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Attempts of the Deep State to enslave Trump (and remind him about JFK destiny). Neocons counterattacked isolationalists who wanted to end wars for enlarging the US neoliberal empire using "Russian spy scandal and neo-McCarthyism witch hunt " as a ruse and managed to enslave and emasculate Trump by promoting birds of a feather for key Trump administration positions
Picture from Secret Money For Private Armies
See also
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Note: due to the size introduction was moved to a separate page November 2016 as a referendum on neoliberal globalization
This election is about the backlash against neoliberalism that became the dominant ideology of the ruling elite in the USA since 1980th. At this point blue color workers became sick of Demorats (aka Neoliberal Democrats) who are betraying them after each elections ("Change we can believe in" in worlds of the king of "bait and switch" Obama) and expecting still they will vote for Democratic as they have nowhere to go (Clinton strategy). They want to show middle finger to Clinton and other neoliberal criminals who deprived them of work, of dignity, of health (heroine epidemic is hitting the USA really hard). It's a class war all over again. Note how neoliberal media tried to misrepresent it accusing Trump supporters of racism, bigotry, and all other sins to mask anti-neoliberal backlash of the US population, and the revolutionary situation in the county, when the elite lost the control of the population. Which really somewhat reminds me the last days of the USSR when communist propaganda stopped working and people start seeing the "Politburo" as "naked king" -- a bunch of corrupt priests of obscure religion, who do not believe in the ideology they promote for "shmucks", only with their own and their families well-being. that their sons and daughters attend Western universities and their wives are shopping in Paris.
It is not an exaggeration to see in 2016 Presidential election as a referendum on neoliberal globalization. But the political power still belongs to Neoliberals, which dominates both the government and the economy (transnationals are the cornerstone of neoliberal world order). It's a big question if the American people will be able to change neoliberal dogma, the official civil religion of the USA without a violent revolution...
The great Trump political breakthrough was consolidating the white working class and white middle class vote. At last "clintonization" (sellout of the Party to Wall Street whichwas initialed by Bill Clinton, converting it into the party of "soft neoliberalism" which at times was undistinguishable from "hard neoliberalism" ) of Democratic Party backfired. Demexit -- abandoning of Demorats by white working and middle class is now a reality.
Writing in Politico, Georgetown political scientist Joshua Mitchell has a long, important take on the deep meaning of Trump — and it’s probably not what you think:
If you listen closely to Trump, you’ll hear a direct repudiation of the system of globalization and identity politics that has defined the world order since the Cold War. There are, in fact, six specific ideas that he has either blurted out or thinly buried in his rhetoric: (1) borders matter; (2) immigration policy matters; (3) national interests, not so-called universal interests, matter; (4) entrepreneurship matters; (5) decentralization matters; (6) PC speech—without which identity politics is inconceivable—must be repudiated.
These six ideas together point to an end to the unstable experiment with supra- and sub-national sovereignty that many of our elites have guided us toward, siren-like, since 1989.
That is what the Trump campaign, ghastly though it may at times be, leads us toward: A future where states matter. A future where people are citizens, working together toward (bourgeois) improvement of their lot. His ideas do not yet fully cohere. They are a bit too much like mental dust that has yet to come together. But they can come together. And Trump is the first American candidate to bring some coherence to them, however raucous his formulations have been.
This is a clear repudiation of neoliberalism (aka "casino capitalism" or Trotskyism for the rich) -- the secular religion to both Republican and Democratic parties adhere (while the term is prohibited from mass media -- can you imagine the Communist Party of the USSR would prohibit its members under the threat of purge to utter the word "communism" or call themselves "communists"). And that means that Trump is a threat to Washington neoliberal elite, the threat to neoliberal Washington_Consensus, which since 1980 (or even earlier) rules the place. That's why they fight and demonization of Trump is conducted by neoliberal media with such a fierce determination. That's why such a tremendous efforts and money are spend on propelling sick and unprincipled establishment candidate -- Hillary Clinton. A warmonger neoconservative, who is a staunch neoliberal (like her husband Bill Clinton).
The US neoliberal elite ("creator class" or "Masters of the Universe" in neoliberal jargon) have successfully revolted against the political and economic constraints on their wealth and power put by "enlightened corporatism" of the New Deal, and for 36 years managed to redistribute wealth up to the level that has no historical presidents. As a result social stability is in danger and "the rest" (or Untermensch, or "takers"/"welfare queen" in neoliberal jargon) are rebelling in the only way left open to them: voting for anyone who claims to be an outsider. (Romney-Ryan 'makers vs. takers' rhetoric helped spawn Donald Trump Washington Examiner)
This idea of low-income "takers" lay beneath Mitt Romney's view that the 47 percent of adults in the U.S. who owed no federal income tax were therefore "dependent upon government" and "who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them…."
...
But "taker" is a slur also when aimed at recipients of government benefits. Millions of "takers" are people who work 40 hours, but at low wages, and thus receive the earned-income tax credit. Will you blame their low wages on them? Perhaps they got horrible education thanks to incompetent government, or were just never blessed with marketable skills.
Some percentage of the 47 percent are World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam Veterans, who after serving their country, put in decades of work, and now live off the Social Security they paid into, without earning enough to owe federal income tax.
The "takers" include widows receiving food stamps, the ill being kept alive by Medicaid, and people drawing on unemployment because their employer got up and moved to Mexico.
More importantly, many of those on welfare or disability hate that they are dependent. They want to be working.
Are there "welfare queens," lazy able-bodied moochers, and people scamming disability? Yes. But lumping in 47 percent of the country with these scoundrels is as illegitimate lumping all businessmen in with the failed bankers who depend on bailouts.
This wasn't just Ryan's mistake. Conservatives broadly have equated low income with dependency. The conservative belief that the market tends to reward skill and diligence often mutates into a belief that poverty reflects some sort of turpitude.
That view helped give birth to Donald Trump, who has tapped into the working class that Ryan and Romney had pushed away.
Globalization and free trade are fast becoming dirty words. That’s because they were culprits for major shocks — like the 2008 financial crisis. In the United States alone, median household income has been practically stagnant for about three decades, the labor market continues to be anemic, manufacturing jobs have been lost, and many have experienced a significant deterioration in living standards.
Much of the post-Brexit and primary election conventional wisdom seems to be stuck in a political narrative in which the Brexit vote and the rise of Trump_vs_deep_state in the United States are seen as symbols of the populist revolution. These symbols are combined with a nationalist tide has been sweeping not only the United Kingdom and the United States, but also many other parts of Europe, including Poland, Hungary, France, The Netherlands and Scandinavia, not to mention, Russia, Turkey, India and Israel.According to this narrative, economic insecurity and cultural anxiety that reflect sociodemographic trends have given momentum to ethnonationalism and religious separatism in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The Rust Belt is pitted against New York City, and the Midlands against London.
All this means that the crisis of neoliberalism, which started in 2008 now obtained political dimension, when the institutions created by neoliberalism are under attacks from the disgruntled population. The power of neoliberal propaganda, the power of brainwashing and indoctrination of population via MSM, schools and universities to push forward neoliberal globalization started to evaporate. And the fight against neoliberal globalization is not easy and it is not accidentally Hillary Clinton became the Democratic nominee and neoliberal MSM unlashed unprecedented campaign of blackmail against Trump. The fact is, Sheldon Wolin not accidentally calls neoliberalism "inverted totalitarianism" . It's a system where corporate power has seized all of political levers of control. In fact, under neoliberalism, there is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil or Raytheon. We also have lost our privacy. And under Obama, an assault against civil liberties has outstripped what George W. Bush carried out.
This is about the crisis of neoliberal ideology and especially Trotskyism part of it (neoliberalism can be viewed as Trotskyism for the rich). The following integral elements of this ideology no longer work well and are starting to cause the backlash:
So after 36 (or more) years of dominance (which started with triumphal march of neoliberalism in early 90th) the ideology entered "zombie state". That does not make it less dangerous but its power over minds of the population started to evaporate. Far right ideologies now are filling the vacuum, as ith the discreditation of socialist ideology and decimation of "enlightened corporatism" of the New Deal in the USA there is no other viable alternatives.
The same happened in late 1960th with the Communist ideology. It took 20 years for the USSR to crash after that with the resulting splash of nationalism (which was the force that blow up the USSR) and far right ideologies.
It remains to be seen whether the neoliberal US elite will fare better then Soviet nomenklatura as challenges facing the USA are now far greater then challenges which the USSR faced at the time. Among them is oil depletion which might be the final nail into the coffin of neoliberalism and, specifically, the neoliberal globalization.
This has been a bipartisan effort, because they've both been captured by corporate power. We have undergone what John Ralston Saul correctly calls a corporate coup d'état in slow motion, and it's over.
Neoliberal poison destroys a society and lifts the politicians with nationalistic bend like Trump. First, neoliberalism dislocated the working class, de-industrialized the country. Then, in the name of austerity, it destroyed public institutions, education, public broadcasting. And then it poisoned the political system.
I would argue that in terms of megalomania and narcissism, Hillary Clinton is not far behind Trump. But the point is, we've got to break away from-which is exactly the narrative neoliberal MSM want us to focus on.
We've got to break away from political personalities and understand and examine and critique the structures of power. And, in fact, the Democratic Party, especially beginning under Bill Clinton, has carried water for corporate entities as assiduously as the Republican Party.
We need to be aware of neoliberal brainwashing. I mean, this whole debate over the DNC WikiLeaks emails disclosure is insane. The key question here is not who leaked emails, but whether they are authentic or not. They are. As well as DNC dirty laundry exposed those long emails -- you should read them. They're really appalling, and exposes the way the Democratic primaries were rigged. Tricks used included the mechanism of the superdelegates (which unlawfully declared their allegiance very early creating pro-Clinton pressure of voters) , the stealing of the caucus in Nevada, and the huge amounts of corporate money and money of super PACs that flowed into the Clinton campaign. This faux feminism on which Hillary Clinton based her campaign is another propaganda trick. She si hostile to both women and children. Cold like any sociopath. The fact is, Clinton has a track record of hurting US children: she and her husband destroyed welfare as we know it, and 70% of the original recipients were children.
If is important to understand that the rise of nationalism, the phenomenal success of Trump is just a form of backlash against neoliberalism.
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Jul 03, 2021 | www.wsj.com
... ... ...
In their book "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction," Mr. Delgado and Jean Stefancic list several of its core premises, including the view that "racism is ordinary, not aberrational," and that it "serves important purposes, both psychic and material, for the dominant group," that is, for white people. In recent years, these ideas have entered the mainstream thanks to the advocacy of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was catalyzed by several high-profile cases of police violence against Black people, as well as the New York Times's 1619 Project and bestselling books like Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility" and Ibram X. Kendi's "How to Be an Antiracist." Critical race theory also informs instruction at some schools and other institutions.
...Far more Americans have learned about critical race theory from its opponents than from the theorists themselves. That may be inevitable, since their writing was mostly aimed at other scholars. But at least one major work is more accessible: "Faces at the Bottom of the Well," the 1992 book by Derrick Bell, who is often described as the founder or godfather of critical race theory.
Bell died in 2011, but the response to his work foreshadows today's controversies. In "Faces," he blends the genres of fiction and essay to communicate his powerfully pessimistic sense of "the permanence of racism" -- the book's subtitle. Bell's thought has been an important influence on some of today's most influential writers on race, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michelle Alexander.
Derrick Bell was born in Pittsburgh in 1930, and after serving in the Air Force he went to work as an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Eisenhower Justice Department. He left the job in 1959 after being told that he had to resign his membership in the NAACP to avoid compromising his objectivity. That experience reflects a major theme in Bell's work: Can traditional legal standards of objectivity and neutrality lead to justice for Black Americans, or does fighting racism require a more politically engaged, results-oriented approach to the law?
In 1971, Bell became the first Black professor to receive tenure at Harvard Law School. As he writes in "Faces," "When I agreed to become Harvard's first black faculty member I did so on the express commitment that I was to be the first, but not the last, black hired. I was to be the pioneer, the trailblazer." But the school was slow to hire more Black faculty, leading Bell to leave in protest in 1990. He ended up spending the last part of his career at NYU Law School.
... ... ...
The political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr., whose work focuses on race and inequality, wrote about a conference he attended at Harvard Law School in 1991, where "I heard the late, esteemed legal theorist, Derrick Bell, declare on a panel that blacks had made no progress since 1865. I was startled not least because Bell's own life, as well as the fact that Harvard's black law students' organization put on the conference, so emphatically belied his claim." Mr. Reed dismissed the idea as "more a jeremiad than an analysis."
In the conclusion to "Faces," Bell argues that the struggle for racial equality is worthwhile even though it will never succeed. Like the French existentialist Albert Camus, who saw Sisyphus's eternal effort to roll a boulder uphill as a symbol of human endurance in an absurd world, Bell demands "recognition of the futility of action" while insisting "that action must be taken."
To the journalist and historian James Traub, who profiled Bell for the New Republic magazine in 1993, this amounted to a recipe for paralysis: "If you convince whites that their racism is ineradicable, what are they supposed to do? And what are blacks to do with their hard-won victim status?"
... ... ...
These experiences inform "Faces at the Bottom of the Well," which is made up of nine fables, some with a science-fiction twist. In one story, a new continent emerges in the Atlantic Ocean, with an atmosphere that only African-Americans can breathe. In another, the U.S. institutes a system where whites can pay for permission to discriminate against Blacks -- a kind of cap-and-trade scheme for bigotry.
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Jun 09, 2021 | www.unz.com
GMC , says: June 9, 2021 at 7:19 am GMT • 18.5 hours ago
@beavertalesMy good friend in Canada says that it seems to be a "BioSecurity Fascist State" forming also. And it's not against Cuba , it's against the populace of Canada. Worse than anything in the US. < >
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May 16, 2021 | www.amazon.com
4.0 out of 5 stars The roots of National Socialism in cultural criticism Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2019 Verified Purchase Written originally in 1961 as part of venerable scholar Fritz Stern's doctoral thesis The Politics of Cultural Despair is a classic study of the cultural criticism and irrational ideologies of three 19th and early 20th century German writers that helped pave the way for the rise of the Third Reich and the triumph of national socialism. The book traces the lives and works of the obscure German writers and scholars Lagarde, Langbehn, and Moeller to illuminate how ideas conducive to national socialism, including antisemitism, extreme German nationalism (volk movement), anti-liberalism, anti-intellectualism, the desire for an authoritarian Caesar or "Fuhrer", and the primacy of "the will", became pervasive in 19th and early 20th century Germany.
All three authors relentlessly attacked liberal democracy, the enlightenment tradition, and the modern industrial society that had separated the German people from their "spiritual" and "pure" connection with the Germany's ancestral forests and countryside. They were, as Stern puts it, "Conservatives with nothing left to conserve". They viewed Germany's unification and the advancement of liberal democracy and modernity as a disastrous development that divided Germany's people and drained them of their spiritual essence. Their criticism also took on extreme antisemitism that egregiously blamed the Jewish people and portrayed them as conspiratorial outsiders who promoted capitalism and diluted Germany's ethnic purity. They also felt that traditional sources of authority, such as religion and the Bismarck nation state, were entirely inadequate and stale in the age of Nietzsche. Seeing Germany in crisis, and with no traditional political or cultural forces to turn to, all three authors became their own prophets of change. They expounded vague and irrational theories that found salvation in nationalists myths and desired a return to a illusory past where the German people lived in unified harmony and prosperity in their ancestral lands. The authors took on the delusional path from cultural critics to Nihilistic prophets. Starting from somewhat credible attacks on Germany's political and cultural shortcomings and transforming them into irrational and delusional political programs with little grasp on reality and dangerous support for authoritarian policies. Tragically, their works enjoyed a consistent level of support among Germany's population and influenced many philosophers and political theorists, such as Alfred Rosenberg, that would formulate the National Socialist ideology. While none of the three were Nazis, all of them clearly proliferated ideas central to the National Socialist program and advocated for a dangerous and authoritarian cultural regeneration.
Stern's work is classic in the sense that it represents the mid 20th century political and historical scholarly work that focuses on the impact of political ideologies and political ideas. While this focus on "ideas" is far less emphasized today in modern political science scholarship, the book reminds us that the rise of National Socialism and Fascism was far more than a reaction to Germany's disastrous defeat in World War I and the impact of the Versailles Treaty. Instead, the ideas of national socialism were deeply embedded in German society and represented a dangerous undercurrent acting against the forces of democratic liberalism, industrialization, and the enlightenment. In advocating a "politics of cultural despair" all three turned towards delusional, dangerous, and authoritarian solutions that could have only supported a political program as appalling and devastating as national socialism. As Stern reminds us, "the politics of cultural despair" can come from any region of the political spectrum where the most unwavering cultural critics can become "nihilistic" prophets who desire not just cultural change, but cultural and political regeneration based on a mythic and nonexistent past or promise a millenarian utopia . A statement that applies not only to Germany's lost 19th and 20th century conservatives, but to idealistic leftist terrorist groups in the 60s and 70s, and Islamic and right wing terrorist groups today. In summary, Stern reminds us not only that Fascism and National Socialism had deep roots in 19th and 20th century Germany, but also of the dangers of irrational and delusional political programs that depart from reality.
However, like any good skeptic, one has to wonder how important the cultural and political critiques and ideas of Stern's three authors really were. Modern political science has mostly moved beyond the focus on political ideas found in Stern's work and without concrete quantitative data, it is close to impossible to determine the impact of their work. The book also suffers from a narrow focus that makes it less approachable for the casual reader. Unlike other introductory works on Fascism and National Socialism, Stern writes for an expert audience that is expected to be well versed in 19th and 20th century German political, philosophical, and intellectual history. Readers less versed in these subjects may find the book less enjoyable and insightful. Although this work has probably been superseded by more modern works, it remains a classic in the field of intellectual and political history and represents classic political and cultural history at its best. I also recommend George Mosse's 1964 work "The Crisis of the German Ideology" that covers very similar ground, as well as Zeev Sternhell's "The Birth of Fascist Ideology" on the intellectual origins of Italian Fascism. >
A presage of the rise of German National Socialism. Similarities to modern Islamic Radicalism. 4.0 out of 5 stars A presage of the rise of German National Socialism. Similarities to modern Islamic Radicalism. Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2006 Verified Purchase Stern's book gives us valuable insight into currents of German thinking from the 19th century up to the rise of National Socialism in the 20s and 30s. Stern's books focuses on the writings of Paul de Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, and Moeller van den Bruck.
Paul de Lagarde was a biblical scholar and a master of oriental languages like Aramaic and Persian. He was also a rabid Jew hater who openly called for extermination. He loathed classical Western liberalism, science, and capitalism. For him, these were all spiritless abstractions. For Lagarde, Western liberalism, capitalism, science, and the Jews where the monstrous embodiment of all he hated. He had a romantic notion of a mythical Germanic past, and he believed the Jews and the modern society of the West were conspiring to pollute and corrupt this pure German spirit. He advocated a Great Leader, a "purge the Jew" program, and a divinely inspired expansionist foreign policy to rekindle an authentic and noble Germanic way of life.
Lagarde despised bourgeois 19th century German Christianity, and he called for a "new" German religion that would purge all the Jewish elements of Christianity and become the unifying spiritual basis and justification for the new German state. This new religion would fuse the squabbling German factions and sects into a unified people and nation with one single will .... embodied in the form a "Great Leader."
Lagarde rejected the premise of general education, and instead, he proposed a totally new education system based on social status and intellectual promise. This new, state-run authoritarian education system would mold the leaders of the new German nation.
Julius Langbehn wrote a book that extolled the Dutch artist Rembrandt as an authentic "German man". If this sounds confusing, well ... it is ..., but recall that many years later the Nazis attempted to use Rembrandt as a cultural symbol to force a Dutch-German alliance after they occupied Holland during the war.
Like Lagarde, Langbehn hated the modern liberal society because of its mechanization, realism, bourgeois lifestyle, and commercialism. Like Hitler, Langbehn was an "artist"; he was anti-scientific, anti-Western, and anti-rational. He postulated a "cult of the young" (think Hitler Youth) and a "Hidden Emperor" (think Führer) who would emerge to unite the German people. Again like Lagarde, Langbehn hated the U.S.A because it was the embodiment of all he despised. He warned that Jews were destroying the German "Volk" by "worming" their way into German life. For Langbehn, modernity itself was the ultimate cause of German decay, and the Jews were to blame for bringing this modernity to German society. For Langbehn, the Jews were "democratically inclined; they have an affinity for the mob," and like Lagarde, Langbehn called for extermination of the Jews.
I won't go on about Moeller van den Bruck, because it is similar to Lagarde and Langbehn. One important footnote: The Nazi's got the term "The Third Reich" from one of Moeller's books.
In summary, we find a set of three German intellectual romantics who were alienated by modernism and who abhorred all that was new. They suffered from "cultural despair." For these three, the "Jews" were the immediate agents of corrupting change, and it was America that was the colossal embodiment of all they detested. For them, a pure and authentic German way of life was lost due to the conspiracy and confluence of these horrible forces of modernism. All of the ills and fractiousness and faithlessness of German society were attributable to Jews and liberal modernism (as exemplified by America).
These three sought to annihilate the bourgeois modern society they found themselves in and they sought to replace it with a utopian dream. Their utopia was a unified and harmonious German people -- purged of Jews -- who would be orderly, hierarchical, and authentic. This unified German nation would be led by a strong emperor who would perfectly embody the unified will of the people. They sought a "New German religion", free of Jewish influence, that would provide a unifying framework for this new society. They proposed state-controlled education and propaganda, leadership by a small elite, annexation and conquest of middle Europe, and they called for the extermination of Jews.
In short - these three "culturally despairing" egg heads predicted much of the horror of the Nazis. All three were widely read in German society at various points in time leading up to the rise of National Socialism.
We know that Hitler emphatically read Lagarde. For more on this, see "Hitler's Forgotten Library" in the May 2003 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, by Timothy W. Ryback. On p.295, Stern shows how Lagarde, Langbehn, and van den Bruck influenced other key Nazi ideologists like Alfred Rosenberg.
The book contains extensive footnotes and end notes, a large bibliography, and a good index. I have one gripe with the book. There are several book titles, quotes, and passages that are in German without English translation. I could not work them out with my meager German. I wish translations were provided. I also wish pictures or portraits of Lagarde, Langbehn, and van den Bruck were provided.
Finally, I'd like to add that many of the themes we see having emerged from Lagarde, Langbehn, and van den Bruck are similar to what is found the more recent work of the influential Islamic radical Sayyid Qutb. I strongly recommend the Paul Berman book "Terror and Liberalism" for a very readable and enlightening treatment of Qutb.
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May 12, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Stonebird , May 12 2021 20:56 utc | 47
psychohistorian | May 12 2021 19:44 utc | 31
I'm not sure that it is global private finance that is the key. Although I used to.
Either we consider the Oligarchs (Bezos Zuckerberg) as the newest form of low life, or the Banking cartels and billionares are even lower.
BUT - There is a third class of Global financiers. That is "Corporations" (as a class). Corporations are immortal, and like a hydra, with many heads, have more arms than an "image of a covid-virus" ( Octopussii are simply too limited, although they are a good example of multi-brained resourceful animals ). They are also "persons" in front of the law, with all the protections and privilges that offers. On other occasions they are simply above the law (Twit-Facebook and free speech). The people running them are only occasionally reprimanded, but the "corporation" itself is never touched. *1*
They pay, sometimes, a bit of taxes, have different laws and have lobbies working in their favour. Can corrupt Politicians with the offer of directorships or whatever. They can even be "foundations" and pay no tax at all. They deal across many different National laws, obey what they will, and are extra terrritorial in scope. They can have a nominal "center", while decisions are made elsewhere. They are in fact a new type of alien supra-being .
Of course, the "leaders" of Corporations are rich, but they can be replaced by others at the wishes of "shareholders". Untouchable and unknown.Very useful for storing wealth and speculating at the same time.
In spite of Musk and others taking all the limelight, it is the corporations that work in the background that seem to be the real seat of power.
---
*1* One of the last real actions taken against Corporate power was the breaking up of Rockefellers Standard Oil .*****
*2* In the case of the "breakup" of either the US or the EU - would the corporations be touched (eliminated), or hailed as saving civilisation?
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May 09, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
jared , May 5 2021 16:50 utc | 49
I think that there is an on-going effort to create fads/movements in which the public becomes caught-up and distracts the from reality.
The more binary and controversial the better. Red/Blue. I used to be a big fan of sports but have the opinion it is a pointless waste of time and my life is better for that realization.
Additionally/tangentially, I feel there is a habit in the English language in particular to create new words to describe things these words are not well define and generate a lot of discussion and heat about things that nobody knows what they are actually talking about and end up arguing the meaning of the words.
People who don't know the new words must try to catch up or be left out of the discussion. I don't direct this at your discussion. I just wonder how we might see things if we were constrained to a limited vocabulary - as I am as a programmer of sorts.
EoinW , May 5 2021 16:57 utc | 52
gottlieb , May 5 2021 17:06 utc | 54NonPartisanRinsed | May 5 2021 16:03 utc | 30
Characteristics of the Woke: They always attack, especially with insults, like "paranoia nonsense". They never address the actual point made, instead they reinterpret the point to make it appear pure evil. Which allows them to attribute the worst possible motivations on the person they are attacking. Naturally they invent things the other person hadn't even mentioned, like climate change.
psychohistorian , May 5 2021 17:17 utc | 55Again the whole woke 'identity' culture that cancels dissent and promotes 'minorities' in positions of power is simply woke fascism. Just as military recruitment is about turning violent video games real for young men, so too is CIA recruitment about inviting the 'woke' for murder and mayhem in the name 'freedom' without which the woke could not wake.
I will believe that any of this is worth a shit when Snowden wades in with his opinion...until then its just another distraction
The CIA is why we can't have "wokeism" about the right issue like global private/public finance.....where is Occupy 2.0?
The current wokeism is like the pet rocks of old days.....would want folks to focus that woke on the inherited class structure of the private property West, would we?
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May 03, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Posted on April 25, 2021 by Lambert Strether
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Recently, the political class has been working hard to rehabilitate George W. Bush into an elder statesman, no doubt to continue the liberal Democrat conversion of suburban Republicans, with headlines like " George Bush reborn as the nation's grandfather " (the London Sunday Times, but you know it will migrate over here), " George W Bush is back "" but not all appreciate his new progressive image " (Guardian), " Bush calls on Congress to tone down "˜harsh rhetoric' about immigration " (CNN), and "George W Bush reveals who he voted for in 2020 election "" and it wasn't Biden or Trump " (the Independent. Bush wrote in Condaleeza Rice, who Exxon once named a tanker for). I could go on. But I won't. These stories from major outlets seem to be erasing early coverage like " The 7 worst moments of George W. Bush's presidency " (WaPo, 2013), " The blood on George W Bush's hands will never dry. Don't glorify this man " (The Guardian, 2017), " Reminder: George W. Bush Is Still Very, Very Bad " (Vice, 2018), " Seth Meyers: Don't Let Trump Make You Forget How Awful George W. Bush Was " (Vanity Fair, 2020), and " We Shouldn't Have to Remind People George W. Bush Was a Terrible President : (Jacobin, 2020). That's unfortunate, because George W. Bush (hereafter "Bush"; the "W" distinguishes him from his spook Yankee patrician Dad, oil bidnessman George H.W. Bush). As with so much else that is fetid in the miasmic air of our current liberal Democrat dispensation, Bush's rehabilitation begins with the Obamas, in this case Michelle Obama, in this iconic photo:
(The backstory: " Michelle Obama Reveals What Really Happened During Her Sweet Exchange With George W. Bush ," and "Michelle Obama: George W. Bush is "˜my partner in crime'[1] and "˜I love him to death' ").
Bush became President in the year 2000. That was "" let me break out my calculator "" 2021 "" 2000 = 21 years ago. It occurs to me that our younger readers, born in 2000, or even 1990, may not know how genuinely horrid Bush was, as President.
I was blogging even back then, and I remember how horrid Bush was; certainly worse than Trump, at least for Trump's first three years in office, until the Covid pandemic. To convey the full horror of the Bush years would not a series of posts, but a book. The entire experience was wretched and shameful.
Of the many horrors of the Bush years, I will pick three. (I am omitting many, many others, including Hurricane Katrina , the Plame Affair , Medicare Part D, the Cheney Energy Task Force , that time Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face , Bush's missing Texas Air National Guard records , Bush gaslighting the 2004 Republican National Convention with terror alerts, and on and on and on. And I didn't even get to 9/11, " You've covered your ass ," WMDs, and the AUMF. Sorry. It's exhausting.) I'm afraid my recounting of these incidents will be sketchy: I lived and blogged in them, and the memories of the horror well up in such volume and detail that I lose control of the material. Not only that, there was an actual, functioning blogosphere at that time, which did great work, but unfortunately most of that work has succumbed to link rot. And my memory of events two decades ago is not as strong as it could be.
The White House Iraq Group
Here I will rely on excerpts from Colonel Sam Gardiner's (PDF) "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II" (2003), whose introduction has been saved from link rot by the National Security Archive and a full version by the University of Leeds . I would bet, long forgotten even by many of those who blogged through those times. ("Gulf II" is what we refer to as the "War in Iraq.") Quoting from the full version:
You will see in my analysis and comments that I do not accept the notion that the first casualty of war is truth. I think we have to have a higher standard. In the most basic sense, Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to come to right decisions. Truth became a casualty. When truth is a casualty, democracy receives collateral damage.
Seems familiar. (Gardiner's report can be read as a brilliant media critique; it's really worth sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading it all.)[2] More:
My research suggests there were over 50 stories manufactured or at least engineered that distorted the picture of Gulf II for the American and British people . I'll cover most in this report. At the end, I will also describe some stories that seem as if they were part of the strategic influence campaign although the evidence is only circumstantial.
What becomes important is not each story taken individually. If that were the case, it would probably seem only more of the same. If you were to look at them one at a time, you could conclude, "Okay we sort of knew that was happening." It is the pattern that becomes important. It's the summary of everything. To use a phrase often heard during the war, it's the mosaic. Recognizing I said I wouldn't exaggerate, it would not be an exaggeration to say the people of the United States and UK can find out more about the contents of a can of soup they buy than the contents of the can of worms they bought with the 2003 war in the Gulf.
The White House was, naturally, at the center of the operation:
One way to view how the US Government was organized to do the strategic communications effort before, during and after the war is to use the chart that was used by the Assistant Deputy Director for Information Operations. The center is the White House Office of Global Communications, the organization originally created by Karen Hughes as the Coalition Information Office. The White House is at the center of the strategic communications process"¦.
Handy chart:
And:
Inside the White House there was an Iraq Group that did policy direction and then the Office of Global Communications itself.
Membership of the White House Iraq Group:
So, in 2020 Bush's write-in vote for President was Condi Rice, the [x] Black [x] woman who helped run a domestic disinformation campaign for him in 2003, to sell the Iraq War to the American people. Isn't that"¦. sweet?
Of course, I was very naive at that point. I had come up as a Democrat, and my first real political engagement was the Clinton impeachment. Back in 2003, I was amazed to discover that there was a White House operation that was planting fake stories in the press "" and that I had been playing whackamole on them. At a higher level, I was disturbed that "Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to come to right decisions." Now it all seems perfectly normal, which is sad.
Torture at Abu Ghraib
There are a lot of images of our torture prison in Iraq, Abu Ghraib. This one ( via ) is not the most famous , but to me it is the most shocking:
What kind of country sets dogs on a naked prisoner? Well, my kind of country, apparently. (Later, I remember discussing politics with somebody who came from a country that might be considered less governed by the rule of law than my own, and they said: "Abu Ghraib. You have nothing to say." And they were right.)
For those who came in late, here's a snapshot (the detail of the story is in fact overwhelming, and I also have pity for the poor shlubs the brass tossed into that hellhole[3].) From the Los Angeles Times, " Few have faced consequences for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq " (2015):
[A] 44-year-old Al Jazeera reporter named Salah Ejaili, said in a phone interview from Qatar that he was arrested in 2003 while covering an explosion in the Iraqi province of Diyala. He was held at Abu Ghraib for 48 days after six days in another facility, he said.
"Most of the pictures that came out in 2004, I saw that firsthand "" the human pyramid where men were stacked up naked on top of each other, people pulled around on leashes," he said in the interview, with one of his attorneys translating. "I used to hear loud screams during the torture sessions."
Ejaili says he was beaten, left naked and exposed to the elements for long periods, and left in solitary confinement, among other acts.
"When people look at others who are naked, they feel like they're animals in a zoo, in addition to being termed as criminals and as terrorists," he said. "That had a very strong psychological impact."
The plaintiffs also say they suffered electric shocks; deprivation of food, water and oxygen; sexual abuse; threats from dogs; beatings; and sensory deprivation.
Taha Yaseen Arraq Rashid, a laborer, says he was sexually abused by a woman while he was cuffed and shackled, and also that he was forced to watch a female prisoner's rape.
Ejaili said that his face was often covered during interrogations, making it difficult for him to identify those involved, but that he was able to notice that many of the interrogators who entered the facility wore civilian clothing.
His attorneys, citing military investigations into abuses at Abu Ghraib and other evidence, say the contractors took control of the prison and issued orders to uniformed military.
"Abu Ghraib was pretty chaotic," said Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought suits against CACI and L-3 Services. "They were involved in a conspiracy with the military police to abuse our clients.""¦. Eleven U.S. soldiers were convicted in military trials of crimes related to the humiliation and abuse of the prisoners.
(So Abu Ghraib is a privatization story, too. Oddly, whoever signed the contract never ended up in court.) All this seemed pretty shocking then. But now we know that the Chicago Police Department ran a torture site at Homan Square while Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, was Mayor , so perhaps this is all perfectly normal too.
Warrantless Surveillance and the Destruction of the Fourth Amendment
Here is the wording of the Fourth Amendment :
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers , and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
If our legal system had the slightest shred of integrity, it would be obvious to the Courts, as it is to a six-old-child, that what we laughingly call our "personal" computers and cellphones contain "paper," not in the tediously literal sense of a physical material made from wood fibre, but in the sense of content . Bits and bytes are 20th Century paper, stored on silicon and hard disk platters. Of course a warrant should be needed to read what's on my phone, ffs.
That Fourth Amendment common sense did not prevail is IMNSHO due in large part to Bush's program of warrantless surveillance, put in place as part of the Global War on Terror. Here again, the complexity is overwhelming and took several years to unravel. I'm afraid I have to quote Wikipedia on this one :
A week after the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), which inaugurated the "War on Terror". It later featured heavily in arguments over the NSA program.
Soon after the 9/11 attacks President Bush established the President's Surveillance Program. As part of the program, the Terrorist Surveillance Program was established pursuant to an executive order that authorized the NSA to surveil certain telephone calls without obtaining a warrant (see 50 U.S.C. § 1802 50 U.S.C. § 1809). The complete details of the executive order are not public, but according to administration statements, the authorization covers communication originating overseas from or to a person suspected of having links to terrorist organizations or their affiliates even when the other party to the call is within the US.
In October 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act, which granted the administration broad powers to fight terrorism. The Bush administration used these powers to bypass the FISC and directed the NSA to spy directly on al-Qaeda via a new NSA electronic surveillance program. Reports at the time indicate that an "apparently accidental" "glitch" resulted in the interception of communications that were between two U.S. parties. This act was challenged by multiple groups, including Congress, as unconstitutional.
The precise scope of the program remains secret, but the NSA was provided total, unsupervised access to all fiber-optic communications between the nation's largest telecommunication companies' major interconnected locations, encompassing phone conversations, email, Internet activity, text messages and corporate private network traffic .
Of course, all this is perfectly normal today. So much for the Fourth Amendment, good job. (You will note that the telcos had to be in on it; amusingly, the CEO of Qwest, the only telco that refused to participate, was charged and convicted of insider trading, good job again.) The legal aspects of all this are insanely complex, but as you see from my introduction, they should be simple.
Conclusion
Here's a video of the Iraqi (now in Parliament) who threw shoes at Bush (who got off lightly, all things considered):
https://www.youtube.com/embed/OM3Z_Kskl_U
We should all be throwing shoes at Bush, seriously if not literally. We should not be accepting candy from him. We should not be treating him as an elder statesman. Or a "partner in crime." We should not be admiring his paintings. Bush ran a bad, bad, bad administration and we are living with the consequences of his badness today. Bush is a bad man. We are ruled by bad people. Tomorrow, Obama!
NOTES
[1] Indeed.
[2] For example, I vividly remember playing whack-a-mole as a blogger with the following WMD stories: Drones, weapons labs, WMD cluster bombs, Scuds, nuclear materials from Niger, aluminum tubes, and dirty bombs. They one and all fell apart on close inspection. And they were only a small part of the operation, as Gardiner shows in detail.
[3] My personal speculation is that Dick Cheney had a direct feed from the Abu Ghraib torture chambers to the White House, and watched the proceedings live. Some of the soldiers burned images of torture onto CDs as trophies, and the prison also had a server, whose connectivity was very conveniently not revealed by the judge in a lawsuit I dimly remember being brought in Germany. So it goes.
flora , April 25, 2021 at 6:46 pm
Does anyone believe that W, son of H. W. Bush, H. W. son of Senator Prescott Bush, would have been been pres without that familial lineage and its important govt connections? The pity is W wasn't smart enough to grasp world politics and the US's importance as an accepted fulcrum in same beyond his momentary wants. imo. Brent Scowcroft and others warned him off his vain pursuits. The word "squander" come to mind, though I wish it did not.
flora , April 25, 2021 at 7:43 pm
See for example Kevin Phillips' book American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush . ( Kevin Phillips is a great modernist American historian, imo, who saw the rise of Nixon before anyone else.)
Teejay , April 27, 2021 at 10:16 am
" saw the rise of Nixon"? Phillips worked on the '68 campaign.
JTMcPhee , April 25, 2021 at 8:12 pm
Don't deny W his agency. As I followed the horrors, from Vietnam to Iraq to Syria to Central America and elsewhere, the full list that was visible anyway, of the W regime, it sure seemed clear to me that W played the bumbling yuk very well.
He did what he set out to do, no doubt with careful guidance from that sh!t of a father (magically turned into a laid-in-state "statesman") and mother-of-string-of-pearls, and of course Cheney and the rest of the corpo-gov policy gang.
The Consent Manufacturers are whitewashing an evil man and his slicker but equally evil successor and his glamorous spouse.
Helluva job, Georgie! Full marks for kicking the world a long way down a dark road.
anon y'mouse , April 26, 2021 at 12:24 pm
the dumb cluck thing was mostly an act. he was deliberately talking that way not only to paint himself as stupid, but also because those in power assume we must be spoken to as children (they've studied president speeches since JFK have decreased from high school level to 6th grade in complexity, word usage etc).
see Pelosi's daughter's film of his campaign trail. He's no Angel Merkel, but sly enough for politics in this country and most third world corruptocracies.
In our kayfabe duoparty system, it also gave the "opposing" side the "W is a Chimp" talking point to harp on (dress rehearsal for the same stuff against tRUMP).
Tom Stone , April 25, 2021 at 6:49 pm
Abu Ghraib was not an anomaly, Con Son Island served the same purpose during the Vietnam War. When I was young I was proud to be an American Citizen, we had the Bill of Rights, the Military was controlled by Civilians and their oath was to defend the Constitution from "All Enemies Foreign and Domestic.". I have been horrified, ashamed and deeply saddened by what has happened in the US over the last half Century or so.
And it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.ambrit , April 25, 2021 at 7:00 pm
You actually "˜blogged' back when we had to use punch cards to program our PCs? How oh how did you clamber on up out of "the Well" so many times a week? I am somewhat convinced that the Hollerith Cards Protocol was the origin of the Twitter 140 character limit.
I also "lived through" the "˜Reign of "W""˜ and see it as a Time of Prophecy. Most of the things we are now staring down the barrel of were effectuated then.
I may be foilly, (may be? who am I kidding,) but I view the 2000 election as a major turning point of American history.
albrt , April 25, 2021 at 7:20 pm
I view the 2008 election as the major failing-to-turn-back-when-we-had-the-chance point. Obama could have undone Bush's worst policies, but instead he cemented them into place forever.
Our elites are both stupid and evil, but Bush is more stupid and Obama is more evil.
drumlin woodchuckles , April 26, 2021 at 12:08 am
So was the 1963 " election at Dealey Plaza". Very pivotal.
Susan the other , April 26, 2021 at 1:56 pm
I go with JFK's assassination too. But little George is a close second.
Paul Whalen , April 26, 2021 at 6:42 am
you are 40 years off the mark-It was Reagan who's brand of avuncular fascism, celebrating stupidity as a virtue who paved the way.
Jason , April 26, 2021 at 6:59 am
All the pomp and circumstance surrounding the personage of the President serves to conceal the people behind the scenes who vetted and groomed said president, and actively advise him while in office. It's in this way that a Jimmy Carter may be viewed as a gentle soul so far as presidents go, but he was actually vetted by Brzezinski on behalf of the CFR goons. Once in office he was then advised by Brzezinski and Volcker, among other assorted lunatics. And he gladly took their advice the entire time. That's how he came to be president in the first place. And so it goes.
Ashburn , April 26, 2021 at 4:29 pm
albrt: I agree with your take. Obama campaigned as an anti-war candidate (at least wrt Iraq). He then proceeded to "˜surge' into Afghanistan and added Libya, Syria, and Yemen, to the regime change mix. Never a thought given to prosecuting the war criminals: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet, Feith, Wolfowitz, Powell, et al; much less even consider a truth and reconciliation commission.
Obama was equally complicit in this never ending horror show and, I am hopeful, history will hold him equally accountable.
km , April 25, 2021 at 7:19 pm
Is it not written that Margaret Thatcher's true legacy was Tony Blair? If that is true, then the true legacy of Dubya is Obama.
Tom Doak , April 25, 2021 at 7:43 pm
That gives W too much credit. Obama continued the legacy of Cheney.
John Wright , April 25, 2021 at 9:58 pm
Could you explain your view that Obama and Trump are "worse than that" (Bush-Cheney).?
As far as harm that George W. Bush did and launched (illegal/immoral wars, domestic surveillance, tax cuts for the wealthy"¦.) Bush should take the award.
Obama did push for military action in Libya, but at least held back from Syria.
The administrations after Bush "kicked the can down the road" but he initiated the events they simply continued. And Trump did attempt to pull troops back from Bush initiated wars. How is Trump worse than Bush? What are your metrics?
drumlin woodchuckles , April 25, 2021 at 10:04 pm
I am just a commenter here, but I would say that . . .
When Obama deliberately and with malice aforethought turned all the admitted (and in fact proudly self-avowed) war-criminals and criminals-against humanity loose, free and clear under "look forward not back", he routinised and permanentized the up-to-that-very-minute irregular and extra-constitutional novel methods of governance and practice which the Cheney-Bush Administration had pioneered. Obama deliberately made torture, aggressive war, etc. "legal" when America does it and "permanent" as long as America is strong enough to keep doing it.
He did some other things like that which I don't have time to mention right now. Maybe others will beat me to it.
Most of all, by slickly conning or permitting to self-con numbers of people about "hope and change" to come from an Obama Administration, he destroyed all hope of hope. He destroyed hope itself. Hope is not a "thing" any more in this country, thanks to Obama.
He may also have destroyed black politicians' dreams of becoming America's " Second Black President" for several decades to come. Been there, done that. Never Again. But since I am not Black, that is not my problem. That is something Black America can thank Obama for, if they decide to wake up to the fact of that reality.
Of course , if the Evil Countess Draculamala becomes President after Biden, then I guess I will be proven wrong about that particular observation.
tegnost , April 25, 2021 at 10:47 pm
Bush was the set up guy, Obama was the closer
norm de plume , April 26, 2021 at 6:51 am
The Greatest Disappointment in History. No-one else comes close, in terms of the sheer numbers of people globally who he let down. The Bait and Switch King, The Great Betrayer. After the nightmare of Bush we got him and his "˜eloquence', pulling the wool over the dazzled sheeple's eyes while he entrenched the 1% and the neocon MI complex, his paymasters, and sponsors for his entry into the overclass.
Last, does any single person with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton, bear so much responsibility for the election of Trump?
quackery , April 26, 2021 at 7:57 am
When Obama campaigned for president he claimed he wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons. Instead, he upgraded the nuclear arsenal.
Mr Grumpy , April 26, 2021 at 10:28 am
It is ironic that the far right views Obama as the antichrist but they benefited from all of his policies.
Cat Burglar , April 26, 2021 at 11:19 am
Remember that Obama voted in favor of FISAA, the bill that immunized Bush and his flunkies from prosecution for their felony FISA violations, as a senator, not long before the presidential election. It was impossible to make myself vote for him after that.
Hotei , April 25, 2021 at 11:53 pm
Excellent documentation of that lineage here: http://www.obamatheconservative.com/
Norm Norton , April 26, 2021 at 11:14 am
"Is it not written that Margaret Thatcher's true legacy was Tony Blair?" If that is true, then the true legacy of Dubya is Obama."
And for Obama, Trump!
upstater , April 25, 2021 at 7:42 pm
Lambert, you forgot this one" Biden presents Liberty Medal to George and Laura Bush Instead of a war crimes trial at the Hague, Biden gave him a (family bloging) medal!
Jason , April 25, 2021 at 7:51 pm
Thanks Lambert. I'd add that the intelligence being sent to the "White House Iraq Group" was being manufactured by the Office of Special Plans (OSP) which was set up and run by Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. Following Feith's history and connections alone is a fruitful endeavor for those so inclined.
Among other things, Feith co-authored, along with Richard Perle and David Wurmser, the A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing the Realm paper prepared for the prime minister of a certain foreign country. This is back in 1996. Around the same time the PNAC boys were formed by Kagan and Kristol and started selling the same policy prescriptions vis a vis Iraq to the pols and public here.
Feith was also fired from the NSC back in the early 80's for passing classified information to some little country. Fast forward to his OSP days and, lo and behold, his employee Larry Franklin is convicted of the same thing, along with Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman of AIPAC.
That's just a taste of the malfeasance.
John , April 25, 2021 at 8:26 pm
I guess sometimes people need to be reminded that water is wet. The Buddhists say that ignorance is the root poison. True dat. Especially in Amrika.
JTMcPhee , April 25, 2021 at 8:56 pm
This stuff has gone on forever. What amount of ventilation is needed to blow this kind of dung out of the Augean stables of geopolitics? Not much chance of that anyway, given all the incentives and and interests"
Is it luck that Putin and Xi might be a little less monstrous?
Elizabeth , April 25, 2021 at 10:20 pm
It's really sickening to see George W being "rehabilitated" and made to look like some kind of a senior statesman, when he should be hauled off to the Hague to spend the rest of his life in prison for war crimes. For me, his election in 2000 was mostly the beginning of the end of the rule of law in this country. As a result, the U.S. has Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, in addition to all the other events mentioned, and don't forget he tried to privatize Social Security.
His eight years as president, for me, was a horror show. What really bothers me is that he got away with all of it "" and now he's hailed as an eminence gris. I can't help but think that his rehabilitation is to remind us all of how bad Orange Man was "" Obama was just as bad because he cemented everything W did "" and more.
Thanks for the horrible memories.
Joe Hill , April 25, 2021 at 11:02 pm
I understand you disagree with the policies of Mr Bush, but war crimes?
Please describe what charges would be brought against him if you were to prosecute at a war crimes tribunal.
Yves Smith , April 26, 2021 at 3:23 am
That is an assignment, which is a violation of our written site Policies. This applies to reader comments when you could easily find the answer in less than 30 seconds on Google rather than being a jerk and challenging a reader (or even worse, me derivatively) on bogus grounds.
https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/28000/amr510972011en.pdf
Robert Gray , April 26, 2021 at 1:57 am
> For me, [W's] election in 2000 was mostly the beginning of the end of the rule of law in this country.
At this moment I'm writing it is still early days for this thread: there are only 24 comments. In these comments are named many bad people. However, one name that does not (yet) appear is "˜Clinton'. W was a monster as president (and likely remains a monster as a human being) but surely Billy Jeff needn't yield to him in his contempt for the rule of law.
Yves Smith , April 26, 2021 at 2:29 am
I loathe Bill Clinton but nothing he did approaches the Iraq War in the level of damage to the US and many foreign countries"¦.starting with Iraq.
Robert Gray , April 26, 2021 at 3:52 am
Quite right, of course. My comment was specifically in regard to his disdain for and abuse of the rule, and rôle, of law in the American polity, e.g., his perjury > disbarment. Sort of like the famous photograph of Nelson Rockefeller who, while serving as VP, was captured giving the finger to a group of protestors; Clinton also oozed that kind of hubristic impunity.
Alex Cox , April 26, 2021 at 12:01 pm
Regarding Clinton, the damage he caused to his own country and the world was substantial. The destruction of Yugoslavia caused considerable mayhem "" in addition to bombing and breaking apart a sovereign nation, it enabled "liberals" to feel good about war again, and paved the way for the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.
And the damage done by NAFTA was enormous "" in terms of leading to deaths of despair in both the US and Mexico I suspect NAFTA has a higher domestic "body count" than any of the subsequent forever wars.
anon y'mouse , April 26, 2021 at 12:33 pm
and welfare "reform", the crime bill. Talk of privatizing SSI made commonplace acceptable. Repeal of Glass Steagall. They were going to do to healthcare what oBLAM succeeded at, 20 years before him but got sidelined by Lewinsky's blue dress stains. Clintoon is a criminal and so is his spouse, and he did his share of damage everywhere. people who think otherwise might be looking back with nostalgia on a simpler (pre 9.11) time.
little known covered up crime from his ARK days is the selling of HIV tainted blood (taken from prisoners) to Canada, among other things.
yet another who had credible rape allegations. which damages our image at home and abroad.
tegnost , April 25, 2021 at 10:36 pm
Total Information Awareness https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/preemption/tia.html
Adm. John Poindexter"¦ https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/08/us/poindexter-is-found-guilty-of-all-5-criminal-charges-for-iran-contra-cover-up.html
yep, that one"¦drumlin woodchuckles , April 26, 2021 at 12:14 am
I read that for the very briefest time, somebody or other was selling Total Information Awareness memorabilia with the Total Information Awareness symbol on it. I wish I had thought to buy a Total Information Awareness mug.
I imagine knockoffs and parodies exist, but I am not sure the real thing is findable any more.
Darius , April 25, 2021 at 10:43 pm
After Dennis Rader, the Wichita serial killer, murdered someone, the cops always found his semen on the floor next to the mutilated victim. He got sexual pleasure out of gruesome murder. This is how I always pictured Cheney's attitude toward torture. Well. I tried not to actually picture it.
Kevin Carhart , April 26, 2021 at 12:06 am
Bush also whipped votes for Kavanaugh, during the cuddly years.
https://theweek.com/speedreads/798796/george-w-bush-reportedly-working-phones-kavanaugh
Colonel Smithers , April 26, 2021 at 4:26 am
Thank you, KC.
Kavanaugh accompanied Bush fils on his state visit to the UK. Even then, Kavanaugh was being touted as a future Supreme Court judge.
The Rev Kev , April 26, 2021 at 3:48 am
Talk about your target rich environment. Where do you even start? Where do you begin? A serial business failure, draft dodger, military deserter, drunk driver "" and all that was before he became President. A man so incurious about the world "" just like Trump "" that he never even owned a passport until he actually became President and who never knew that Islam (prior to the Iraq invasion) , for example, was just not one religion but was divided into Sunni and Shia in the same way Christianity is divided into "" mostly "" Protestant and Catholics. But to me he was always the "Frat Boy President". His family always protected him from his many flaws and he never had to grow up like his father had to in WW2. Even as President he never grew into the job, again, just like Trump.
Lambert gives a few good reminders but there were many others and these are just the top of my head. He cared little for the US Constitution and called it nothing more than a goddamn scrap of paper. He officially made the US a torture nation, not only by pretending that US laws did not apply in Guantanamo bay but also aboard US Navy ships for which laws definitely did apply. As part of a movement to make America an oil-fueled hegemony for the 21st century, he invaded Iraq with the firm intention on invading Iran next so that Washington would have a firm grip on the fuel pump of the world. As he said "" "America is addicted to oil." He dropped the ball on 9/11 through over-obsessing on Iraq and in the immediate aftermath sent jets around the country "" when all jets were grounded "" to fly Saudi royalty back to Saudi Arabia before the FBI could interrogate them about all their knowledge of the attack. All this to hide his very deep connections with the Saudis.
I could go on for several more paragraphs but what would be the point? For the neocons he was a great fronts-man to be followed by a even greater one. I sometimes think that if Biden was a "˜real' Republican, then he would have been a great vice-president for Bush. And now the establishment and their trained seals in the media are trying to make him out as "America's Favourite Uncle" or something so that when he dies, he will have the same sort of funeral as John McCain did. And I predict that tens of thousands of veterans around the country will then raise their glasses to him "" and then pour the contents on the ground.
Colonel Smithers , April 26, 2021 at 4:22 am
Thank you, Lambert.
W's rehab continues in the UK MSM, not just the Independent. The worst offenders are probably the Grauniad and Channel 4, both Blairite.
The rehab mirrored the rise of Trump. His lack of interest in war upset these preachy imperialists.
Using Michelle Obama to facilitate the rehab brought id pol into the equation and made it easier. It was remarkable how often the above photo is used in the neo liberal and neo con media.
The Rev Kev , April 26, 2021 at 5:43 am
Thank you, Colonel. That foto is remarkable and I suspect that the origins for the idea for it may lay on the other side of the pond as it seemed so familiar-
drumlin woodchuckles , April 26, 2021 at 5:36 am
There is a blog called Rigorous Intuition 2.0. Many of its blogposts are about the Bush period and Bush related subjects and events. ( Many others are not). The sections on 9/11, Iraq, and Katrina probably have the highest percent of Bush-related blogposts, in case one is interested.
norm de plume , April 26, 2021 at 7:26 am
Jeff Wells wrote some interesting essays in the Bush years, though many of his connections were a bit too far out, even for me. He had some striking collateral evidence for his concept of High Weirdness in high places "" sex abuse, torture and magick figuring prominently, juxtaposed with political skulduggery, and financial crimes and misdemeanours. The Gannon/Guckert affair, the Franklin ring and Gary Caradori were the sort of thing that laced his quite penetrating analyses of events. Facts were jumping off points for speculations, but given our lack of facts his imaginings were a nourishment of sorts, though often very troubling indeed.
Tony massey , April 26, 2021 at 1:58 pm
Who needs to make shit up during those years?
The facts"¦the shit he actually did, was glossed over or simply forgotten.
If shit was made up about his sorry ass i didn't bother checking, Sir.
I just assumed it was true.
Bushies destroyed the country. If there's a country in 100 years they'll be paying for those years.
And then came obama and big Mikejackiebass63 , April 26, 2021 at 6:14 am
People have been brain washed by the glossed over history of the US they are taught. It gives people a false belief of our past. The phrase American Exceptionalism comes to mind. It is a myth. The real history is out there but you have to search it out. From it's beginning continuing to today our government is responsible for bad behavior.
Some scholars like Noam Chomsky write about our real history. Unfortunately most people don't read this material. They are content with our glossed over shining star version of US history that unfortunately continues to be taught in our educational system , starting in elementary school continuing through a 4 year college education. Our system of government is so corrupted , I don't believe it can be fixed.
Jason , April 26, 2021 at 7:17 am
Arguing over degrees of presidential evil. Perfect.
farmboy , April 26, 2021 at 8:03 am
Nixon was rehabbed so he could open China, Kissinger got to keep his mantle. W portrayed by Josh Brolin pretty good take. Nice to see dunking on GW, but the cycle of rehabilitation is due. The question is can he do some good or is there too much mud on his boots. Can't see W as a new Jimmy Carter. Glossing over history begins the moment it's made. Makes me miss LBJ
Carlos Stoll , April 26, 2021 at 9:23 am
Between 1998 and 2000, under the rule of Saddam Hussein, about 1000 prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison were executed and buried in mass graves. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_prison How many Abu Ghraib prisoners did the US army execute?
The Rev Kev , April 26, 2021 at 9:48 am
Tell me again how many Iraqis were killed by the US Army because they were doing their own version of "Red Dawn"? And that tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would still be alive if Saddam was simply left in place. Here is a video to watch while you have a little think about it-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfvFpT-iypw (17:46 mins)
Phil in KC , April 27, 2021 at 8:02 am
We Americans have this thing called exceptionalism which among other things creates the idea that our government is more virtuous than others. It's a useful idea in that it calls us to be different and better than the average nation, and certainly different and better than a cruel dictatorship. But it's also a dangerous idea because too many of us actually believe it to be true. Our atrocities are different in kind, but the scale is the same.
We are not at Hitler/Stalin/Mao standards ""yet"" but who's to say that could never happen here? One of the bafflements of the 20th century was how a civilized people descended into the dark barbarism of Nazi Germany.
Deschain , April 26, 2021 at 10:55 am
"(I am omitting many, many others, including Hurricane Katrina, the Plame Affair, Medicare Part D, the Cheney Energy Task Force, that time Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face, Bush's missing Texas Air National Guard records, Bush gaslighting the 2004 Republican National Convention with terror alerts, and on and on and on. An I didn't even get to 9/11, "You've covered your ass," WMDs, and the AUMF. Sorry. It's exhausting.)"
You left out the housing bubble and the GFC!
Mr Grumpy , April 26, 2021 at 10:58 am
Agree with all the criticism of Bush, Cheney, Obama. On a lighter note, my father-in-law is a high tech oil prospector in W Texas, much of it in Midland, overlapping in time with W. Both members of the Petroleum Club (been there once, very stuffy) and worked out at the same gym. Naturally, my wife asked if he had ever seen W naked. Her dad wouldn't answer, but did turn beet red. We take this as confirmation.
Phil in KC , April 26, 2021 at 12:24 pm
Noam Chomsky observed some thirty years ago that if the Nuremberg standards were applied to all the post-war American Presidents, then all of them would hang. Chomsky could not have imagined the future sequence of presidents from that point forward, but certainly they did not break the chain of criminality. My point is that Bush is not unique in the type of crimes, just the enormity of them. But I also believe he set new standards (lower) for shamelessness. Remember his smirk?
But also remember Obama joking about killing people.
John Wright , April 26, 2021 at 3:25 pm
Remember the comedy skit in which GWB "looked" for Iraq WMD's in the Oval office as part of the White House Correspondent's dinner?
Anyone with any sense of decency would have refused to do this skit, but Bush apparently followed his handlers' advice to get some laughs. That the USA was led by someone of such limited talent for 8 years speaks volumes. Years ago, a New York Times reader wrote that Hillary Clinton is a "well-connected mediocrity".
That comment may be true for ALL of the recent political candidates, from both parties, for a great many years.
LBJ was definitely not mediocre (civil rights/war on poverty), and would be viewed far more favorably, maybe as great, if he had pulled out of Vietnam rather than escalating. Carter in his post presidency has much to recommend. Post presidency Bush is painting his portraits rather than having any retrospective regrets for the harm he did.
Susan the other , April 26, 2021 at 2:27 pm
We have such a dismal record. Little George was the most audacious of all our criminal presidents, but he has plenty of company. My question is now, looking back, why was the USA incapable of organizing a peaceful world after WW2? I start there. 1945. How did our ideology become so inept? And everything I have read about our failures over the years is contrasted with what might have been. We have operated under a system that could not function without extraction. There was always a sell-by date on the cover; one that we tried to ignore. There's no doubt in my mind that it has finally failed completely. Ignominiously. But we have also learned and come to admit certain realities. The most important one is that there can be no more war; civilization cannot survive a modern war. So, ironically, our advanced warfare might well bring a peaceful world without world war. And our advances in science (mostly militarily inspired) will help us now survive.
Sue inSoCal , April 26, 2021 at 4:56 pm
Lambert, thank you for this piece. I won't repeat what others have opined. I've had a real problem with Michelle Obama being the rehabilitation cheerleader leader for Dubya. Imho, we lost all of our rights under the odious Patriot Act, which was pre-written. Russ Feingold was the lone Senate holdout. And I recall Byrd's ire and rant at the tome they had no time to read, but he caved. It went downhill from there. The links below, (apologies, I don't know how to fashion a hot link..) are about Bush's crimes and Amnesty International's exhaustive investigation of them.
I don't have the citation anymore, and I've knocked myself out trying to find it. But there exists a UN human rights commission memo suggesting (?) Obama to do a number of things: hold Bushco accountable for war crimes etc, as well as address what is termed as "systematic racism" in incarceration (and more). I had printed it out a number of years ago and can't find it.)
I'm not buying that Bush fils is any elder statesman. He and his cronies used torture, extreme rendition, hired mercenaries and completely destabilized the Middle East. We still don't have our rights back, and I'm betting the Patriot Act will never go away. (Nor will data mining under the guise of "targeted advertising" and sold to..the military.) The NYT's link is how Obama elected to rug sweep and just move ahead! I look forward to Lambert's take on the Obama administration..https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/28000/amr510972011en.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/politics/12inquire.html
techpioneer , April 26, 2021 at 4:56 pm
Finally, someone has the courage to point out the obvious. An excellent article, well researched and nicely nuanced.
I'm disappointed with the remedy proposed, however. Throwing shoes is not enough; it's merely symbolic. The potential crimes committed here, including lying us into war, the extent of torture committed, and practices that violate international military norms and intelligence require a transparent and impartial investigation. One possible venue is the International Criminal Courts in the Hague.
I've been told many times that sunlight can be an effective deterrent against disease.
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May 03, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
These folks have had it with the constant stream of baseless propaganda U.S. intelligence is spilling over the world:
Dear Director of National Intelligence,we, the the 4-star Generals leading U.S. regional commands all over the world, are increasingly concerned with about the lack of evidence for claims you make about our opponents.
We, as true believers, do not doubt whatever judgment you make about the harmful activities of Russia, Iran and China. However - our allies and partners do not yet subscribe to the bliss of ignorance. They keep asking us for facts that support those judgments
Unfortunately, we have none that we could provide.
You say that Russia thought to manipulate Trump allies and to smear Biden , that Russia and Iran aimed to sway the 2020 election through covert campaigns and that China runs covert operations to influence members of Congress .
Media reports have appeared in which 'intelligence sources' claim that Russia, China and Iran are all paying bounties to the Taliban for killing U.S. soldiers. Fortunately no soldier got hurt by those rumors.
Our allies and partners read those and other reports and ask us for evidence. They want to know how exactly Russia, Iran and China are doing these things.
They, of course, hope to learn from our experience to protect their own countries.
Currently we are not able to provide them with such information. Your people keep telling our that all of it is SECRET.
We therefore ask you to declassify the facts that support your judgments. *
Sincerely
The Generals
----
PS: * Either that or shut the fuck up.The above may well have been a draft for the letter behind this report :
America’s top spies say they are looking for ways to declassify and release more intelligence about adversaries’ bad behavior, after a group of four-star military commanders sent a rare and urgent plea asking for help in the information war against Russia and China.The internal memo from nine regional military commanders last year, which was reviewed by POLITICO and not made public, implored spy agencies to provide more evidence to combat "pernicious conduct."
Only by "waging the truth in the public domain against America’s 21st century challengers†can Washington shore up support from American allies, they said. But efforts to compete in the battle of ideas, they added, are hamstrung by overly stringent secrecy practices.
“We request this help to better enable the US, and by extension its allies and partners, to win without fighting, to fight now in so-called gray zones, and to supply ammunition in the ongoing war of narratives," the commanders who oversee U.S. military forces in Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, as well as special operations troops, wrote to then-acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire last January.
“Unfortunately, we continue to miss opportunities to clarify truth, counter distortions, puncture false narratives, and influence events in time to make a difference," they added.
The generals must have been seriously miffed to write such a letter. There have been a number of published intelligence judgments where the NSA had expressed low confidence in conclusions made mainly by the CIA. The NSA is part of the military.
Between two bureaucracies such an accusing letter or internal memo is the equivalent of a declaration of war. It is doubtful that the intelligence folks would win that fight.
That gives some hope that the Office of the DNI and the agencies below it will now lessen their production of nonsensical claims.
Posted by b on April 28, 2021 at 15:49 UTC | Permalink
Josh , Apr 28 2021 16:02 utc | 1
Right on man.Kartoschka , Apr 28 2021 16:04 utc | 2
Thank You.I hope you're right.psychohistorian , Apr 28 2021 16:12 utc | 3
It could go the other way.
They will produce more "evidence"Thanks for that b....is it rubber meets the road time?Caliman , Apr 28 2021 16:25 utc | 4I just read that the US is getting all its ambassadorial folk out of Afghanistan....maybe somebody is believing May 1 is a firmer deadline than the Biden 9/11 myth.
The shit show is about to crash, IMO, but if it is in slow motion, this crazy could go on for a while....what geo-political straw will break the camel's back?
Lewis Black, a pretty good US comedian, used to have a bit in the mid-2000's where he would ask the W administration flacks why they didn't just make up evidence about the Iraq WMDs after they "found out" that there were no weapons in the country. Black would tell them just make it up; we're used to it. Just give us an excuse to believe in the BS for God's sake; we'll do it!Serg , Apr 28 2021 16:29 utc | 5I feel it's the same with our satrap nations around the world. At this time, is there anyone who does not understand that US foreign policy is conducted for and by MICIMATT (look it up)? So the generals have got nothing to worry about: keep pounding out that BS; there's a willing, able, and ready corps of salesmen and women in the media who will make enough of the public believe it for "democracy's" purposes.
General Mackenzie who testified before the US House Armed Services Committee said Iran’s widespread use of drones means that the US is operating without complete air superiority for the first time since the Korean War.librul , Apr 28 2021 16:30 utc | 6Iran has time and again stated that its military capabilities are merely defensive and are designed to deter foreign threats.
General Flynn had been head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (military).gottlieb , Apr 28 2021 16:36 utc | 7
The CIA was out to get him. It took a while but they eventually hamstrung him good."Dear Generals, who haven't won a war in 75 years, so much for the DIA huh? We'd love to share our intelligence with you, our evidence showing the overwhelming and egregious misdeeds of our hateful, spiteful disgusting enemies, whose questioning of our Word should be met with charges of treason, but to give you evidence on top of our own unquestionable and 100% correct threat estimations, would compromise our Intelligence Gathering Methods which are of the strictest security and would threaten the ongoing ability of this Agency to gather and disseminate the unquestionable facts that without fear of contradiction we know is the truth. In short, dear Generals - work on winning a war, any war, and don't meddle in places that befuddle your ability to follow orders. Hooah! The CIA."librul , Apr 28 2021 16:51 utc | 8This fight has been ongoing for years.Canadian Cents , Apr 28 2021 17:10 utc | 11
Bottom line: The CIA wants to control the messages and narrative.Article from 2013, great lead photo. Robert Mueller, James Clapper, John Brennan
and General Flynn all seated near each other.https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2013/07/intel-wars-dia-cia-and-flynns-battle-consolidate-spying/66716/
Headline and subtext:Intel Wars: DIA, CIA and Flynn’s Battle to Consolidate Spying
The Defense Department wants in on the spying game. But will the CIA block their efforts?
The CIA essentially absorbed the Pentagon’s only military-wide spying agency seven years ago [2006]
when the Defense HUMINT Service was dismantled -- and now, the Pentagon wants it back.The CIA is quietly pushing the Armed Services committees along, hoping that Flynn’s DCS will be remembered by history as a failed power grab.
rgl , Apr 28 2021 17:31 utc | 13The CIA/FBI/17+ known/unknown agencies are clearly a security apparatus that's gone out of control when even the USA's "nine regional [four-star general] military commanders" are out of the loop and pleading to be better informed. Worryingly, though, they ask for "ammunition in the ongoing war of narratives," which they apparently are ready to go right along with.
Western news media, of course, has become but a compliant weaponized appendage of that security apparatus, and democracy, which depends on informed voters, is nowhere in control of any of this.
Down this slippery slope, lies fascism.
librul , Apr 28 2021 17:48 utc | 15I do not see how this is possible. Every major event, from Vietnam, to JFK, to 9-11, and a myriad of others, had US lies baked into the cake. If the US ceased to lie, it would cease to function as America functions today. It would be incapable of empire.
The US establishment, from the President on down, is based on lies. They cannot survive on truth.
No. Nothing is going to change in this regard.
m , Apr 28 2021 18:13 utc | 17b ended his post with: " lessen their production of nonsensical claims."
"Nonsensical" misses the mark. They are *agenda-driven* claims.
I don't believe the Generals care one whit whether the spineless jellyfish pols
in other countries see through our lies. The Generals want the Pentagon to
have more participation in shaping the agenda and it's attendant narrative.Erelis , Apr 28 2021 20:31 utc | 26The military used to be that part pf the US government apparatus ("deep state") that emphasized the value and importance of allies the most.
IMHO what is happening here is that the generals sense the imcreasing cracks in the US-centered alliance system. They attribute it to the work of the intelligence community, which is certainly a contributing factor, but thr real cause is the relative decline in US power and general unreliability due to political instability. The USA is less and less attractive as a partner. When the generals ask another country for a favour as they had been used to for decades they increasingly often get just questions and excuses in return.
K_C_ , Apr 28 2021 22:26 utc | 28Is this a sign of a struggle between the CIA and Pentagon as to who is the boss of foreign and war policy? Anybody remember when CIA supported jihadists were fighting Pentagon supported groups (were they jihadists?) in Syria. Seems like the Pentagon is the one deciding on relations with the Syrian Kurds, and not the CIA. Flynn was actively helping the Damascus with info about the CIA backed jihadists.
I would rather have the Pentagon win as they are not all that hot-to-trot for actual wars. The CIA should just go back to running US media, law makers, corporation and ruining civil liberties.
Isn't it safe to assume that *anything* the CIA says publicly, either through direct channels or their co-opted corporate media, is false? Cue the Mike Pimpeo quote: "We lied, we cheated, we stole..." and of course the entire history of that useless agency, lol.
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Apr 07, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
Foe Jaws 8 hours ago
drjd 6 hours agoThe globalists are behaving just like the Bolsheviks of old. It is down right scary to see this happen in America. We lost the major cities 40 or 50 years ago and now the entire country (except that 1 percent stealing all the money) is on the verge of going 3rd world banana republic.
YuriTheClown 2 hours agoIf this was truly "communism", would 1% be stealing all the money? Why don't we just call it what it really is: "globalist crony capitalism."
artless 1 hour ago remove linkThe internationalists are behaving just like the Bolsheviks of old.
You must not know your history. High powered US bankers prop up the big Bolshevik names in New York until it was time to loose them on Russia. Then they financed the whole operation.
And who is financing the Bolsheviks in the USA now???
The word you are looking for is fascism. This use of "crony this" and "crony that" along with ANY use of the word capitalism-because their is nothing capitalist about any of this- needs to stop. It is fascism. Not communism, not socialism...
words matter.
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Mar 06, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
snake , Mar 4 2021 21:42 utc | 32
pfizer not the USA, wants military bases
very interesting.. extension of the office of the president to a private corporationThis does not comport with Article II(Section 2) of the USA constitution.. which says
"The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the usa, and of the Militia of the serveral states, when into the actual service of the USA,but no where do I find a private corporation may exercise the power of the Office of the President ...? What did I mis?
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Feb 27, 2021 | www.unz.com
Andy Ngo's new book Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy is as important to understanding where we are today as Ann Coulter's Adios America! was before Donald Trump election. Ngo shows that far from being just an "idea," as President Joe Biden would have us believe , Antifa comprises highly organized groups of dedicated activists with an extreme political agenda and a commitment to violence. But Ngo also shows, perhaps less consciously, that Antifa operates with de-facto backing from the Ruling Class, including Main Stream Media journalists, the principal enforcers of the current order. Ngo suggests Antifa are a revolutionary threat to the power structure and could overthrow it. But the truth is much worse -- Antifa are simply the System's militant wing.
What makes Unmasked so remarkable is that Ngo doesn't limit himself to anecdotal reporting, nor does he retreat to abstract theorizing. Instead, like a great historian, he seamlessly integrates his experiences and other primary sources with political theory. He shows, often literally with chapter and verse, what motivates Antifa, how they are organized, how they are trained, and how this is turned into concrete action:
Where there is no single capital A 'Antifa' organization with one leader, there are indeed localized cells and groups with formalized structures and memberships. Though officially leaderless, these are organizations by every definition.
The [ Rose City Antifa ] curriculum is modeled on a university course. Yet it includes training on how to use guns and do reconnaissance against enemies.
Ngo also helpfully reports on the history the Antifa brand, especially its origins in the Red Front Fighters' League of the pre-Hitler German Communist Party. He's especially astute to note that "the German Communist Party [KPD] and its various offshoots viewed social democrats and liberals as 'social fascists' no different from Nazis." Needless to say, KPD leader Ernst Thälman 's strategy of fighting the more moderate Social Democrats ahead of the Nazis was glossed over by Communist propaganda after World War II. East German hagiographies of Thälman, like Sohn Seiner Klasse and Führer Sonne Klasse ("Son of His Class," "Leader of His Class") portray him as fighting the Nazis above all else.
Ngo also describes "anti-fascism's" parallels with the East German regime. After all, the Berlin Wall was formally called the "Anti Fascist Protection Rampart." The East German secret police, the so-called Stasi, resemble nothing so much as today's journalists (and FBI) complaining that they can't tattle on people listening to Clubhouse [ From Clubhouse to Twitter Spaces, social media grapples with live audio moderation , by Elizabeth Culliford, Reuters, February 25, 2021].
When Ngo describes the Communist takeovers of East Germany and Vietnam, the latter of which his family fled, he's warning Americans that we face a Communist coup . Historically, "anti-fascism" was created by, and has always been a front for, Communist or Communist-adjacent groups.
(I don't dispute Ngo's characterization of the movement as "anarchist-communist." It sounds clumsy, but anarcho-communism is a venerable Leftist tradition that goes back to Marx's great rival Mikhail Bakunin. I was surprised, though, that Ngo didn't mention that the three-arrow "Iron Front" symbol widely used by Antifa today actually came from the German Social Democratic Party (SPD.) The SPD opposed the Communists just as much as they did monarchists and the National Socialists.
Ngo has been physically attacked by Antifa -- causing him a brain injury -- and says the conservative meme that Antifa are all physically weak isn't true: they are violent and dangerous .
He's right, but when looking at what Antifa prioritize today, it does seem preoccupied with boutique progressive causes like transgenderism and policing speech. While physical attacks are common, doxing and complaining to capitalist employers are what Antifa do best of all.
Indeed, it's hard to imagine East Germany or the USSR tolerating the cultural degeneracy championed by today's Antifa. The Soviet Bloc was positively social-conservative compared to 2021 post-America.
Ngo's reporting on the specific individuals, curriculum, tactics, and operational plans of Antifa are a testament to his skill as a researcher (not mention his guts.) However, one thing jumps out of the book repeatedly. Despite all their emphasis on "OpSec" and paranoia about law enforcement, Antifa aren't actually especially secret. Like illegal aliens who lecture us on television about their lives " in the shadows ," it's not a huge mystery who is in Antifa. We know what groups exist, where they operate and what they are doing. They openly operate on Twitter, Facebook etc.
In contrast to the Proud Boys or bewildered Boomers who wandered into the Capitol last month, Antifa can operate openly because it has the tacit approval of law enforcement and Main Stream Media outlets . Thus Ngo describes in shocking detail Antifa groups' training workshops, including combat training. Right-wing activity even at this level would be shut down by the government instantly.
It's an obvious point but bears repeating -- how radical are your opinions when you have police, the military, corporate America, and the media all supporting you? Antifa violence exists because it is permitted, arguably encouraged, to exist. Despite President Trump's blustering promises, these Antifa groups were never labeled "terrorists" nor, inexplicably, was systematic federal law enforcement action ever taken against them.
During the CHAZ insurrection , Antifa was allowed to more or less claim sovereignty in a major American city for a period of weeks. If nationalists had tried that, it would have ended in drone strikes. The glee with which progressives hailed the execution of Ashli Barrett tells us what they're willing to do. The "Capitol Insurrection" would have been heralded as another Bastille Day had it come from the other side .
Antifa is faux rebellion. None of these people have ever faced real opposition in their lives. And when groups like the Proud Boys did emerge to challenge them -- and actually started winning, for example at the Battle of Berkeley -- the state intervened to save Antifa. See FBI Arrests White "Serial Rioters" -- And Ignores Antifa , Proud Boys Persecution: Four Years For Fighting Back , and Ann Coulter On Jake Gardner: Innocent Until Proven Trump Supporter .
Ngo points out repeatedly that Antifa conduct themselves to present a certain media image. Yet this is a two-way relationship. While Antifa are eager to make sure only their narrative gets out, Regime journalists willingly collaborate. It's a mistake to even speak of journalists or Antifa as being separate categories of people.
After all, we know that journalists change their coverage to help Antifa present their narrative. Consider New York Times hackette Taylor Lorenz, who recently started an online controversy by accusing someone of using a slur on the Clubhouse application [ New York Times' Taylor Lorenz blasted for false claim tech entrepreneur used 'r-slur' on social media app , by Joseph Wulfsohn, Foxnews, February 8, 2021].
But back in 2017, Lorenz reported from Charlottesville Unite The Right rally that she had been punched by Antifa and also that police at the time thought James Fields was simply "scared. "
Perhaps she was told such tweets would be career-ending or maybe she figured that out on her own. She deleted them and joined the winning team.
The rest is history. Lorenz has made a career doxing random people, notably Pamela Geller's daughters.
This also explains why Regime "journalists" -- make that Journofa -- seem to hate Ngo so much. Ngo provides many examples of independent journalists like himself recording and livestreaming footage that provide "the up-close, raw, and uncensored look into Antifa's extremism." Such raw footage strips Regime Media reporters of the ability to craft the Narrative.
Ngo writes that Antifa "have made it a priority to keep out journalists like myself, even releasing manuals on how to obstruct to the work of unapproved press." However, the critical point is what he says next:
"[T]hey've [Antifa] made key allies in the media to counter negative coverage, amplify their propaganda messaging, and discredit their shared opponents. The American public has been inundated with n onstop propaganda that obfuscates and lies about Antifa , simultaneously presenting them as anti-fascists righting racism, and a figment of the right's imagination ." [Emphases added]
Thus Ngo accuses corporate journalists, quite rightly, of knowingly spreading propaganda or being "actually members of the militant Antifa movement."
Ngo's guide on how to "identify Antifa press" is important. If you see a reporter freely videoing protests without being attacked, "that is a good sign the journalist produces Antifa-approved content."
But I must take issue with Ngo's conclusion that the "movement is made of organized networks of anarchist-communists who have the goal, training, and determination to overthrow the US government." Is that what Antifa actually fights for in the real world?
For example, CHAZ didn't end with a heroic last stand. It ended after bored city workers scattered some riffraff without much effort. It existed as long as Left-wing city politicians defended it against then-President Donald Trump. It vanished the moment that city authorities decided to regain control.
Insofar as Antifa have a real impact, it's not in organizing rent strikes or fighting banks. Instead, they are most effective when calling up oligarchs to get working-class people fired. Is such a group really a threat to the US government or something of a partner?
Last week, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security held a hearing on domestic terrorism. Andy Ngo was one of the witnesses [ Republican witness hits media coverage of Antifa and far-left violence at domestic terrorism hearing , by Zachary Halachak, Washington Examiner, February 24, 2021]. However, the main focus of the hearing was "white supremacy and right-wing extremism," at least according to Rep. Val Demings [ Domestic Terror Still Thorny Issue for Lawmakers After Capitol Attack , by Brandi Buchman, Courthouse News Service, February 24, 2021]. The World Socialist Web Site sneered that Ngo "served as a sounding board for all the lies and libels against hundreds of thousands of youth and workers of all races and ethnicities who marched peacefully in response to last May's police murder of George Floyd" [ Republicans use hearing on domestic terrorism to defend Trump and promote far-right forces , by Jacob Crosse, WSWS, February 24, 2021].
Ngo himself tweeted that Democrats "rebuffed" him.
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1364808781327122433&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Farticle%2Fandy-ngos-unmasked-antifa-not-anarcho-communism-but-anarcho-tyranny%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=e1ffbdb%3A1614796141937&width=500px
The Democrats showed no interest in his testimony seriously nor did the Main Stream Media. It simply vanished into the ether of non-news like the massive increase in homicides around the country. [ WATCH: Andy Ngo testifies to Congress on the rise of domestic terrorism in America , The Post Millennial, February 24, 2021]
As Ngo himself points out early in his book, the United States government is tremendously powerful. Anarcho-communists hardly seem a credible threat to its legitimacy. Rather than wanting to crush them, at least some Democrats favor what Antifa are doing -- and certainly want to downplay it.
Thus the presumptive next Attorney General, Merrick Garland, blithely dismissed an attack on a federal courthouse because it happened at night. If anything, the new administration seems determined to put the power of the state behind these "anarcho-communists."
And rather than trying to create a Workers' Paradise, what Antifa actually do is make the world safe for Woke Capital .
While Antifa violence is real, the danger to ordinary people is not so much that some rampaging mob will come into their house at four in the morning. The danger is that Antifa will see a Politically Incorrect tweet and render a person unemployable, with an assist from "journalist" allies.
Ngo's book is essential reading. However, he may not fully understand the threat. The problem isn't that Antifa is trying to overthrow the state. The problem is that the state and Antifa are working together against ordinary Americans.
What we're living under is something far worse than Antifa's imagined " anarcho-communism ." It's what the late Sam Francis presciently called anarcho-tyranny , with the worst features of lawlessness and autocracy combined.
This is why our situation is not as bad as Ngo suggests. It's far, far worse.
James Kirkpatrick [ Email him |Tweet him @VDAREJamesK ] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc. His latest book is Conservatism Inc.: The Battle for the American Right . Read VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow 's Preface here .
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Mar 03, 2021 | www.unz.com
A classic villain of 1970s and 80s was the evil tycoon. James Bond took on some of them. Meet Hugo Drax of the Moonraker , or Karl Stromberg of The Spy Who Loved Me ; these guys were willing to destroy mankind to replace it with a better version. Stromberg planned to trigger a global nuclear war and survive it underwater. Drax intended to poison mankind with his deadly gas and repopulate the world with his new chosen ones. Another one was de Wynter, the super-villain of The Avengers, played by Sean Connery. He controlled the world weather, and could kill us all off by hurricanes and tsunamis.
Before the tycoons, when the Cold war raged, a villain was a KGB agent or a Chinese operative. As détente calmed relations between the blocks, the agents went out of fashion; later, the fantastic villains of Marvel came into a vogue. The evil tycoons were uncomfortably close to the real thing; and they moved from the cinematic world into our reality.
The world we live in is the world formed by evil tycoons. They are the modern Demiurges, the evil creators of the Gnostics, an early sect that confronted the Church. Like the Demiurges, they are practically omnipotent; stronger than the State. The government needs lot of permissions and authorisations to spend a penny. If a penny had been misspent, the dark word 'corruption' will sound. 'Corruption' is a silly concept; by applying it, the oligarchs eliminated state competition, for they can pay whatever they want to whomever they wish. The State must observe intricate arcane rules, while the tycoons have no such limits. As a result, they shape our minds and lives, making the State a poor legitimate king among powerful and wealthy barons.
The Corona crisis is a result of their activity. Now, a group of WHO scientists completed its four weeks inspection tour of Wuhan trying to find out how the virus found its way to humans; some of them think (as President Trump did) the virus escaped the Wuhan Lab. Matt Ridley of The Daily Telegraph concluded his piece analysing their findings: "A growing number of top experts [he provides the list] say that a lab leak remains a plausible scientific hypothesis to be investigated". It is rather unlikely, said the WHO , but other explanations (pangolins etc) also border on the improbable . The Chinese are understandably upset. Hua Chunying, the spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs ministry (the Chinese counterpart for the State Department's Ned Price) rejected the idea saying, "The United States should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, and invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the United States". The Guardian report said she promoted "a conspiracy theory that it came from a US army lab"; while Ms Hua accused the US of spreading "conspiracy theories and lies" tracing the source to Wuhan. Whatever we say is a fact-based result of diligent research; whatever you say is a conspiracy theory – both the US and China representatives subscribe to this mantra.
Our own Ron Unz made an excellent analysis of these accusations and counter-accusations in his April 2020 piece . He noted that the virus attack in Wuhan took place at the worst possible time and place for the Chinese; therefore, an incidental release (or intentional release by the Chinese) is extremely unlikely. Ron Unz suggested that it was an American biowarfare attack upon China. Didn't American people suffer from the disease? Yes, the US government is "grotesquely and manifestly incompetent " and they were likely to expect "a massive coronavirus outbreak in China would never spread back to America".
Perhaps, but a better explanation is that some evil tycoon(s) played the part of Karl Stromberg who intended to nuke both Moscow and New York causing war and world-wide devastation, as in the James Bond movie. It could be somebody like Bill Gates, who is a major investor in Wuhan Lab. A fact-checking site with its weasel language admitted that the Lab "has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but Bill Gates can hardly be called a "partner" in the laboratory." Sure, not a partner. Just an investor, and that is more important than a partner. And he is not the only one; other multi-billionaires also are involved in bioresearch, in vaccine manufacturing, in Big Pharma. "Glaxo, BlackRock, and Bill Gates are all partners, but not owners of Pfizer", says another fact-checker . "In 2015, Anthony Fauci did issue a USD 3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but not to "create the coronavirus" – the fact-checking site adds. Well, you could not possibly expect Fauci to word the grant in such a straightforward way, could you?
Perhaps it is too formidable a job even for an evil tycoon like Gates. A plot of several evil tycoons is more likely. Together, they could try to change the world and mankind to suit them.
The evil tycoons could poison China on their New Year holiday and take this uppity state down a ring or two. They could import the virus into the US to undermine and remove Trump whom they hated. (He was certain to win the elections but for Corona.) They could poison Europe to weaken it and make it more docile and obedient to their demands – and to buy their assets on the cheap. Corona and lockdown did not harm them for they are normally withdrawn from the bustle of the common man's life.
The billionaires control the media; that much we know, and the part media has played in the Corona crisis was enormous. The media coverage of the crisis has a huge hidden cost. Try to publish information you consider important on the front page of a newspaper. It will cost you a lot. Still, all newspapers belonging to the Billionaires' Media block beginning with the New York Times and ending with Haaretz gave at least a third of its front page to Corona news each day. The sheer cost of this advertising runs into billions. Will we ever know who paid for it?
Steven Soderbergh's (2011) film Contagion predicted many features of the Covid-19, notably the origin of the virus. In the film, the disease originates from bats in China and is spread through markets where contaminated pork meat is sold. How could Soderbergh (or his script writer Scott Z. Burns) possibly know eight years before the event that the contagion should originate in the Chinese bats? Who told him? Wouldn't you expect he knew something? Burns was instructed by WHO experts, the CNN site explains. Isn't it interesting that the same Bill Gates is a major donor of WHO? Is it entirely impossible that already in 2011 Gates' people began to leak some details of the future virus through their own WHO to Hollywood?
The tycoons could force a weak state to follow their instructions. Scientists do obey orders: otherwise, no grants, no positions. In April 2020, the German scientists were ordered , "to instill the fear of Corona". And they did it, as we learned this week, producing numbers of dead on demand.
It seems that tycoons gained most from the Corona Crisis. Their assets grew by trillions, while the assets of the middle classes decreased by the same amount. More importantly, all states suffered from the crisis; they took loans and credit, they were responsible for their citizens' health, while billionaires just had fun and enjoyed it. For this reason, I tend to dismiss the case against states, be it the US or China, while (some) billionaires appear the only possible villains.
These billionaires are able to influence people much better that the state. Consider Pierre Omidyar. Besides being the owner of eBay, he is the force behind hundreds of NGOs. His organisations form the 'progressive' agenda and train the foot soldiers of the Green Deal. Roslyn Fuller of Spiked-online checked the plethora of NGOs he employs.
She says his NGOs and charities are "engaged in 'social engineering' – that is, using their resources to artificially change the structure of society to how they think it should be. If successful this would amount to an extreme circumvention of democracy, utilising money not just to win elections, but to substitute paid or subsidised content for actual support, and thereby flip an entire political culture on to a different track by amplifying some voices and drowning out others."
He is just one of the Masters of Discourse, next to the infamous George Soros. Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon are even more powerful. The billionaires have immense clout and they decide what we can and can't say and write. Just last week Amazon banned my Cabbala of Power , a book that was sold by them for some ten years. The estimable The Unz Review is banned on Facebook and shadow-banned on Google. Twitter switched-off President Trump, showing who is the real boss of the United States. Probably almost all movements described as 'leftists' nowadays are engineered by the tycoons like Omidyar or Soros. True left had been left for dead on the battlefield of ideas.
The tycoons are directly involved in the Corona Crisis, because its results are good for them. And it means they have us where they want to have us, and they won't let us out. We are cancelled until we regain the government and cancel them.
SAGE, as British Corona management team rather presumptuously named itself (it included the ridiculous figure of Neil Ferguson, he of the millions of predicted deaths), already declared that lockdowns will be a part of British life for years to come, vaccine or no vaccine. The Guardian , the Voice of the Oligarchs, gently pooh-poohed them, for it is not good to declare what must happen right away. Let people have some hope, so they run to vaccinate themselves, and then only afterwards can we reveal that, sorry, it does not help, you still have to don a mask and observe social distance and, yes, suffer lockdowns. "It's much easier to follow the rules if we think of them as temporary."
The plotters' plans aren't secret; they were described by Klaus Schwab in his book The Great Reset . Schwab is not a great thinker, being merely a weak scientist with just a few publications, and not a good or even decent writer. He had to collaborate with a journalist Thierry Malleret to produce the book. He is just a voice for the tycoons. But the question is, will he/they get what they want?
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Feb 25, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
steven t johnson , Feb 24 2021 18:11 utc | 16
There is no such thing as "liberal-fascist." "Liberal" has never meant any sort of quasi-anarchist commitment to untrammeled individual rights. It has always meant the freedom of the press. The thing is, the real meaning of freedom of the press for the liberal is the freedom of the owners of the press to do what they want. The fact that customarily a free-for-the-owners'-press happen to produce the right kind of news suitable for owners and the advertisers is seen as the benefit of a free press. As for "fascist," no concept of fascism that doesn't include legal and illegal restrictions on freedom and government propaganda mobilizing the citizens to sacrifice for recovery from defeat/further conquest is not a serious concept of fascism at all. Both liberalism and fascism revere property but will compromise for necessity, liberalism for a certain degree of class peace, fascism for war, but if anybody is determined to indoctrinate the masses it is fascism. The implicit notion here that people daring to think or worse, live, differently than tradition may inspire rage in mad dog reactionaries. But this is at bottom the same rage that led Catholics and Protestants to murder each other or for witches to be killed by the thousands (yes, they were,) or for monarchists to kill republicans or for one ethnic/religious/national group to murder another. Modern society is not a genuine offense, no matter how bigoted you are. The keyboard has a hyphen but hitting it between "liberal" and "fascist" is just more crypto-fascist BS. It doesn't matter how many times you type it, it's not a thing.
Mao Cheng Ji , Feb 24 2021 18:14 utc | 17
@Saraj 9, "Very difficult, see https..."Mao Cheng Ji , Feb 24 2021 18:23 utc | 18It seems to me, they make it sound more difficult than it really is.
Think of thepiratebay. It gets banned, blocked, raided, sued - from 2006 at least - and yet it lives. It changes from .org to .whatever, it finds registrars and infrastructure somehow.
And you don't really need google/apple store all that much: a browser will suffice.
And search? paypal, bank - what is this all about? I'm sure thepiratebay works with advertisers somehow (definitely with VPN companies), and somehow it gets paid. And that's all there is to it. Imo.
Dear steven, when fascists call themselves 'liberal', it makes sense (to me) to identify them as 'liberal-fascist'.S , Feb 25 2021 1:39 utc | 58And that's all there is to it.
You are free to classify and identify them any way you like. May I suggest, as an alternative, 'woke-fascist'?
S , Feb 25 2021 2:13 utc | 62The term liberal-fascist refers to people who consider themselves liberals, but in reality are not; in fact, these people resemble fascists more and more with each passing day. A more precise term would be "liberal"-fascist (with the quotes). It's not so much about SJW witchhunts as about absolute faith in everything the state says and hysterical demands to censor any dissenting opinion.
Piotr Berman , Feb 25 2021 3:14 utc | 64I guess, one can use fake liberal proto-fascist to avoid the wrath of nitpickers.
ak74 , Feb 25 2021 4:32 utc | 65...In short, anywhere it deems convenient, liberals support fascists, cannibals and other charming characters. As it goes for a while, liberals acquire fascistic values and try them in their home countries. Show trials and corporate censorship for now.
MFB , Feb 25 2021 7:26 utc | 74Do not undermine faith in the NATO alliance and its stability.
Do not amplify narratives that are aligned with the Russian government.
Do not undermine faith in the NATO alliance and its stability.
Everyone got that now?
Alan MacLeod actually tweeted about this:
"This is not a joke. Twitter has deleted dozens of account for the crime of 'undermining faith in the NATO alliance.'"
https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1364548110521876480
Undermining faith in the North American Terrorist Organization (NATO) is a Thought Crime of the highest order!
The punishment for this crime is being forced to watch a conga line of Anglo-American media mouthpieces blather about whatever is their Moral Outrage of the Month--Clockwork Orange style.
Welcome to the United States of Oceania.
MFB , Feb 25 2021 7:26 utc | 74..I suspect that the term "liberal-fascist" derives partly from the term Islamofascist, meaning a Muslim who does not bow to Washington six times a day, and partly from the term "social-fascist", a Stalinist term for a socialist who did not bow to Moscow six times a day.
Dogon Priest , Feb 25 2021 13:15 utc | 91Apropos neoliberalism.
The liberalism which is referred to here is the economic liberalism which was adopted in the United Kingdom in the 1840s after the "reform" of the Corn Laws, which permitted free trade in grain and therefore brought down both the price of wheat and the small farming community in the UK, as it was intended to do. Later these liberal policies (largely modelled on the "comparative advantage" economic theory, which had already been refuted by the time it was developed by David Ricardo) were used to justify the Irish genocide of 1847-9.
This policy was eventually abandoned later in the nineteenth century, except for places like India, of course. It was restored in the West in the 1970s, under the name of "free trade", and therefore is called neoliberalism, or new liberalism in the economic sense.
The term is not a compliment.
I suspect that the term "liberal-fascist" derives partly from the term Islamofascist, meaning a Muslim who does not bow to Washington six times a day, and partly from the term "social-fascist", a Stalinist term for a socialist who did not bow to Moscow six times a day.
Some animals are more equal than others
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Feb 10, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
PlutoniumKun , February 6, 2021 at 11:25 am
The thing is, the UK has long been captured by neoliberalism (arguably, they invented it). The UK was the Trojan horse for the worst forms of neoliberalism in the EU. Which is why I thought it was ideal for neoliberals wherever they were based for the UK to be in the EU. I think one problem is that the UK somehow regressed from neoliberalism to a dream of some form of old style 19th Century liberalism.
Patrick , February 6, 2021 at 2:46 pm
My reading attributes the term (aside from an obscure French usage) and the ideology to Friedman and Austrian ex-pats Hayek and von MIses. When I think UK in the context of neoliberalsim, naturally I think Thatcher. So yes, at least since Thatcher neoliberalism has been the prevailing wind in the UK for which – imho – Brexit is both a symptom and a solidifier.
jsn , February 6, 2021 at 5:03 pm
Slobodan's "The Globalists" is a great look at Von Mises and Hayek peddling NeoLiberalism to to the last hereditary aristocracy standing in Europe in the interwar years.
The Charlatan and Saint of NeoLiberalism didn't really get traction until the US set up the BIS to help the Germans keep the debt cycle of dependence from the Versailles treaty liquid, with German payments through France and the UK back to the US.
To my mind, this set up a deracinated pseudo-nazism, a comfortableness with exterminatory exploitation so long as it's exercised though debt contracts, that has persisted to this day in Western finance, where debt is absolute but lives are fungible.
Michaelmas , February 6, 2021 at 10:42 pm
Slobodan's "The Globalists" is a great look at Von Mises and Hayek peddling NeoLiberalism to the last hereditary aristocracy standing in Europe in the interwar years.
It's Slobodian, Quinn.
To my mind, this set up a deracinated pseudo-nazism
So you're on to something.
Hayek is the Grandfather of neoliberalism and the primary influence on Hayek's thought was the Vienna of his youth: the go-go years after Franz Josef surrendered to the Hungarians, created the dual monarchy, and there was the great cultural efflorescence of Vienna that preceded the Austro-Hungarian empire's collapse.
Two ideologies emerged after WWI from Austria in reaction to the traumatic experience of that collapse -- ideologies formulated by Austrians that then deeply damaged the rest of the world.
Neoliberalism was one, of course. The other? Well, someone once asked Ernst Hanfstaengl aka Putzi, Hitler's confidant, what caused Hitler's antiSemitism.
Hanfstaengl replied: 'Anyone who did not know Vienna before 1914 cannot understand.' Hanfstaengl then explained that before WWI Vienna was full of beautiful people, the soldiers in their uniforms, the Hapsburg Empire's citizens in their local traditional clothes etc and 'then these strange people came from the East all dressed in black and speaking a strange kind of German'. These were the Orthodox Jews who came from Silesia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kaiser Franz Josef had done much to emancipate and help the Jews, so many crossed over to Vienna to start a new life.
Now, to further put Hitler and Nazism's policies in their historical context, it's necessary to understand the situation in Germany prior to their appearance.
In 1871, Bismarck had nationalized healthcare, making it available to all Germans, then provided old-age pensions as public social security. Child labor was abolished and public schools were provided for all children. The Kaiser implemented worker protection laws in 1890. After WW I, the Social Democrats' influence had remained strong. Germany had an active union membership. An official "Decree on Collective Agreements, Worker and Employees Committees and the Settlement of Labor disputes" enabled collective bargaining, legal enforcement of labor contracts as well as social security for disabled veterans, widows, and dependents. In 1918, unemployment benefits were given to all German workers.
In the 1932 elections, the Nazi Party didn't have an outright majority. According to the Nuremberg Trial transcripts, on January 4, 1933, German bankers and industrialists had a secret backroom deal with then-Chancellor Von Papen to make Hitler the Chancellor of Germany in a coalition.
https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_war-criminals_Vol-VIII.pdf
According to banker Kurt Baron von Schröder:
"In February 1933, as Chancellor, Hitler met with the leading German industrialists at the home of Hermann Goring. There were representatives from IG Farben, AG Siemens, BMW, coal mining magnates, Theissen Corp, AG Krupp, and others bankers, investors, and other Germans belonging to the top 1%. In this meeting, Hitler said, "Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy.'"
In 1934 the Nazis outlined their plan to revitalize the German economy with the reprivatization of significant industries: railways, public works project, construction, steel, and banking. Hitler guaranteed profits for the private sector; many American industrialists and bankers flocked to Germany to invest.
The Nazis had a thorough plan for deregulation. The Nazi's chief economist stated," The first thing German business needs is peace and quiet. It must have a feeling of absolute legal security and must know that work and its return are guaranteed." Likewise, businesses weren't to be hampered by too much "regulation." On May 2, 1933, Hitler sent his Brown Shirts to all union headquarters. Union leaders were beaten, and sent to prison or concentration camps. The Nazi party expropriated union funds -- money workers paid for union membership -- for itself.
On January 20, 1934, the Nazis passed the Law Regulating National Labor, abrogating the power of the government to set minimum wages and working conditions. Employers lowered wages and benefits. Workers were banned from striking or engaging in other collective bargaining rights, and worked longer hours for lower wages. Their conditions so deteriorated that when the head of the AFL visited Nazi Germany in 1938, he compared an average worker's life to that of a slave. .
The Nazis also privatized medicine. One of Hitler's economists was the head of a private insurance company. These private for-profit health insurance companies immediately started to profit from Anti-Semitism. In 1934, they eliminated reimbursements for Jewish physicians, which allowed them to profit further.
And so on.
Philip K. Dick once wrote a novel whose particular ontological riff was that the Roman empire never really ended and in the 20th century people lived in an imposed illusion under the same elite, or their heirs, that had headed the Roman empire.
That sort of science-fictional novel could be written based on our own reality, riffing on the theme: The Nazis won.
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Feb 02, 2021 | en.wikipedia.org
Politics [ edit ]
Le Carré feuded with Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses , stating that "nobody has a God-given right to insult a great religion and be published with impunity". [35]
In January 2003, two months prior to the invasion, The Times published le Carré's essay "The United States Has Gone Mad" criticising the buildup to the Iraq War and President George W. Bush 's response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks , calling it "worse than McCarthyism , worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War " and "beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams". [36] [37] Le Carré participated in the London protests against the Iraq War . He said the war resulted from the "politicisation of intelligence to fit the political intentions" of governments and "How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history". [38] [39]
He was critical of Tony Blair 's role in taking Britain into the Iraq War, saying "I can't understand that Blair has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under false pretences has committed the ultimate sin. I think that a war in which we refuse to accept the body count of those that we kill is also a war of which we should be ashamed". [38]
Le Carré was critical of Western governments' policies towards Iran. He believed Iran's actions are a response to being "encircled by nuclear powers" and by the way in which "we ousted Mosaddeq through the CIA and the Secret Service here across the way and installed the Shah and trained his ghastly secret police force in all the black arts, the SAVAK ". [38]
In 2017, le Carré expressed concerns over the future of liberal democracy , saying "I think of all things that were happening across Europe in the 1930s, in Spain, in Japan, obviously in Germany. To me, these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it's contagious, it's infectious. Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There's an encouragement about". [40] He later wrote that the end of the Cold War had left the West without a coherent ideology, in contrast to the "notion of individual freedom , of inclusiveness, of tolerance – all of that we called anti-communism " prevailing during that time. [41]
... ... ...
Le Carré was an outspoken advocate of European integration and sharply criticised Brexit . [45] Le Carré criticised Conservative politicians such as Boris Johnson (whom he referred to as a "mob orator"), Dominic Cummings , and Nigel Farage in interviews, claiming that their "task is to fire up the people with nostalgia [and] with anger". He further opined in interviews that "What really scares me about nostalgia is that it's become a political weapon. Politicians are creating a nostalgia for an England that never existed, and selling it, really, as something we could return to", noting that with "the demise of the working class we saw also the demise of an established social order, based on the stability of ancient class structures". [44] [46] On the other hand, he said that in the Labour Party "they have this Leninist element and they have this huge appetite to level society."
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Jan 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
james , Jan 27 2021 0:15 utc | 85
quote from an article i am reading on alex ross interview...Alex Ross is the music critic of The New Yorker, among other things.. its a bit of a controversial comment which i why i am sharing it..
"America -- people have said this in so many ways -- is in need of the kind of self-examination that has become widespread in Germany. For all of its problems, the culture of working through the past is very strong in Germany. Susan Neiman recently wrote a brilliant book, Learning from the Germans, drawing a line between the German examination of the Nazi past and the Holocaust and America's, to put it mildly, very incomplete reckoning with racism, slavery, the Native American genocide, and everything else. As I say in the book, Germany becomes a sort of alibi for us -- no matter how bad things are here, we're not that bad. We're not as bad as the Germans. That undertow exists whenever German history and German culture are discussed in America. Consider the incredible profusion of books on the Nazi period that you see in bookstores -- there's always an element of wanting to go back this period when America seemed to be purely on the side of good and the Germans were absolute evil. It makes us feel better about ourselves. And so we have these Nazi characters in movies over and over -- good down-to-earth Americans out there battling evil Germans who are playing Wagner on their Victrolas, which is literally something that happens in one of the Captain America movies. It's a comforting myth, one that needs to be shaken up a bit."
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Jan 25, 2021 | www.unz.com
anti_republocrat , says: January 25, 2021 at 7:51 pm GMT • 7.0 hours ago
@anonGlobalists tell the people they are for mankind and Mother Earth, against corporate exploitation. Once in control after a year of planpanic and the Great Reset, globalists will operate for the benefit of those in control of the world's largest corporations.
In all three "different" systems, the people begin to wake up too late. The only way for those who have seized control to stay in control is to suppress the "have nots." This leads inevitably to totalitarian control and tyranny.
Thus, communism, fascism and globalism differ only in rhetoric. In all things that matter they are identical. It's all totalitarianism.
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Jan 24, 2021 | www.rt.com
A hallmark of totalitarian societies is that there's no escape from politics and the dominant state ideology. Recent events demonstrate that we've now sadly reached that point in Britain, the US and other Western countries.
...In the choice between the personal and the political, between listening to the politician, or romancing (even if only in his imagination), the poet chooses the personal. He is right to do so. Totalitarian societies come about when people do the opposite. They put politics before the personal. They betray old friendships for 'the cause', or put 'following the party line' before family and loved ones.
...Things that used to be apolitical have become completely politicised. There is no 'ring-fencing' any more. I have to say, even as someone who makes my living as a political commentator, I'm absolutely sick of the way politics has infected every aspect of our lives
...While the US presidential inauguration was being televised, and viewers were no doubt being told repeatedly what a 'great day for democracy' it was, I was doing a jigsaw puzzle. Believe me, it was far more rewarding.
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66
sarcastictruth 17 hours ago 24 Jan, 2021 06:38 AM
Political correctness is the means by which the powers that be/the elite/the globalists control the masses. Why do people demonstrate political correctness? To show what a "good person" they and how they are aware of "social issues". That's why people strive to be politically correct. Its the reason we are in the lockdown situation, people accept the lockdown because you are deemed politically incorrect (a bad person) if you don't. People mistake that politically correctness is about fighting racism, whilst racism against black people is condemned, racism against white people is actively encourage. This shows political correctness has nothing to do with fighting racism, fighting gender inequality, or about being a good person. It has everything to do with fostering division amongst people and controlling the opinion of the masses.Cl K-berg 13 hours ago 24 Jan, 2021 10:33 AM100%. Here's a great extract for essay quotation: ''We should turn off television programmes masquerading as 'drama' or 'comedy' that are really political sermons dolled up in entertainment's clothing and provide no enjoyment whatsoever.'' Wow! how totally spot on.
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Jan 25, 2021 | www.rt.com
Journalist Andy Ngo, whose parents fled to the US from Vietnam in 1978, has become a political refugee himself, fleeing to London, saying he received death threats from Antifa over his coverage of the movement.
"For a number of months now, there's just been increasing threats of violence against me, promises by Antifa extremists to kill me," the Portland native said Saturday night in a Sky News interview. Local law enforcement authorities did nothing about the alleged threats, even when Ngo provided names of the suspects, he said.
"It's pained me a lot, temporarily having to leave the country and home that settled my parents who came there as political refugees," Ngo added.
Ngo came to increased prominence after he was attacked by a mob of Antifa protesters in 2019. There have been no arrests in connection with that attack – in which Ngo was beaten, robbed and hospitalized with a brain injury – even though it was caught on camera from various angles and the journalist's lawyer provided names of suspects to police.
//www.youtube.com/embed/KlCTpywgEQk
Some Antifa members have condemned Ngo for "enabling fascism" and exposing them to danger by reporting their names and posting their arrest photos. He was vilified by Rolling Stone magazine, which branded him as a "right-wing troll" and said he tries to "demonize" Antifa.
Hatred towards Ngo apparently escalated even further with the upcoming publication of his book, 'Unmasked', which chronicles Antifa's history of violence and its "radical plan to destroy democracy."
The protests, which some observers called "modern-day book burning," may have had an unintended consequence by bringing more attention to 'Unmasked'. The book, which is scheduled for release on February 2, is already the No. 1 seller in several political categories on Amazon.com. At one point earlier this month, it was the overall top seller by the online behemoth.
READ MORE'Modern-day book burners': Portland bookstore forced to evacuate after protesters demand it pulls book critical of Antifa
Ngo said the same Democrat politicians who have condemned and magnified the January 6 US Capitol riot were silent "at best" when Antifa and Black Lives Matter plagued Portland with 120 days of riots, including violent attacks on a federal courthouse, last year. He said some even promoted crowdfunding efforts to get rioters out of jail, while others described federal law enforcement officers as "Trump's Gestapo and secret police."
Rioting in Portland was so bad on President Joe Biden's Inauguration Day that 15 Antifa activists were arrested, nearly half of whom had been busted and released for similar crimes last year, Ngo said. "This is a nightmare version of Groundhog Day," he added.
Reminded that Biden had called Antifa "an idea, not an organization" during last year's presidential campaign, Ngo pointed out that documents leaked to him show Antifa's organizational setup, including processes for recruiting, radicalizing and vetting new members.
"Very sad," author Julia Smith said of Ngo's fleeing to London. "This is not the America his parents sought."
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Jan 24, 2021 | www.globalresearch.ca
"You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country why in the name of God don't you have any faith in the system of government you're so hell-bent to protect? You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with -- its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don't steal it after midnight, when the country has its back turned." -- Seven Days in May (1964)
No doubt about it: the coup d'etat was successful.
That January 6 attempt by so-called insurrectionists to overturn the election results was not the real coup, however. Those who answered President Trump's call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys, manipulated into creating the perfect crisis for the Deep State -- a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State -- to swoop in and take control.
It took no time at all for the switch to be thrown and the nation's capital to be placed under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or controversial viewpoints ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned .
This new order didn't emerge into being this week, or this month, or even this year, however.
Indeed, the real coup happened when our government "of the people, by the people, for the people" was overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, techno-corporate state that is in cahoots with a government "of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations."
We've been mired in this swamp for decades now.
Every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought lock, stock and barrel and made to dance to the Deep State's tune.
Enter Donald Trump, the candidate who swore to drain the swamp in Washington DC. Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the Deep State to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic.
Joe Biden will be no different: his job is to keep the Deep State in power.
Step away from the cult of personality politics and you'll find that beneath the power suits, they're all alike.
Follow the money. It always points the way.
As Bertram Gross noted in Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America , " evil now wears a friendlier face than ever before in American history ."
Writing in 1980, Gross predicted a future in which he saw:
a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion
This stealthy, creeping, silent coup that Gross prophesied is the same danger that writer Rod Serling envisioned in the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May , a clear warning to beware of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation's security.
Incredibly enough, almost 60 years later, we find ourselves hostages to a government run more by military doctrine and corporate greed than by the rule of law established in the Constitution. Indeed, proving once again that fact and fiction are not dissimilar, today's current events could well have been lifted straight out of Seven Days in May , which takes viewers into eerily familiar terrain.
American Apocalypse: The Government's Plot to Destabilize the Nation Is WorkingThe premise is straightforward.
With the Cold War at its height, an unpopular U.S. President signs a momentous nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Believing that the treaty constitutes an unacceptable threat to the security of the United States and certain that he knows what is best for the nation, General James Mattoon Scott (played by Burt Lancaster), the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presidential hopeful, plans a military takeover of the national government. When Gen. Scott's aide, Col. Casey (Kirk Douglas), discovers the planned military coup, he goes to the President with the information. The race for command of the U.S. government begins, with the clock ticking off the hours until the military plotters plan to overthrow the President.
Needless to say, while on the big screen, the military coup is foiled and the republic is saved in a matter of hours, in the real world, the plot thickens and spreads out over the past half century.
We've been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long -- sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs -- that it's hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we've been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.
The question is no longer whether the U.S. government will be preyed upon and taken over by the military industrial complex. That's a done deal, but martial law disguised as national security is only one small part of the greater deception we've been fooled into believing is for our own good.
How do you get a nation to docilely accept a police state? How do you persuade a populace to accept metal detectors and pat downs in their schools, bag searches in their train stations, tanks and military weaponry used by their small town police forces, surveillance cameras in their traffic lights, police strip searches on their public roads, unwarranted blood draws at drunk driving checkpoints, whole body scanners in their airports, and government agents monitoring their communications?
Try to ram such a state of affairs down the throats of the populace, and you might find yourself with a rebellion on your hands. Instead, you bombard them with constant color-coded alerts, terrorize them with shootings and bomb threats in malls, schools, and sports arenas, desensitize them with a steady diet of police violence, and sell the whole package to them as being for their best interests.
This present military occupation of the nation's capital by 25,000 troops as part of the so-called "peaceful" transfer of power from one administration to the next is telling.
This is not the language of a free people. This is the language of force.
Still, you can't say we weren't warned.
Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that "widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security." The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, "unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order , purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters."
In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism .
Meanwhile, the police have been transformed into extensions of the military while the nation itself has been transformed into a battlefield. This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent's order or not complying fast enough. This hasn't just been happening in crime-ridden inner cities. It's been happening all across the country.
And then you've got the government, which has been steadily amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their "troops" for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.
Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable . It's not just the drones, fusion centers , license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You're also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars , your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.
So you see, January 6 and its aftermath provided the government and its corporate technocrats the perfect excuse to show off all of the powers they've been amassing so assiduously over the years.
Mind you, by "government," I'm not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.
I'm referring to "government" with a capital "G," the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.
I'm referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.
This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.
Brace yourself.
There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn't bode well for the future of this country.
Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you'd better beware.
Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you'd better beware.
And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you'd better beware.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People , we are at our most vulnerable right now.
All of those dastardly seeds we have allowed the government to sow under the guise of national security are bearing demon fruit.
The gravest threat facing us as a nation is not extremism but despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute .
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute . His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People is available at www.amazon.com . Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected] . He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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Jan 15, 2021 | www.strategic-culture.org
It should be shocking to Republicans and Democrats alike that the Commander-in-Chief of the United States is banished from all of the main social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook and YouTube – denying him the ability to communicate with his 75 million constituents, or one half of the electorate. This is real and unprecedented violence being committed against the body politic and far more worrisome than any breach of federal property, as loathsome as such an act may be.
The Capitol building is, after all, ultimately a mere symbol of our freedoms and liberties, whereas the rights laid down in the U.S. Constitution –the First Amendment not least of all – are fragile and coming under sustained assault every single day. Why does the left refuse to show the same concern for an aging piece of parchment, arguably the greatest political document ever written, as it does for a piece of architecture? The answer to that riddle is becoming increasingly obvious.
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Big Tech began its slide towards marked fascist tendencies thanks to one of the greatest hoaxes ever foisted upon the American public, known as Russiagate. One after another, Silicon Valley overlords were called before Congressional committees to explain "how and why Russian operatives were given free rein to tamper with 2016 U.S. election," in favor of the populist Donald Trump, no less.
After this made for television 'dressing down', the Big Tech executives at Google, Facebook, Twitter and others got busy reconfiguring their software algorithms in such a way that thousands of internet creators suddenly lost not only a lifetime of hard work and their sustenance, but their voice as well. This is the moment that Big Tech and the Democrats began to really march in lockstep. A new dark age of 'McCarthyism' had settled upon the nation, which gave the left unlimited powers for blocking user accounts they deemed "suspicious," which meant anyone on the right. Now, getting 'shadow banned,' demonetized and outright banned from these platforms has become the new dystopian reality for those with a conservative message to convey. And the fact that the story of 'Russian collusion' was finally exposed as a dirty little lie did nothing to loosen the corporate screws.
Incidentally, as a very large footnote to this story, Big Tech and Big Business have not dished out the same amount of medieval-style punishment to other violators of the public peace. The most obvious example comes courtesy of Black Lives Matter, the Soros-funded social-justice movement that has wreaked havoc across a broad swath of the heartland following the death of George Floyd during an arrest by a white police officer.
Both BLM and Trump supporters believe they have a very large grudge to bear. The former believes they are being unfairly targeted by police due to the color of their skin, while the latter believes they are not getting fair treatment by the mainstream media due to 'Trump Derangement Syndrome', and possibly also due in part to their skin color. But at this point the similarities between BLM and Trump voters come to a screeching halt.
Taking it as gospel that America suffers from 'systemic racism' (it doesn't, although that is not to say that pockets of racism against all colors and creeds doesn't exist), dozens of corporations jumped on the woke bandwagon to express their support for Black Lives Matter at the very same time the latter's members were looting and burning neighborhoods across the nation. Strangely, violence has never shocked the progressive left, so long as the violence supported its agenda.
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Here are just some of the ways the corporate world responded to charges that America was a racist cauldron ready to blow, as reported by The Washington Post: "Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, knelt alongside employees during his visit to a Chase branch. Bank of America pledged $1 billion to fight racial inequality in America. Tech companies have invested big dollars in Black Lives Matter, the Center for Policing Equity, Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp and other entities engaged in racial justice efforts " And the list goes on and on.
Of course, private corporations are free to express their solidarity with whatever group they wish. The problem, however, is that these monopolistic monstrosities have an overwhelming tendency to pledge allegiance to liberal, progressive values, as opposed to maybe steering clear of politics altogether. Nowhere was Corporate America's political agenda more obvious than in the aftermath of the siege of the Capitol building on January 6, which led to the death of five people.
Corporate America missed a very good opportunity to keep quiet and remain neutral with regards to an issue of incredible partisan significance. Instead, it unleashed a salvo of attacks on Trump supporters, even denying them access to basic services.
Aside from the most obvious and alarming 'disappearing act,' that of POTUS being removed from the major social media platforms, were countless lesser names caught up in the 'purge.'
One such person is conservative commentator and former baseball star Curt Schilling, who says that AIG terminated his insurance policy over his "social media profile," which was sympathetic to Donald Trump, according to Summit News. "We will be just fine, but wanted to let Americans know that @AIGinsurance canceled our insurance due to my "Social Media profile," tweeted Schilling.
"The agent told us it was a decision made by and with their PR department in conjunction with management," he added.
While all forms of 'cancel culture' (which seems to be part of a move to build American society along the lines of the Chinese 'social credit system,' which rewards those who toe the party line, and punishes those who fall out of favor) are egregious and counterintuitive to American values, perhaps the most astonishing was the cancellation of Republican Senator Josh Hawley's book deal with Simon and Shuster.
"We did not come to this decision lightly," Simon & Schuster said in a statement over Twitter. "As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat."
The so-called "threat" was a photograph of Hawley raising a fist to the crowd that had assembled outside of the Capitol building before it had breached the security perimeter. It seems that corporations may now serve as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to how Americans behave in public. Is it a crime that Hawley acknowledged a crowd of supporters who were at the time behind the gates of the Capitol building? Apparently it is.
By the way, the name of the Hawley's book? 'The Tyranny of Big Tech'. How's that for irony?
In conclusion, it would be a huge mistake for the Democrats to believe that they are safe from the same sort of corporate and government behavior that has now dramatically silenced the conservative voice across the nation. The United States has entered dangerous unchartered waters, and by all indications it would appear that the American people have inherited a 'soft' form of fascism.
Although there may not be troops and tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same: the brutal elimination of one half of the American population from all of the due protections provided by the U.S. Constitution due to an unholy alliance between corporate and government power, which is the very definition of fascism. Democrats, you may very well be next, so enjoy your victory while you still can.
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Jan 22, 2021 | www.unz.com
Curmudgeon , says: January 21, 2021 at 10:35 pm GMT • 3.5 hours ago
@Cthulu SmithFascism is opposed to usury and the power of the international banking cartel. Whether Italy, Spain, or Portugal, the bankers were squeezed. The US "fascism" is a product of the banks, not an opponent.
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Jan 22, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
For many years, a handful of people have postulated that those who control industry, finance and governments are essentially the same people – a cabal of sorts that have, over generations, solidified their relationships in order to gain greater wealth and power, whilst systematically making things ever more difficult for the free market to exist.
But why should this be? Surely, corporate leaders are more ardently capitalist than anyone else?
Well, on the surface, that might appear to make sense, but once a significant position of power has been achieved, those who have achieved it recognize that, since they've already reached the top, the primary concern changes. From then on, the primary concern becomes the assurance that no others are able to climb so high as they have.
At that point, they realise that their foremost effort needs to be a push toward corporatism – the merger of power between government and business. This is a natural marriage. The political world is a parasitic one. It relies on a continual flow of funding. The world of big business is a study in exclusivity – the ability to make it impossible for pretenders to the throne to arise. So, big business provides the cash; government provides protective legislation that ensures preference for those at the top.
In most cases, this second half of the equation does not mean a monopoly for just one corporation, but a monopoly for a cabal – an elite group of corporations.
This corporatist relationship has deep roots in the US, going back over one hundred years. To this day, those elite families who took control of oil, steel, banking, motor vehicles and other industries a century ago, soon created a takeover of higher learning (universities), health (Big Pharma) and "Defense" (the military-industrial complex).
Through legislation, the US was then transformed to ensure that all these interests would be catered to, creating generations of both control and profit.
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Of course, "profit" should not be an evil word, but under crony capitalism, it becomes an abomination – a distortion of the free market and the death of laissez faire economics.
Certainly, this sort of collectivism is not what Karl Marx had in mind when he daydreamed about a workers' paradise in which business leaders retained all the risk and responsibility of creating and building businesses, whilst the workers had the final word as to how the revenue would be distributed to the workers themselves.
Mister Marx failed in being objective enough to understand that if the business creator took all the risk and responsibility but gave up the ability to decide what happened to the revenue, he'd never bother to open a business. Even a shoeshine boy would reject such a notion and elect to go on the dole, rather than work.
Mister Marx sought more to bring down those who were successful than to raise up those who were not, yet he unwittingly created a new idea – corporate collectivism – in which the very people he sought to debase used the appeal of collectivist rhetoric to diminish both the freedoms and wealth of the average worker.
On the surface, this might appear to be a hard sell – to get the hoi polloi into the net – but in fact, it's quite easy and has perennially been effective.
Hitler's New Order was such a construct – the promise to return Germany to greatness and the German people to prosperity through increasingly draconian laws, warfare and an economic revolving door between government and industry.
Of course, a major influx of capital was required – billions of dollars – and this was eagerly provided by US industry and banks. Heads of New York banks not only funded Nazi industry; families such as the Fords, Rockefellers, Morgans, etc., sat on the boards of German corporations.
The Nazi effort failed, as they underestimated the Russian will to fight to the death. (Eighty percent of all German Army deaths were due to the Russian campaign.)
But those in New York were able to regroup and be first in the queue for the restructuring of German industry after the war and, ultimately, profited handsomely.
But most significantly, the idea of corporatist collectivism did not die. Even before the war, the same group of families and corporations had drawn up the plan for Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
Mister Roosevelt was a dyed-in-the-wool Wall Street man and a director of New York banks. In the 1930s and early 1940s, he created, as president, a revolving door that favoured large corporations, whilst the average American was consciously kept at the subsistence level through government entitlements.
The scam worked. Shortsighted Americans not only were grateful; they deified him for it.
Likewise, John Kennedy's New Frontier sought to revitalize the concept, as did Lyndon Johnson's Great Society: Give the little people entitlements that keep them little. Tax smaller businesses and create a flow of tax dollars to the elite industries, who, in turn, provide monetary favours to the political class.
The Green New Deal is merely the latest corporate collectivist scheme on the list.
Corporate collectivism can be defined as a system in which the few who hold the legal monopolies of finance and industry gain an overriding control over all others, and in so doing, systematically extract wealth from them.
Today, this system has become so refined that, although the average American has a flat screen TV and an expensive smartphone, he cannot raise $400 to cover an emergency that occurs in his life. He is, for all practical purposes, continually bankrupt, but still functioning in a zombie-like existence of continual dependency.
This, on the surface, may not seem all that dangerous, but those who cannot buy their way out of a small emergency are easily controlled. Just create an emergency such as an uber-virus and that fact will be illuminated quickly.
In order to maximise compliance in a population, maximise their dependence.
As stated above, this effort has been in play for generations. But it is now reaching a crescendo. It's now up to speed in most of the former Free World and those who hold the strings are ready for a major step forward in corporate collectivism.
In the coming year, we shall see dramatic changes appearing at a dizzying rate. Capital controls , migration controls, internal movement controls, tax increases, confiscation of assets and the removal of "inalienable" rights will all be coming into effect – so quickly that before the populace can even grasp the latest restrictions, new ones will be heaped on.
As this unfolds, we shall witness the erosion of the nation-state. Controls will come from global authorities, such as the UN, the IMF and the WEF. Organisations that have no formal authority over nations will increasingly be calling the shots and people will wonder how this is possible. Elected officials will increasingly become mere bagmen, doing the bidding of an unelected ruling class.
The changes that take place will be not unlike a blanket that is thrown over humanity.
The question then will be whether to, a) give in to this force, b) to fight it and most likely fall victim to it, or c) seek a means to fall outside the perimeter of the blanket.
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Unfortunately most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare The coming economic and political crisis is going to be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we've seen in the past. That's exactly why New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video. Click here to watch it now .
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Jan 19, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
A new viral video calling on liberals to form "an army of citizen detectives" to gather information on Trump supporters and report their activities to the authorities has racked up thousands of shares and millions of views in just a few hours.
The hashtag #TrumpsNewArmy is trending on Twitter as of this writing due to the release of a horrifying video with that title from successful author and virulent Russiagater Don Winslow. As of this writing it has some 20 thousand shares and 2.6 million views, and the comments and quote-retweets are predominantly supportive.
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"On or before January 20th, Donald Trump will no longer be the Commander-in-Chief: he will lose control of the Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, Special Forces and America's nuclear arsenal," Winslow's voice begins ominously. "On January 20th Donald Trump will become Commander-in-Chief of a different army: this army."
Viewers are then shown footage from Trump rallies while being told that they are looking at "radical extreme conservatives, also known as domestic terrorists".
"They are hidden among us, disguised behind regular jobs," Winslow warns.
"They are your children's teachers. They work at supermarkets, malls, doctor's offices, and many are police officers and soldiers."
Winslow talks about white supremacists and the Capitol riot, warning that Trump will continue escalating violence and fomenting a civil war in America.
"We have to fight back," Winslow declares.
"In this new war, the battlefield has changes. Computers can be more valuable than guns. And this is what we need now more than ever: an army of citizen detectives. I'm proposing we form a citizen army. Our weapons will be computers and cellphones. We, who are monitoring extremists on the internet and reporting our findings to authorities. Remember, before the Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden, he had to be found. He was found by a CIA analyst working on a computer thousands of miles away. It's up to you."
The viral video is being loudly amplified by popular #Resistance accounts like Majid M Padellan (better known as Brooklyn Dad Defiant) with frighteningly paranoid and HUAC-like rhetoric.
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"#TrumpsNewArmy is VILE," one of Padellan's Twitter shares of the video reads. "And we KNOW who they are. They are our teachers. They are our neighbors. They are our police officers. They are EVERYWHERE. EXPOSE THEIR TREASON."
"Donald trump is on his way out," reads another .
"Good riddance. But his 'army' is still here, hiding amongst us. They are traitors. They are evil. And they MUST be rooted OUT."
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America," reads yet another . "But SOME people they pledged their allegiance ONLY to trump. These are dangerous traitors."
"After 9/11, we were told: If you see something, say something," reads still another .
"We have TERRORISTS in our midst. Some of us KNOW these people. It is our patriotic DUTY to expose them."
So if you were hoping that maybe liberals would chill out and get a little less crazy with Trump out of the White House, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
This is as insane and scary as I have ever seen these people get, and I was in the thick of peak Russiagate hysteria. An aggressively manufactured push to get an army of citizens spying on each other calls to mind the Stasi informants of East Germany , the patriotism-fueled digital "digging" of the QAnon psyop, and the NatSec LARPing of Louise Mensch Twitter, all rolled into one great big ball of crazy.
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This comes out as we are being bombarded with mass media punditry from literal CIA veterans like Sue Gordon and Elissa Slotkin forcefully hammering home the message that domestic terror is the new frontier for combating violent extremism, meaning of course that new Patriot Act-like solutions will be needed . Winslow himself spent six years traveling and doing research for a novel about a former CIA operative , and if some government agency didn't recruit him during that period they clearly should have.
This will get frightening if it keeps up. Just as a relatively low-profile lefty blogger I routinely get liberals online falsely claiming I'm a Russian agent and saying they'll report me to the FBI, and that's without an aggressive campaign urging them to join a powerful digital army. The fact that Winslow stays very vague about what he means by "Trump's new army" and constantly conflates rank-and-file Trump supporters with white supremacist terrorists means people are effectively being pointed at all Trump supporters, especially when normal Trump rallies are what he points to in the video. If this takes off it can very quickly lead to a volunteer army of power-worshipping snitches against literally anyone who is critical of US foreign policy or the Democratic Party, whether they actually support Trump or not.
In fact just following the trending hashtag I'm noticing Twitter users saying this means targeting all Trump supporters, so clearly that is the message that's being absorbed.
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"Trumpers are pushing back so hard against this video because so many of them live in the dark, cloaked behind normal jobs and seemingly normal lives," Winslow tweeted in promotion of his project.
Well maybe that's because they are half the voting public, Don?
Winslow mixes in these generic comments about "Trumpers" with comments about "white supremacists" , about whom he tweets "1. We expose them. 2. We identify them. 3. We notify law enforcement. 4. We notify their employers."
Their employers.
This is just liberals being pushed toward targeting anyone who isn't ideologically aligned with them for destruction. I really, really hope it doesn't take off, because it is profoundly ugly. Please don't let the manipulators trick you into ripping each other to pieces, America. They're only pointing you at each other so you don't look at them.
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Fudomyo 2 hours ago
cankles' server 35 minutes agoHopefully things will settle down after the inauguration. There are a lot of normal people in the US who just want to get on with fixing their lives after all the economic damage done by the lock downs. This extreme political crap is getting really exhausting for everyone in the center. The number of people who are centrists well exceed the the polar extremes. Unfortunately the extremists get the lion's share of news coverage, so it makes it appear the country is filled with lunatics. If Biden is smart he won't alienate the center or he will lose a lot of support going into the mid-terms. A quiet period where people can actually start rebuilding their lives and the economy is desperately needed. I remain cautiously hopeful that once the political circus dies down, that could actually happen.
As Greenwald said, it's easy for the neocons to switch because the D's are now the party of "militarism, imperialism, and corporatism."
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Jan 19, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Zanon , Jan 19 2021 20:26 utc | 21
The U.S. seems to have gone completely crazy these day.
Two full divisions worth of soldiers are closing off Washington DC to 'protect' a mostly virtual inauguration from a non-existing threat.
26,000 National Guard members to secure Washington for inauguration
The FBI is investigating the loyalty of those troops as if it were really in doubt.
FBI vetting troops stationed in Washington ahead of Inauguration Day
On the massive military buildup = another drift towards fascism under the democrats, they have the media, military, police on top of congress, house and president. GOP will be so weak coming years, and they have themselves to blame for being so passive past years, in fact any dissent will not be heard coming years with Biden.
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Jan 19, 2021 | www.counterpunch.org
Exceptionalist Conceit
The first such hurdle was the longstanding American- exceptionalist conceit that, in the ironic title of Sinclair Lewis's dystopian 1935 novel, "It Can't Happen Here." The "it" in Lewis's title was authoritarian fascism, falsely deemed impossible in the United States during and since Lewis' time because of the supposedly strong hold here of democratic and constitutional principles and institutions. Such authoritarianism has long been falsely portrayed as beyond the pale of possibility in a nation whose media and political authorities regularly and absurdly call the "world's greatest democracy."
Apathy/Demobilization/"Inverted Totalitarianism"
A third barrier was a critical ingredient of what the late left political scientist Sheldon Wolin considered to be America's distinctive authoritarian "inverted totalitarianism" – the atomized demobilization of the populace. While what Wolin called the "classical totalitarian regimes" of fascist German and Soviet Russia aimed at the constant political mobilization of the populace, "inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the populace to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the populace has given up hope that the government will ever significantly help them." The second most common response to pleas to join popular movements against Trumpism-fascism (after "I'll vote/I voted against him") in my experience was a shrugging indifference to and/or disgust with any and all politics often combined with a sense that American political life is too ugly, boring, and/or impenetrable to merit attention.
No Real Left
Eighth, the continuing and longtime absence of any sophisticated, powerful, and relevant, many-sided Left of significance in late Neoliberal America is a significant part of the tragic equation. No such movement would have met the rise of Trump and Trumpism-fascism with four years of avoidance, denial, passivity, and diversion. There are many factors in play behind this pathetic portside weakness but two that have struck this writer and activist as particularly relevant alongside excessive localism and excessive identitarianism in the last four years are (i) the crippling holds of sectarianism (an almost pathological refusal to reach across tribal-ideological and organizational lines to form a united anti-fascist front) and (ii) single-issue silo politics whereby group A cares about the climate, group B cares about reproductive rights, group C cares about a higher minimum wages, group D cares about teachers' working conditions and so on.
Paul Street's new book is The Hollow Resistance: Obama, Trump, and Politics of Appeasement .
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Jan 15, 2021 | www.strategic-culture.org
© Photo: REUTERS
Although there may not be tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same.
Most Americans can probably still remember a time when U.S. companies were in business with one goal in mind – providing a product or service for profit. It was a noble idea, the bedrock of capitalism, in which everyone stood to gain in the process.
Today, the monopolistic powers now enjoyed by a handful of mighty corporations, which are no longer shy about declaring their political bent, have tempted them to wade into the deep end of the political pool with deleterious effects on democracy. Indeed, corporate power wedded to government is nothing less than fascism.
In presenting such a case, it is important to put aside the notion that fascism is a purely right-wing phenomenon, complete with a chauvinistic demagogue haranguing a frenzied crowd. The new dictator on the block is not some fanatical Fuhrer, but rather Silicon Valley, the fountainhead of technological advancement and the formidable fortress of liberal ideology. In other words, fascism is an ideology that moves fluidly along the political spectrum, although some say the ideology grew out of European progressivism.
Jonah Goldberg argued in his 2008 book, Liberal Fascism , that even before World War II "fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States." Many years earlier, the late political theorist Hannah Arendt described the Nazi Party (which stands for, lest we forget, the 'National SOCIALIST German Workers' Party') as nothing more than "the breakdown of all German and European traditions, the good as well as the bad basing itself on the intoxication of destruction as an actual experience." That sounds like a pretty accurate description of the cancel culture mentality that has now gripped the 'progressive' left with an almost demonic possession.
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It should be shocking to Republicans and Democrats alike that the Commander-in-Chief of the United States is banished from all of the main social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook and YouTube – denying him the ability to communicate with his 75 million constituents, or one half of the electorate. This is real and unprecedented violence being committed against the body politic and far more worrisome than any breach of federal property, as loathsome as such an act may be.
The Capitol building is, after all, ultimately a mere symbol of our freedoms and liberties, whereas the rights laid down in the U.S. Constitution – the First Amendment not least of all – are fragile and coming under sustained assault every single day. Why does the left refuse to show the same concern for an aging piece of parchment, arguably the greatest political document ever written, as it does for a piece of architecture? The answer to that riddle is becoming increasingly obvious.
We are living Orwell's 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech and what's left is only there for a chosen few.
This is absolute insanity! https://t.co/s2z8ymFsLX
-- Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 9, 2021
Big Tech began its slide towards marked fascist tendencies thanks to one of the greatest hoaxes ever foisted upon the American public, known as Russiagate. One after another, Silicon Valley overlords were called before Congressional committees to explain "how and why Russian operatives were given free rein to tamper with 2016 U.S. election," in favor of the populist Donald Trump, no less.
After this made for television 'dressing down', the Big Tech executives at Google, Facebook, Twitter and others got busy reconfiguring their software algorithms in such a way that thousands of internet creators suddenly lost not only a lifetime of hard work and their sustenance, but their voice as well. This is the moment that Big Tech and the Democrats began to really march in lockstep. A new dark age of 'McCarthyism' had settled upon the nation, which gave the left unlimited powers for blocking user accounts they deemed "suspicious," which meant anyone on the right. Now, getting 'shadow banned,' demonetized and outright banned from these platforms has become the new dystopian reality for those with a conservative message to convey. And the fact that the story of 'Russian collusion' was finally exposed as a dirty little lie did nothing to loosen the corporate screws.
Incidentally, as a very large footnote to this story, Big Tech and Big Business have not dished out the same amount of medieval-style punishment to other violators of the public peace. The most obvious example comes courtesy of Black Lives Matter, the Soros-funded social-justice movement that has wreaked havoc across a broad swath of the heartland following the death of George Floyd during an arrest by a white police officer.
Both BLM and Trump supporters believe they have a very large grudge to bear. The former believes they are being unfairly targeted by police due to the color of their skin, while the latter believes they are not getting fair treatment by the mainstream media due to 'Trump Derangement Syndrome', and possibly also due in part to their skin color. But at this point the similarities between BLM and Trump voters come to a screeching halt.
Taking it as gospel that America suffers from 'systemic racism' (it doesn't, although that is not to say that pockets of racism against all colors and creeds doesn't exist), dozens of corporations jumped on the woke bandwagon to express their support for Black Lives Matter at the very same time the latter's members were looting and burning neighborhoods across the nation. Strangely, violence has never shocked the progressive left, so long as the violence supported its agenda.
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Here are just some of the ways the corporate world responded to charges that America was a racist cauldron ready to blow, as reported by The Washington Post: "Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, knelt alongside employees during his visit to a Chase branch. Bank of America pledged $1 billion to fight racial inequality in America. Tech companies have invested big dollars in Black Lives Matter, the Center for Policing Equity, Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp and other entities engaged in racial justice efforts " And the list goes on and on.
Of course, private corporations are free to express their solidarity with whatever group they wish. The problem, however, is that these monopolistic monstrosities have an overwhelming tendency to pledge allegiance to liberal, progressive values, as opposed to maybe steering clear of politics altogether. Nowhere was Corporate America's political agenda more obvious than in the aftermath of the siege of the Capitol building on January 6, which led to the death of five people.
Corporate America missed a very good opportunity to keep quiet and remain neutral with regards to an issue of incredible partisan significance. Instead, it unleashed a salvo of attacks on Trump supporters, even denying them access to basic services.
Aside from the most obvious and alarming 'disappearing act,' that of POTUS being removed from the major social media platforms, were countless lesser names caught up in the 'purge.'
One such person is conservative commentator and former baseball star Curt Schilling, who says that AIG terminated his insurance policy over his "social media profile," which was sympathetic to Donald Trump, according to Summit News.
"We will be just fine, but wanted to let Americans know that @AIGinsurance canceled our insurance due to my "Social Media profile," tweeted Schilling.
"The agent told us it was a decision made by and with their PR department in conjunction with management," he added.
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While all forms of 'cancel culture' (which seems to be part of a move to build American society along the lines of the Chinese 'social credit system,' which rewards those who toe the party line, and punishes those who fall out of favor) are egregious and counterintuitive to American values, perhaps the most astonishing was the cancellation of Republican Senator Josh Hawley's book deal with Simon and Shuster.
"We did not come to this decision lightly," Simon & Schuster said in a statement over Twitter. "As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat."
The so-called "threat" was a photograph of Hawley raising a fist to the crowd that had assembled outside of the Capitol building before it had breached the security perimeter. It seems that corporations may now serve as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to how Americans behave in public. Is it a crime that Hawley acknowledged a crowd of supporters who were at the time behind the gates of the Capitol building? Apparently it is.
By the way, the name of the Hawley's book? 'The Tyranny of Big Tech'. How's that for irony?
In conclusion, it would be a huge mistake for the Democrats to believe that they are safe from the same sort of corporate and government behavior that has now dramatically silenced the conservative voice across the nation. The United States has entered dangerous unchartered waters, and by all indications it would appear that the American people have inherited a 'soft' form of fascism.
Although there may not be troops and tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same: the brutal elimination of one half of the American population from all of the due protections provided by the U.S. Constitution due to an unholy alliance between corporate and government power, which is the very definition of fascism. Democrats, you may very well be next, so enjoy your victory while you still can.
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Jan 17, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Mao Cheng Ji , Jan 17 2021 19:03 utc | 23
@steven t johnson: "reactionary Republicans"
Since you like Hitler analogies so much, dear Steven, why don't you contemplate the 'reactionary' aspect of those Germans who resisted, in the 1930s, the 'progress' of the National-Socialist movement.
'Reactionary' simply means 'opposing the change', and the changes instituted by global finance, aided by their faithful servants, your liberal comrades, -- those changes should be opposed by all decent citizens.
And they are opposed by all decent citizens, and especially by the American working class, which is why your liberal comrades have to resort to fascist methods: goebbelsian propaganda, censorship, blacklisting, police repression.
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Jan 17, 2021 | irrussianality.wordpress.com
peter moritz JANUARY 11, 2021 AT 3:53 PM
"Yale historian Timothy Snyder" In light of his opinions the appellation "historian" to this person can only be considered satire.
"The term 'fascist' is far too easily abused."
It is today used – like the term anti-semite, white supremacist, racist – to smear and or discredit anybody from the left or right one disagrees with or tries to disempower.
Jonathan Cook lays out how this works with regards to the left:
I have no problem arguing conservatives, if they actually clearly define what they mean by this term and find some points I agree with someone like Peter Hitchens:
"His view is that conservatism should embody a Burkean sense of public duty, conscience and the rule of law, which he sees as the best guarantee of liberty. Furthermore, this view holds a general hostility to hasty reforms and adventurism .
Hitchens takes a critical stance on many wars. He was opposed to the Kosovo and 2003 Iraq War, on the grounds that neither was in the interests of either Britain or the United States,[66] and opposes the war in Afghanistan.[67] He believes that the UK should never have joined in World War I, and is very critical of the view that World War II was "The Good War".
Mikhail JANUARY 11, 2021 AT 3:56 PM
John Thuloe JANUARY 11, 2021 AT 6:45 PMSynchronization. Just beforehand, Rachel Maddow propped Snyder's book on fascism.
Dmitry Babich made an excellent point about how the Biden crowd cheered the storming of the Ukrainian parliament which include some folks who qualify as fascists. In comparison, last week's DC protesting MAGA group didn't appear to be so fascist. I saw an Israeli flag among these protestors as well as some African-Americans.
A related great shot at establishment politico Ian Bremmer:
Mark Sleboda @MarkSleboda1 · Jan 10 "Calling for an insurrection to overthrow the legitimate outcome of a free and fair election is crime against the nation." - Unless the nation in question is #Ukraine in 2014 or some other state & govt not aligned with US hegemony. Then calling for an insurrection is kosher.Quote Tweet ian bremmer @ianbremmer · Jan 10
Calling for an insurrection to overthrow the legitimate outcome of a free and fair election is crime against the nation. Yes, Trump only has another week in office. But he should still be impeached and convicted.
There are plenty of poseurs, blow-hards about. To be dangerous, there must be a leadership, an apparatus, discipline, and a substantial rank and file. And most importantly, all motivated by a creed, common beliefs that weld all into a force. Nothing like that exists.
But the good news is that behind the shrill loud-mouths of the Woke censorship bullies, fake news media, liberals, Democrats, burned out 'progressives – the On Duty paid for apparatchiks. Behind them is – nothing. No Party, no organizers, no apparatus at all. No store fronts for meetings, no stand by printers, no trained marshals. No seething masses burning with righteous fury ready to hit the streets. Nothing.
Sure, people are mad. But when you're mad at everything then that power is dissipated. And when you're not united by being For something then you don't amount to a hill of beans. The liberals are afraid that when their 'lockdown pandemic racket' runs out of gas, the public will turn on them with a vengeance. And they can expect no organized part of population to defend them. For a while, folks will be united on venting their fury at those that ride high now. Wait till the wheel turns. Grigory Matyunin JANUARY 11, 2021 AT 9:51 PM
It's like the misuse of the term 'conspiracy theorist' by people like Snyder, Harding and Applebaum. Anyone who merely points to the impropriety of Nuland/McCain's actions on the Maidan is pre-emptively dismissed by them as a conspiracy theorist. Yet the notion that Russia controls Trump through a pee tape, bewitched the Brits into voting for Brexit and was the sole force behind the Catalan independence movement is now axiomatic for worshippers of received wisdom. Guest JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 12:51 AM
In the case of this Ukrainian nazi – of course they knew. They just hoped no one would notice. The reason she was given this appointment was because she is who she is. Ukraine is to be the anti-Russian state with an indoctrinated population – people like this young woman are part of that policy.
Look around the world! We have seen that the west has no problem funding and supporting all sorts of disgusting groups and individuals if it meets their objectives.
yalensis JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 7:19 AM
peter moritz JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 10:07 AMNice job, Professor! It's always good to see somebody point out these hacks egregious double standards.
I want people to start scientifically as possible defining their terms for political ideologies. Like, there is actually a legitimate use for the word "fascist". From what I understand, fascism is an actual political ideology and movement and should not be used simply as a derogatory. From what I understand, fascism does not necessarily include a racialist component, although it usually does (being based on nationalism).
Mussolini was a fascist. Hitler was a fascist too. (Nazism being a subset of the broader movement fascism?) Franco was a fascist. That Ukrainian lady you mentioned is an ideological fascist, more specifically a fucking Nazi.
Donald Trump -- is NOT a fascist. He is just a right-wing conservative, Murican-style!
PaulR JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 10:20 AMI have for years tried to find a concise definition of "Fascism", but only found a lot of disagreement.
Fascism is by some defined as a corporatism where the state and the industrial and financial capitalist elite have come to a complete nexus where the state protects within a framework of "ultra" nationalism those elites who in return follow and as well directly influence the policies. By this definition the USA could be called not a fascist state, but one with fascists tendencies as the nexus has been established to a great extend.
Some conservatives and libertarians find intellectual solace in pointing out that especially in Germany fascism developed as a "national socialism". A version that opposed the internationalism of the Marxist version espoused the German Communist party, and propagated an economic based antisemitism.
They are not wrong there, as socialism is not just the socialism or communism as defined by Marx, but as Marx himself pointed out in his critiques there are various kind of socialisms. ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm )What they however ignore is Hitlers move under the guise of "socialism" to establish close ties with the German financial and Industrial leadership and the attempt of a "true" National Socialism came to an end with the Strasser Brothers breaking away and one being murdered in the Night of the Long Knives when Hitler destroyed any leftwing faction within the NSDAP.
Others like Paxton define define Fascism as a developmental process. This article here lays out some of the differences in interpreting the term: https://newrepublic.com/article/154042/failure-define-fascism-today
Lyttenburgh JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 9:18 PMFascism is not the only ideology which lacks clear definition. Try looking at the literature on liberalism – it's a mess (with good reason – many modern day 'liberals' are entirely at odds with classical liberals, neoliberals, etc, but they're all called liberal). The best recent scholarship can come up with is the idea that liberalism is a 'family of resemblances' or even that it's just whatever people who call themselves liberal happen to say it is at any given time and place. Conservatism is similarly poorly defined.
"I have for years tried to find a concise definition of "Fascism", but only found a lot of disagreement."
There's still definition provided by G. Dimitrov:
"Fascism is an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of the finance capital
Fascism is not a supra-class power and not the power of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen proletariat over finance capital. Fascism*is* the rule of finance capital itself .
This is the organization of terrorist reprisals against the working class and the revolutionary part of the peasantry and intelligentsia. Fascism in foreign policy is chauvinism in its crudest form, cultivating zoological hatred of other peoples."
Defenders of Google, Twitter, Amazon et al saying "they CAN do that – they are PrIVaTe CoMpaNIeS!" – ha-ha!
Grigory Matyunin JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 3:01 PM
Absolutely, Paul. Comparing the neoconservative and paleoconservative traditions, for instance, reveals extraordinary divergences in conservative intellectual thought. Your recent book presents plenty of such contradictions.
Yet the lack of definitional clarity does not mean that any particular term can be thrown around as a polemical device or a catch-all form of abuse. Fascist ideologies differ between themselves, but they do have a relatively ubiquitous common denominator in being mass movements set upon utopian mass transformation relying upon extreme violence, as per the scholarship of Roger Griffin.
It's like right-of-centre political commentators who misuse the term 'Marxist' to describe modern identity politics, notwithstanding how clearly inappropriate that label is when analyzing a movement which has little commitment to class struggle.
Equally, while we may lack a one-size-fits-all definition of any given ideology, we can usually say with some confidence what it is not. In other words, while the fascism of OUN-B may differ remarkably from the fascism of Mussolini, it is sufficiently clear that these movements lack any ideological likeness with modern Russia.
yalensis JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 3:28 PM
From what I understand, one common denominator of genuine fascist movements is a cult of a national leader (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Bandera). However, I am not sure that this factor is REQUIRED in order to be fascist. I imagine it is theoretically possible to have a fascist nation run by a committee or collegial leadership.
And the "Leader" factor is also not definitive in and of itself, because the Stalin period in the Soviet Union was also defined by a cult of a leader; and yet the Soviet Union was definitely not fascist, it was socialist.
In this case, I would say, two different systems (capitalistic fascism and Soviet-style socialism) showed, what evolutionary biologists call "convergent" traits.
For example, in the natural world, fishes and whales both have fins and live in the water; yet these two types of animals are not related to each other genetically (except going way back). This is "convergent" evolution.
Which leads me to another thought: Perhaps ideological movements can be classified by their historical genetics rather than a static "structuralist" definition. The difference between a Darwinian vs a Linnaeus approach? I think this method is also used to categorize religions, so might be appropriate also for political ideologies.
Just musing here, but I think it's important
Lyttenburgh JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 8:57 PM
Lyttenburgh JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 10:57 PM"Outside of a particular time period (1920s to 1940s), I don't think that the term 'fascism' has a lot of meaning. "
What about:
– Spain under Franko.
– Greece under "black colonels"
– Genuine, NATO approved fascist parties working diligently and openly in the "Western democracies" throughout the period?Also:
Remember VICE's breathless coverage of the "Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity" that propelled certain Ostrovsky to the upper echelons of the journalism and punditry? From their linked article:
"She also addressed a photo that was circulated of her online, showing her as one of a group of four women holding a flag emblazoned with a swastika while giving a Nazi salute. She claimed the image was an ironic Halloween photo, mocking the Kremlin narrative that Ukrainian nationalists were neo-Nazis."
Mikhail JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 11:50 PM
Mikhail JANUARY 13, 2021 AT 12:02 AMLater with Ostrovsky.
No surprise to see PC Bulgarian Ivan Kravtsev involved with that establishment org accepting her. At the Brit based openDemocracy venue, Kravtsev felt compelled to write an article on why China (in his opinion) is freer than Russia. Tom de Waal is a Kravstev fan.
yalensis JANUARY 13, 2021 AT 7:13 AMRelated:
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There're better academics posting at this threads. By academic, I'm referring to those who intellectually and knowledge wise aren't inferior to the aforementioned folks getting the accolades.
james JANUARY 13, 2021 AT 12:18 AMIf she says it was just a Halloween costume, that means she is disowning or denying having Nazi views? That seems cowardly to me. I personally have more respect for Nazis who just come out and admit, "Yeah, I'm a Nazi." Of course, in that case, they would have to be willing to sacrifice the money and income from "respectable" bourgeois institutions.
David JANUARY 16, 2021 AT 12:18 AMYale historian Timothy Snyder – more like Yale historian – propagandist Timothy Snyder.. i figured this out on my own without having to be an academic to know this, but thank you paul for this article and confirming my viewpoint
Snyder is such a fraud. His book Bloodlands is utter drivel filled with complete falsities – none of which substantiated with sources. "Yale historian" is clearly a meaningless title. But of course he gets called on for propaganda hit pieces like this or that ridiculous Agents of Chaos series on HBO.
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Jan 13, 2021 | www.unz.com
Faihtful , says: January 12, 2021 at 5:28 am GMT • 22.8 hours ago
The mob never wins. It is always led by the nose by well organised agents provocateur. See Epoch time video:
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/FrE27FTf11Q/
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Jan 10, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Francis , Jan 10 2021 19:21 utc | 36
Georgi Dimitrov. The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism
Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.
...
Fascism is not a form of state power "standing above both classes -- the proletariat and the bourgeoisie," as Otto Bauer, for instance, has asserted. It is not "the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie which has captured the machinery of the state," as the British Socialist Brailsford declares. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm
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Dec 30, 2020 | www.unz.com
3,000 WORDS 68 COMMENTS REPLY RSSMichael Kellogg
The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945
Cambridge University Press, 2005With the near-universal demonization of the Third Reich, historians have developed a blind spot for the genesis of German anti-Semitism. Michael Kellogg, in his 2005 work The Russian Roots of Nazism, sheds a sharp light on this topic and points our attention eastward. He reveals how the post-World War I atrocities of the Soviet Union along with the presence of a large, vengeful, and politically active White émigré population in Weimar Germany played a critical role in developing National Socialist attitudes on Jews and Bolshevism. And in making this argument, he not only addresses the errors of other historians, but he also makes an indirect case for much of Nazism itself.
Kellogg's work is crucial for several reasons, most prominent being the facts themselves. The interwar period in Germany, the Baltic states, and Ukraine were roiled in conflict, intrigue, revolution, and, most of all, uncertainty. It was an interesting time. More importantly, it was consequential. Any history that discloses previously unknown or overlooked events from that time and place will have value.
Kellogg also exhibits remarkable academic discipline by not taking sides in the political drama he unfolds. There is nothing tendentious about The Russian Roots of Nazism aside from its pointed historiography. This is good since it lets the facts speak for themselves. On the other hand, Kellogg's avoidance of a broader political schema makes the book a bit of a slog. It's not biased, but it's not sexy, either. But Kellogg's prose is tight and serviceable, and he offers concise summaries at the end of each chapter and at the end of the book for those who wish to skim.
The Russian Roots of Nazism can also be viewed as a strike against the anti-German racism of Jewish writers such as Daniel Goldhagen. In his 1996 work, Hitler's Willing Executioners , Goldhagen accuses the Germans of being inherently racist, anti-Semitic, and "eliminationist." This takes the extreme form of what's known as the Sonderweg (special path) thesis, which posits the inevitability of the Third Reich, given the weakness of the German bourgeoisie. Kellogg demolishes this idea by uncovering the foreign influences of National Socialism during its formative years and also by portraying Adolf Hitler in his mid-thirties and other early-period Nazis as three-dimensional human beings rather than comic book villains.
Most importantly, Kellogg demonstrates how the Nazis may have had excellent reasons for their anti-Semitism and their anti-Bolshevism, thereby justifying much of what they did during the interwar period. This may not have been Kellogg's intention. Regardless, by eschewing a political agenda and by relying so heavily upon National Socialist primary sources (rather than the mountain of secondary sources that condemn the Nazis), Kellogg leaves the door open for a revisionist, and much more positive, interpretation of National Socialism.
Our story may as well begin in German-occupied Ukraine in 1918. After Soviet Russia's capitulation in the war, many disaffected Russian and Ukrainian officers began cooperating with their German counterparts, bonding over their shared sense of nationalism and their mutual hatred for the Bolsheviks. When the Germans abandoned Ukraine the following year, they took thousands of these so-called "White" officers with them, including some, such as Vladimir Biskupsky, Ivan Poltavets-Ostranitsa, Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, Fedor Vinberg, and Piotr Shabelsky-Bork, who would work closely with the Nazis in years to come. Shabelsky-Bork deserves special mention because he was the first to transfer the forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the West, thereby unleashing one of the most famous conspiracy theories upon the world.
As the Ukrainian Biskupsky became a leader among the 600,000 White émigrés in Weimar Germany, he also became one of two de facto leaders of a secret, conspiratorial organization known as Aufbau (or, Reconstruction) which promoted a particularly urgent strain of apocalyptic anti-Semitism. Max von Scheubner-Richter, a Baltic German émigré from Latvia, was the other, and soon this organization had had great influence upon the nascent Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler himself. In fact, Scheubner-Richter grew quite close to Hitler and marched arm-in-arm with him during the failed 1923 Putsch in Munich where he was shot and killed. Thereafter, Hitler considered him a martyr for National Socialism.
Two other White émigrés, Alfred Rosenberg, another Baltic German, and the Russian Fedor Vinberg, became leading theorists of National Socialism, with Rosenberg ultimately gaining the most stature in the Nazi Party. Publisher and early Hitler mentor Dietrich Eckart introduced Rosenberg to Hitler, and the men quickly grew to admire each other. When Hitler was imprisoned after the Munich Putsch, he appointed Rosenberg as his successor. By World War II, this émigré was so embedded in high-level Nazi operations that the Allies rewarded him at Nuremburg with a sentence of hanging.
Bavaria in the early 1920s was a unique petri dish of nationalist and anti-Semitic ideas and action. Stirred into the mix were the völkisch Germans. These were Aryan identitarians, Teutonic traditionalists, and Thule Society people who drew racialist ideas from the likes of Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Many of these people were still smarting over the revolution of 1918, which forced the Kaiser to abdicate, and shared a distrust of Jews for their materialistic and "world-affirming" (that is, non-heroic, non-transcendent) behavior.
Add to this the White émigrés who brought with them not only The Protocols but the hyper-nationalist ideas of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Solovev. A militaristic form of Christianity played into this as well, with the great Jew-Gentile struggle often being portrayed in Biblical terms. These were people who had witnessed firsthand Red atrocities during the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War and had experience in the Tsar's army or in the reactionary organization, the Black Hundreds. It's no wonder they blamed the Jews for upending their world. Their world had been upended, and they couldn't help but notice how a disproportionate number of Bolsheviks were Jews, especially at the top.
The result was an explosive burst of national and anti-Jewish sentiment which culminated in 1933 when Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. Kellogg repeatedly stresses that without the Whites who were more anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik than the Germans after World War I, the National Socialists would likely not have been as successful as they were. No so-called "far-Right" organization in Germany before the Nazis had garnered popular support. This does away with the notion that the Germans were somehow inherently anti-Semitic. Where Goldhagen insists that "German antisemitism was sui generis, " Kellogg demonstrates that it was the powerful gestalt of the German völkisch movement and the White fear and fascination with Jewish Bolshevism which was sui generis .
Hitler harbored standard socialist views well into 1919. Hitler's former immediate commander on the Western Front in World War I, Aide-de-Camp Hans Mend, asserted that his earlier underling had exclaimed towards the end of 1918 in Munich, "Thank God that the kings' crowns have fallen from the tree. Now we proletarians have something to say". . .
Hitler only began to develop a detailed anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic ideology beginning in the second half of 1919 through his collaboration with Eckart and Rosenberg, who served as his early mentors. Mend confirmed Hitler's rapid political lurch from the far left to the far right in postwar Munich. When he heard Hitler speak publicly at the beginning of 1920, he thought, "Adi has changed his colors, the red lad!" In addition to borrowing anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic ideas from Eckart and Rosenberg, Hitler soon learned far-right concepts that castigated "Jewish Bolshevism" from the Aufbau ideologues Scheubner-Richter and Vinberg as well.
The White émigrés from 1918 to 1923 lent a sense of Manichean urgency to the postwar German zeitgeist. It was, in effect, good versus evil, Christ versus Anti-Christ, and the slew of conspiracy theories emanating from the Aufbau circle painted this struggle in the starkest black and white. For example, one theory posited that Leon Trotsky was a Satanist who practiced Black Mass rituals in the Kremlin and prayed to the Devil for the defeat of the Whites. But this alliance was also practical. If the v ölkisch Germans and the émigré Whites didn't have the exact same enemies, their shared ethnocentrism gave them similar goals. Whereas the Whites aimed to conquer the Soviet Union and remove the Jewish yoke from the Slavic peoples, the Germans needed to defy the Entente and overthrow the socialist, pro-Soviet Weimar government. There was quite of bit of overlap here, and Hitler's Nazi Party approved of the White plan to invade the Soviet Union and liberate independent republics such as Russia and Ukraine. Hitler indeed had a great interest in Nazifying Ukraine, which Kellogg believes was the deciding factor behind his disastrous order for the Wehrmacht to strike south in August 1941 when it was a mere 200 miles from Moscow.Hitler only began to develop a detailed anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic ideology beginning in the second half of 1919 through his collaboration with Eckart and Rosenberg, who served as his early mentors. Mend confirmed Hitler's rapid political lurch from the far left to the far right in postwar Munich. When he heard Hitler speak publicly at the beginning of 1920, he thought, "Adi has changed his colors, the red lad!" In addition to borrowing anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic ideas from Eckart and Rosenberg, Hitler soon learned far-right concepts that castigated "Jewish Bolshevism" from the Aufbau ideologues Scheubner-Richter and Vinberg as well.
The Whites contributed more than energy and ideas to the National Socialist cause before 1923. It also provided money and manpower. Many who marched during the doomed Munich Putsch were Whites, as were many of the soldiers who fought alongside the Germans against the Bolsheviks during the Latvian Intervention of 1919. Boris Brazol, a white émigré in the United States funneled much-needed funds from industrialist Henry Ford and worked closely with Scheubner-Richter. Brazol, notably, was a contributor to Ford's anti-Semitic newspaper The Dearborn Independent and also translated Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer into English. More importantly, Kirill Romanov, exiled heir apparent to Tsardom in Russia, gave tremendous sums to the White-Nazi alliance. Many Whites supported his bid for power, and so did Hitler.
Sadly, many White émigrés opposed Kirill in favor of his cousin Nikolai who also aspired to Tsardom. The Nikolai faction, led by the émigré Nikolai Markov II, was Russian imperialist in nature and supported restoring Russia to its pre-1917 borders. Hitler and the Aufbau contingent preferred the more ethnocentric solution of petty nationalism in the defeated Soviet Union, with Russia, Ukraine, and other republics becoming independent entities. This impasse festered into acrimony and hatred among the Whites, and effectively prevented the invasion of the Soviet Union that they all so desperately wanted.
After the failed Putsch in 1923, White influence began to wane. Regardless, it never went away and, in some ways, enjoyed a resurgence in the 1930s with Alfred Rosenberg's success in the Nazi Party. However, if there is a flaw to The Russian Roots of Nazism , in my mind, it's that Kellogg fails to adequately address the issue of Lebensraum , or living space. He gives it minimal attention and quotes the famous passage in Mein Kampf Volume II (1926) in which Hitler insists the Germans " . . . shift to the soil policy of the future" and "have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states." Lebensraum, with its all imperial implications, clearly violates Aufbau 's ethnocentric notions of Nazifying Ukraine for the sake of the Ukrainians.
Kellogg seems to think it adequate to demonstrate that Hitler fully developed his Lebensraum ideas only after the 1923 Putsch. Thus, Kellogg abides by his thesis of the Russian roots of Nazism, that is, of how White émigré thought influenced early -- and not middle or late -- National Socialism. But this is too easy. If Aufbau ideas were truly the roots of Nazism, then why did Hitler reverse some of these ideas by the late 1920s? Kellogg doesn't quite tell us.
Overshadowing this, however, is Kellogg's assertion that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 after his 1939 non-aggression pact with Stalin in part because of the feverish anti-Bolshevism and anti-Semitism of the pre-Putsch White émigrés. The pact had devastated the Whites that were still living in Germany at that time. However,
[T]he cooperation between Hitler and Stalin that so discomfited Germany's White émigré community did not last long. Hitler soon returned to his intense anti-Bolshevik roots, which he had largely developed during his close interaction with Aufbau in the early 1920s. Even while German armed forces were still engaged in the French campaign in June 1940, Hitler expressed his intention "to take action against the menace of the Soviet Union the moment our military position makes it at all possible." He issued the first directive for the invasion of the Soviet Union in August 1940 under the telling name Aufbau Ost (Reconstruction East). In titling his planned Soviet campaign Aufbau Ost, Hitler demonstrated the lasting impression that Aufbau's warnings against "Jewish Bolshevism" had made on his thinking.
Adding to this was how Rosenberg himself had urged Hitler to invade the Soviet Union as well.
Kellogg's most valuable and revolutionary contribution to our understanding of this time involves his admirable academic restraint. Rarely does he pass judgment on his subjects, and certainly never during the 1918-1923 period on which his book mostly focuses -- except in the few cases in which certain émigrés committed crimes such as embezzlement. Yes, in the last few pages, Kellogg rightly deplores the mass murder and extermination of Jews at the hand of Hitler -- although, interestingly, he very rarely uses the term "Holocaust." Rosenberg, who served as the State Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories during the war, greatly facilitated these horrific actions. But note how Kellogg insists on placing these actions within the larger context of Soviet atrocities from decades prior:
Rosenberg viewed his genocidal anti-Semitic actions in the occupied East as retaliation for the depredations of "Jewish Bolshevism." The November 18, 1941 press release dealing with Rosenberg's public assumption of the State Minister post stressed that the White émigré had entered politics since "he wanted to protect the German people from the same fate that he had lived through in Moscow."
And what were these depredations?
In Mein Kampf , Hitler again treated the "Jewish Bolshevik" annihilation of the nationalist Russian intelligentsia. He drew upon Aufbau and Eckartian thought to describe a ruthless Jewish drive for world domination. With the stage set for the "last great revolution," Hitler argued:
The democratic people's Jew becomes the blood-Jew and tyrant over people. In a few years he tries to exterminate the national intelligentsia and by robbing the peoples of their natural intellectual leadership makes them ripe for the slave's lot of permanent subjugation.
He further asserted, "The most frightful example of this kind is offered by Russia, where [the Jew] killed or starved about thirty million people with positively fanatical savagery, in part amid inhuman tortures."
Kellogg later quotes Mein Kampf , demonstrating how Hitler "combined völkisch German and anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic White émigré beliefs" when stating of "the Jew" that
[H]is ultimate goal is denationalization, the muddled half-breeding of the other peoples, the lowering of the racial level of the most superior, as well as the domination of this racial mush through the extermination of the völkisch intelligentsias and their replacement by the members of his own people.
Now, is any of this true? Kellogg doesn't say -- indeed, it's not his job to say. And we should be thankful for that. A Goldhagian approach, however, would be to dismiss it all as anti-Semitic lies and canards (just like The Protocols! ) and smear anyone swayed by them as being irredeemably racist and anti-Semitic.
But with enough research under our belt from historians such as Robert Conquest, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Kevin MacDonald, and others, we now know that Hitler and the White émigrés were much closer to the truth than not. Tens of millions were starved or murdered in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, and millions more died in the Great Terror and the Gulag Archipelago. From such authors, we have also learned that a disproportionate amount of the Soviet leadership in all facets of its military and government was indeed Jewish. Soviet Jews as a bloc remained enthusiastic for the Soviet Union even when it was committing its greatest atrocities. Lenin himself (as reported by Yuri Slezkine in The Jewish Century ) attributed much of the success of the October Revolution to the Jews:
The fact that there were many Jewish intelligentsia members in the Russian cities was of great importance to the revolution. They put an end to the general sabotage that we were confronted with after the October Revolution. . . . The Jewish elements were mobilized . . . and thus saved the revolution at a difficult time. It was only thanks to this pool of a rational and literate labor force that we succeeded in taking over the state apparatus.
The Whites and the Nazis may have somewhat exaggerated Soviet crimes and often entertained fanciful conspiracy theories, but they were not wrong in linking Bolshevism to Jews and believing that the Soviet Union posed a dire threat to the West. By not shutting the door on such an interpretation of history, Kellogg indirectly allows the reader to develop a revisionist view of the Nazis as protectors rather than destroyers of civilization. Of course, it's extremely difficult to justify Nazi atrocities during World War II (and Kellogg does no such thing), but after we read The Russian Roots of Nazism we learn that it was even more difficult to justify the Soviet atrocities which were greater, took place beforehand, and caused millions of Whites to emigrate westward to begin with.
The Whites knew this and they made sure the Nazi knew this. And thanks to Michael Kellogg, we know it too.
stozi , says: Website December 31, 2020 at 7:52 am GMT • 11.0 hours ago
GMC , says: December 31, 2020 at 8:34 am GMT • 10.3 hours agoAs an ethnic German of Russia and (against all reason perhaps) a Tsarist, I agree that this White influence on Nazis is an important story to tell. But there is a glaring gap in the chain of logic in this article. "they were not wrong in linking Bolshevism to Jews and believing that the Soviet Union". "Linked" is a very vague word. Yes, many Old Bolsheviks were jews, many of whom were precisely the ones purged and killed in the Great Terror. I'm sure there are those who claim Stalin was a jew, but come on. The famines we ordered personally by this non-Jewish Georgian dictator who surrounded himself with a disproportionate number of other Georgians/Transcaucasians in the halls of power. The famines were arranged/permitted as you like by confiscating grain to export and fund rapid industrialization in preparation for war, and, to discipline the peasantry as a class from Ukraine to Kazakhstan whatever their ethnic makeup. Jews were overrepresented earlier on largely because they didn't have any other options, they were banned from academia and various professions. Don't under-estimate the proportion of really poor jews in the Russian Empire up to this time who had no schemes but getting by. The biases of a bunch of pogromists shouldn't be taken as gospel truth. It's always easy to blame someone else for your defeat. In the same way, my fiercly anti-soviet orthodox co-religionists need to consider how the conduct of the pre-revolutionary church establishment allowed it's virtual abolishment to be broadly accepted. The church has always been flawed because it is made up of human beings, but people were truly sick of everything establishmentarian by 1917 and were, as a Tsarist one must admit, broadly apathetic or even happy when the last Emperor abdicated. Also remember that there are other far more intellectually interesting movements within the whites like the Eurasianists.
Olivier1973 , says: December 31, 2020 at 9:20 am GMT • 9.6 hours agoWhen there are Ghosts in the Closet, one has to be very very careful about keeping them there. When other people know about those ghosts – they can use them – against you. I've hinted to a few Russian friends concerning the fact that Germany had been under the Jewish yoke and that Germany was under the impression that the Bolsheviks, that murdered and tortured millions, were in fact Jews – and some were from the US and helped fund the Revolution. I stopped my conversation after saying Hitler was very afraid of this Bolshevik Jewish – Soviet Union. I've never gotten a response from my friends , so I dropped it. Maybe, the Russian people are aware of these facts , but don't wish to bring up the past . Afterall, I'm a Gringo in Russia – what do I know look at all the skeletons in Washington's closet .
gotmituns , says: December 31, 2020 at 9:53 am GMT • 9.0 hours agoPure anti-Russian propaganda and bullshit. The roots of hitlerism are in Nietzsche.
Jon Halpenny , says: December 31, 2020 at 9:54 am GMT • 9.0 hours agoIt doesn't really matter where the concept of Nazism started. What matters was/is the idea worked until the bankers/Jews started WW2 and we didn't get to see the outcome of how Hitler's revolution would have worked. I my own mind, it would he worked well and the Jews couldn't allow that because their game would have been up. That's why all these years later after the end of WW2, the anti Nazi/Hitler propaganda is still so intense.
Nicolas Bonnal , says: Website December 31, 2020 at 10:12 am GMT • 8.7 hours agoIn WW I Germany was not anti-Semitic to any significant degree. Jews had full rights in Germany which was in marked contrast to Tsarist Russia. East European Jews tended to regard the Germans as liberators when they advanced into parts of the Russian Empire.
Lloyd George later admitted one of the reasons for the Balfour Declaration was to secure support among east European Jews for the allies and prevent them supporting Germany.
Greg Bacon , says: Website December 31, 2020 at 11:04 am GMT • 7.8 hours agoAnother stupid book serving the demonization of Russia.
Bardon Kaldian , says: December 31, 2020 at 11:05 am GMT • 7.8 hours agoRussia is starting to recover from over 70 years of Bolshevik looting of her wealth, then anudda 112+ or so years of organized looting by Wall Street financial sharpies that helped those 'Russian' oligarchs steal hundreds of billions more.
Damn near everyone was a Jew, but we can't speak truths like that in the USA anymore, why that would be anti-Semitic!
The Silence of the Jews
After the collapse of the Soviet empire, a group of Zionists in Russia seemingly steeped in 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', lied, cheated, stole, and murdered, their way into virtually all positions of power throughout the country. They used gangs (some of which probably included mossad agents) to intimidate and murder their opponents in order to gain control of between 70-85% of Russia's industries including most of its natural resources. They also took control of Russia's media which they then used to elect Boris Yeltsin as President of Russia despite the fact that he was a brain-dead, vodka soaked, alcoholic.
Within a matter of years these Russian traitors had become billionaires having stolen vast quantities of Russian assets. They exported as much as possible of their ill-gotten wealth to the Zionist state in Palestine just in case the Russians might ask for their money back.
As for me, I'm still trying to figure out how one gets NAZI from the term National Socialist?
But you can get NAZI from this term, Ashke nazi.
While Russia's infrastructure has vastly improved over the last decade, the USA's has went to hell, since we spend that on propping up those Wall Street Casinos–owned by whom?–and fighting endless wars for the glory of Apartheid Israel.
@stozi mp; similar cultures). This segment is very influential (or has become) & it is incurable in its hatred towards the Western historical identity (under West, I include all European Christendom, east & west, as well as their descendants).conatus , says: December 31, 2020 at 11:36 am GMT • 7.3 hours agoThere is no grand plan for anything. It's just that tribal Jewish activists, when they acquire power, tend to be bad news & they may form a hostile elite or sub-elite. Some Jewish persons have noticed that, too: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/american-jewrys-disgraceful-hypocrisy/
American Jewry's Disgraceful Hypocrisy
Jake , says: December 31, 2020 at 11:41 am GMT • 7.2 hours agoThe Russian Roots of Nazism perhaps would be more about the millions of Deaths caused by the Bolsheviks and inflicted on a seemingly passive population(much like US YTs now) from 1917 to 1935.R.J. Rummel, researched 'Democide' or 'the murder of a people by their own government' has the Bolseviks Communists murdering over 16 million of their own people.
Perhaps Hitler had a reason to fear the Communists and invade the Bolshevik Bloodlands. Hitler wanted to prevent the Communist takeover of Germany and the ensuing Democide of Germans. Thus the real Russian roots of Nazism.https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM
Chapter 2. 3,284,000 Victims: The Civil War Period 1917 to 1922 Figure 2.1. Range in Civil War Democide EstimatesTable 2.1. Civil War Period Democide and Other KilledFigure 2.2. Democide Components and Soviet War/RebellionKilled 1917-1922Appendix 2.1Table 2.A. 3,284,000 Victims: SourcesChapter 3. 2,200,000 Victims: The NEP Period 1923-1928Figure 3.1. Range in NEP Democide EstimatesTable 3.1. NEP Period DemocideFigure 3.2. Democide Components for Civil War andNEP PeriodsFigure 3.3. Soviet Democide and Annual Rate by PeriodAppendix 3.1Table 3.A. 2,200,000 Victims During the NEP Period: Sources, Calculations, and EstimatesChapter 4. 11,440,000 Victims: The Collectivization Period 1928-1935 Figure 4.1. Range of Collectivization Democide EstimatesTable 4.1. Collectivization Period DemocideFigure 4.2. Democide Components for Three PeriodsFigure 4.3. Soviet Democide and Annual Rate by Period@RahanJake , says: December 31, 2020 at 12:26 pm GMT • 6.5 hours agoGood grief, says Charlie Brown.
The ideas that formed the German National Socialist Worker's Party were all in place long before WW! started, which means that even if all (rather than a small minority of) Russian emigres had gone to Germany and had done so by 1918, the Russian impact on the formation of the Nazis would have been minimal.
@Olivier197304398436986 , says: December 31, 2020 at 12:32 pm GMT • 6.4 hours agoThe roots of Hitler are also in: Hegel, Bismarck, Frederick the Great, Luther, the late 19th century German 'back to nature/nudist/proto-hippie' movement, Germanic romanticizing of Germanic paganism.
The roots of Hitler also are set firmly in his Germanic adoration of the Anglo-Saxon empire, his desire to have a Continental Germanic version.
The roots of Hitler are anti-Slavic to the core.
for-the-record , says: December 31, 2020 at 2:04 pm GMT • 4.8 hours agoThis writer recasts Slezkine's "many Jewish intelligentsia members" as "the Jews", which is typical for Hitler-worshiping genocide inciters.
They will never write an honest word about the origins of Russian socialism, both intellectual and activist, which trace back to the 1850's and earlier, even before Marxism emerged. The members of these radical literary clubs were gentile blue-bloods; they came from army families and large landowning families, and had the best religious educations. They were disgusted by the misery of the peasants in the face of the opulence of manor and church.
Decades later, with the empire continuing to decline, some secular Jews politicized, joining many anti-tsarist liberal and socialist movements. Around the time of the revolution, some threw in with Lenin's Bolsheviks, while others, such as Lenin's would-be assassin, did not. After the revolution, being literate and good at logistics, they filled important roles. In a context of civil war, with much savagery on both sides, not to mention experience of pogroms and predations of such as the Black Hundreds, some of these Jews became terrible butchers.
But what of "the Jews"? Both before and after the revolution, they were fleeing by the hundred thousand. (A rapid influx of often dishevelled and not sweet-smelling Jews into Germany in the inter-war years created problems.)
This is not what people do when they feel their co-ethnics are assuming prominence, bringing hopes of good treatment and opportunity.
The "Judeo-Bolshevism" lie is deployed by those with dreams of personal advancement through butchery and piracy, in order to mesmerize the frustrated, disenchanted and ignorant.
@Carlton Meyer t even in 1915 (during the World War I anti-Germanism), 16 of the 53 top officials in the Minindel [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] had German names" In the 1880s, the Russian Germans (1.4 percent of the population) made up 62 percent of the high officials in the Ministry of Posts and Commerce and 46 percent in the War Ministry.Germans were, occupationally and conceptually, the Jews of ethnic Russia (as well as much of Eastern Europe). Or rather, the Russian Germans were to Russia what the German Jews were to Germany -- only much more so.
The Russian Revolution, according to Slezkine, essentially served to replace the German elite by a Jewish one.
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Dec 27, 2020 | newleftreview.org
24 DECEMBER 2020 HISTORY
Jesus of Nazareth lived in a time of political turmoil. Between the lines of the Gospels, which are our main source of information about him, this comes through loud and clear. But it is never brought to the surface. The last thing that the writers of the Gospels wanted was to drag in politics. They wanted to extract Jesus from his real historical situation and put across a universal message, which could apply to anybody. Above all, they did not want to tie Jesus in with the fate of the Jewish people who, at the time of writing, had just been crushed by the Roman legions after a bitter resistance war.
However, the actual situation in which Jesus lived is plain enough. In 63 BC Palestine was conquered by a Roman army, led by Pompey, and made part of the Roman province of Syria. Pompey, accompanied by his military staff, strode into the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem Temple, which had been defended by its priests after the reigning king had opened the gates of the city to the invaders. From that moment on, until the final showdown 133 years later in 70 AD, the history of Palestine is mainly a history of Jewish resistance to Roman rule. It was a hopeless resistance which took place during a time which fundamentally was one of Roman expansion. Jesus of Nazareth lived right in the middle of this period and, despite his well-known attachment to the other-worldly, he could hardly have been blind to what was going on.
Palestine's strategic role
The situation was not an easy one for the Romans. Palestine – Judea, as the Jewish part of it was called – was one of a chain of small states, stretching from Armenia down to Egypt, which formed a buffer zone between Rome and the Parthian Empire to the east, based in Persia. Palestine was a crucial link in the chain because it bordered Egypt, granary of Rome. Parthia was the second major power of the region and it was never conquered by Rome. Indeed, it several times inflicted defeats on the Roman legions, routed them and captured the eagles which were their battle standards. So Palestine was a sensitive area. A Jewish uprising could count on Parthian support. Indeed, in 40 BC, only about twenty years after Pompey's invasion and not very long before the birth of Jesus, this was exactly what happened. The Roman puppet regime was overthrown and a new king installed, with Parthian support. The Parthians, moreover, unlike the Romans, took care not to desecrate the Temple. Their position was more or less like that of the Indians in Bangladesh, a foreign power aiding a national movement for its own purposes.
The Romans reacted quickly. They ditched the old lot of puppets and brought in a new candidate, Herod, who was about 30 at the time. Herod's father had been the strong man, main pro-Roman in the old regime. Herod himself had been military governor of Galilee, the northern part of Palestine. When the Parthians came in he managed to escape to Egypt and eventually got to Rome. There he was crowned king of Judea. With full Roman backing he returned, taking Jerusalem with the help of the legions in 37 BC, and promptly executed the rebel leaders. The anti-Roman king, Antigonus, was crucified, the first of tens of thousands who were to be executed in this way by the Romans or their puppets. Once on the throne, Herod stuck to it until his death in 4 BC.
It is not certain exactly when Jesus was born. All we can say is that it was during the reign of the Emperor Augustus, who died in 14 AD, and that during Jesus' adult life Augustus' successor Tiberius was on the throne. Jesus may have seen the end of Herod's reign, as an infant. Certainly the events which followed Herod's death must have impressed him, either as childhood memories or as stories which were told him as he grew up.
Herod's death
Herod's death produced a crisis. Herod had been servile to the Romans and cruel and extortionate to his own people. He was loathed and hated. Naturally, when he died there was general rejoicing and the national movement came to the surface again. There had already been rumblings shortly before the end of his reign. A student demonstration, more or less led by two Pharisees, Judas and Matthias, had culminated in the tearing down of the Roman eagle which Herod had displayed in the Temple to please his masters. The ringleaders were burned alive. When Herod finally died, there was an uprising in Jerusalem. The procurator, Sabinus, the top Roman official in Palestine, immediately moved troops into the capital to maintain law and order and also to seize Herod's treasury. During the festival of Pentecost, fighting broke out between pilgrims to the Temple and these Roman troops. Sabinus was pinned down in the garrison.
At the same time, there was another armed uprising in Galilee, led by a partisan leader called Judas, known as the Galilean, whose father had been executed by Herod for insurgency. This was a large-scale uprising in which the partisans took Herod's palace in Sepphoris and seized the arms which were stored there. Sepphoris was only a few miles from Nazareth, where Jesus spent his childhood. About an hour's walk away, in fact. The Romans had to send two legions, that is, twelve thousand troops, down from Syria to suppress these revolts and rescue Sabinus. During the fighting the Temple was badly damaged and Sepphoris was completely destroyed. When the Romans had restored order they crucified 2,000 rebels.
Twice the size of Northern Ireland
Palestine is a comparatively small country. Herod's kingdom of Judea was not much bigger than Wales, about twice the size of Northern Ireland. It did not extend so far south as Israel does today but it covered a fringe of what is now Syria and Jordan. The population, about five million probably, was not homogenously Jewish. The Jews were concentrated in the Jerusalem area – Judea proper – and in Galilee, to the north, where they were fairly recent settlers. In between was Samaria, where the Samaritans lived. The Samaritans had their own religion which was a variant of Judaism. For example, they did not recognise the Temple, but had their own holy place on a mountain in Samaria. In the towns there were a number of Greeks and Hellenized Syrians or Phoenicians, who had first come in the wake of Alexander's armies and now identified with the Romans. Herod had encouraged further immigration of Greeks and had built a number of new towns for them, including a new port and capital, Caesarea, which nationalistic and pious Jews would not live in because it was dominated by irreligious monuments, such as a theatre and a racetrack.
The divided country, split by national and religious differences, had some of the features of Northern Ireland or Cyprus. The Jewish national movement took a religious form; it was religion which bound the nation together. The leader s of the Zealots, as the guerrilla partisans were known, were often ultra-religious and religion was one of the two main issues around which opposition to the Roman occupation crystallised. There were riots over the pagan eagle desecrating the Temple, as described above: later, after the Romans had adopted direct rule, there were more riots under Pontius Pilate over the same issue. There were uprisings in the late thirties, only a few years after the crucifixion of Jesus, when Emperor Caligula wanted to put up a statue of himself in the Temple. Ten years after that there was a big riot when a Roman soldier on guard on a roof overlooking the Temple made an obscene gesture to the pilgrims.
Imperialist taxes
The second issue was economic: the Roman tax appropriations. Rome did not tax its own citizens but relied on wringing what it could out of subject peoples. The system was laid down officially and then the actual tax-collection was left to private enterprise, on something like a tender basis. Roman troops backed up the tax-collectors. Naturally tax-collectors were regarded as collaborators with the Romans and there were frequent attempts to sabotage the system and boycott it. Quirinius's census in 6 AD was designed by the Romans to help implement tax-collection and it provoked widespread resistance and armed struggle, which was not subdued for some time, right during the childhood of Jesus. Once again Galilee was a focus of the revolt, but this time there was heavy fighting in the south as well, led by a shepherd called Athronges. Thousands were killed by the Romans during this period.
Direct rule starts
The census was particularly resented because it marked the beginning of direct rule by Rome. The puppet regime was abandoned by the Romans shortly after Herod's death. His son was exiled after the Procurator was given full powers, in Judea at least. In Galilee and in South-East Syria, the Golan Heights area, two other sons of Herod were allowed to stay on as autonomous rulers. Generally speaking, the Romans changed Procurators quite rapidly. Pontius Pilate, who lasted nine years, from 27 to 36 AD was an exception to the rule. Pilate was intensely hated and this loathing shows through all the Jewish source documents which remain. He was both harsh and corrupt. When he took money from the Temple treasury there were massive demonstrations against him. He suppressed them by putting troops into the crowd in plain-clothes, and with concealed weapons, who suddenly leapt into action at a given signal. In the Gospels, there are references to the killing of Galileans, always troublemakers, and to riots in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus's death, while the word used to describe the two 'thieves' crucified with Jesus is the same generally used to describe guerrillas, rather like 'bandits'.
The Pharisees and armed struggle
However, the real struggle built up from the forties onwards, culminating in the full-scale national uprising in the sixties. At the same time, the national struggle began to cross-cut with an increasingly overt class struggle. The traditional ruling class in Judea consisted of an interlocking bloc formed by large landowners and the hereditary high-priestly families who controlled the Temple. The Sadducees were members of this bloc. They were challenged as religious authorities by the Pharisees, who were rigourists, organised on a strict entry basis into cells, led by scribes, graduates in theology, but also including elements from artisan and even labouring backgrounds. It was the Pharisees who welded the Jewish nation together into a religious-political force. Many of the Zealot leaders were Pharisees who had decided to move into a phase of armed struggle.
The mass of Zealots however, came from the people, from small towns and villages. This period was one of an overall movement in the countryside towards large estates, throwing small peasants, many of them in debt, off the land. There were a large number of slaves in Judea at the time and these made up part of the guerrilla armies. There was also an increasing number of hired hands, who are often mentioned in parables in the Gospel. The surplus of labour meant that they were usually employed on a casual basis. There was naturally a drift from the country into the towns and an increasing amount of employment in small craft industries.
Jesus and the apostles came from artisan families; Jesus was a carpenter, working with lumber imported from Lebanon and many of the apostles were fishermen, owning their own boats. We know from other sources that the fishing industry was thriving in Galilee at the time and there was investment in pickles for use in exporting fish. Jesus did not come from the masses, who were either living off charity – there was an efficient dole system in operation – or else were day labourers or slaves. Neither, of course, did he come from the priestly caste or from a rich business or land-owning background. He was a petit-bourgeois.
Kidnapping and assassination
The ruling class throughout this period became increasingly compromised with the Romans. It was the Roman Procurator who appointed the High Priest, usually a matter for bribery. In return, the High Priest acted as a Quisling, maintaining law and order in Jerusalem, a sensitive area for Romans, with his own Temple police and handing over troublemakers for trial. Yet at the same time, the Temple and its High Priest were the main symbols of national consciousness. In the end, class feelings came out into the open. Zealots kidnapped a Temple official and, like Tupamaros, held him ransom for the release of political prisoners. Assassination of collaborators was stepped up, until a High Priest was struck down too.
When, in the sixties, resistance gathered momentum, there were particularly troubled economic circumstances. For years extensions to the Temple had provided employment in Jerusalem and these suddenly halted. After riots, the programme was set in motion again in the form of paving the city streets. At the same time, there were complaints that the high-priestly families, who had equipped themselves with armed gangs, were marauding in the countryside extorting 'tithes' on which they had no claim. Matters came to a head in 66 AD when, after a huge tax boycott, the Roman Procurator looted the Temple treasury to make up the deficit. There was an immediate Zealot uprising. The Roman's main force withdrew and the remnant left behind were massacred. One of the first acts of the Zealot regime was to destroy the record of debts – freeing the masses from the grip of moneylenders and landlords. A new High Priest was elected by lot, which fell to a peasant, an impoverished member of the priestly caste, an act regarded as outrageous by ruling class opinion.
The left is isolated
During the four years between 66 and 70 AD there was all-out war. A whole Roman expeditionary force, comprising two legions and several thousand auxiliaries, was wiped out. The Romans lost over 5,000 infantry and 480 calvary. This victory led to the setting up of a national Government, representing all aspects of religious opinion, both Sadducees and Pharisees, and even Essenes, the monastic group who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Zealots opposed this Government, which they regarded as class-based and potentially collaborationist. They were quite right.
The Jewish commander in Galilee, Josephus, who was a Pharisee, spent more time harassing the Zealots than preparing defences against Rome. When the Romans arrived, under Vespasian, he capitulated on the spot and became an open collaborator. Later he wrote a history of the events to justify his completely treacherous role. The backbone of resistance was led throughout by the Zealots who fought to the last in Jerusalem and then in the mountain fortress at Masada. When the Romans took Jerusalem in 70 AD, under Titus, hundreds of thousands were butchered and the city levelled. Josephus recounts how at one point the Romans ran out of wood for crosses and, when they had enough, had to search for empty spaces to put more crosses up in. It is in this context, that the crucifixion of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels must be seen.
Where did Jesus stand?
It can hardly be believed that he was as oblivious to what was going on around him as the Gospel writers make out. Roman reprisals must have struck the families of Jews known to him in the area. One of Jesus's own disciples, one of the Twelve, was Simon the Zealot, who presumably participated in one of the uprisings.
Reading the Gospels, the picture presented in the main is that of a passive collaborator. Although Jesus was condemned and executed by Pontius Pilate, every effort is made to clear him of any real responsibility. Crucifixion was not a Jewish method of execution. It was the Roman punishment for political crimes. Spartacus was crucified, for instance. Whereas the Jews had responsibility for ordinary crimes and for religious offences, the political crimes went to Pilate. Yet the Gospels claim that Pilate washed his hands of the affair, protested Jesus's innocence, could see no wrong in him and was only pressured into crucifying him by the High Priest and his lobby.
Jesus himself is represented in a pro-Roman light. For example, he is described as friendly with tax-collectors and collaborationists. He heals the child of a Roman centurion. He advises, not simply going along with the authority of Rome under duress, but going twice as far as required. And, of course, the most important incident recounted concerns the payment of tax. 'Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's'. In the Gospels, this is presented as a particularly cunning reply which outwitted the Pharisees who asked it. In fact, it is not at all equivocal. It plainly supports the payment of taxes to Rome. The whole question of taxation was the burning issue of the day. On this issue, Jesus took a pro-Roman stand and backed the claims of the Imperial power.
Keeping Jesus clear of Judaism
The counterpart of this pro-Roman attitude of the Gospels is the persistent denigration of the Pharisees. The Zealots, as such, play no part in the Gospel story at all. They are simply suppressed verbally, as the Romans suppressed them militarily. But the Pharisees are very much in the forefront. They are used as straw-men who feed Jesus the straight lines which enable him to score off them. The purpose of this, as far as the Gospels are concerned, is clearly to distinguish Jesus and the Christian community from the Jews and the Jewish cause. In almost every case, it is a disagreement with Judaism which is stressed, so that Jesus can be distanced from his own people. Stories like that of the Good Samaritan are heavily promoted to the same end.
A number of scholars have tried to rescue Jesus from this Pro-Roman presentation, especially in recent years when, after Auschwitz and Belsen, commentators on the Gospel have at long last become sensitive to its anti-Jewish bias. In particular, the episode of Jesus's trial has been gone over in detail and it has been admitted that Rome and not the High Priest was responsible for his execution – as a political offender.
Pilate was not a weak administrator who was likely to allow the High Priest's lobby to pressure him against his better judgement.
Pacifist sentiment
This line of reasoning has led some writers to go as far as claiming that Jesus was actually pro-Zealot and sympathetic to armed struggle. This interpretation means discounting the great slabs of pacifist sentiment which fill the Gospels as nothing but post-Fall of Jerusalem PR, put in by the fawning Evangelists, eager not to rub Rome the wrong way. In contrast, episodes like driving the money-changers out of the Temple are stressed and the fact that Jesus was arrested by an armed patrol and one of his disciples drew his sword and resisted arrest. Indeed, Luke describes how Jesus apparently instructed his disciples to buy swords just before the arrest, though he quickly adds that two would be enough.
It is certainly true that there are patches of anti-Roman material in the Gospels which may get closer to the attitude of Jesus, or at least the early followers, than the Gospel writers do. For example, the story of the Gadarene swine seems to have an anti-imperialist gibe hidden away in it. Jesus exorcises an evil demon, who is called 'Legion', and the demon then enters a herd of pigs who plunge over a cliff. The Roman occupation troops were known as 'pigs' by the Jews, so the moral is pretty clear. But conversely, there is a definite strain of anti-Temple feeling in a Jesus's preaching. He is critical of a number of Temple institutions, particularly the financial institutions, and more than once criticises the various ways the Temple made money: donations, taxes, commercial transactions and so forth.
Above all Jesus did not in any way advocate violent resistance to the Romans, but believed that it was necessary to undergo a spiritual change in readiness for the coming of the Kingdom. He conceived of this change in a way which brought him up against the Pharisees, because he was an anti-traditionalist in his attitude to the Jewish religious Law. Ethically, he was a purist, but not in a legalistic way. Judging from his numerous parables about vineyards, labourers and husbandmen, he was fully satisfied with the existing relations of production, including slavery, and the general economic set-up, though he was distrustful of the rich. He seems to have felt that the Temple should not be in any way a secular institution, either commercially or politically.
Jesus not subversive
In itself, there was little that was subversive in Jesus's preaching and, in this sense the Gospel writers were right to portray him as a passive collaborator. But his fate was sealed when he began to attract crowds, partly because of his feats of healing, partly because he was a compelling orator. The Gospels several times tell how he tried to get away from the crowds and give them the slip, anxious about the outcome, as well he might be.
Pontius Pilate's last official act for example, in 36 AD, only two or three years after Jesus's execution, was to massacre a crowd of Samaritans who expected a revelation on their Holy Mountain. Anybody who gathered large crowds was in danger of being halted in their tracks for political reasons. In Rome the careers of sports and theatre stars were abruptly stopped when they began to acquire supporters who were too vocal or demonstrative.
Religions of the oppressed
It is quite usual for messianic and prophetic religious movements to spring up in times of political upheaval. Jesus can be compared with the new movements which sprang up as part of the response to the advance of European imperialism: Peyotism and Ghost-dancing among the American Indians, Ringatū among the Maoris, Hòa Hảo in Vietnam. These movements attempt to break out of the confines of an apparently hopeless historical predicament, by stressing a glorious other-worldly role for the followers of their prophet. In a time of political turmoil, they appear dangerous to the authorities, anxious to suppress anything which might develop into a threat, usually cynical and ignorant, and inclined to err on the side of ruthlessness rather than mercy. They are put down and, if the circumstances are right, a new cult based on the prestige of martyrdom springs up.
The man in the middle
The real strength of Jesus's preaching lay in his ability to respond to conflict without being sucked into it. He was the man in the middle. Not only was he in the middle of a class conflict but of a national liberation struggle. He was able to find something to say which made sense to all kinds of people without ever coming down on one side or the other. This still is his strength. The discontented, the disaffected, the wretched of the earth could respond to him. So could tax-collectors and Roman soldiers. In part, this was because he chose out of preference to speak in riddles and parables, to tell stories rather than make statements. But partly too it was because he had a talent for the ring of truth, for words which sounded right, which pushed everyone a little bit further together. He walked a verbal tightrope which he wove as he went along. And he could back it up with a quotation every time. It is precisely because he had this ability to reconcile conflicting aspirations, that he sometimes seemed subversive. But in the long run anything that covers over contradictions by appealing to both sides always favours those in power, and Christianity still does.
First published in the left weekly 7 Days , 22 December 1971. An offshoot of Black Dwarf , the paper ran from October 1971 to March 1971; it is available at the Amiel Melburn Trust internet archive under Creative Commons license .
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Dec 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
@William Gruff | Nov 30 2020 21:13 utc | 138
Bemildred , Dec 1 2020 11:06 utc | 160
When left becomes right, progressive become regressive, and fascist becomes anti-fascist, then we have to invent whole new vocabularies just to discuss the problems that humanity is facing. What is worse though is that upending the language of political society in this manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present. I suppose that is the point though.This is pretty interesting thought, thank you very much. Kind of Orwellian ""War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength," on a new, more sinister level as in "this manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present."But is reality Henry Ford quote "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." is perfectly applicable to any US elections and political life in general.
Some commentators here for some reason think that Biden (yes, this semi-senile Biden, a marionette from the very beginning; senator from credit card companies; the worst enemy of working class in Congress ) is somehow preferable to Trump (yes, this Trump, a marionette of Zionists, the President who completely betrayed his electorate, best friend of billionaires and Pentagon; kind of Bush III replicating both intellectual level of Bush II and his policies, including a tax cut for the rich).
I don't disagree with the idea that Trump should go (he is clearly incompetent for this position), but to think that Biden (personally also completely incompetent due to his health condition, and even before that; can you imagine this second rate politician summit with Macron, Merkel, or Putin even if we ignore his current health problems ), in some ways, will be an improvement is pretty optimistic.
Biden administration will be especially dangerous in foreign policy where Russiagaters mafia clearly returned to power, (and chickenhawks like Nuland are in demand again; as well several other flavors of "national security parasites".)
Both are puppets of approximately the same social force -- the union on neoliberal oligarchy and MIC (aka Uniparty.) Biden mafia simply will be slightly more polished, and less "in your face." But both are brutal gangsters, both domestically and on foreign arena. And that's pretty depressing. And one great service of Trump administration was that it exposed what is behind the fake facade. Biden will try to rebuild this fake facade, this Potemkin village again. that's all the difference.
Posted by: likbez | December 01, 2020 at 07:04
"When left becomes right, progressive become regressive, and fascist becomes anti-fascist, then we have to invent whole new vocabularies just to discuss the problems that humanity is facing. What is worse though is that upending the language of political society in this manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present. I suppose that is the point though."
Yes, that's what the gaslighing is all about, but the problem - as our self-designated betters are finding out now - is that you cannot run a sucessful competitive modern society that way, banana republics do not get to rule the world.
Even ... Henry Ford understood he had to take good care of his employees.
Biden is going to have his hands full without looking for any more trouble.
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Dec 01, 2020 | www.lettinggobreath.com
| Dec 1 2020 1:32 utc | 148
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Dec 01, 2020 | www.strategic-culture.org
Matthew Ehret
November 29, 2020 © Photo: Wikimedia
"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that Civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captives to the judgement of law, is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever paid to reason."
-Justice Robert Jackson, Nov. 21, 1945
It is often forgotten what sort of a battle occurred after WWII to establish the Nuremberg Trials which gave the world a revolutionary code of law which even today offers many of the remedies to the Gordian Knots blocking our way to a peaceful future. By the end of the war, many European leaders of the allied nations wished to simply put leading Nazis against a wall to face a firing squad and return to "business as usual".
As I've outlined in many recent writings , it was only through the intensive efforts of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and his leading allies in both the USA and Russia that a different course of action was decided upon and an official international tribunal was sanctioned that generated a total legal paradigm shift in international law that has been too easily taken for granted (due largely to the lack of effect these laws have had on post-WWII practice).
Among those revolutionary reforms included the unprecedented mandate that wars of aggression would henceforth be illegal in the eyes of the law. The tendency for those higher officials carrying out inhuman orders to escape responsibility for their actions or omissions of correct action were deemed insufficient defenses under the higher moral principle of "known or should have known".
The underlying assumption of these Nuremberg laws are: 1) "might does not make right" despite what generations of Hobbesians and Niescheans have chosen to believe and 2) that every individual is responsible for their decisions based not on the arbitrary standards of whatever degenerate society they live in but rather upon the belief in the intrinsic powers of reason and conscience which all humans have access to and are obliged to guide our actions in life.
Nazi philosophers and crown jurists like Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmidt whose thoughts have penetrated the western zeitgeist over the past 70 years would obviously find such concepts repugnant and deplorable.
The fact that the "free world" has ignored these foundations of international law has not changed the fact that they are still true.
Today, many of those powerful unipolar ideologues who managed the disastrous Cold War and post-Cold War geopolitical environment have attempted to erase the precedents of Nuremburg with such atrocities as Soros' International Criminal Court, and the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine (R2P) in defense of "humanitarian wars" as seen in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria in recent years. The disturbing rise of unipolar R2P advocacy rampant among the British ruling class like Lord Mark Malloch Brown , Tony Blair and all of the Obama-era globalists surrounding Biden make Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov's recent remarks at the 75 Anniversary Moscow conference celebrating the commencement of the Nuremberg Trials that much more important.
Putin and Lavrov Celebrate the 75 th Anniversary of Nuremberg Trials
At this event, Putin reminded the attendees of the importance of the historic tribunals which ran from November 21, 1945 to October – 1946, saying:
"We constantly refer to the lessons of the Nuremberg Trials; we understand their importance for defending the truths of historical memory, for making a well-founded and solid case against deliberate distortions and falsifications of World War II events, especially the shameless and deceitful attempts to rehabilitate and even glorify Nazi criminals and their accessories It is the duty of the entire international community to safeguard the Nuremberg Trials' decisions, because they concern the principles that underlie the values of the post-war world order and the norms of international law."
Putin's remarks were amplified by Sergey Lavrov who elaborated on the new legal paradigm created at Nuremberg which provides an obvious cure for the rise of WWII revisionism, sanitation of Nazism in Ukraine and beyond as well as the revival of many of the practices that made Nazism a viral threat to mankind.
"The Nuremberg Trials -- an example of international criminal justice -- proved that justice can be achieved with a professional approach based on broad interstate cooperation, consent and mutual respect. Clearly, the Nuremberg Tribunal's legacy is not limited to law, but has enormous political, moral and educational value. A strong vaccination against the revival of Nazism in all its forms and manifestations was made 75 years ago. Unfortunately, the immunity to the brown plague that was developed in Nuremberg has seriously worn off in some European countries. Russia will continue to vigorously and consistently oppose any attempts to falsify history, to glorify Nazi criminals and their henchmen, and to oppose the revision of the internationally recognized outcomes of World War II, including the Nuremberg rulings."
So What Happened at Nuremberg?
Amidst the ashes of WWII, a major battle was waged between those deep state forces that had funded fascism as a "solution to the woes of the great depression" vs those genuine patriots who understood that the very fabric of empire and its associated financial, cultural and legal paradigm had to be destroyed and replaced with a paradigm more befitting human civilization.
Among the leading representative of the patriotic forces loyal to FDR's anti-colonial vision was a man who has been nearly lost to history named Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954). Jackson would serve as Franklin Roosevelt's most trusted legal advisor who first made a name for himself working closely with Ferdinand Pecora in prosecuting dozens of high level Wall Street financiers and pro-fascist industrialists who orchestrated the depression of 1929 and the later coup and assassination attempts against FDR in 1933-1934. After proving himself in combat, Jackson arose to become U.S. Solicitor General (1938-1940), Attorney General (1940-41) and leading member of the Supreme Court from 1941 until his death in 1954.
Knowing that the deep state coup that ousted Vice-President Henry Wallace and imposed Anglophile tool Harry Truman onto the USA might destroy the hopes for a post-WWII order of peaceful cooperation as outlined by the United Nations Charter, Judge Jackson took the lead and organized the Nuremberg Tribunals delivering the opening speech on November 21, 1945:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/L50OZSeDXeA?feature=oembed
One of the prime motives behind the hearings was the intention to give legal meaning and action to the universal ideals conveyed in the United Nations' Charter. This charter encapsulated the principles that FDR and Henry Wallace outlined repeatedly in the Four Freedoms . These freedoms asserted that all humankind regardless of race, sex, creed, or nationality would: 1) have the freedom from want, 2) freedom to worship as one's conscience dictated, 3) freedom from fear, and 4) freedom of speech. If international law could tolerate wars of aggression, or if abdication of responsibility for ones' criminal deeds could be tolerated on the basis of "I was just following orders", then the UN Charter could carry little weight indeed.
As Jackson wrote in his Summer 1945 report to the President justifying the creation of the Nuremberg Tribunal:
"We therefore propose to charge that a war of aggression is a crime, and that modern international law has abolished the defense that those who incite or wage it are engaged in legitimate business. Thus, may the forces of law be mobilized on the side of peace."
During the course of the 11 month proceedings, not only were leading cabinet members, generals, lawyers and other high officials put on trial, but the deepest facets of natural law vs Nietschean "law of the strongest" was investigated with Platonic rigor as laid out in the brilliant award-winning film Judgement at Nuremberg (1960).
https://www.youtube.com/embed/lbqDuUjm4aU?feature=oembed
Due to the leadership of Justice Jackson, the treatment of INTENTION and conspiracy was made the primary focus in the pursuit of justice and cause of criminal guilt. This was not a popular approach then or today for the simple fact that our world is shaped by many top down forces that want their victims' minds to be forever trapped in the material bottom up world of deductive/inductive logic where immaterial causal intentions and ideas can never be found. For anyone wishing to pursue this fruitful line of thinking further, I suggest reading Edgar Allan Poe's Eureka.
When one adopts the view that intentions and conspiracies (i.e.: the effect of intentions + ideas when put into action) ARE NOT a driving force of politics and life, then we forever loose our ability to judge truthfulness in any serious manner. This was the philosophical premise of leading Nazi financier Hjalmar Schacht, whose moral relativism and cold calculating principles of economics directly justified the cheap labor camps that worked millions to death in the German war production effort. This same philosophy again found fertile soil in the post-1971 consumer society that revived the logic of cheap labor production under the age of "cheapest price is the law" globalization.
Quoting Schacht who said "Truth is any story that succeeds", Justice Jackson quipped "I think you can score many more successes, when you want to lead someone, if you don't tell them the truth- than if you do tell them the truth".
Laying out the principled intention of the trial to the American people, Jackson said:
"The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched .
"The case as presented by the United States will be concerned with the brains and authority in back of all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders .
"It is not the purpose in my part of this case to deal with the individual crimes. I am dealing with the common plan or design for crime and will not dwell upon individual offenses. My task is only to show the scale on which these crimes occurred, and to show that these are the men who were in the responsible positions and who conceived the plan and design which renders them answerable, regardless of the fact that the plan was actually executed by others .
"The Charter recognizes that one who has committed criminal acts may not take refuge in superior orders nor in the doctrine that his crimes were acts of state .
"The real complaining party at your bar is Civilization . The refuge of the defendants can only be their hope that International Law will lag so far behind the moral sense of mankind that conduct which is crime in the moral sense must be regarded as innocent in law. Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance."
Today, the world sits once more on the brink of a new world order, and the emergence of a governing system that is shaped entirely on the same social Darwinistic/Nietschean operating system that gave rise to fascism in WWII. The same denial of universal truth that animated the minds of a Schacht, Goebbels, Heidegger or Schmidt has become hegemonic among western academia as well.
Very few statesmen have had the courage and insight to resist this unipolar anti-nation state system, but among those who have we are fortunate to have found the current leader of Russia and his allies who in many ways are playing the same historic role as the one played 75 years earlier by Justice Robert Jackson, Henry Wallace and President Roosevelt. Whether the rest of the world wakes up in time to recognize the superiority of the multipolar alliance over the regressive order of the unipolarists carrying us ominously towards World War 3 remains to be seen.
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Nov 18, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Stephen Laudig , Nov 18 2020 20:03 utc | 8
Governments are "tools" to accomplish things. The totalitarian Han Communist Party runs the PRC in a way that the Democratic/Republican Party does not run the United States. Totalitarians recognize no inherent limit on their 'authority' to act. Non-totalitarians do. A totalitarian government is a better 'tool' to command lock step obedience to a central authority because most of the population at large and ALL of the political population knows what happens should the central command total authority be disobeyed or be seen to be disobeyed.
So in a plague, war maybe, flooding, famine, fires, the totalitarians will be more effective.
So what? In ordinary times I'd rather live under non-totalitarians because incarceration for thought crime is vastly less frequent.
Totalitarianism is a 'good tool' for exceptional matters requiring "uniform and disciplined" response. Under normal times its just another Third Reich.
Ask any Han who wishes to state a non-approved opinion; any Tibetan wishing to display a photo of the Dalai Lama and any Muslim wishing to be orthodox. Why is it that you don't see people illegally entering totalitarian Han Communist China? well except from an even worse place North Korea. While millions want to "be" in the US? People vote with their feet. They flee from the Totalitarians. They flee toward the US. Power to people feet.
psychohistorian , Nov 18 2020 20:53 utc | 19
@ Stephen Laudig | Nov 18 2020 20:03 utc | 8 who wrote about totalitarian
Totalitarian is the definition of the effect of global private finance on the West, is it not?
Totalitarian describes the social contract in the West much more than in China.
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neutral , says: November 18, 2020 at 7:55 am GMT • 8.3 hours agoNov 18, 2020 | www.unz.com
karel , says: November 16, 2020 at 2:38 am GMT • 2.6 days ago
Wielgus , says: November 16, 2020 at 6:47 am GMT • 2.4 days agoYes indeed '
'One may wonder: where was the German Left when Hitler's popularity increased amongst Germany's Working class at a speed that puts Covid-19 to shame?
" The left was very much around and the combined electorate of communists and social democrats exceeded in November 1932 that of the NSDAP. I cannot think of a single plausible explanation for the rise in popularity of NSDA. As always and more probably, there was a multitude of reasons, not easily identified then and now. My guess is that during the economic collapse of Germany the citizens have lost patience with the left wing parties as the communist and socialists did little, or perhaps could do little, to alleviate their hardship. Then there was a novelty feature of the NSDAP and the belief or a hope that nationalism could reduce the foreign interference in the affairs of Germany. Furthermore, the legend of the "Dolchstoss" was steadily gaining in popularity with the increasingly distant armistice of 1918. Feelings that "we were cheated" and dreams that Germany could be great again were also on the rise. Finally, die NSDAP propaganda apparatus was much better at identifying the "enemies" of the working classes and unemployed by pointing out the factual dominance of the Jews in running the state.
@karel hing. Basically, conservatives like von Papen thought the weakening of the Nazis and their inexperience meant that they could be manipulated.karel , says: November 16, 2020 at 1:56 pm GMT • 2.1 days ago
"The factual dominance of the Jews running the state" – they didn't. They had no significant footing in the armed forces or the civil service in Germany. The Nazis called Weimar the Judenrepublik but had it actually been so, they would have encountered more resistance and less cooperation from state elements than they did. In reality, this was a state that in the 1920s thought about deporting Hitler back to Austria (he did not gain actual German citizenship until relatively late) but never did.@Wielgus cillations in support of one or another party are quite common in any system.SolontoCroesus , says: November 16, 2020 at 7:58 pm GMT • 1.8 days agoThe perception that the Jews were running the state was overwhelming, whether you like it or not. Most banks were in Jewish hands as well as large sections of the retail and textile industry. Apparently, almost 80% of all lawyers were Jews. In fact, prior to the putsch in 1933, most Jews could be described as German nationalists. It is paradox that Jews in Czechoslovakia were also leaning towards German nationalism. Czech speaking Jews were more like rare exotic birds. The putsch in 1933 brought them to their senses and those who did not emigrate started to learn Czech.
@Wielgus Jewish intellectual, Kurt Eisner, and after his assassination, two other Jewish leaders, Gustav Landauer and Eugen Levine, assumed positions of major influence in the "Raterepublik" ("Soviet" Republic"). Rosa Luxemburg, who was also assassinated, was a leader of the revolutionary Spartakus- bund, which was one of the predecessors of the German Communist party.
In the following years as well, Jews held major political posts, primarily in the leadership of the democratic and socialist parties. The most prominent Jewish Political figure was Walther Rathenau, who served first as minister for economic affairs and then as foreign minister.
@Wielgus "The factual dominance of the Jews running the state" – they didn't. They had no significant footing in the armed forces or the civil service in Germany.
This is no different to current ZOG regimes now. Just because they are not the rank and file in the military or the government paper pusher does not mean they are not in charge. What they were in charge of was the cultural, financial and academic institutions, when you run these things then you run everything. Luckily for Germany the military was not overrun by the cuckservative types like in the US military is now, there were enough decent types that overthrew the jew in their government.
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Aug 05, 2016 | www.nytimes.com
During a 33-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, I served presidents of both parties -- three Republicans and three Democrats. I was at President George W. Bush's side when we were attacked on Sept. 11; as deputy director of the agency, I was with President Obama when we killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.
I am neither a registered Democrat nor a registered Republican. In my 40 years of voting, I have pulled the lever for candidates of both parties. As a government official, I have always been silent about my preference for president.
No longer. On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Between now and then, I will do everything I can to ensure that she is elected as our 45th president.
Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president -- keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.
I spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument.
I also saw the secretary's commitment to our nation's security; her belief that America is an exceptional nation that must lead in the world for the country to remain secure and prosperous; her understanding that diplomacy can be effective only if the country is perceived as willing and able to use force if necessary; and, most important, her capacity to make the most difficult decision of all -- whether to put young American women and men in harm's way.
Refer someone to The Times.
They'll enjoy our special rate of $1 a week.Mrs. Clinton was an early advocate of the raid that brought Bin Laden to justice, in opposition to some of her most important colleagues on the National Security Council. During the early debates about how we should respond to the Syrian civil war, she was a strong proponent of a more aggressive approach, one that might have prevented the Islamic State from gaining a foothold in Syria.
I never saw her bring politics into the Situation Room. In fact, I saw the opposite. When some wanted to delay the Bin Laden raid by one day because the White House Correspondents Dinner might be disrupted, she said, "Screw the White House Correspondents Dinner."
In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump has no experience on national security. Even more important, the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief.
These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.
The dangers that flow from Mr. Trump's character are not just risks that would emerge if he became president. It is already damaging our national security.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated.
Mr. Putin is a great leader, Mr. Trump says, ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests -- endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia's annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States.
In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.
Mr. Trump has also undermined security with his call for barring Muslims from entering the country. This position, which so clearly contradicts the foundational values of our nation, plays into the hands of the jihadist narrative that our fight against terrorism is a war between religions.
In fact, many Muslim Americans play critical roles in protecting our country, including the man, whom I cannot identify, who ran the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center for nearly a decade and who I believe is most responsible for keeping America safe since the Sept. 11 attacks.
My training as an intelligence officer taught me to call it as I see it. This is what I did for the C.I.A. This is what I am doing now. Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president.
Michael J. Morell was the acting director and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2010 to 2013.
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Jun 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Peter AU1 , Jun 22 2020 0:12 utc | 59
I have been watching a few of these Russian WWII documentaries.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=soviet+stormOne I watched the other night, either Liberation of Ukraine or Operation Bagration had a bit on the Ukraine and other local SS Nazi groups that sided with nazi Germany and ran the genocide operations in their countries. I think it was the remnants of the Ukraine groups that were mentioned.
They made there way to the west and surrendered to the western allies. US UK refused to extradite them to the Soviet Union and instead resettled them in UK and Canada.
Since WWII, five eyes have been taking in the scum of the world that have hereditary hatreds of their own countries. Many get into positions of influence and power. This can't end well.
Don Bacon , Jun 22 2020 1:14 utc | 63
@ Peter 59Peter AU1 , Jun 22 2020 1:32 utc | 66
Re: resettling NazisOperation Paperclip was a secret program of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) largely carried out by special agents of Army CIC, in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, such as Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were taken from Germany to the United States, for U.S. government employment, primarily between 1945 and 1959. Many were former members, and some were former leaders, of the Nazi Party - wiki
Don Bacon 63Jen , Jun 22 2020 1:35 utc | 67I had read a little on that. US head scientist that built the Saturn rockets and sent the Apollo rockets to the moon, an American hero was one of those Nazi's
Peter AU 1 @ 59, Don Bacon @ 63:David G , Jun 22 2020 1:39 utc | 68Yup Peter, let's thank our lucky stars we Antipodeans don't (to my knowledge anyway) have a politician like Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland who lied about her maternal Grandpa Mihaylo Chomiak who collaborated with the Nazis in Krakow producing a propaganda rag with printing equipment and other assets stolen from a printer who was sent off with his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau and perished there.
Unfortunately some of Europe's fascist scum ended up here in Australia too, in Sydney and Melbourne in particular. Some of these scum also went to Bolivia and had connections to the people who overthrew President Evo Morales.
Chas | Jun 21 2020 23:26 utc | 55:Shop , Jun 22 2020 1:51 utc | 71Leaving aside the rather heavy connotations of the word "Stalinist", I agree that Putin's essay seems to elide Stalin's initial reaction to June 22, which I understand to have been several days of paralysis, which, since he was absolute ruler, translated down to the state and military response.
The Nazi invasion was always inevitable, regardless of who was in charge in Moscow: Hitler's only two unshakable principles were against the Jews and for conquest in the East, and they were always there for anybody to see, starting with his book. I think Stalin knew that intellectually, but it seems he had a period of denial leading up to the invasion, and briefly even afterward.
Still, after that Stalin and the USSR did what needed to be done.
Jen,Abbott liked the Nazi's There was a bit of a stir when When one of his ministers gave a speech to the Australian Croatian Nazi's on behalf of Abbott. I think one of Abbott's ministers was also a descendant of nephew of a German Nazi general.
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May 30, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
I listened to this colloquy last night betwixt Ingraham and Logan. It supports the statements made just now by the governor of Minnesota and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul that the rioters the last few nights increasingly are organized, led and coordinated by people from "out of state" and dressed in black.
Someone pays for the equipping, training, transporting of these anarchist cadres. Who? pl
Who would be responsible for investigating this "terrorism?" The FBI?...Fred , 30 May 2020 at 12:19 PMCol.,Diana Croissant , 30 May 2020 at 01:01 PMThank you for posting the video. "Who is paying" is a very good question.
Joy Reid, hardly a Trump supporter, is shocked: "That Gov. Tim Walls, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and now MN attorney general Keith Ellison" are all together saying outside influences are behind the violence and looting and general agitation. The police are also "contact tracing" those arrested. I think the thread is worth a read:
https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1266741059163389952
I soros (oops! meant "suppose") it might be the same group that organized the massive fundraising from out of the country to pay for Barry Soretoro's first run for the Presidency. No one seemed to care that such fundraising was illegal.boots , 30 May 2020 at 01:03 PMIt really must be absolutely galling for our ex POTUS that the Weather Men got the forecast all wrong for election day when DJT was first put into office.
It's amazing how much money you can get for nihilistic mayhem making a group of young never-do-wells can get so they can travel and make mayhem.
Funding starts as self-funding or informally croudsourced from friends and relatives, develops into more formal croudsourcing, particularly of higher-profile (twitter etc) commentators and informal reporters, and sometimes of infrastructure (food, legal, etc.).Finally, there sometimes becomes enough structure (not yet), that some big anonymous donors throw in. In New Orleans after Katrina, Michael Moore was a big anonymous donor. In Occupy Chicago, Lupe Fiasco was. Occupy Wall Street in NYC had probably $250,000 donated at its peak, because people throw money at stuff like that. None of it was earmarked by donors (beyond in-kind, ie warehouse space). It destroyed OWS because their decision structures weren't equipped to deal with that absurdly large sum of money.
Often the life cycle of protests after a televised police killing of a black person is that local youth come out and begin to self-organize. Some blow off steam, some debate. They develop self-organization and very astute but very local demands. Out of town insurrectionists (antifa, non-ideological nihilists, and right-wing insurrectionists) show up for the circus and are resented by some local factions. Finally, national nonprofits like Black Lives Matter and undefinable organizations like some of the Democratic Party's wings take "leadership," disempowe the youth, who head home, and substitute their demands for those of the youth.
If these uprisings are remembered to have political content, it is usually the messaging of the national orgs that gets remembered (eg. body cams after Ferguson).
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simulacra27 , 9 Dec 2016 19:2Dec 09, 2016 | www.theguardian.com
From: Barack Obama orders 'full review' of possible Russian hacking in US election Spncer Ackerman in New York and David Smith in Washington
Geoff Smythe , 24m agoWell, if Rupert Mudroach, an American citizen, can influence the Australian elections, who gives a stuff about anyone else's involvement in US politics?
The US loves demonising Russia, even supporting ISIS to fight against them.
The United States of Amnesia just can't understand that they are run by the military machine.
As Frank Zappa once correctly stated: The US government is just the entertainment unit of the Military.
Altogether the only thing people are accusing the Russians of is the WikiLeaks scandal. And in hindsight of the enormous media bias toward Trump it really comes of as little more than leveling the playing field. Hardly the sort of democratic subversion that is being suggested.HollyOldDog -> Nataliefreeman, 11 Dec 2016 01:4And of course there is another problem and that is in principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table modifications aren't logged, so this would not be detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The US even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious, it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They are 100% untraceable.
Don't know about Russians, but in the early 2000's the Ukrainian hackers had some nasty viruses embedded in email attachments that could fuckup ARM based computers.smellycat -> waltercarl67, 11 Dec 2016 00:0Time to stop attempting regime change in other countries then, if you condemn it in your own. What goes around comes around.caveOfShadows , 10 Dec 2016 23:1European governments tried to elect Hillary Clinton. Latin American and Asian allies of the US tried to elect Clinton.uyCybershy -> caveOfShadows , 10 Dec 2016 23:1Top leaders of France, the UK, Germany, all leaked to US newspapers, with dire warnings of how Trump's election would lead to bad outcomes.
Many countries made as clear as possible, without coming out officially for a candidate, that they were for the election of Clinton.
Mexico tried to get Clinton elected. Believe me, they did. Not officially, of course, but almost.
But all we hear about is Russia.
Wonder why???
Russia has an independent foreign policy and acts in what it perceives as it's own best interests. It has refused to become a vassal state of the West and is a threat to the Empire's full-spectrum dominance. Worst of all it has begun trading outside the $US in energy and other resources with China and Iran.imperfetto , 10 Dec 2016 23:0Mainstream media are now busy repressing any news and any questioning about facts, as the last battle in their support to jidaists fighting the Syrian Army. This is the dark pit where our so called free press has fallen into.Flugler -> imperfetto , 10 Dec 2016 23:1Yep had a chat with an army mate yesterday asked him what the fcuk the supposed head of MI6 was on about regarding Russian support for Syrian govt suggesting Russian actions made terrorism more likely here in UK. He shrugged his shoulders and said he hoped Putin wiped the terrorists out...smellycat -> imperfetto , 10 Dec 2016 23:4Western media are in full panic as Aleppo falls with all sorts of gruesome tales about the mistreatment of their favorite terrorists in Aleppo and a strange silence on the whereabouts of their '250K civilians' under siegeGeoff Smythe -> smellycat , 11 Dec 2016 01:3Of course no news on the danger to the civilians of W,Aleppo, who have been bombarded indiscriminately for months by the 'moderates' in the east of the city or the danger to the civilians of Palmyra, Mosul or al Bab.
Or the 50,000 that have been evacuated out of Aleppo by the Russian military. https://www.rt.com/news/369869-syria-evacuation-civilians-aleppo /Merseysidefella , 10 Dec 2016 21:5I cant believe the Fake News outlets are still making a big deal about this issue. Obomber is leaving in a cloud of failure as he deserves. I´ll still look for the Guardian articles on football which are excellent.GuyCybershy -> confettifoot , 10 Dec 2016 21:0
Cheers!The Sanders movement inside the Democratic party did offer some hope but this was snuffed out by the DNC and the Clinton campaign in collusion with the media. This is what likely caused her defeat in November and not some Kremlin intrigue.dopamineboy , 10 Dec 2016 20:5"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." ― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda.dopamineboy , 10 Dec 2016 20:5"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality," Karl Rove.caveOfShadows -> dopamineboy , 10 Dec 2016 23:1Don't use quotes when you are doing a fake attribution.dopamineboy , 10 Dec 2016 20:4New Canadian documentary - All Governments Lie. "It lucidly argues that powerful interests have been creating supercharged fake stories for decades to advance their own nefarious interests. And the institutional media have too often blithely played along." The Globe and Mail.joinupthedots , 10 Dec 2016 20:4Fake news....No news.....None sense news?smellycat -> joinupthedots , 10 Dec 2016 20:5Uncle Sam has been doing it for years and the degree of incestuousness between MSM and the "Agencies" is all right here (just one example)
That's some serious shitstoneshepherd , 10 Dec 2016 20:2
'"The same sons of bitches," he hissed, "that killed John F. Kennedy."No comments about Seth Rich the DNC staffer Assange hinted had leaked the Podesta emails to Wikileaks and was subsequently shot multiple times and died at 04:20 on a Washington DC street in a 'motiveless' crime in which none of his possessions were taken.Flugler -> stoneshepherd , 10 Dec 2016 20:3Hmmm....
Distract the masses with bullsh*t , nothing new... Trump needs to double up on his personal security, he has doubled down on the CIA tonight bringing upmtheir bullsh*t on WMD. Thing are getting interesting...Liesandstats , 10 Dec 2016 19:2Meanwhile the good guys with their Smart bombs indulge in a spot of collateral damage. (Or war crimes as it's described when Russians do it).GuyCybershy -> sunflowerxyz , 10 Dec 2016 19:3https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/breaking-90-iraqi-soldiers-killed-in-mosul-from-us-airstrikes/
This article is jiberish, as are the ones trying to say that the Russians caused Brexit.
The rise of the right wing in Europe is due to the fact that Social Democratic parties have completely sold out to neo-liberal agenda.Powerspike , 10 Dec 2016 19:1Spreading lies about the very real Podesta emails and their importance seems to be a fake news stock in trade. Since Hillary was responsible I'm not sure where Putin comes into the picture.GuyCybershy , 10 Dec 2016 19:0
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/a-clinton-fan-manufactured-fake-news-that-msnbc-personalities-spread-to-discredit-wikileaks-docs /So Putin's plan to undermine U.S. voter confidence was to simply show what actually happens behind the scenes at the DNC, how diabolical!Powerspike , 10 Dec 2016 18:3"If we can revert to the truth, then a great deal of one's suffering can be erased, because a great deal of one's suffering is based on sheer lies. "Powerspike -> KassandraTroy , 10 Dec 2016 18:5
R. D. Laing
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
US politicians and the MSM depend on sheer lies.....They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.James7 , 10 Dec 2016 17:2
R. D. Laing
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
I'm sick of jumping through their hoops - how about you?"Tin Foil Hat" Hillary--James7 -> fedback , 10 Dec 2016 17:3
"This is not about politics or partisanship," she went on. "Lives are at risk, lives of ordinary people just trying to go about their days to do their jobs, contribute to their communities. It is a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly."We fail to see how Russian propaganda has put people's lives directly at risk. Unless, of course, Hillary is suggesting that the increasingly-bizarre #Pizzagate swarm journalism campaign (which apparently caused a man to shoot up a floor tile in a D.C. pizza shop) was conjured up by a bunch of Russian trolls.
And this is about as absurd as saying Russian trolls were why Trump got elected.
"It needs to be said," former counterintelligence agent John R. Schindler (who, by the way, believes Assange and Snowden are both Russian plants), writes in the Observer, "that nearly all of the liberals eagerly pontificating about how Putin put Trump in office know nothing about 21st century espionage, much less Russia's unique spy model and how it works. Indeed, some of the most ardent advocates of this Kremlin-did-it conspiracy theory were big fans of Snowden and Wikileaks -- right until clandestine Russian shenanigans started to hurt Democrats. Now, they're panicking."
(Nonetheless, #Pizzagate and Trump, IMHO, are manifestations of a population which deeply deeply distrusts the handlers and gatekeepers of the status quo. Justified or not. And with or without Putin's shadowy fingers strumming its magic hypno-harp across the Land of the Free. This runs deeper than just Putin.)
Fake news has always been around, from the fake news which led Americans to believe the Pearl Harbor attack was a surprise and completely unprovoked .
To the fake news campaigns put out by Edward Bernays tricking women into believing cigarettes were empowering little phallics of feminism. (AKA "Torches of Freedom.")
This War on Fake News has more to do with the elites finally realizing how little control they have over the minds of the unwashed masses. Rather, this is a war on the freaks, geeks and weirdos who've formed a decentralized and massively-influential media right under their noses.
Laissez Faire Today
and there may be some truth to that. An article says has delved into financial matters in Russia.BaronVonAmericano , 10 Dec 2016 17:0Kremlin Connection? The TRUTH About Hillary's Shady Ties To Russia REVEALED
Find out why insiders say Clinton has some explaining to do.Americans have no idea just how closely Hillary Clinton is tied to the Kremlin! That's the shocking claim of a new report that alleges the Democratic nominee is secretly pals with Vladimir Putin and his countrymen.
Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, has published a report that claims that that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was on the executive board of a foreign company that received $35 million from the Kremlin. "The company was a transparent Russian front, and how much Podesta was compensated - and for what - is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position on that board to the Federal government, as required by law," John Schindler of the Observer wrote.
As Radar previously reported, when Clinton was secretary of state, she profited from the "Russian Reset," a failed attempt to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.
chweizer wrote, "Many of the key figures in the Skolkovo process - on both the Russian and U.S. sides - had major financial ties to the Clintons. During the Russian reset, these figures and entities provided the Clintons with tens of millions of dollars, including contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies with deep Clinton ties." Schweizer also details "Skolkovo," a Silicon Valley-like campus that both the U.S. and Russia worked on for developing biomed, space, nuclear and IT technologies. He told the New York Post that there was a "pattern that shows a high percentage of participants in Skolkovo who happen to be Clinton Foundation donors."
So it's true because the CIA said so. That's the gold standard for me.GuyCybershy -> BaronVonAmericano , 10 Dec 2016 17:0So let me be the first to thank Russia for providing us with their research.
Instead of assassination, coup or invasion, they simply showed us our leaders' own words when written behind the public's backs.
I'm no fan of Putin, but this was a useful bit of intelligence you've shared with us.
Happy Christmas, Vlad.Next time why not provide us with the email of all our banks and fossil fuel companies; you can help us clean up both political parties with one fell swoop that way.
"Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies" - Ron Paulgreyford14 -> GuyCybershy , 10 Dec 2016 17:1Be careful there, Ron Paul is an FSB agent of Putin, according to the Washington Post.elias_ , 10 Dec 2016 17:0At least Tucker Carlson is able to see through the BS and asks searching question.GuyCybershy -> elias_ , 10 Dec 2016 17:1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRkeGkCjdHgDems are so out to lunch that they make FOX pundits seem sane. I would say the Democratic party is beyond hope of saving.sblejo , 10 Dec 2016 16:4The U.S. is getting what it deserves, IF Russia was even dumb enough to meddle. The government in this country has been meddling in other countries' affairs sixty years, in the Middle East, in South America and other places we don't even know about. The result is mayhem, all in the 'interests' of the U.S., as it is described.Burnaby1000 , 10 Dec 2016 16:4Note that most supporters of the Russian hacks never (and cannot) present rational arguments, just dubious talking points--AKA Fake News.GuyCybershy -> Burnaby1000 , 10 Dec 2016 16:4But it is fun to spot the gaps in their logic, and the holes in their stories.
Great sport--rather like hunting hares.
We need to trust the CIA, they'd never fix evidence to manipulate the American public.BaronVonAmericano -> Burnaby1000 , 10 Dec 2016 16:5Where's the gap in this logic:foolisholdman , 10 Dec 2016 16:3
A) The American public has been offered ZERO proof of hacking by the Russian government to alter our election.
B) Even if true, no one has disputed the authenticity of the emails hacked.
C) Therefore, the WORST Russia could have done is show us who are own leader are when they don't think we're listening.
D) Taken together, this article is pretty close to fake news, and gives us nothing that should outrage us much at this time -- unless we are trying to foment war with Russia or call for a military coup against the baboon about to take the oath of office.Hacking by unnamed individuals. No direct involvement of the Russian government, only implied, alleged, etc. Seems to me that if Hillary had obeyed the law and not schemed behind the scenes to sabotage Bernie S. there would have been nothing to leak! Really this is all about being caught with fer fingers in the cookie jar. Does it matter who leaked it? Did the US public not have a right to know what the people they were voting for had been up to? It's a bit like the governor of a province being filmed burgling someone's house and then complaining that someone had leaked the film to the media, just when he was trying to get re-elected!GuyCybershy -> foolisholdman , 10 Dec 2016 16:3The US public has a right to know what CNN, New York Times and the Washington Post want them to know.sblejo -> foolisholdman , 10 Dec 2016 16:4It is called passing the buck, and because of the underhanded undermining of Bernie Sanders, who was winning, we have Trump. Thank you Democratic party.aidanfahey , 10 Dec 2016 16:3I am disappointed that the Guardian gives so much prominence to such speculation which is almost totally irrelevant. Why would we necessarily (a) believe what the superspies tell us and (b) even if it is true why should we care?GuyCybershy -> aidanfahey , 10 Dec 2016 16:5I am also very disappointed at the Guardians attitude to Putin, the elected leader of Russia, who was so badly treated by the US from the moment he took over from Yeltsin. I was in Russia as a visitor around that time and it was obvious that Putin restored some dignity to the Russian people after the disastrous Yeltsin term of office. If the US had been willing to deal with him with respect the world could be a much better place today. Instead the US insisted in trying to subvert his rule with the support of its supine NATO allies in order to satisfy its corporate rulers.
They expected Russia to fall apart like the USSR and then they could march in and pick up the pieces. Putin prevented this and this why they hate him.NickinHalifaxNS , 10 Dec 2016 16:2If this is true, the US can hardly complain. After all, the US has a long record of interfering in other countries' elections--including CIA overthrow of elected governments and their replacement with murderous, oppressive, right-wing dictatorships.BaronVonAmericano , 10 Dec 2016 15:5If the worst that Russia did was reveal the truth about what Democratic Party figures were saying behind closed doors, I'd say it helped correct the unbalanced media focus on preventing Trump from becoming President. Call it the globalization of elections.
First, the government has yet to present any persuasive evidence that Russia hacked the DNC or anyone else. All we have is that there is Russian code (meaningless according to cyber-security experts) and seemingly baseless "conclusions" by "intelligence" officials. In other words, fake news at this point.elias_ , 10 Dec 2016 14:5Second, even if true, the allegation amounts to an argument that Russia presented us with facts that we shouldn't have seen. Think about that for a while. We are seeing demands that we self-censor ourselves from facts that seem unfair. What utter idiocy.
This is particularly outrageous given that the U.S. directly intervenes in the governance of any number of nations all the time. We can support coups, arm insurgencies, or directly invade, but god forbid that someone present us with unsettling facts about our ruling class.
This nation has jumped the shark. The fact that Trump is our president is merely confirmation of this long evident fact. That fighting REAL NEWS of emails whose content has not been disputed is part of our war on "fake news," and the top priority for some so-called liberals, promises only worse to come.
>> Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said Russia had "succeeded" in "sow[ing] discord" in the election, and urged as much public disclosure as is possible.MrIncredlous , 10 Dec 2016 14:4What utter bullshit. The DNC's own dirty tricks did that. Donna Brasille stealing debate questions and handing them to Hillary so that she could cheat did that. The FBIs investigation into Hillary did that. Podesta's emails did that. The totally one-sided press coverage (apart from Fox) of the election did that. But it seems the american people were smart enough to see through the BS and voted for trump. Good for them.
And we're gonna need a lot more than the word of a few politicised so-called intelligence agencies to believe this russo-hacking story. These are the same people who lied about Iraqi WMDs so they are proven fakers/liars. These are also the same people who hack EVERYONE else so I, quite frankly, have no sympathy even of the story turns out to be true.
Obama is a disgrace to his office.DanielDee , 10 Dec 2016 14:4Announce "consensus" (not unanimous) "conclusion" based in circumstantial evidence now, before the Electoral College vote, then write a report with actual details due by Jan 20.
Put a proven liar in charge of writing the report on Russian hacking.
Fail to mention that not one of the leaked DNC or Podesta emails has been shown to be inauthentic. So the supposed Russian hacking simply revealed truth about Hillary, DNC, and MSM collusion and corruption.
Fail to mention that if hacking was done by or for US government to stop Hillary, blaming the Russians would be the most likely disinformation used by US agencies.
Expect every pro-Hillary lapdog journalist - which is virtually all of them - in America will hyperventilate (Twitter is currently on fire) about this latest fact-free, anti-Trump political stunt for the next nine days.
Or, as a reader put it, this is a soft coup attempt by leaders of Intel community and Obama Admin to influence the Electoral College vote, similar to the 1960s novel "Seven Days in May."When the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security release a joint statement it is not without very careful consideration to the wording.elias_ , 10 Dec 2016 14:4
Therefore, to understand what is known by the US intelligence services one must analyse the language used.This is very telling:
"The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts."Alleged:
adjective [attributive]
said, without proof, to have taken place or to have a specified illegal or undesirable qualityConsistent:
adjective
acting or done in the same way over timeMethod:
noun
a particular procedure for accomplishing or approaching somethingMotivation:
noun
a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular waySo, what exactly is known by the US intelligence services?
Well what we can tell is:
the alleged (without proof) hacks were consistent (done in the same way) with the methods (using a particular procedure) and motivations (and having reason for doing so) with Russian State actions.There is absolutely no certainty about this whatsoever.
Thank God Obama will be out of office soon. He is the biggest disappointment ever. He has ordered the death of THOUSANDS via drone strikes in other people's countries and most of the deaths were innocent bystanders. If President Xi of China or Putin were to do that we would all be calling them tyrannical dictators and accusing them of a back door invasions. But somehow people are brainwashed into thinking its ok of the US president to do such things. Truly sickening.Flugler , 10 Dec 2016 14:4Says the CIA the organisation set up to destabilise governments all over the world. Lol.....Susanna246 , 10 Dec 2016 13:1
Congratulations for keeping a straight face I hope Trump makes urgently needed personnel changes in the alphabet soup agencies working against humanity for very many years.Beware --MacTavi5h , 10 Dec 2016 12:5This is an extremely dangerous game that Obama and the political elites are playing.
The American political elites - including senetors, bankers, investors, multinationals et al, can feel power and control slipping away from them.
This makes them very dangerous people indeed - as self-preservation and holding onto power is their number one priority.
What they're aiming to do ( a child can see what's coming ), is to call into question the validity of Trump's victory and blame the Russians for it.
The elites are looking to create chaos and insurrection, to have the result nullified and to vilify Putin and Russia.
American and Russian troops are already lined up and facing each other along the Eastern European borders and all it takes is one small incident from either side.
And all because those that have ruled the roost for so many decades ( in the White house, the 2 houses of Congress and Wall St ), simply cannot face losing their positions of power, wealth and political influence.
They're out to get Trump, the populists and President Putin.
God help us all.
This is starting to feel like an attempt to make the Trump presidency appear illegitimate. The problem is that it could actually make the democrats look like sore losers instead. We've had the recount, now it's foreign interference. This might harm them in 2020.alexfoxy28 , 10 Dec 2016 12:5I don't like that Trump won, but he did. The electoral college system is clearly in the constitution and all sides understood and agreed to it at the campaign commencement. Also some, by no means all, of commenters saying that the popular vote should win have also been on referendum BTL saying the result isn't a legitimate leave vote, make your minds up!
I don't want Trump and I wanted to remain but, by the rules, my sides lost.
Yet in August, Snowden warned that the recent hack of NSA tied cyber spies was not designed to expose Hillary Clinton, but rather a display of strength by the hackers, showing they could eventually unmask the NSA's own international cyber espionage and prove the U.S. meddles in elections around the world.nishville , 10 Dec 2016 12:3http://yournewswire.com/snowden-claims-russia-can-expose-u-s-meddling-in-foreign-elections /
A reader's comment from the Independent:zulugroove -> nishville , 10 Dec 2016 13:4Will the CIA be providing evidence to support these allegations or is it a case of "just trust us guys"? In any event, hypocrisy is a national sport for the Yanks. According to a Reuters article 9 August 2016 "NSA operations have, for example, recently delved into elections in Mexico, targeting its last presidential campaign. According to a top-secret PowerPoint presentation leaked by former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden, the operation involved a "surge effort against one of Mexico's leading presidential candidates, Enrique Peña Nieto, and nine of his close associates." Peña won that election and is now Mexico's president.
The NSA identified Peña's cellphone and those of his associates using advanced software that can filter out specific phones from the swarm around the candidate. These lines were then targeted. The technology, one NSA analyst noted, "might find a needle in a haystack." The analyst described it as "a repeatable and efficient" process.
The eavesdroppers also succeeded in intercepting 85,489 text messages, a Der Spiegel article noted.
Another NSA operation, begun in May 2010 and codenamed FLATLIQUID, targeted Pena's predecessor, President Felipe Calderon. The NSA, the documents revealed, was able "to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon's public email account."
At the same time, members of a highly secret joint NSA/CIA organization, called the Special Collection Service, are based in the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and other U.S. embassies around the world. It targets local government communications, as well as foreign embassies nearby. For Mexico, additional eavesdropping, and much of the analysis, is conducted by NSA Texas, a large listening post in San Antonio that focuses on the Caribbean, Central America and South America."
Fake news!! ...That would be a Clinton / Obama , reply!!CTG2016 , 10 Dec 2016 12:0Breaking news! CIA admits people in USA aren't smart enough to vote for the person right person. Why blame Russians now?Gallicdweller , 10 Dec 2016 11:1
Come on. Let's move on and enjoy the mess Trump will start. This is going to be worse than GWB.
We should all just enjoy the political comedy programs.The CIA accusing a foreign power of interfering in the election of a showman for president - it would take me all day top cite the times that this evil criminal organisation has interfered in the affairs of other countries, ordered assassinations, coups etc. etc. etcDave Harries , 10 Dec 2016 10:4Yes like the "help" the CIA gave to the Taliban, Bin Laden and Co. when the Russians were in Afghanistan.fedback , 10 Dec 2016 10:4
Then these dimwits from the CIA who taught Bin Laden and Co guerrilla warfare totally "missed" 9/11 and Twin Towers with all their billions of funding.
So basically this is a total load of crap and if you think we are going to believe any reports vs. Russia these fools at the CIA are going to publish then think again.During the election our media was exposed as in essence a propaganda tool for the Democrat campaign and they continue the unholy alliance after the electionLiesandstats , 10 Dec 2016 10:4Instead of trying to blame the Russians how about reflecting on why the Democrats picked such a dreadful candidate.ana ruiz , 10 Dec 2016 10:2Pathetic move from an organisation that created ISIS and is single handling every single conflict in the world. Here we have a muppet president that for once wants to look after USA affairs internally and here we have a so alleged independent organisation that wants to keep bombing and destabilising the world. Didn't Trump said he wanted to shake the FBI and CIA ? Who is going to stop this machine of treachery ? : south America, middle east ...Asia ... they put their fingers on to create a problem- solution caveat wereas is to create weapons contracts /farma or construction and sovereign debt . But it never tricles down to the layperson ..Tim Jenkins , 10 Dec 2016 10:2"We are Not calling into question the election results"fedback , 10 Dec 2016 10:2
next White House sentence - "Just the integrity.. " WTFWhat more do you need to know - Bullshit Fake News.. propaganda, spoken by the youngest possible puppet boy White House Rep. who almost managed to have his tie done up..
I am bookmarking this guy, for a laugh! White House Fake Newscaster ..:)
Worth watching the sides of his mouth onto his attempt to engage you with the eyes, but blinking way too much before, during and after the word "Integrity".. FAKE!
His hand signals.. lmfao, so measured, how sweet.. now sack the sycophants --
People should know that these Breaking News stories we see in Western media on BBC, Guardian etc, about Russian interference are in fact from Wash Post and NY Times quoting mysterious sources within the CIAfedback , 10 Dec 2016 10:0
Of course we know that Wash Post and NY Times were completely objective during the election and didn't favor any partyRussia made Hillary run the most expensive campaign ever, spending 1.2 billion dollars.Tim Jenkins , 10 Dec 2016 09:5
Russia stole Hillary's message to the working people and gave her lousy slogansMy real comment is below, but work with me, for a moment.Powerspike , 10 Dec 2016 09:4
So, since 2008, eh? Barack has thought carefully, with a legal mind.Can't we somehow blame the Russians for the whole Economic collapse.. coming soon, Wall Street Cyber Crash, screwed up sKewed up systems of Ponzi virus spiraling out of control..
blame the Russians , logic, the KGB held the FED at gunpoint and said "create $16.2 Trillion in 5 working days"
jeez, blame anything and anybody except peace prize guy Obama, the Pope, Bankers & Israel..Now can we discuss the Security of the Pound against Cyber Attack.. what was it 6% in 2 minutes, early on Sunday morning, just over month ago.. whoosh!
It seems more important than discussing an election where the result was always OBVIOUS!
And we called it, just like Kellyanne Conway..
Who is Huma Abedin? I wish to know and hear her talking to Kellyanne Conway, graciously in defeat.. is that so unreasonable?
********
Obama wishes to distract from exceedingly poor judgement, at the very minimum....
after his Greek Affair with Goldman Sachs.. surely.As for his other Foreign Policy: Eternal Shame, founded on Fake News!
Obama the Fake News Founder to flounder over the Russians, who can prove that he, Obama supports & supported Terrorism!Thus this article exists, to create doubt over the veracity of evidence to be presented over NATO's involvement in SYRIA! Obama continues to resist, or loose face completely..
Just ask Can Dundar.... what he knows now and ask Obama to secure the release of Can Dundar's wife's passport, held for no legitimate reason in Turkey! This outrageous stand off, from Erdogan & Obama to address their failures and arrogant disrespect of Woman and her Legal Human Rights is Criminal.. & a Sickness of Mind that promotes Dictatorship!
Mainstream Media - Fake News.. for quite some time!
& Obama is guilty!President-elect Donald Trump's transition team said in a statement Friday afternoon that the same people who claim Russia interfered in the presidential election had previously claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.alexfoxy28 , 10 Dec 2016 09:1
http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/09/trump-team-same-people-who-say-russia-meddled-in-election-said-iraq-had-wmds/#ixzz4SQWsDXpZIt's getting funny as Biden promised cyber attack on Russia weeks before Trump was elected .. due to Russian hackers?uptonogoode -> alexfoxy28 , 10 Dec 2016 09:5Link?alexfoxy28 -> uptonogoode , 10 Dec 2016 09:5http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/721851/russia-joe-biden-obama-cyber-attack-war-clinton-putin-US-moscowArtherOhm , 10 Dec 2016 08:5or just google about it.
Is the USA, as author of windows software, really unable to prevent foreign hacking?Shotcricket -> Burnaby1000 , 10 Dec 2016 09:0Do the CIA never do anything like this?
Do we actually have any evidence rather than just a lot of allegations?
'Russia like to surprise' ?Powerspike , 10 Dec 2016 08:4The one certainty of the US/EU led drive to remove an elected leader just in their 2nd year after an election that saw them gain 47% of the popular vote was the Russki response, its borders were immediately at open 'threat' from any alliance. NATO or otherwise, the deep sea ports of eastern Ukraine which had always been accessed by the Russki fleets would lose guaranteed access etc....to believe the West was surprised by this action, would be to assume the US Generals were as stupid as the US administration, they knew exactly the response of the Russkis & would have made no difference if their leader had been named Putin or Uncle Tom Cobbly.
In some ways the Russkis partitioning of the East of Ukraine could well minimise the possibility of a world conflict as the perceived threat is neutralised by the buffer.
The Russkis cyber doodah is no different to our own the US etc, they're all 'at it' & all attempt to inveigle the others in terms of making life difficult.....not too sure Putin will be quite as comfortable with the Pres Elects 3 Trumpeteers though as the new Pressie looks likely to open channels of communications but those negotiations might well see a far tougher stance......still, in truth, all is never fair in love or war
.....that the CIA is not only suddenly involved, but suddenly at the forefront, may well reflect President-elect Trump's stated policy intentions being far removed from those that the CIA has endorsed, and might be done with an eye toward undermining Trump's position in those upcoming policy battles.Nataliefreeman , 10 Dec 2016 08:3
At the center of those Trump vs. CIA battles is Syria, as the CIA has for years pushed to move away from the ISIS war and toward imposing regime change in Syria. Trump, by contrast, has said he intends to end the CIA-Saudi program arming the Syrian rebels, and focus on fighting ISIS. Trump was even said to be seeking to coordinate anti-ISIS operations with Russia.
The CIA allegations could easily imperil that plan, as so long as the allegations remain part of the public discourse, evidence or not, anything Trump does with respect to Russia is going to have a black cloud hanging over it.
http://news.antiwar.com/2016/12/09/cia-claims-russia-intervened-to-get-trump-elected /Oh dear Obama trolls? Food for your starved thoughts:GraemeHarrison , 10 Dec 2016 08:2Your degree of understanding IT is disturbing, especially given how dependent we are on it.
This is all very simple. The process by which you find out if and how a machine was hacked was clearly documented in the Russian "Internet Audit", run by a group of Grey Hats.
Grey Hats: People concerned about security who perform unauthorized hacks for relatively benign purposes, often just notifying people of how their system is flawed. IT staff have mixed reactions(!), the illegality is not disputed but the benefit of not being hit by a Black Hat first can be considerable at times. Differentiation is rare, especially as some hacktivist groups belong here, causing no damage beyond reputational by flagging activity that is not acceptable to the hacktivists.
Black Hats: These are the guys to worry about. These include actually destructive hacktivists. These are the ones who steal data for malicious purposes, disrupt for malicious purposes and just generally act maliciously.
Nothing in reports indicates if the DNC hack was Grey Hat or Black Hat, but it should be obvious that there is a difference.
IP addresses and hangouts - worthless as evidence. Anyone can spoof the former, happens all the time (NMap used to provide the option, probably still does), Grey Hats and Black Hats alike have the latter and may break into other people's. It's all about knowing vulnerabilities.
That voting machines were even on the Internet is disturbing. That they and the DNC server were improperly configured for such an environment is frightening - and possibly illegal.
The standard sequence of events is thus:
Network intrusion detector system identifies crafted packet attacking known vulnerability.
In a good system, the firewall is set to block the attack at that instant.If the attacker scans the network, the only machine responding to such knocks should be a virtual machine running a honeypot on attractive-looking port numbers. The other machines in the zone should technically violate the RFCs by not responding to ICMP or generating recognized error codes on unused/blocked ports.
The system logger picks up an event that creates a process that shouldn't be happening.
In a good system, this either can't happen because the combination of permissions needed doesn't exist, or it doesn't matter because the process is root jailed and hasn't the privileges to actually do any harm.The file alteration logger (possibly Tripwire, though the Linux kernel can do this itself) detects that a process with escalated privileges is trying to create, delete or alter a file that it isn't supposed to be able to change.
In a good system with mandatory access controls, this really is impossible. In a good system with logging file systems, it doesn't matter as you can instruct the filesystem to revert those specific alterations. Even in adequate but feeble systems, checkpoints will exist. No use in a voting system, but perfectly adequate for a campaign server. In all cases, the system logs will document what got damaged.The correct IT manager response is thus:
Find out why the firewall wasn't defaulting to deny for all unknown sources and for unnecessary ports.
Find out why the public-facing system wasn't isolated in the firewall's DMZ.
Find out why NIDS didn't stop the attack.
Non-public user mobility should be via IPSec using certificates. That deals with connecting from unknown IP addresses without exposing the innards of the system.
Lock down misconfigured network systems.
Backup files identified by file alteration detection as corrupt for forensic purposes.
Revert files identified by file alteration detection as corrupt to last good version.
Close permission loopholes. Everything should run with the fewest privileges necessary, OS included. On Linux, kernel permissions are controlled via capabilities.
Establish from the logs if the intruder came through a public-facing application, an essential LAN service or a non-essential service.
If it's a LAN service, block access to that service outside the LAN on the host firewall.
Run network and host vulnerability scanners to detect potential attack vectors.
Update any essential software that is detected as flawed, then rerun the scanners. Repeat until fixed.
Now the system is locked down against general attacks, you examine the logs to find out exactly what failed and how. If that line of attack got fixed, good. If it didn't, then fix it.
Password policy should prevent rainbow attacks, not users. Edit as necessary, lock accounts that aren't secure and set the password control system to ban bad passwords.It is impossible from system logs to track where an intruder came from, unsecured routers are common and that means a skilled attacker can divert packets to anywhere. You can't trust brags, in security nobody is honest. The sensible thing is to not allow such events in the first place, but when (not if) they happen, learn from them.
If the USA is to investigate the effect of foreign governments 'corrupting' the free decisions of the American people in elections, perhaps they could look into the fact that for the past three decades every Republican candidate for president, after they have won the nomination of their party, has gone to just one foreign country to pledge their firm commitment/allegiance to that foreign power, for the purpose of shoring up large blocks of donors prior to the actual presidential election. The effect is probably more 'corrupting' than any leak of emails!SamSamson , 10 Dec 2016 08:2Obama should confess to creating ISIS, sustaining ISIS & utilising ISIS as a proxy army to have them do things that he knew US soldiers could never be caught doing!!!LordTomnoddy , 10 Dec 2016 08:1They then spoon fed you bullshit propaganda about who the bad guys were, without ever being to properly explain why the US armed forces were prevented from taking any hostile action against ISIS, until they were FORCED TO, that is, when Putin let the the cat out of the bag!!!
Hilarious. One would've thought Obama of all presidents would be reluctant to delve too deeply into this particular midden. As the author of the weakest and most incompetent American foreign policy agenda since Carter's, it's much the likeliest that if China or Russia have been hacking US elections, then by far the biggest beneficiary will have been himself.Tim Jenkins , 10 Dec 2016 08:1Just another attempt to distract from realities, like:-Polly123456 , 10 Dec 2016 08:0From:[email protected] To: [email protected], [email protected] Date: 2015-05-28 12:12 Subject: Fwd: POLITICO Playbook
cdm Begin forwarded message: > From: Lynn Forester de Rothschild <[email protected]> > Date: May 28, 2015 at 9:44:12 AM EDT > To: Nick Merrill <[email protected]>, "Cheryl Mills ([email protected])" <[email protected]> > Subject: FW: POLITICO Playbook > > Morning, > I am sure you are working on this, but clearly, the opposition is trying to undercut Hillary's reputation for honesty (the number one characteristic people look for in a President according to most polls) ..and also to benefit from an attack on wealth that Dems did the most to start I am sure we need to fight back against both of these attacks. > Xoxo > Lynn > > By Mike Allen (@mikeallen; [email protected]), and Daniel Lippman (@dlippman; [email protected]) > > > > QUINNIPIAC POLL, out at 6 a.m., "Rubio, Paul are only Republicans even close to Clinton": "In a general election, ... Clinton gets 46 percent of American voters to 42 percent for Paul and 45 percent of voters to 41 percent for Rubio." Clinton leads Christie 46-37 ... Huckabee 47-40 ... Jeb 47-37 ... Walker 46-38 ... Cruz 48-37 ... Trump 50-32. > > --"[V]oters say 53-39 percent that Clinton is NOT honest and trustworthy, but say 60-37 ... that she has strong leadership qualities. Voters are divided 48-47 ... over whether Clinton cares about their needs and problems." > > --RNC's new chart - "'Dead Broke' Clintons vs. Everyday Americans": "Check out the chart below to see how many households in each state it would take to equal the 'Dead Broke' Clintons." http://bit.ly/1Avg8iE
Blind leading the Blind.. & Obama knows that very well after it was clear that Clinton was NEVER trusted by the Voters, which makes Debbie and the DNC look like a complete bunch of..
Idiots?!?! STILL BLAMING The RUSSIANS.... instead of themselves!
She was and always will be unelectable due to exceedingly poor judgement, across the board.
Can we move on?
Who is in charge of Internet security in the US government? Because it seems full of holes. Last time it was the Chinese and this time it's the Russians, yet not one piece of evidence to say where hacks have come from. How much are these world class Internet security people paid? And why do they still have a job? People sitting in their bedrooms on a pc from stores like staples have hacked their security regularly.AlexPeace , 10 Dec 2016 08:0FMinus , 10 Dec 2016 08:0Extremely vague. Seems like there is no evidence at all to suggest any Russian involvement, but they need to pretend otherwise. Blah, blah, blah, Weapons of mass destruction... Apollo mission, etcIn 2016, he said, the government did not detect any increased cyber activity on election day itself but the FBI made public specific acts in the summer and fall, tied to the highest levels of the Russian government. "This is going to put that activity in a greater context ... dating all the way back to 2008."
Ole, Russians exposed the DNC emails, we knew about that. I though this should investigate Russians vote rigging, but I guess not. I for once welcome anyone who hacks my government and exposes their skeletons, so I can see what kind of dirty garbage I had leading or potentially leading my country.Robert Stokes -> FMinus , 10 Dec 2016 08:3Maybe the DNC should play fair and not dirty next time and put a candidate forward without skeletons that still reek of rotting flesh.
You rig electronic voting machines by reflashing the firmware or switching out the sd cards. Can't be done remotely.Baldrick Daacat , 10 Dec 2016 07:5And the CIA has never intervened in a foreign election?VibePit -> Baldrick Daacat , 10 Dec 2016 08:0Oh heaven forbid!! The Shah of Iran was democratically elected but of course. . .HeathCardwell , 10 Dec 2016 07:2Don't believe any of this at all.theonetruepainter , 10 Dec 2016 07:1
American has been thee most corrupt and disgusting western nation for decades, run by people who are now being shown for who they really are and they're shitting themselves big time. The stakes don't get higher than this.What's the point of this?theonetruepainter , 10 Dec 2016 07:0The American people don't want Clinton because she is a liar and a dangerous psychopath who also ignored the working people.
If you want to change that, get her treatment. Don't try to undermine the election result.
How can you not respect Putin?Peter Turner , 10 Dec 2016 07:0He's spent the last few years making fools out of Clinton, Kerry and the obomber.
If you didn't want him to let Crimea rejoin Russia, then you shouldn't have initiated the coup that broke up Ukraine.
What a total load of double talk. There is zero integrity in anything CIA says or does since the weapons of mass destruction deal or before that it was the Iran Contra deal and before that it was the Bay of Pigs. Now we have this rigging os the election results based on zero evidence. The whole thing is just idiocy. What is Obama trying to achieve?The end game will be for Obama to go down in history as ... let's just say he is not the smartest tool in the shed when it comes to being a so called world leader. Well done Obama you have now completely trashed what is left of your legacy.LondonLungs , 10 Dec 2016 06:5Ted Reading Reading 10 Dec 2016 06:3"CIA concludes Russia interfered to help Trump win election – report "
You might as well ask accountants to do a study on wether it's worthwhile to use an accountant. Part of the CIAs job is to influence elections around the world to get US-Corporation friendly gov'ts in to power. So yes of course they are going to say that a gov't can influence elections, if they said otherwise then they'd be admitting they're wasting money.
So, it was the Russians! I knew it must've been them, they're so sneaky. All HFC had was the total backing of the entire establishment, including prominent Republican figures, the total fawning support of the entire main-stream media machine which carefully controlled the "she's got a comfortable 3 point lead maybe even double-digit lead" narrative and the "boo and hiss" pantomime slagging of her opponent. Plus the endless funds from the crooked foundation and murderous fanatics from the compliant Gulf states, and lost. But hey, do keep this going please, it'll help the Trumpster get a second term! Trump/Nugent 2020.righteousfist01 , 10 Dec 2016 06:2It's possible the Russians hacked and released the documents. However the report is not saying the Russians created them.Nataliefreeman -> righteousfist01 , 10 Dec 2016 06:3So whatever was so deplorable about them was all Democrat
Good point. Add that the whole election was dogged is the most glaring media bias and suddenly Russia comes off as simply leveling the playing field a bit12inchPianist , 10 Dec 2016 06:1CIA finds Russia had covertly influenced election. CIA finds FBI had overtly influenced election. Fancy that!ashleigh2 , 10 Dec 2016 06:1The 'secret' enquiry reported to Congress that the CIA concludes etc, etc, etc. Then yet more revelations from 'anonymous sources' are quoted in the Washington Post and The New York Times reaching the same conclusions.....talk about paranoia, or are the Democrats guilty of news fakery of the highest order to deny the US voters....Nataliefreeman , 10 Dec 2016 05:5Ooh Obama...there's a little snag about this investigation.Bosula , 10 Dec 2016 05:5In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table modifications aren't logged, so this would not be detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The U.S. even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious, it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They are 100% untraceable.
How about a Presidential review covering US interference in the elections of countries around the world?Paulare -> Bosula , 10 Dec 2016 06:2But where to start?Bosula -> Paulare , 10 Dec 2016 08:0UK, Australia, Chile, Nicoragua, Cuba, Philippines, Malaysia, Germany...?
such choice..
Yes. Maybe do it on a regional basis across the globe.Anarchy4theUK , 10 Dec 2016 05:4Of course the Americans would never interfere in other people's elections would they?...........I imagine the Russians wanted to avoid a nuclear war with war monger Hilary & who can blame them?Nataliefreeman -> Anarchy4theUK , 10 Dec 2016 06:1Y'know really all they seem to be looking possibly guilty of is the wikileaks scandal. Compare that to the enormous media bias regarding Trump and suddenly the Russians at worst come off as evening the playing field so as to help an election be less biased...Kris Penny , 10 Dec 2016 05:4When certain members of the public would believe one man over those who have more intelligence in a follicle than he will ever have floating in his cranium is when you realise that a place like Guantanamo should exist, exclusively for them.Newmacfan , 10 Dec 2016 05:3
http://www.allgov.com/news/where-is-the-money-going/surprise-cost-of-ammo-for-us-navy-destroyers-new-guns-800000-a-shot-161114?news=859762Paranoia about Russia has arrived at the laughable, almost like the fable of the boy who cried wolf! Even the way the CIA statement is worded makes you smile. "silk purse sows ear"? Everyone is clutching at straws rather than looking down the barrel at the truth......that folks is what is missing from Western Politics......"The Truth" --StephenO , 10 Dec 2016 04:3Dom Michaels -> pureist , 10 Dec 2016 04:3Obama expected the review to be completed before he leaves office...
Really?? Obama wants a "deep review" of internet activities surrounding the elections of 2008, 2012, and 2016; and he wants this done in less than 40 days? And it encompasses voting stations throughout the 50 states? That's the definition of political shenanigans.
Seeing as how the CIA interfered with Ukraine before and during the overthrow of Yanukovich, and with Moscow protests a few years ago...... seems like everyone is always trying to interfere with each-other. Hypocrisy aboundsMarkThomason , 10 Dec 2016 03:5This is not really a fight against Trump. That is lost. This is an intramural fight among Democrats.GuyCybershy -> MarkThomason , 10 Dec 2016 04:0This is desperate efforts by the corporate Democrats to hang on to power after Hillary (again) lost.
Excuses. Allegations without sources given, anonymous.
Remember that the same people used the same media contacts to spread fake news that the Podesta leaks were faked, and tried to shift attention from what was revealed to who revealed it.
Agreed. Another reason why the Democratic party is not worth saving. 13 million voted for Sanders in the primary, that is enough to start a new party.Fabr1s , 10 Dec 2016 03:4if the Ruskies did it, there's something funny: they did it on Obama's watch and her protege, Hillary, lost it. The system is a real mess in this case.Kris Penny , 10 Dec 2016 03:4Read and research further...GeoffP -> Kris Penny , 10 Dec 2016 04:0
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-security-and-office-director-nationalInteresting link. It raises a particularly salient question: assuming the Russians did indeed do it - and after the whole CIA yellow cake thing in Iraq, no one could possibly doubt national intelligence agencies any more - does it particularly matter?sejong -> jcadams , 10 Dec 2016 03:5Did the Russians write the emails? The betrayal of Sanders, the poor protection on classified materials, the cynical, vicious nonsense spewed out by the HRC campaign, the media collusion with the DNC and HRC: did the Russians do these things too? Or was that Clinton and the DNC? Silly question, I'm sure.
Russia's competence with computer hacking and cyber espionage is a givennaomh -> sejong , 10 Dec 2016 03:5So what? What about Chinese or Israeli competence in these areas?
This is Fake News that exists only because Clinton lost.
The real news is about in competence by HRC, DWS, and the DNC in foisting a sure loser on American voters.
Thank you for speaking the truth!!!!GeoffP -> jcadams , 10 Dec 2016 04:0Well, chief, the Wisconsin recount is in and the results are staggering: after the recount, Clinton has gained on Trump by 3 votes... and Trump gained on Clinton by a heady six votes. One begins to wonder at the 'Manchurian candidate' claim.third_eye , 10 Dec 2016 03:3It is precisely charades like this that millions in the US and around the world have given up on the establishment. Business as usual or rather lying as usual will only alienate more not-so-stupid citizens. It speaks volumes about their desperation that they're are actually employing such obviously infantile tactics on the Russia even as they continue to paper over Hillary's tattered past. The result of the investigation is totally predictable..................Yes, the Russians were involved in hacking the elections, but..........for reasons of national security, details of the investigative process and evidence cannot be revealed.Longleveler , 10 Dec 2016 03:2If the Russians really wanted Trump to win that means they helped Hillary win the Democratic primaries because Bernie would have beat Trump.. There was a mess of hanky-panky going on to defeat Bernie, and deflecting the blame to a foreign actor should keep the demonstrators off the streets.Will D , 10 Dec 2016 03:1
If someone is gullible enough to believe the Russians did it they'd also believe that Elvis made Bigfoot hack the DNC. That's even more plausible since bigfoot is just a guy who spends so much time sitting at his computer he lost all interest in personal hygiene.The Democrats are really desperate to find anything they can use to challenge the results of the election.madeiranlotuseater , 10 Dec 2016 02:4Either way they look foolish - openly investigating the possibility of Russian hacking which acknowledges that their electoral systems aren't well secured, OR look really foolish if they find anything (whether real or faked).
The big question now is if, and how much, they will fake the findings of the investigation so that they can declare the election results wrong, and put Clinton into the White House.
Clearly, it is a case of desperate times calling for desperate measures. It is incredible that one man can make the largest Western nation look so ridiculous in the eyes of the world.Pot calling the kettle black. Reveal fully what the CIA get up to all over the planet. The phoney intel America has used to go to war causing countries to implode. The selective way they release information to project the picture they want. I am not convinced that Russia is any better or any worse than the USA.onofabeach , 10 Dec 2016 02:3I can understand the Russians wanting Obama in 2008 and 2012 because he is a weak leader and totally incompetent.BoBiel , 10 Dec 2016 02:2I can also understand Putin preferring DJT to HRC.
It's about time the planet settled down a little bit, Trump and Putin will do more for world peace in the next year than Obama achieved in his 8 wasted years in charge.
The Democrats have yet to realise the reason for their demise was not the racists, the homophobes, the KKK, the Deplorables, the misogynists, the xenophobes etc etc etc.
It was Hillary Clinton.
Get over it, move on, stop whining, get out of your safe room, put the puppy down, throw the play dough away, stop protesting, behave like an adult.
As much as I am enjoying the monumental meltdown of the left, it is getting sad now and I am starting to feel very sorry for you.
Georgia Says Someone in U.S. Government Tried to Hack State's Computers Housing Voter Data123Akava , 10 Dec 2016 02:1What a sad bunch of clowns. But the time is ripe. You and your sort are done Obama, Hillary Clinton, Juncker, Merkel, Hollande, Mogherini, Kerry, Tusk, Nuland, Albright, Breedlove, SaManThe Power and the rest of the reptiles. With all respect - mwuahahaha! - you will soon sink into the darkness of the darkest places of history, but you won't be forgotten, no you won't!poppetmaster , 10 Dec 2016 02:0The Democrats still don't understand that the problem in American politics is everything that happened BEFORE election day.CarlHansen , 10 Dec 2016 02:0How can you worry about the ballot boxes when the entire process from beginning to end is utterly corrupt.
As for the Podesta email. John Podesta was so stupid that he gave out his password in a simple email scam that any 8 year old kid could have conducted. I wouldn't be surprised if Assange did it himself. Assange will be celebrating at the demise of Hillary.phobeophobe , 10 Dec 2016 02:0Guys! Your side lost the election. Get over it & stop looking for excuses.Nataliefreeman , 10 Dec 2016 01:5I don't think it was the Russians, it was just a lot of people got sick of being told what to think & how to behave by your side of politics.
It is because people who disagree with you are either ignored, shut-down or called names with weaponised words such as "racist, bigot, xenophobe, homophobe, islamophobe, you name it. You go out onto the streets chanting mindless slogans aimed at shutting down debate. You have infiltrated academia and no journalism graduate comes out of a western univerity without a 60 degree lean to the left. People of alternative views to what is now the dominant social paradigm are not permitted to speak at universities. Once they were the vanguard of dangerous ideas. Now they are just sheep pens.
You have infiltrated the mainstream media so of course people need to go to Info Wars, Breitbart & Project Veritas to get the other side to your one-sided argument.
Your side of politics has regulated the very words we speak so that we can't even express a thought anymore without being chanted down, or shut down, prosecuted or sued.
There was once a time when it was the left who spoke up for freedom of speech. It was the left who demanded that a man be judged by the content of his character & not the color of his skin & it was once the right who used to be worried about the Russians taking over our institutions.
Have a look at yourselves. Look at what you've become. You've stopped being the guardians of freedom & now you have become the very anti-freedom totalitarians you thought you were campaigning against.
Bleating about the "popular vote" doesn't cut it either. That's like saying, the other side scored more goals than us but we had possession of the ball more times. It is sad for you but it is irrelevant.
Trump won the election! Get over it!
Let's see what sort of job he does before deciding what to do next.
News flash for all the obamabots:DanielDee , 10 Dec 2016 01:3In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table modifications aren't logged, so this would not be detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The U.S. even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious, it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They are 100% untraceable.
Joe Biden unwittingly gave the game up when he spoke to the press with indignation of the Russian hacks. The US would respond in kind with a covert cyber operation run by the CIA First of all it would be the NSA, not the CIA Secondly, it's not covert when you tell the press! Oh Joe, you really let the Obama administration down with that gaffe! Who would believe them now? A lot of people it would seem. Mainly those still reeling from an election they were so vested infedback , 10 Dec 2016 01:2Unfortunately our media has lost all credibility.GuyCybershy -> fedback , 10 Dec 2016 01:2
For years we were told it was necessary to remove the dictator Assad in Syria. The result, a country destroyed, migrant crisis that fuelled Brexit and brought EU to its knees.
Now they are going to sell the 'foreign entities decided the US election'.
It's just a sad situationSyria has been destroyed because Western client states in the Middle East wanted this to happen. Assad had a reasonably successful secular government and our medieval gulf state allies felt. threatened by his regime. there was the little business of a pipeline, but of course that would be called a "conspiracy theory".SomersetApples , 10 Dec 2016 01:1If Obama has resources to spend on investigations, he should be investigating why the US is providing guided missiles to the terrorist in Syria. We had such great hopes for him, and he has proved to be totally useless as a president. Rather than giving us leadership and guidance he is looking under his bed for spooks. Just another example of his incompetence at a time when we needed leadership.ID3053875 , 10 Dec 2016 01:0Looking for proof of espionage will be like trying to prove a negative and only result in a possible or at best a likely type of result for no purpose. It would just be another case of an unsupported accusation being thrown about.
Facing up to the question of who is supplying weapons to terrorist would require the courage to take on the Military Industrial Complex and he hasn't got it. Trump will be different.
If the russians did interfere in the USA elections perhaps is a bit of poetic justice.nbk46zh , 10 Dec 2016 01:0
The USA has interfere in Latin America for over hundred years and they have given us Batista, Somoza, Trujillo, Noriega, Pinochet, Duvaliers , military juntas in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Streener in Paraguay to name a few. They all were narcissists, racists and insecure. The american people love this type of leader now they got him in the white house may be from Russia with love. Empires get destroyed from within, look at Little Britain now, maybe the same will happen soon in the USA.
Viva China , is far from Latin AmericaSo if the US managed to somehow get rid of Russia and China, what would they do then? How would it justify hundreds of billions in defense spending? Just remember, the US military industry desperately needs an external enemy to exist. Without it, there is no industry.ID5151903 , 10 Dec 2016 01:0No I disagree. I don't think it was a conpriscy. It was just decades of misinformation, lies, usually perpertrated by our esteemed foreign minister. The man is a buffoon , liar and incompetent. It is quite amusing to see how inept, Incompotent and totally unsuited this man child is to public office.PullingTheStrings , 10 Dec 2016 01:0Good to see alot of Americans on here back into Mccarthyism/Paranoia/scapegoating/Witch hunting/Propaganda.smellycat , 10 Dec 2016 01:0Clinton's 'Russia did it' cop-outprairdog , 10 Dec 2016 00:4
https://off-guardian.org/2016/12/09/clintons-russia-did-it-cop-out /Why should we trust US intelligence which is essentially US propaganda?DanielDee , 10 Dec 2016 00:3Another red herring that smacks of desperation. The final death throes of a failed administration. These carefully chosen words reveal a lot. The email leaks were "consistent with the methods and motivations" of Russian hackers. In layman's terms its the equivalent of saying "we haven't got a clue who it was but it's the kind of thing they would probably do". Don't expect a smoking gun because it doesn't exist, otherwise we would have known about it by now.PostTrotskyite -> DanielDee , 10 Dec 2016 00:3It's not just the US who has accused Putin of meddling in their domestic affairs. Germany and the UK have made the same allegations. Are they wrong too?DanielDee -> PostTrotskyite , 10 Dec 2016 00:5I think anyone with reasonable intelligence would take each accusation on a case by case basis. There is no doubt that Russia conducts cyber operations, as the US and UK and Germany does. There is also little doubt that significant Russophobia exists, particularly since the failed foreign attempt of regime change in Syria that was thwarted by Russia. On that last point many citizens of the West are coming to the realisation that a secular government in Syria is preferable to one run by jihadists installing crude sharia law (Libya was certainly a lesson). Furthermore, if Hillary Clinton had succeeded one dreads to think of the consequences of her no-fly-zone plans. Thankfully she didn't succeed, no doubt in part to wikileaks revelations, who for the record stated that did not result from Russian hackssejong , 10 Dec 2016 00:2Fake News is mass gaslighting, removing any sense of what is real. Biggest psy-op ever.gondwanaboy , 10 Dec 2016 00:1Barack Obama orders 'full review' of possible Russian hacking in US electionJCDavis -> gondwanaboy , 10 Dec 2016 00:2
FAKE NEWS ALERTThey already stated their conclusions, now they have to find evidence.Yodasyodel , 9 Dec 2016 23:5Hows the election recount going? You know the one this paper kept going on about a few weeks ago in Wisconsin that was supposed to be motivated by "Russian Hacking" in the election? Not very well but you have gone quiet. Also I see the Washington Post has been forced to backtrack for implying news outlets like Breitbart are Russian controlled on the advice of their own lawyers....after all calling someone a Russian agent without a shred of evidence is seriously libellous and they know it. Russian agents to blame yeah ok Obama no doubt the Easter Bunny will be next in your sights you fraud.Wilderloo , 9 Dec 2016 23:5Look no further than Hillarys private server. Classified information sent and received and Obam was part of it. Obama is a liar and a fraud who is now blaming the Russians for crooked Hillarys loss.SUNLITE , 9 Dec 2016 23:5Feed the flames of the war mongers that want Russia and Putin to be our bogeyman.Feed the military industrial complex more billions.The U.S. Defense budget is already 10 times that of Russia ,feed NATO already on Russia's boarder with tanks ,troops and heavy weapons.i did expect more from this pres,... The lies ,mis information and propaganda has worked so well since the end of WW2,upon a public who has been fed those lies {and is to busy with sports ,gadgets,games, alcohol and other drugs }for 70 yrs by a compliant,for profit lap dog media more interested in producing infotainment and profits than supplying information..If you don't think the "public" isn't very poorly informed and will believe anything ,..just look at who the next prez will be..GuyCybershy -> SUNLITE , 10 Dec 2016 00:0I don't think it's true that Trump voters were less informed than Clinton voters. The public knows that they all lie, they simply choose the one who's lies most appeal to them.Alexander Bach , 9 Dec 2016 23:5Did he also order to investigate the Clinton's deeds revealed by the 'hackers'?fedback , 9 Dec 2016 23:3Unfortunately Obama is not leaving office with dignity.USApatriot12 , 9 Dec 2016 23:3
This action is another attempt to delegitimize the election of Trump. We already have the recount farce going on.
If Republicans had tried to delegitimize the election of Obama we know what the reaction from media would have been. An outcry against antidemocratic and racist behaviourThe corporate media is so predictable at this point. The news cranks up the anti-Russia hysteria while the guys over in entertainment roll out a slick fantasy about anti-Nazi resistance. It all adds up to a big steaming pile of crap but you hope it will push enough buttons to keep the citizens chained to their their desks for another quarter. Don't bet on it. As a great American said at another time of upheaval, you can't fool everyone forever...GuyCybershy -> USApatriot12 , 9 Dec 2016 23:3We're supposed to condemn "white nationalism" in The US and UK while supporting it in Ukraine.GeeDeeSea -> GuyCybershy , 9 Dec 2016 23:4That's not all. We in US and UK are supposed to condemn jihadists in Iraq while supporting them Syria.James7 -> Eddy Cannella , 9 Dec 2016 23:2Hillary? Although I would lean to more "Grey."raymondffoulkes , 9 Dec 2016 23:1Kremlin Connection? The TRUTH About Hillary's Shady Ties To Russia REVEALED
Find out why insiders say Clinton has some explaining to do.Americans have no idea just how closely Hillary Clinton is tied to the Kremlin! That's the shocking claim of a new report that alleges the Democratic nominee is secretly pals with Vladimir Putin and his countrymen.
Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, has published a report that claims that that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was on the executive board of a foreign company that received $35 million from the Kremlin. "The company was a transparent Russian front, and how much Podesta was compensated - and for what - is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position on that board to the Federal government, as required by law," John Schindler of the Observer wrote.
As Radar previously reported, when Clinton was secretary of state, she profited from the "Russian Reset," a failed attempt to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.
chweizer wrote, "Many of the key figures in the Skolkovo process - on both the Russian and U.S. sides - had major financial ties to the Clintons. During the Russian reset, these figures and entities provided the Clintons with tens of millions of dollars, including contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies with deep Clinton ties." Schweizer also details "Skolkovo," a Silicon Valley-like campus that both the U.S. and Russia worked on for developing biomed, space, nuclear and IT technologies. He told the New York Post that there was a "pattern that shows a high percentage of participants in Skolkovo who happen to be Clinton Foundation donors."So it's anti-Russia propaganda today again, all over the Guardian as well as everywhere else.smellycat -> raymondffoulkes , 9 Dec 2016 23:2I daresay they have a few things (perhaps a tad more important than football and athletics) to say about us as well..
Sour grapes at the liberation of Aleppo and their loss of face.nbk46zh , 9 Dec 2016 23:1
I'm surprised they haven't started asking about the missing 250K civilians,who must even now be languishing in Assad's dungeons.
Keeping that one for tomorrow probably.When Cheney used the terror alert levels to keep the US population in the constant state of fear, the Democrats denounced it as fear mongering. Now they're embracing the same tactics in the constant demonization of Russia. Look, it's raining today! Russia must be trying to control the weather in the US! Get them! Utterly ridiculous.stegordon21 , 9 Dec 2016 23:0The US has been the most bloodthirsty, aggressive nation in my lifetime. Where the US goes we obediently follow. Yet as Obama (7 countries he's bombed in his presidency, not bad for a Nobel Prize Winner) continues to circle Russia with NATO on their borders. We're continually spun headline news that Russia is the aggressor and is continually meddling in foreign affairs. We are the aggressors, we are the danger to ourselves and it's we who are run by megalomaniac elites who pump us full of fear and propaganda.nbk46zh , 9 Dec 2016 23:0Malicious cyberactivity... has no place in international community... No? When West does it, then it's for democratic purposes? But invading countries on a humanitarian pretense does? So Democrats are still looking to blame Russia for everything not going their way I see. This rhetoric didn't work for Clinton in the election and it won't now. Stop with this nonsenseGuyCybershy -> nbk46zh , 9 Dec 2016 23:1There wasn't a lot of outrage about the use of the "stuxnet" virus against Iran. You see, when we do it is always for a good cause.Paulare , 9 Dec 2016 22:5Take the long view folks.DexDex , 9 Dec 2016 22:5The Egyptian Empire lasted millenum,
The Greek and Roman Empires a thousand years, give or take.
The Holy Roman Empire centuries.
The British and French circa 200 years.
The USSR about 70, the USA 70 and countingThis is just the cyclical death throes of empires played out at ever increasing speed before our very eyes.
5 articles abut Russia, again. This is the Russia interference in the Guardian. Putin must be stopped.Earl_Grey -> DexDex , 9 Dec 2016 23:0NATO has bought a subscription to the GuardianTonyBlunt , 9 Dec 2016 22:5Is all this hoohaa the BBC and the Guardian trying to get some revenge for the Russian liberating East Aleppo?TheIPAResistance , 9 Dec 2016 22:5This is exactly why we should never move to electronic voting. Can you imagine the lengths the IPA would go to ensure their men security the power they need to roll out their neoliberal agenda? As a tax-free right wing think tank composed of rich like Rinehart, Murdoch, Forrest, et al. the sky's the limit.Anthony1152 , 9 Dec 2016 22:4The five stages of dealing with psychological trauma: Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Hillary and the Democrats are still at stage one and two. Obama is only beginning stage one as events dawn on him.TheCharacteristicEquation 9 Dec 2016 22:4I really do feel the established media and its elite hierarchy are vexed by both the Trump victory and Brexit here in the UK. Now the media attention turns to a report on another of its perpetual campaigns, namely Russia, and corruption in sport.dallasdunlap , 9 Dec 2016 22:3I'm not going to doubt the 'findings', but I know humans are corrupt ALL over the world, but it does strike me that no Western outlet, ever prints anything positive about Russia. I mean - nothing, zero!
If, indeed, the Russian government gathered the DNC and Podesta info released by Wikileaks, the Russians did the American people a favor by pulling back the curtain on behind the scenes scheming by Clinton campaign potentates.GuyCybershy -> dallasdunlap , 9 Dec 2016 22:4
Of course, I don't believe the Democratic claim that Clinton lost the election because of the Russians and the FBI.Podesta's password was "p@ssword". Inexcusable carelessness.smellycat , 9 Dec 2016 22:3Nothing wrong with a bit of regime change now and then, so we've been told. No good crying when the Russians do it to you.sammy3110 , 9 Dec 2016 22:3It's instructive to see the Guardian drag up Reagan's "Evil Empire" spiel, but only after Hillary lost.GeeDeeSea , 9 Dec 2016 22:3US backed a coup, or set up a coup, to overthrow the democratically elected government in Ukraine which led to war. Putin's payback seems fully justified.theenko -> GeeDeeSea , 9 Dec 2016 22:4sweet fucking jesusGeeDeeSea -> theenko , 9 Dec 2016 22:4Yanukovych is a disgrace to Ukrainian's everywhere and a traitor to his country. Fucking Putin puppet should be in jail.
sweet fucking jesusEarl_Grey , 9 Dec 2016 22:3Porshenko is a disgrace to Ukrainian's everywhere and a traitor to his country. Fucking Obama puppet should be in jail.
Oh my, a foreign country may have had a tiny influence on a US Election.bcnteacher , 9 Dec 2016 22:3How about investigating the overthrow of the Democratically elected Govt in Ukraine, or the influence the US has had on the Syrian Govt, or even in Australia, where the Chinese Govt donates massive amounts of money to Political Parties (note, there's no link of course between Chinese Govt donations and Chinese Companies being able to buy most of Australia and employ Chinese Nationals in Australia on Chinese conditions and 500,000 Chinese Nationals being able to buy Real Estate in Sydney alone... none whatsoever).
Good call! Something is fishy about the US electoral system.COReilly , 9 Dec 2016 22:2I'm not a policy or think tank wonk, but isn't Russia just a euphemism for China. Aren't their geopolitical interests linked. You just say Russia because China has us by the financial balls (I'm sure the Guardian would prefer to NOT be censored on the mainland) right? Package it that way and I'm on board. My love of Dostoevsky goes out the window. Albeit I still think Demons one of the best novels ever written. Woke me up.fedback , 9 Dec 2016 22:1Survivor of Bosnian sniper fire Hillary Clinton decries fake news in speech yesterdayAaron Aarons , 9 Dec 2016 22:1I'm all in favor of delegitimizing the incoming semi-fascist Trump/Pence regime, and find Obama's talk of a smooth transition disgusting. However, I reject the appeal to Russophobia or other Xenophobia.Sund Fornuft , 9 Dec 2016 22:1BTW, Obama and his collaborators like Diane Feinstein have done a lot to prepare the legal basis for fascistic repression under the new POtuS.
I already know what the comission will find. They will find evidences that Iraq holds vast ammonúnt of weapons of mass destruction! Oh wait, that was already used.kalander , 9 Dec 2016 22:0Obama has been as useless as his predecessor young Bush. His policies generally are in tatters and the US neo cons evil fantasy of full spectrum dominance has met its death in Syria. Bravo.ShoppingKingLouie , 9 Dec 2016 22:0The neoliberal corporate machine is wounded but not dead. They will use every trick, ploy and opportunity to try to regain power.fedback , 9 Dec 2016 21:5The fight goes on.
After an election cycle with proven collusion between the DNC/Hillary Clinton campaign and our media, our media has the nerve to come up with the term 'fake news'.John Urquhart , 9 Dec 2016 21:5
Hypocrisy at its finestNobody does paranoia like the yanks. To the rest of the world, the unedifying spectacle of the world's biggest bullies, snoops, warmongers, liars and hypocrites complaining about how unfair life is, is pretty nauseating. Most of America's problems are home-grown.ShoppingKingLouie , 9 Dec 2016 21:5Why fake the news when you can just strong the media companies into muzzling their criticism?mjp3470 , 9 Dec 2016 21:5http://nypost.com/2016/12/09/mika-brzezinski-says-clinton-camp-tried-to-pull-her-off-the-air /
And the final report will conclude with something along the lines of:garenmel -> mjp3470 , 9 Dec 2016 22:2
'After a thorough, exhaustive investigation of all relevant evidence concerning the potential of foreign interference in the United States electoral process, the results of the investigation have shown that, although there remain troubling questions about the integrity of U.S. cyber-security which should prompt immediate Congressional review, there has been uncovered no conclusive evidence to support the conjecture that cyber attacks originating with any foreign actor, state or individual had any significant effect on the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, and that there is no cause or justification for the American People to question the fairness of or lose faith in the electoral process and laid out by and carried out according to the Constitution.'
I do Holiday cards too.My hat off to you sir/madam. This was great!Powerspike , 9 Dec 2016 21:5Georgia's Secretary of State is accusing someone at the Department of Homeland Security of illegally trying to hack its computer network, including the voter registration database.feliciafarrel , 9 Dec 2016 21:5
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, copied to the full Georgia congressional delegation, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp alleges that a computer with a DHS internet address attempted to breach its systems.
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/309530-state-of-georgia-allegedly-accusing-homeland-security-of-attempted-hackWake up and smell the BS, the hacking is being done by people a lot nearer home.....
Oh dear, the GOP seem to have forgotten what they were saying about Putin and the Kremlin a short while back:Russian Troll (Number 254) 9 Dec 2016 21:5The continuing erosion of personal liberty and fundamental rights under the current officials in the Kremlin. Repressive at home and reckless abroad, their policies imperil the nations which regained their self-determination upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. We will meet the return of Russian belligerence with the same resolve that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. We will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine, Georgia, or elsewhere, and will use all appropriate constitutional measures to bring to justice the practitioners of aggression and assassination.
https://www.gop.com/platform/american-exceptionalism/
Are they going to conveniently forget all decency and morality? Is the white supremacist agenda in the GOP finally in the ascendant?
I as a Russian Troll do not like this investigation and will do or say anything in order to change your mind. Putin is not a problem, the EU is.Powerspike , 9 Dec 2016 21:4..... prohibiting "fake" or "false" news would be a cure worse than the disease, i.e., censorship by other means. The government cannot be trusted with distinguishing fake from genuine news because it has ulterior motives. News the government dislikes would be conflated with fakery, and news the government approved would be conflated with truthfulness. Private businesses like Facebook cannot be trusted with distinguishing fake from genuine news because its overriding mission is to make money and to win popularity, not to spread truth. It would suppress news that risked injury to its reputation or profits but leave news that did the opposite undisturbed.GuyCybershy , 9 Dec 2016 21:4
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/5/reflections-fake-news /"The Anonymous Blacklist Promoted by the Washington Post Has Apparent Ties to Ukrainian Fascism and CIA Spying".GuyCybershy , 9 Dec 2016 21:3Clinton lost even though she outspent Trump two to one. She was just a lousy candidate who ran a terrible campaign.fimbulvinter -> GuyCybershy , 9 Dec 2016 21:4Uh excuse me but that sort of introspection doesn't fly. She was flawless and the blame rests solely on Russia/alt-right/Sanders/Third Parties/Racism/Misogyny/Alignment of the stars/etc/etcemilyadam , 9 Dec 2016 21:3I thnk the idea that russia has world domination is quite laughable, what else they gonna be blamed for next, reduction of giraffe population!LolJim Moodie , 9 Dec 2016 21:3
I think a teeny wee paranoia is setting in, or outright deliberate propaganda, too obviousIs this worse than when the two CIA operatives were caught searching through files in the Offices of the British Labour Party about thirty years ago. What goes around comes around.freeandfair -> Jim Moodie , 9 Dec 2016 21:3The CIA hacks have been destabalisuping Government for a at least seventy years.
One thing is pretty obvious paper ballots and a different ballot for each is much harder to rig.
It is ironic it takes a despot life key Trump to bring the issue to a head AFTER unexpectedly won.
"Is this worse than when the two CIA operatives were caught searching through files in the Offices of the British Labour Party about thirty years ago. What goes around comes around."guest88888 , 9 Dec 2016 21:3The CIA were caught hacking into the US Congressional computers just 6 or so months ago. Nothing came out of it.
Texas_Sotol , 9 Dec 2016 21:3possible Russian hacking in US election
Based on the fact that the US 2000 (and possibly 2004) election was outright stolen by George Bush Jr., perhaps the propagandists in the White House and media ought to be looking for a "Russian connection" in regards to our illustrious former president.
I'm shocked--shocked--to hear that our close Russian allies have done anything to influence and undermine the stability of other countries. Preposterous accusation! And to try to become huge winners in the Western Hemisphere, by cheating? Vitriolic nonsense!Fencewalker -> Bluebird101 , 9 Dec 2016 21:4Many posters here actually believe that Good Old Russia should just stick with what they do best. That's poison!
Rather like the Litvenenko inquiry...full of maybe's and possibilities, with not a shred of hard, factual proof shown - demonstrating that the order came from the Kremlin.Informed17 , 9 Dec 2016 21:3
It's just a total accident that Putin's most vocal opponents keep getting shot in the head, gunned down on bridges, suffering 'accidents' or strange miscarriages of (sometimes post-mortem) 'justice' and fall victim to radiological state-enacted terrorism in foreign countries. No pattern there, whatsoever.I am at a loss. On the one hand, I hear about Russian economy in tatters, gas station posing as a country, deep crisis, economy the size of Italy, rusty old military toys, aircraft carrier smoking out the whole Northern hemisphere, etc. On the other hand, I hear about Russian threat all the time, which must be countered by massive build up of the US and EU military, Russia successfully interfering in the elections in the beacon of democracy, the US, with 20 times greater economy, with powerful allies, the best armed forces in the world, etc. Are we talking about two different Russias, or is this schizophrenia, pure and simple?jamese07uk -> Informed17 , 9 Dec 2016 21:3It's always easy to find reasons to fear something, added to that the psychology of the unknown, and we have the makings of very powerful propaganda. Whatever Russia's level of corruption, and general society, I feel I cannot trust the Western media anymore 100%. There seems to be a equally sinister hidden agenda deep within Western Elites - accessing Russia's land, political and potential wealthly resources must surely be one of them!? The longterm Western agenda/mission?spiridonovich , 9 Dec 2016 21:1The Democratic Party's problem is Russia, which the President is rightly putting front and center. All Russians are the summit of eviality, and must be endlessly scapegoated in order for Democrats to regain power for the nation's greater good.ImmortalTao , 9 Dec 2016 21:1Democrats' problems have nothing to do with corruption, glaring conflicts of interest, favoritism, ass-licking editors, crappy data, lacking enthusiasm, and horribly poor judgement.
None of these issues need to be publicly addressed, being of no consequence to independent voters, and the President, Guardian, et al. must continue their silent -- and "independent" -- vigil on such silly topics, if Democrats are to have any hope of cultivating enough mindless, enraged, and abandoned sheep to bring them future victories.
I admire Trump, Putin & Farage. Don't agree with them but I have admiration for them. They show all the cunning, calculating, resourcefulness that put the European race on top. Liberals don't like that and want to see the own people fall to the bottom. Thankfuly the neoliberal elite are finishedmMJMaguire , 9 Dec 2016 21:1Absurd nonsense - the third anti-Russian story of the day. Very little of this has much traction because of the sheer volume of misinformation coming out about Russia. there are very good cogent reasons why the Democrats lost the US election - none of them have anything to do with Russia.slats7 , 9 Dec 2016 21:0another pathetic attempt to delegitimize Trump. wanna know why he won? look in the mirror, Barry.oldsunshine -> slats7 , 9 Dec 2016 21:2Will Obama see Clinton if he looks in the mirror??Bluejil , 9 Dec 2016 21:0I can't see a thing wrong with reviewing the last three election cycles, if there is any doubt at all and to put speculation to bed, it should be done.CurtBrown -> Bluejil , 9 Dec 2016 21:1Why stop at the last three?Karl Marks -> CurtBrown , 9 Dec 2016 21:4Because the US is more concerned about money than democratic integrity.dicksonator , 9 Dec 2016 21:0So the US intelligence servies aren't doing similar operations?gray2016 , 9 Dec 2016 21:0If they werent, heads would roll as they have a considerable budget. Did we learn nothing from Edward Snowden? Are Russia just better at this? I doubt it.
I think both sides conduct themselves in a despicable manner so please dont call me a Putin apologist. Well, feel free actually, I could'nt care less.
yeCarumba -> gray2016 , 9 Dec 2016 21:0Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election
US interference:
COUNTRY OR STATE Dates of intervention Comments
VIETNAM l960-75 Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; one million killed in longest U.S. war; atomic bomb threats in l968 and l969.
CUBA l961 CIA-directed exile invasion fails.
GERMANY l961 Alert during Berlin Wall crisis.
LAOS 1962 Military buildup during guerrilla war.
142 more rowsShall I go on with anoter 142? US lying scumbags
the vietnam fiasco alone is enough to disqualify america from any criticism about interference in internal affairsKitKnightly , 9 Dec 2016 20:5
they practically destroyed the countryThe pathetic way the media are pushing this big-bad-Russians meme is a little depressing.freeandfair -> KitKnightly , 9 Dec 2016 21:3This "hack" is totally fictional, the wikileaks e-mails were almost certainly that...leaks. As most o their output has been over the years. For 95% of the Wikileaks existence there have been absolutely zero connections with "the Kremlin", in fact they have leaked stuff damaging to Russia before now.
The Russian's did not hack the DNC, or rig the election, this is yet another example of the political establishment hysterically pointing fingers and making up lies when their chosen side loses an election.
I remember how North Korea was blamed for Sony hack. I think they were even cut from the internet for a day and there was all this talk of punishing them. And then later it came out that very likely wasn't North Korea. Only the news cycle already moved on and nobody cared.mismeasure , 9 Dec 2016 20:5Traditionally, the best Cold Warriors have been right-wing liberals. In the absence of policies that concretely benefit the people they engage in threat inflation and demagoguery.SergeyL , 9 Dec 2016 20:4In 90s US set all figures in Russia - from president to news program anchor. Elections of 96 were ripped by American "advisors" so that Eltsyn with 3% rating "won" them. It's payback time.Shaemus Gruagain , 9 Dec 2016 20:4Oh how wonderful it is to watch them smart and the bonus? no more Obamas.uest88888 -> PeteCW , 9 Dec 2016 21:3And yet the so-called "Russian trolls" (which is apparently anyone who exercise a modicum of skepticism) seem to be winning here at CiF based on the number of likes per comment, which is likely why the NSA sponsored propagandists and clueless dopes are getting so increasingly shrill.Mattster101 , 9 Dec 2016 20:3If you take a wider view, this is all really about keeping the Dems in the game, trying to undo the Trump validity and give them another go in 4 or so years. Really, seems quite desperate that a man that allowed 270000 wild horses to be sold for horsemeat this year across the border to Mexico, brought HC in to his own cabinet having said 'she will say anything and do nothing', knowing what a nightmare that would make, and is going to watch his healthcare get ripped to shreds, needs more accomplishments in his last year, aka Obama, ergo, let's investigate the evil russians and their female athletes with male DNA ( you would think I am making this stuff up, but I am not ) ... Come on Grandma, where are you when we need you mostnolongersilent , 9 Dec 2016 20:3we must somehow, subvert the despicable populace that elected trump. we must erase from history the conceding of president elect clinton - newpeak from the ministry of truth. we'll get her into the white house if it takes more cash, lies, and corruption. after all, who needs democracy in the democratic party when we have big brother. democracy just confuses the members. we'll send the despicables through the ministry of love to re-educate them, of course, this IS 1984 after all....we will vote for you, the intelligentsia of the left knows what is best for you.eldudeabides , 9 Dec 2016 20:3Should Hillary have been disqualified (and prosecuted) for having access to debate questions beforehand?Nete75 , 9 Dec 2016 20:3"Malicious cyber activity, specifically malicious cyber activity tied to our elections , has no place in the international community. Unfortunately this activity is not new to Moscow. We've seen them do this for years ... The president has made it clear to President Putin that this is unacceptable."Boghaunter , 9 Dec 2016 20:2Note how carefully it specifies that it is cyber activity tied to the american elections that is inappropriate. I presume that is simply to avoid openly saying that mass-surveillance by the US government of everyone's private email, and social network accounts doesn't come under that "no place in the international community" phrase. You know, one does wonder how these people's faces don't come off in shame when whinning about potential interference by foreign governemnts after a full 8 years or so of constant revelations of permanent spying and mass-surveillance by the US government of international leaders and ordinary citizens worldwide.
So the DNC was hacked - so what. Hacking is so common these days as to be expected. A quick perusal of the internet provides some SIGNIFICANT hacks that deserved some consternation:Omoikani , 9 Dec 2016 20:29/4/07 The Chinese government hacked a noncritical Defense Department computer system in June, a Pentagon source told FOX News on Tuesday.
Spring 2011 Foreign hackers broke into the Pentagon computer system this spring and stole 24,000 files - one of the biggest cyber-attacks ever on the U.S. military,
On the 12th of July 2011, Booz Allen Hamilton the largest U.S. military defence contractor admitted that they had just suffered a very serious security breach, at the hands of hacktivist group AntiSec.
5/28/13 The confidential version of a Defense Science Board report compiled earlier this year reportedly says Chinese hackers accessed designs for more than two dozen of the U.S. military's most important and expensive weapon systems.
June 2014 The UK's National Crime Agency has arrested an unnamed young man over allegations that he breached the Department of Defense's network last June.
1/12/15 The Twitter account for U.S. Central Command was suspended Monday after it was hacked by ISIS sympathizers (OK twitter accounts shouldn't be a big deal. Why does US CentCom even HAVE a twitter account???)5/6/15 OPM hack: China blamed for massive breach of US government data
And so the neocon propaganda machine trundles on, churning out this interesting material day after day. The elephant in the room is that if you get hacked you have no knowledge of this until your private stuff is all over the internet, and the chances of finding out who did it are zilch. Everyone in IT security knows this.johhnybgood , 9 Dec 2016 20:1Another "fake news" story. Does anybody with a pulse really believe that Russia hacked the DNC? The US Security Services admitted that it was NOT Russia; the likelihood is that the leaks were provided to Wikileaks by insiders within the US Administration - they wanted to ensure that Hillary did not win. None of the actual revelations were covered by the MSM, and "the Russians did it" was a convenient distraction.Omoikani -> johhnybgood , 9 Dec 2016 20:2All people that on earth do dwell have no clue who hacked the DNC to the amusing end that Podesta's e-mails ended up on the internet, but it suits a dangerous political narrative to demonise Russia until it becomes plain logical to attack them.peterward881 , 9 Dec 2016 20:0YES YES let attack Russia, YES YES YES, Russia Russia we should carry on attacking Russia. We the journalists are well paid by the man from Australia. YES YES we must to carry on attacking Russia and forget the shit happening in other countries. YES YES it is our duty.guest88888 , 9 Dec 2016 20:0Chirographer , 9 Dec 2016 19:5Election hacking: Obama orders 'full review' of Russia interference
And I guess Obama has also ordered the Guardian to do a full court press of anti-Russian propaganda, just judging by the articles pumped out on today's rag alone.
The US government is seemingly attempting the "Big Lie" tactic of Joseph Goebbels and instigating support in the public for war against Russia. By repeating the completely unsubstantiated allegations that Russia has somehow "interfered with the election" they hope, without any genuine basis, to strong arm the public into accepting a further ramping of tensions and starting yet another illegal war for profit.
There's nothing wrong with conducting the investigation, but shouldn't it have been done before accusing Russia?Karega , 9 Dec 2016 19:5And aren't all the people cited in the article political appointees, Democrats or avowed Trump enemies, and then there's closing, " A spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment."
Surely of all the Orders Obama might issue during his last weeks in office, why does he choose to give a stupid Order that effectively makes US some sort of Banana Republic? This man was/is more hype than real! At a stroke of a pen he seriously undermines the integrity of the US Electoral System. Whatever credibility was left has now been eroded by these constant and silly claims that somehow Russians installed Trump as President. Doesn't that make Trump some sort of Russian Agent?alexfoxy28 , 9 Dec 2016 19:5
Meanwhile MSM keeps on streaming some fake news and theories and then Obama Orders US intelligence to dig deeper. This is lunacy!Obama certainly understands that Russia is not the reason why Trump was elected. However, he wants to create new obstacles on the way of normalization of relations between the US and Russia and make it more difficult for Trump.Ginen , 9 Dec 2016 19:5However, Trump is not a weak man, not a skinny worm; and he can hit these opponents back so hard that international court for them (for invasions into sovereign countries) will lead to their life sentences.
Only two weeks ago the Obama Administration publicly stated there was no evidence of cybersecurity breaches affecting the electoral process, as reported in the NYT :imperfetto , 9 Dec 2016 19:5Was Obama lying then or is he lying now?The administration, in its statement, confirmed reports from the Department of Homeland Security and intelligence officials that they did not see "any increased level of malicious cyberactivity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election Day."
The administration said it remained "confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out." It added: "As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective."
Is there any limit to the ridicolous, Mr. Obama? what is this? a tragicomic play of the inept?brothersgrimm , 9 Dec 2016 19:3
Here we are with the most childish fabrication that it must be the Russians' fault if Trump won the election. I'll be laughing for an entire cosmic era! And all this after US publically announced that they were going to launch a devastating acher attack against the badies: the Russians, which of course didn't work out. Come on, this is more comedy that a serious play.What probably is going on, the readers can gather by having a look at the numberless articles that are being published by maistream media against the Russians.
Why this histeric insurgence of Russofobia? Couldn't it be that it is intolerable for the US and their allies to see the Russians winning in Aleppo, and most of all restoring peace and tollerance among the population returning to their abbandoned homes.I think Hillary, in part, lost the election due to all the fake news being pumped out by the mainstream corporate media, doing her bidding. People are tired of it, along with all the corruption and lies that came to the surface through the likes of Wikileaks.RoachAmerican , 9 Dec 2016 19:3
Trump is a terrible alternative, but the only alternative people were given, so many went with it.
Now we see fake news making out the Russians to be the bad guys again, pumping out story after story, trying to propagandize the population into sucking up these new memes. Russia has its problems, and will always act in its own self-interest, but it's nothing compared to the tactics the US uses, bullying countries around the world to pander to its own will, desperately trying to maintain its Empire.Examine something real, Nuclear Hillary. It must be time for Spring Planting??Joelbanks , 9 Dec 2016 19:3
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/23/us/clinton-foundation-donations-uranium-investors.html?_r=0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syEjkPyqRew
Minutes 20 to 25
Uranium One Wyoming
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.htmlhttp://www.npr.org/2015/04/23/401781313/clinton-foundation-linked-to-russian-effort-to-buy-uranium-company
https://youtu.be/jkfE10g8xbc
at 25 minutes et seq
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfE10g8xbc&feature=youtu.be
Below, first paragraphs are the most important
http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/five-questions-about-the-clintons-and-a-uranium-companyThe 1 2 3 Step of Acquisition of Uranium One
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-clintons-putin-and-uranium-2015-4Going Private Part Public Company Disappears
http://www.wise-uranium.org/ucscr.htmlhttp://www.pravdareport.com/russia/economics/22-01-2013/123551-russia_nuclear_energy-0 /
Coward Comey needs to go.The scripture tells us those who live by the sword will perish by it.hardlyeverclever , 9 Dec 2016 19:3America was in the interference of other countries' elections before its ugly 2016 presidential election. Remember Ukraine and Secretary Hillary Clinton's employee Victoria F****the EU Nuland in Ukraine. Now we have the makings of some kind of conflict with Russia over its alleged meddling in America's elections. More global tension= More cash flowing into the US equity market, money printing by another means.
I'd be surprised if the Russians weren't trying to affect the outcome of the election. The Brits had a debate in Parliament on Trump, Obama made threats to the UK on the Brexit vote, so who knows what we're all doing in each others elections behind closed doors while we are clear to do so publically.alexfoxy28 , 9 Dec 2016 19:3The MSM's absolute refusal to address the leaks in a meaningful way (other than the stuff about recipes) suggests to be no one felt it a big deal at the time.
Obama could realise that Hillary's viewes on Putin and Russia did not help her at all. People are not that stupid, they see well, use own brains and not so easily impressed by whatever CNN says to them.Alun Jones , 9 Dec 2016 19:2John McAfee said that any organization sophisticated enough to do these hacks is also sophisticated enough to make it look as though any country they want did it. So it could have been anyone.palindrome , 9 Dec 2016 19:2Obama earlier this year: Russia is not a world power, only a regional power.diddoit , 9 Dec 2016 19:2Obama now: Russia has the power to manipulate the USA election.
Which one is it then?
Of course it's all bull...Obama is another establishment puppet who cannot accept that people have figured out their modus operandi.
It's reported today on Ars Technica : ThyssenKrupp suffered a "professional attack"alexfoxy28 , 9 Dec 2016 19:2The steelmaker, which makes military subs, says it was targeted from south-east Asia.
..the design of its plants were penetrated by a "massive," coordinated attack which made off with an unknown amount of "technological know-how and research."
The internet and precious information...
Neoliberals are just desperately losing ideological competition at home and abroad. They cannot convince people that they are right because it's not what's going on.alexfoxy28 -> imipak , 9 Dec 2016 21:0It does not matter what some others say, it's what really goes on matters.
But there is innate, basic self-interest in all people (that does not depend on education, ethnicity, race) and people know it instinctively well. They will not go against it even if all around will tell otherwise.alexfoxy28 -> alexfoxy28 , 9 Dec 2016 21:1 0 1
The fake news channel brought to you by Obama and co.p.s. I mean that people cannot be manipulated by others at this basic level when some higher level manipulative tools are used.Kasem3000 , 9 Dec 2016 19:1I love how this has now become solid fact. No confirmation, nothing official but it is no common fact that the Russians interfered. How many reports do we hear about US interference with foreign countries infastructure through covert means.ShoppingKingLouie , 9 Dec 2016 19:1https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/08/vladimir-putin-hillary-clinton-russiaShoppingKingLouie , 9 Dec 2016 19:1Meh. Seems like tampering happens all the time. How many elections in South America did the USA fix? How many in the middle east and Africa? I think this "russian's did it" rhetoric is counterproductive as it is stopping Democrats from doing the introspective needed to really understand why HRC lost the election.
How can you on the one hand crusade against "fake news" and on the other promote this:Sutir Comed , 9 Dec 2016 19:0Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot and there was credible evidence that the Russians had rigged the election in favor of the Democrat. The right-wing echo chamber would be having seizures! These people are UTTER HYPOCRITES. And they would obviously rather win with the help of a hostile foreign power than try to preserve the integrity of our elections.MayorHoberMallow , 9 Dec 2016 19:0Russia may or may not have hacked the DNC. I'd like to find out. I hope the DNC aren't enough of doofusses to assume this wouldn't be in the realm of possibility.Timothy Everton , 9 Dec 2016 19:0
I presume that the U.S. has its own group of hackers doing the same Worldwide. This is not a criticism; I would expect the U.S. intelligence community to learn what our rivals, and even some of our friends, are up to.This is getting to be pretty lame. I have doubts that "Russia" could interfere to any great extent with our elections any more than we could with theirs. Sure, individuals or organizations, and more than likely in THIS country, could do so. And they have, as we saw with the DNC and Sanders campaign (and vice versa). Let's not go into an almost inevitable nuclear war over what is quite possibly "fake news".dreylon , 9 Dec 2016 19:0Russia did this, Russia did thatJohnny Kent , 9 Dec 2016 18:5
its getting very boring now, you have lost all credibility
you have cried wolf to many times
stop trying to manipulate usWhen will the Democrats get it? It wasn't the Russians, who are blamed for everything, including the weather, by desperate Western failed leaders, but an unsuitable candidate in Clinton, which lost them the Election. Bernie Sanders would have walked it.Catonaboat , 9 Dec 2016 18:5Well Guardian I do believe you hit a nerve, I don't think I've ever seen a more one sided BTL. Me thinks some people do protest too much.Iaorana , 9 Dec 2016 18:5Regarding the notorious "fuck the EU " on the part of the US "diplomat" Victoria Nuland "the State Department and the White House suggested that an assistant to the deputy prime minister of Russia Dmitry Rogozin was the source of the leak, which he denied " WikiLafcadio1944 , 9 Dec 2016 18:5Good occasion to substantiate the accusation which ,substantiated or not,will remind the "useful idiots" of the "change of regime " US policy and who started the Ukrainian crisis.
Boy, oh boy, fake news is everywhere just read this headline!Mike5000 , 9 Dec 2016 18:5Election hacking: Obama orders 'full review' of Russia interference
Which states as fact there was interference by Russia and that the investigation is to determine how bad it was. NO EVIDENCE WHAT SO EVER has been offered by anyone that Russia interfered in any way. FAKE NEWS!!
Voting machine hacking is a very serious problem but you generally need physical access to a voting machine to hack it. Anyone notice thousands of Russians hanging around in Detriot, Los Angeles, etc election HQs? How about Clinton drones?ShoppingKingLouie , 9 Dec 2016 18:5If the DNC hadn't rigged the primary we'd be celebrating president-elect Bernie. If they hadn't rigged the general Hillary would have lost by a landslide.
We never investigated this tho did we Former President Obama?Powerspike , 9 Dec 2016 18:5https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/08/vladimir-putin-hillary-clinton-russia
Time to put on your big girl pants, accept defeat and leave gracefully.
1000 Russian athletes were doping in the 2012 Olympics - but it's taken until now to realise it?!geofffrey , 9 Dec 2016 18:4
Russia influenced the 2016 US election?!
Russia is presently "influencing" the German elections?!
Russia is killing civilians and destroying hospitals with impunity in Syria?!
etc
Wow! Russia is taking over the world, it must be stopped, can anyone save us? Obama? Trump? NATO?
Look out! Russian armies are massing on the border ready to sweep into Europe.......arrhhh!I love the smell of gibberish in the morning!
***Newsflash***dahsab , 9 Dec 2016 18:4Reads:
"..ex-prime minister Anthony Charles Lynton Blair of the United Kingdom, and Hillary Rodham Clinton of the United States of America, have formally announced a new transatlantic political party to be named: The Neoliberal Elite Party for bitter anti-Brexiters and sore anti-Trumpettes.
Rather rich coming from my country which has interfered in elections around the world for decades. I suppose it's only cheating if the other team does it.Not that they'll find any evidence. Just another chapter in the sad saga of the Democrats unwillingness to admit they ran the worst candidate & the worst campaign in recent memory. It's not our fault! Them dirty Russkies did it!
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Oct 12, 2016 | theduran.com
Binney also proclaimed that the NSA has all of Clinton's deleted emails, and the FBI could gain access to them if they so wished. No need for Trump to ask the Russians for those emails, he can just call on the FBI or NSA to hand them over.Binney referenced testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2011 by then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in which Meuller spoke of the FBI's ability to access various secretive databases "to track down known and suspected terrorists."
Stated Binney: "Now what he (Mueller) is talking about is going into the NSA database, which is shown of course in the (Edward) Snowden material released, which shows a direct access into the NSA database by the FBI and the CIA Which there is no oversight of by the way. So that means that NSA and a number of agencies in the U.S. government also have those emails."
"So if the FBI really wanted them they can go into that database and get them right now," he stated of Clinton's emails as well as DNC emails.
Asked point blank if he believed the NSA has copies of "all" of Clinton's emails, including the deleted correspondence, Binney replied in the affirmative.
"Yes," he responded. "That would be my point. They have them all and the FBI can get them right there."
Binney surmised that the hack of the DNC could have been coordinated by someone inside the U.S. intelligence community angry over Clinton's compromise of national security data with her email use.
And the other point is that Hillary, according to an article published by the Observer in March of this year, has a problem with NSA because she compromised Gamma material. Now that is the most sensitive material at NSA. And so there were a number of NSA officials complaining to the press or to the people who wrote the article that she did that. She lifted the material that was in her emails directly out of Gamma reporting. That is a direct compromise of the most sensitive material at the NSA. So she's got a real problem there. So there are many people who have problems with what she has done in the past. So I don't necessarily look at the Russians as the only one(s) who got into those emails.
The Observer defined the GAMMA classification:
GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was).
Zerohedge has some background on Binney , who is about as rock solid a security analyst as you could get.
Over a year before Edward Snowden shocked the world in the summer of 2013 with revelations that have since changed everything from domestic to foreign US policy but most of all, provided everyone a glimpse into just what the NSA truly does on a daily basis, a former NSA staffer, and now famous whistleblower, William Binney, gave excruciating detail to Wired magazine about all that Snowden would substantiate the following summer.
We covered it in a 2012 post titled " We Are This Far From A Turnkey Totalitarian State" – Big Brother Goes Live September 2013." Not surprisingly, Binney received little attention in 2012 – his suggestions at the time were seen as preposterous and ridiculously conspiratorial. Only after the fact, did it become obvious that he was right. More importantly, in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, what Binney has to say has become gospel.
Binney was an architect of the NSA's surveillance program. He became a famed whistleblower when he resigned on October 31, 2001, after spending more than 30 years with the agency. He referenced testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2011 by then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in which Meuller spoke of the FBI's ability to access various secretive databases "to track down known and suspected terrorists."
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Sep 14, 2016 | September 12, 2016 at 8:58 am
www.nakedcapitalism.comThe story of Chile's popular, and democratic rejection of government by oligarchs is today's must-read, and provides unsettling similarities to current events, most strikingly in my estimation, recently in Venezuela.
The Popular Unity government enjoyed promising successes during its first year in power. Domestic production spiked in 1971, leading to a GDP growth rate of almost 9 percent. Unemployment fell from 7 percent to below 3 percent, and wages increased dramatically, particularly for the lowest earners. Allende's land reform program - along with intensified popular attacks on large, unproductive landholdings - led to near record harvests and a new abundance of food for the poor.
Of course no good deed goes unpunished by oligarchs.
On the other hand, Chilean elites also pursued a more top-down strategy in their effort to bring the economy to its knees. Objecting to government-mandated price controls and export restrictions, powerful business interests took to hoarding consumer essentials, secretly warehousing enormous quantities of basic goods only to let them spoil as avoidable food shortages rocked the nation.
And of course there's the USA's never-ending efforts to spread peace and democracy.
Meanwhile, in Washington, President Nixon was making good on his promise to "make Chile's economy scream." He called for an end to all US assistance to the Allende government, and instructed US officials to use their "predominant position in international financial institutions to dry up the flow" of international credit to Chile.
And finally a sobering reminder, that in the end, if they can't beat you at the polls, they are not above putting and end to you altogether.
Deeply committed to maintaining the legality of the revolutionary process, the UP government sought to slow the pace of radical democratic reforms at the grassroots in a misguided effort to avoid a putsch, or the outbreak of open civil war. In the end, this error proved fatal - an armed popular base, exercising direct control over its communities and workplaces, could have been an invaluable line of defense for the Allende administration, as well as for its broader goal of total societal transformation.
Because, with friends like these ;
When Henry Kissinger began secretly taping all of his phone conversations in 1969, little did he know that he was giving history the gift that keeps on giving. Now, on the 35th anniversary of the September 11, 1973, CIA-backed military coup in Chile, phone transcripts that Kissinger made of his talks with President Nixon and the CIA chief among other top government officials reveal in the most candid of language the imperial mindset of the Nixon administration as it began plotting to overthrow President Salvador Allende, the world's first democratically elected Socialist. "We will not let Chile go down the drain," Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in a phone call following Allende's narrow election on September 4, 1970, according to a recently declassified transcript. "I am with you," Helms responded.
9/11 means different things to different people.
RabidGandhi , September 12, 2016 at 9:26 amJim Haygood , September 12, 2016 at 11:50 amThe comparison with Venezuela is hugely important, especially with regard to the suppliers boycot, where the Venezuelan opposition seem to be directly copying the Chilean playbook. Even so, there is another aspect that should be of greater concern. Chile stands out for its reliance on mining, especially copper. By failing in his bid to diversify the Chilean economy, Allende left his country vulnerable to the fluctuations of the global economy and the whims of first world importers.
If memory serves, in 1973 mining represented around ~25% of the Chilean economy. Venezuela, by contrast, now has 45% of its GDP tied up in oil exports. The only fact that should be surprising, then, is that the Bolivarian governments have lasted as long as they have; perhaps a testament to the sweeping social improvements that have won them a mass-supported bulwark against constant right wing assaults. Even so, with the economy undiversified, that bulwark will only hold out for so long.
Alejandro , September 12, 2016 at 1:36 pmThis phenomenon has been termed the "resource curse." It consists of multiple elements, all bad.
For one, the ability to produce a commodity at the world's lowest price reduces the incentive to diversify one's economy. In an extreme case like Saudi Arabia, even the workers hired to produce the oil are mostly foreign, leaving domestic workers unskilled and idle.
Second, contrary to the belief early in the industrial revolution that commodity prices would be driven up by scarcity, in fact technological improvement has more than counterbalanced scarcity to keep commodity prices flat to down in real terms.
Finally, as every commodity trader knows, the stylized secular chart pattern of any commodity is a sharp spike owing to a shortage, followed by a long (as in decades) bowl produced by excessive capacity brought online in the wake of the shortage.
Governments, not adept at realizing that commodity price spikes are not sustainable, accumulate fixed costs during the boom years and then get crunched in the subsequent price crash.
Watt4Bob , September 12, 2016 at 4:21 pmIs this suppose to explain what happened in Chile in 1973? Catallactics, ushered in AND imposed via a brutal military dictatorship, yet fail to recognize the contradiction in the so-called "effects of violent intervention with the market"
OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , September 12, 2016 at 5:26 pmThis phenomenon has been termed the "resource curse." It consists of multiple elements, all bad.
The curse is mostly the result of having powerful and rapacious neighbors with no compunction but to use whatever means necessary to install a 'friendly' government willing to repress its own people in order to allow the theft of their 'resources'.
For one, the ability to produce a commodity at the world's lowest price reduces the incentive to diversify one's economy.
It was not the people of Chile, who profited by the "ability to produce a commodity at the world's lowest price" and so cannot be blamed for the inability to diversify their economy.
As for Chile's governing elite, they wore the comfortable version of the "copper collar', the one made of money as opposed to chains, and so paid-off, lived in wealth and comfort so long as they kept their countrymen from doing anything that Anaconda copper didn't like.
In an extreme case like Saudi Arabia, even the workers hired to produce the oil are mostly foreign, leaving domestic workers unskilled and idle.
The extreme case of Saudi Arabia is a direct result of the hegemonic tactics just described, install a government 'friendly' to American 'interests' in this case the House of Saud, and make them so fabulously wealthy that there is no questioning their loyalty, until it becomes questionable
Second, contrary to the belief early in the industrial revolution that commodity prices would be driven up by scarcity, in fact technological improvement has more than counterbalanced scarcity to keep commodity prices flat to down in real terms.
Finally, as every commodity trader knows, the stylized secular chart pattern of any commodity is a sharp spike owing to a shortage, followed by a long (as in decades) bowl produced by excessive capacity brought online in the wake of the shortage.
Until finally, after the inevitable effect of monopolistic control of commodity 'markets' and the corrupting influence of corporate power destroy the working man's earning potential, and by extension his purchasing power, and so extinguishes 'demand'.
Governments, not adept at realizing that commodity price spikes are not sustainable, accumulate fixed costs during the boom years and then get crunched in the subsequent price crash.
It was not the Chilean government who concerned themselves with sustainability, as they were paid not to, and the corporations who made all the money didn't give a damn either.
It should be easy to understand the logic, and necessity of voting out the ruling elite who were very good at lining their own pockets, but not so good at planning for their people's well-being.
The Chilean people grew tired of rule by greedy people bought-off by American corporations, and elected a socialist government in an effort to remedy the situation.For their troubles, they were treated to a violent coup with thousands killed, tortured and disappeared.
And finally, it appears that you think this is all the 'natural' operation of 'markets'?
Katniss Everdeen , September 12, 2016 at 9:27 amSuperb stuff, especially "monopolistic control of commodity markets", supply and demand pressures on wheat and oil and copper have mostly faded to insignificance with hyper-leveraged commodities markets and supine (complicit) regulators.
See: oil going to $140 not so many years ago despite building supply and weak demand. Goldman famously decided commodities were an "asset class" in 2003 and completely f*cked up these critical price signals for the world economy.
Jim Haygood , September 12, 2016 at 11:40 am" . an armed popular base, exercising direct control over its communities and workplaces, could have been an invaluable line of defense for the Allende administration, as well as for its broader goal of total societal transformation."
"Those who do not learn history" are condemned to being exploited and controlled by those who do.
MyLessThanPrimeBeef , September 12, 2016 at 5:10 pm'Objecting to government-mandated price controls and export restrictions, powerful business interests took to hoarding consumer essentials.'
Businesses don't exist for the purpose of "hoarding." But if mandated prices are set below cost, of course goods will not be sold at a loss. Blaming the victims instead of the price controllers is like blaming a murder victim for "getting in the way of my bullet."
hunkerdown , September 12, 2016 at 5:36 pmGoods perhaps, but not labor. If mandated prices (for labor) are set below cost, serfs will still sell their labor. For example, any soldier who never came back from Iraq obviously under-priced his labor.
afisher , September 12, 2016 at 12:30 pmBusinesses don't exist for the purpose of "hoarding."
Oh, right, our precious middlemen call it "sequestration" and "arbitrage". There's a million pounds of aluminum in the Mexican desert that calls bullshit on your claim. Any more self-absorbed theology you would like to discuss this fine Monday?
pretzelattack , September 12, 2016 at 1:03 pmThe terrible legacy of the Pinochet years were also done by the "Chicago boys" who were hired to run the government. In their hate of the people and the embrace of neoliberal capitalism, they did something much worse: they changed the Constitution of the country so that undoing all their hateful legislation would be near impossible to override. When you hear of Student Protests in Chile – they are still fighting to undo the terrible legacy.
Sidenote: US has one of the Chicago Boys, entrenched at the Cato Institute.
ProNewerDeal , September 12, 2016 at 5:40 pmyeah the chicago austerity mongers, and kissinger. guess who takes advice from kissinger, and pushes neoliberal economic policies. the democrats used to be opposed to that sort of thing, at least in public.
What was Allende's Socialist party's policies, were they Nordic-style Social Democracy? I still am not sure if there is a meaningful ideological difference between Nordic Social Democracy, & Latin American "Socialism of the 21st Century" in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia.
Norway & Venezuela both have a state-owned oil company, the profits of which are actually used to help their citizens, specifically in education & health funding. Yet the likes of 0bama/Bush43 praise Norway & slam Venezuela.
Allende was even a full White Guy TM like the Nordics, albeit not blond-hair blue eyes like some Nordics. I suspected this was perhaps an important reason the likes of 0bama/Bush43 praises the Nordic nations while labeling the part-Native American &/or Black Venezuelan/Ecuador/Bolivian Presidents as being "Commie" "Dictators".
Perhaps the Nordics have a special secret deal with Murica & the US Imperial MIC: go along with the US Imperial foreign policy, & don't loudly promote your Social Democratic system, to anyone but especially not to nonwhite nations; & in turn we won't falsely slander you as Commie Dictators as we do any other nation attempting Social Democracy.
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Jul 01, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Michael Hudson July 1, 2016 at 3:52 pm
Imagine the SNL parody of Bubba meeting Lynch.
Lynch: How is your granddaughter Chelsea?
Bubba: She's fine. How are your grandkids?
Lynch: They're doing great too.
Bubba: Too bad if anything were to happen to them
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Jul 29, 2016 | www.truthdig.com
Michael Valentine 41 minutes ago
I understand she said something about being a steady hand at the time of reckoning. Funny always thought of the anti Christ would be a man. Does this make me sexist?
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Medium
What the fuck is your problem, America??
I'm Hillary goddamn Clinton. I'm a political prodigy, have been since I was 16. I have an insane network of powerful friends. I'm willing to spend the next eight years catching shit on all sides, all so I can fix this fucking country for you. And all you little bitches need to do is get off your asses one goddamn day in November.
"Oh but what about your eeeemaaaaillls???" Shut the fuck up. Seriously, shut the fuck up and listen for one fucking second...
But you know what? I don't fucking care. If I gave two shits about the haters I would've dropped the game decades ago.
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www.nbcnews.com
Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan's request to block Hillary Clinton from receiving classified intelligence briefings was denied by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Monday.In a letter to Ryan, Clapper wrote that he did "not intend to withhold briefings from any officially nominated, eligible candidate."
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www.huffingtonpost.com
1. According to Comey, Clinton committed multiple federal felonies and misdemeanors. Many people will miss this in the wash of punditry from non-attorneys in the mainstream media that has followed Comey's public remarks and Congressional testimony.The issue for Comey wasn't that Clinton hadn't committed any federal crimes, but that in his personal opinion the federal felony statute Clinton violated (18 U.S.C. 793f) has been too rarely applied for him to feel comfortable applying it to Clinton. This is quite different from saying that no crime was committed; rather, Comey's position is that crimes were committed, but he has decided not to prosecute those crimes because (a) the statute he focused most on has only been used once in the last century (keeping in mind how relatively rare cases like these are in the first instance, and therefore how rarely we would naturally expect a statute like this to apply in any case), and (b) he personally believes that the statute in question might be unconstitutional because, as he put it, it might punish people for crimes they didn't specifically intend to commit (specifically, it requires only a finding of "gross negligence," which Comey conceded he could prove). Comey appears to have taken the extraordinary step of researching the legislative history of this particular criminal statute in order to render this latter assessment.
The reality is that prosecutors don't normally consider the legislative history or possible unconstitutionality of criminal statutes. Why? Because that's not their job. Their job is to apply the laws as written, unless and until they are superseded by new legislation or struck down by the judicial branch. In Comey's case, this deep dive into the history books is even more puzzling as, prior to Attorney General Loretta Lynch unethically having a private meeting with Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac, Comey wasn't even slated to be the final arbiter of whether Clinton was prosecuted or not. He would have been expected, in a case like this, to note to the Department of Justice's career prosecutors that the FBI had found evidence of multiple federal crimes, and then leave it to their prosecutorial discretion as to whether or not to pursue a prosecution. But more broadly, we must note that when Comey gave his public justification for not bringing charges ― a public justification in itself highly unusual, and suggestive of the possibility that Comey knew his inaction was extraordinary, and therefore felt the need to defend himself in equally extraordinary fashion ― he did not state the truth: that Clinton had committed multiple federal crimes per statutes presently on the books, and that the lack of a recommendation for prosecution was based not on the lack of a crime but the lack of prosecutorial will (or, as he might otherwise have put it, the exercise of prosecutorial discretion).
The danger here is that Americans will now believe many untrue things about the executive branch of their government. For instance, watching Comey's testimony one might believe that if the executive branch exercises its prosecutorial discretion and declines to prosecute crimes it determines have been committed, it means no crimes were committed. In fact, what it means (in a case like this) is that crimes were committed but will not be prosecuted. We can say, accurately, that the judgment of the FBI in its investigation into Clinton and her associates ― and Comey confirmed Clinton was indeed a "subject" of the investigation ― is that Clinton is a criminal. She simply shouldn't, in the view of the FBI, be prosecuted for her crimes. Prosecutorial discretion of this sort is relatively common, and indeed should be much more common when it comes to criminal cases involving poor Americans; instead, we find it most commonly in law enforcement's treatment of Americans with substantial personal, financial, sociocultural, and legal resources.
Americans might also wrongly believe, watching Comey's testimony, that it is the job of executive-branch employees to determine which criminal statutes written by the legislative branch will be acknowledged. While one could argue that this task does fall to the head of the prosecuting authority in a given instance ― here, Attorney General Loretta Lynch; had an independent prosecutor been secured in this case, as should have happened, that person, instead ― one could not argue that James Comey's role in this scenario was to decide which on-the-books criminal statutes matter and which don't. Indeed, Comey himself said, during his announcement of the FBI's recommendation, that his role was to refer the case to the DOJ for a "prosecutive decision" ― in other words, the decision on whether to prosecute wasn't his. His job was only to determine whether criminal statutes on the books had been violated.
By this test, Comey didn't just not do the job he set out to do, he wildly and irresponsibly exceeded it, to the point where its original contours were unrecognizable. To be blunt: by obscuring, in his public remarks and advice to the DOJ, the fact that criminal statutes had been violated ― in favor of observing, more broadly, that there should be no prosecution ― he made it not just easy but a fait accompli for the media and workaday Americans to think that not only would no prosecution commence, but that indeed there had been no statutory violations.
Which there were.
Americans might also wrongly take at face value Comey's contention that the felony statute Clinton violated was unconstitutional ― on the grounds that it criminalizes behavior that does not include a specific intent to do wrong. This is, as every attorney knows, laughable. Every single day in America, prosecutors prosecute Americans ― usually but not exclusively poor people ― for crimes whose governing statutes lack the requirement of "specific intent." Ever heard of negligent homicide? That's a statute that doesn't require what lawyers call (depending on the jurisdiction) an "intentional" or "purposeful" mental state. Rather, it requires "negligence." Many other statutes require only a showing of "recklessness," which likewise is dramatically distinct from "purposeful" or "intentional" conduct. And an even larger number of statutes have a "knowing" mental state, which Comey well knows ― but the average American does not ― is a general- rather than specific-intent mental state (mens rea, in legal terms).
And the term "knowingly" is absolutely key to the misdemeanors Comey appears to concede Clinton committed, but has declined to charge her for.
To discuss what "knowingly" means in the law, I'll start with an example. When I practiced criminal law in New Hampshire, it was a crime punishable by up to a year in jail to "knowingly cause unprivileged physical contact with another person." The three key elements to this particular crime, which is known as Simple Assault, are "knowingly," "unprivileged," and "physical contact." If a prosecutor can prove each of these elements beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant could, at the discretion of a judge, find themselves locked in a cage for a year. "Physical contact" means just about exactly what you'd expect, as does "unprivileged" ― contact for which you have no claim of privilege, such as self-defense, defense of another, permission of the alleged victim, and so on. But what the heck does "knowingly" mean? Well, as any law student can tell you, it means that you were aware of the physical act you were engaged in, even if you didn't intend the consequences that act caused. For instance, say you're in the pit at a particularly raucous speed-metal concert, leaping about, as one does, in close proximity with many other people. Now let's say that after one of your leaps you land on a young woman's foot and break it. If charged with Simple Assault, your defense won't be as to your mental state, because you were "knowingly" leaping about, even if you intended no harm in doing so. Instead, your defense will probably be that the contact (which you also wouldn't contest) was "privileged," because the young lady had implicitly taken on, as had you, the risks of being in a pit in the middle of a speed-metal concert. See the difference between knowingly engaging in a physical act that has hurtful consequences, and "intending" or having as your "purpose" those consequences? Just so, I've seen juveniles prosecuted for Simple Assault for throwing food during an in-school cafeteria food fight; in that instance, no one was hurt, nor did anyone intend to hurt anybody, but "unprivileged physical contact" was "knowingly" made all the same (in this case, via the instrument of, say, a chicken nugget).
So, my first point: for Comey to imply that there is any prosecutor in America uncomfortable with the "constitutionality" of criminal statutes predicated on "negligent," "reckless," or "knowing" mental states is not just laughable but an insult to both the prosecutorial class and our entire criminal justice system. Whatever issue Comey may have had with the felony statute he agrees Clinton violated, that wasn't it.
What about the misdemeanor statute?
Well, there's now terrifying evidence available for public consumption to the effect that Director Comey doesn't understand the use of the word "knowingly" in the law ― indeed, understands it less than even a law student in his or her first semester would. Just over an hour (at 1:06) into the six-hour C-SPAN video of Comey's Congressional testimony, Representative Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) makes a brief but absolutely unimpeachable case that, using the term "knowingly" as I have here and as it is used in every courtroom in America, Secretary Clinton committed multiple federal misdemeanors inasmuch as she, per the relevant statute (Title 18 U.S.C. 1924), "became possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States....and knowingly removed such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location." Comey, misunderstanding the word "knowingly" in a way any law school student would scream at their TV over, states that the FBI would still, under that statutory language, need to prove specific intent to convict Clinton of a Title 18 U.S.C. 1924 violation. Lummis points out that Comey is dead wrong ― and she's right, he is wrong. Per the above, all Clinton had to be aware of is that (a) she was in possession of classified documents, and (b) she had removed them to an unauthorized location. Comey admits these two facts are true, and yet he won't prosecute because he's added a clause that's not in the statute. I can't emphasize this enough: Comey makes clear with his answers throughout his testimony that Clinton committed this federal misdemeanor, but equally makes clear that he didn't charge her with it because he didn't understand the statute. (At 1:53 in the video linked to above, Representative Ken Buck of Colorado goes back to the topic of Title 18 U.S.C. 1924, locking down that Comey is indeed deliberately adding language to that federal criminal statute that quite literally is not there.)
Yes, it's true. Watch the video for yourself, look up the word "knowingly" in Black's Law Dictionary, and you'll see that I'm right. This is scary stuff for an attorney like me, or really for any of us, to see on television ― a government attorney with less knowledge of criminal law than a first-year law student.
2. Comey has dramatically misrepresented what prosecutorial discretion looks like. The result of this is that Americans will fundamentally misunderstand our adversarial system of justice.
Things like our Fourth and Fifth Amendment are part and parcel of our "adversarial" system of justice. We could have elected, as a nation, to have an "inquisitorial" system of justice ― as some countries in Europe, with far fewer protections for criminal defendants, do ― but we made the decision that the best truth-seeking mechanism is one in which two reflexively zealous advocates, a prosecutor and a defense attorney, push their cases to the utmost of their ability (within certain well-established ethical strictures).
James Comey, in his testimony before Congress, left the impression that his job as a prosecutor was to weigh his ability to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt not as a prosecutor, but as a member of a prospective jury. That's not how things work in America; it certainly, and quite spectacularly, isn't how it works for poor black men. In fact, what American prosecutors are charged to do is imagine a situation in which (a) they present their case to a jury as zealously as humanly possible within the well-established ethical code of the American courtroom, (b) all facts and inferences are taken by that jury in the prosecution's favor, and then (c) whether, given all those conditions, there is a reasonable likelihood that all twelve jurors would vote for a conviction.
That is not the standard James Comey used to determine whether to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
What Comey did was something else altogether.
First he asked, "What would other prosecutors do?" That's not a question prosecutors are charged to ask, and we now see why: as Comey himself concedes, countless prosecutors have already come out in public to say that, had they been investigating Clinton, they would have prosecuted her. A standard for prosecutorial discretion in which you weigh what others in your shoes might do based on some sort of a census leads immediately to madness, not just for the reasons I'm articulating here but many others too numerous to go into in detail in this space.
The second thing Comey did was ask, "Am I guaranteed to win this case at trial?" Would that this slowed the roll of prosecutors when dealing with poor black men! Instead, as I discuss later on, prosecutors ― via the blunt instrument of the grand jury ― usually use the mere fact of misdemeanor or felony charges against a defendant as a mechanism for ending a case short of trial. Even prosecutors who ultimately drop a case will charge (misdemeanor) or indict (felony) it first, if only to give themselves time ― because defendants do have speedy trial rights, and statutes of limitation do sometimes intercede ― to plan their next move.
Third, Comey imagined his case at trial through the following lens: "How would we do at trial if the jury took every fact and presumption ― as we already have ― in Clinton's favor?" Indeed, I'm having more than a hard time ― actually an impossible time ― finding a single unknown or unclear fact that Comey took in a light unfavorable to Clinton (including, incredibly, the facts that became unknowable because of Clinton's own actions and evasions). Instead, Hillary was given the benefit of the doubt at every turn, so much so that it was obvious that the only evidence of "intent" Comey would accept was a full confession from Clinton. That's something prosecutors rarely get, and certainly (therefore) never make a prerequisite for prosecution. But Comey clearly did here.
I have never seen this standard used in the prosecution of a poor person. Not once.
3. Comey left the indelible impression, with American news-watchers, that prosecutors only prosecute specific-intent crimes, and will only find a sufficient mens rea (mental state) if and when a defendant has confessed. Imagine, for a moment, if police officers only shot unarmed black men who were in the process of confessing either verbally ("I'm about to pull a gun on you!") or physically (e.g., by assaulting the officer). Impossible to imagine, right? That's because that's not how this works; indeed, that's not how any of this works. Prosecutors, like police officers, are, in seeking signs of intent, trained to read ― and conceding here that some of them do it poorly ― contextual clues that precede, are contemporaneous with, and/or follow the commission of a crime.
But this apparently doesn't apply to Hillary Clinton.
It would be easier to identify the contextual clues that don't suggest Clinton had consciousness of guilt than those that do ― as there are exponentially more of the latter than the former. But let's do our best, and consider just a few of the clear signs that Clinton and her team, judging them solely by their words and actions, knew that what they were doing was unlawful.
For instance, Clinton repeatedly said she used one server and only one device ― not that she thought that that was the correct information, but that she knew it was. Yet the FBI found, per Comey's July 5th statement, that Clinton used "several different servers" and "numerous mobile devices." So either Clinton didn't know the truth but pretended in all her public statements that she did; or she was given bad information which she then repeated uncritically, in which case a prosecutor would demand to know from whom she received that information (as surely that person would know they'd spread misinformation); or she knew the truth and was lying. A prosecutor would want clear, on-the-record answers on these issues; instead, Comey let other FBI agents have an unrecorded, untranscripted interview with Clinton that he himself didn't bother to attend. It's not even clear that that interview was much considered by the FBI; Comey declared his decision just a few dozen hours after the interview was over, and word leaked that there would be no indictment just two hours after the interview. Which, again, incredibly ― and not in keeping with any law enforcement policy regarding subject interviews I'm aware of ― was unrecorded, untranscripted, unsworn, and unattended by the lead prosecutor.
This in the context of a year-long investigation for which Clinton was the primary subject. Since when is an hours-long interview with an investigation's subject so immaterial to the charging decision? And since when is such an interview treated as such a casual event? Since never. At least for poor people.
And since when are false exculpatory statements not strong evidence of intent?
Since never - at least for poor people.
Comey found credible that Clinton had created her private basement server set-up purely out of "convenience"; yet he also found that old servers, once replaced, were "stored and decommissioned in various ways." Wait, "various ways"? If Clinton was trying to create a streamlined, convenient personal process for data storage, why were things handled so haphazardly that Comey himself would say that the servers were dealt with "in various ways" over time? Just so, Comey would naturally want to test Clinton's narrative by seeing whether or not all FOIA requests were fully responded to by Clinton and her staff in the four years she was the head of the State Department. Surely, Clinton and her staff had been fully briefed on their legal obligations under FOIA ― that's provable ― so if Clinton's "convenience" had caused a conflict with the Secretary's FOIA obligations that would have been immediately obvious to both Clinton and her staff, and would have been remedied immediately if the purpose of the server was not to avoid FOIA requests but mere convenience. At a minimum, Comey would find evidence (either hard or testimonial) that such conversations occurred. And indeed, the evidence Comey turned up showed that Clinton's staff was aware ― was repeatedly and systematically made aware ― that the Secretary's set-up had the effect of evading FOIA requests. And Clinton was, by her own admission, clear with her inferiors that "avoiding access to the personal" was key to her private basement-server set-up. That's very different from "convenience."
Even if Comey believed that "avoiding access to the personal," rather than "convenience," was the reason for Clinton's server set-up, that explanation would have imploded under the weight of evidence Clinton, her team, and her attorneys exercised no due caution whatsoever in determining what was "personal" and what was not personal when they were wiping those servers clean. If Clinton's concern was privacy, there's no evidence that much attention was paid to accurately and narrowly protecting that interest ― rather, the weight of the evidence suggests that the aim, at all times, was to keep the maximum amount of information away from FOIA discovery, not just "personal" information but (as Comey found) a wealth of work-related information.
But let's pull back for a moment and be a little less legalistic. Clinton claimed the reason for her set-up was ― exclusively ― "convenience"; nevertheless, Comey said it took "thousands of hours of painstaking effort" to "piece back together" exactly what Clinton was up to. Wouldn't that fact alone give the lie to the claim that this system was more "convenient" than the protocols State already had in place? "Millions of email fragments ended up in the server's 'slack space'," Comey said of Clinton's "convenient" email-storage arrangement. See the contradiction? How would "millions of email fragments ending up in a server's 'slack space'" in any way have served Clinton's presumptive desire for both (a) convenience, (b) FOIA complicance, (c) a securing of her privacy, and (d) compliance with State Department email-storage regulations? Would any reasonable person have found this set-up convenient? And if not ― and Comey explicitly found not ― why in the world didn't that help to establish the real intent of Clinton's private basement servers? Indeed, had Clinton intended on complying with FOIA, presumably her own staff would have had to do the very same painstaking work it took the FBI a year to do. But FOIA requests come in too fast and furious, at State, for Clinton's staff to do the work it took the FBI a year to do in a matter of days; wouldn't this in itself establish that Clinton and her staff had no ability, and therefore well knew they had no intention, of acceding to any of the Department's hundreds or even thousands of annual FOIA requests in full? And wouldn't ignoring all those requests be not just illegal but "inconvenient" in the extreme? And speak to the question of intent?
It took Clinton two years to hand over work emails she was supposed to hand over the day she left office; and during that time, she and her lawyers, some of whom appear to have looked at classified material without clearance, deleted thousands of "personal" emails ― many of which turned out the be exactly the sort of work emails she was supposed to turn over the day she left State. In this situation, an actor acting in good faith would have (a) erred on the side of caution in deleting emails, (b) responded with far, far more alacrity to the valid demands of State to see all work-related emails, and (c) having erroneously deleted certain emails, would have rushed to correct the mistake themselves rather than seeing if they could get away with deleting ― mind you ― not just work emails but work emails with (in several instances) classified information in them. How in the world was none of this taken toward the question of intent? Certainly, it was taken toward the finding of "gross negligence" Comey made, but how in the world was none of it seen as relevant to Clinton's specific intent also? Why does it seem the only evidence of specific intent Comey would've looked at was a smoking gun? Does he realize how few criminal cases would ever be brought against anyone in America if a "smoking gun" standard was in effect? Does anyone realize how many poor black men wouldn't be in prison if that standard was in effect for them as well as Secretary Clinton?
4. Comey made it seem that the amount and quality of prosecutorial consideration he gave Clinton was normal. The mere fact that Comey gave public statements justifying his prosecutorial discretion misleads the public into thinking that, say, poor black men receive this level of care when prosecutors are choosing whether to indict them.
While at least he had the good grace to call the fact of his making a public statement "unusual" ― chalking it up to the "intense public interest" that meant Clinton (and the public) "deserved" an explanation for his behavior ― that grace ultimately obscured, rather than underscored, that what Comey did in publicly justifying his behavior is unheard of in cases involving poor people. In the real America, prosecutors are basically unaccountable to anyone but their bosses in terms of their prosecutorial discretion, as cases in which abuse of prosecutorial discretion is successfully alleged are vanishingly rare. Many are the mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers of poor black men who would love to have had their sons' (or brothers', or fathers') over-charged criminal cases explained to them with the sort of care and detail Hillary Clinton naturally receives when she's being investigated. Clinton and the public "deserve" prosecutorial transparency when the defendant is a Clinton; just about no one else deserves this level of not just transparency but also ― given the year-long length of the FBI investigation ― prosecutorial and investigative caution.
What's amazing is how little use Comey actually made of all the extra time and effort. For instance, on July 5th he said that every email the FBI uncovered was sent to the "owning" organization to see if they wanted to "up-classify" it ― in other words, declare that it should have been classified at the time it was sent and/or received, even if not marked that way at the time. One might think Comey would want this information, the better to determine Clinton's intent with respect to those emails (i.e., given Clinton's training, knowledge, and experience, how frequently did she "miss" the classified nature of an email, relative to the assessment of owning agencies that a given email was effectively and/or should have been considered classified ― even if not marked so ― at the time Clinton handled it?) Keep in mind, here, that certain types of information, as Clinton without a doubt knew, are "born classified" whether marked as such or not. And yet, just two days after July 5th, Comey testified before Congress that he "didn't pay much attention" to "up-classified" emails. Why? Because, said Comey, they couldn't tell him anything about Clinton's intent. Bluntly, this is an astonishing and indeed embarrassing statement for any prosecutor to make.
Whereas every day knowledge and motives are imparted to poor black men that are, as the poet Claudia Rankine has observed, purely the product of a police officer's "imagination," the actual and indisputable knowledge and motives and ― yes ― responsibilities held by Clinton were "downgraded" by Comey to that of merely an average American. That is, despite the fact that Clinton was one of the most powerful people on Earth, charged with managing an agency that collects among the highest number of classified pieces of information of any agency anywhere; despite the fact that Clinton's agency had the strictest policies for data storage for this very reason; despite the fact that State is, as Clinton well knew, daily subjected to FOIA requests; despite all this, Comey actually said the following: "Like many email users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted emails..."
What?
How in the world does the "many email users" standard come into play here? Clinton's server, unlike anyone else's server, was set up in a way that permitted no archiving, an arrangement that one now imagines led (in part) to the person who set up that server taking the Fifth more than a hundred times in interviews with the FBI; even assuming Clinton didn't know, and didn't request, for her server to be set up in this astonishing way ― a way, again, that her own employees believe could incriminate them ― how in the world could she have been sanguine about deleting emails "like many email users" when the agency she headed had completely different and more stringent protocols and requirements for data storage than just about any government agency on Earth? Just so, once it was clear that Clinton had deleted (per Comey) "thousands of emails that were work-related" instead of turning them over to State, in what universe can no intent be implied from the fact that her attorneys purged 30,000 emails simply by looking at their headers? At what point does Clinton, as former Secretary of State, begin to have ill intent imputed to her by not directing her attorneys to actually read emails before permanently destroying them and making them unavailable to the FBI as evidence? If you were in her situation, and instead of saying to your team either (a) "don't delete any more emails," or (b) "if you delete any emails, make sure you've read them in full first," would you expect anyone to impute "no specific intent" to your behavior?
The result: despite saying she never sent or received emails on her private basement server that were classified "at the time," the FBI found that 52 email chains on Clinton's server ― including 110 emails ― contained information that was classified at the time (eight chains contained "top secret" information; 36, "secret" information; and another eight "confidential" information). Moreover, Clinton's team wrongly purged ― at a minimum ― "thousands" of work-related emails. (And I'm putting aside entirely here the 2,000 emails on Clinton's server that were later "up-classified.") At what point does this harm become foreseeable, and not seeing it ― when you're one of the best-educated, smartest, most experienced public servants in U.S. history, as your political team keeps reminding us ― become evidence of "intent"? Comey's answer? Never.
Indeed, Comey instead makes the positively fantastical observation that "none [of the emails Clinton didn't turn over but was supposed to] were intentionally deleted." The problem is, by Comey's own admission all of those emails were intentionally deleted, under circumstances in which the problems with that deletion would not just have been evident to "any reasonable person" but specifically were clear ― the context proves it ― to Clinton herself. During her four years as Secretary of State Clinton routinely expressed concern to staff about her own and others' email-storage practices, establishing beyond any doubt that not only was Clinton's literal key-pressing deliberate ― the "knowing" standard ― but also its repeated, systemic effect was fully appreciated by her in advance. Likewise, that her attorneys were acting entirely on their own prerogative, without her knowledge, is a claim no jury would credit.
Clinton's attorneys worked Clinton's case in consultation with Clinton ― that's how things work. In other words, Clinton's lawyers are not rogue actors here. So when Comey says, "They [Clinton and her team] deleted all emails they did not produce for State, and the lawyers then cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery," we have to ask, what possible reason would an attorney have for wiping a server entirely within their control to ensure that no future court order could access the permanently deleted information? In what universe is such behavior not actual consciousness of guilt with respect to the destruction of evidence? Because we must be clear: Comey isn't saying Clinton and her lawyers accidentally put these emails outside even a hypothetical future judicial review; they did so intentionally.
There's that word again.
The result of these actions? The same as every other action Clinton took that Comey somehow attributes no intent to: a clear legal benefit to Clinton and a frustration, indeed an obstruction, of the FBI's investigation. As Comey said on July 5th, the FBI can't know how many emails are "gone" (i.e., permanently) because of Clinton and her team's intentional acts after-the-fact. So Comey is quite literally telling us that the FBI couldn't conclude their investigation with absolute confidence that they had all the relevant facts, and that the reason for this was the intentional destruction of evidence by the subject of the investigation at a time when there was no earthly reason to destroy evidence except to keep it from the FBI.
In case you're wondering, no, you don't need a legal degree to see the problem there.
As an attorney, I can't imagine destroying evidence at a time I knew it was the subject of a federal investigation. And if I ever were to do something like that, I would certainly assume that all such actions would later be deemed "intentional" by law enforcement, as my intent would be inferred from my training, knowledge, and experience as an attorney, as well as my specific awareness of a pending federal investigation in which the items I was destroying might later become key evidence. That Clinton and her team repeatedly (and falsely) claimed the FBI investigation was a mere "security review" ― yet another assertion whose falseness was resoundingly noted by Comey in his public statements ― was clearly a transparent attempt to negate intent in destroying those emails. (The theory being, "Well, yes, I destroyed possible evidence just by looking at email headers, but this was all just a 'security review,' right? Not a federal investigation? Even though I knew the three grounds for referral of the case to the FBI, and knew that only one of them involved anything like a 'security review'?")
And certainly, none of this explains Comey's (again) gymnastic avoidance of stating the obvious: that crimes were committed.
Listen to his language on July 5th: "Although we did not find clear evidence that Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information" (emphasis in original) ― actually, let's stop there. You'd expect the second half of that sentence to be something like, "...they nevertheless did violate those laws, despite not intending to." It's the natural continuation of the thought. Instead, Comey, who had prepared his remarks in advance, finished the thought this way: "....there is evidence that they were extremely careless with very sensitive, highly classified information" (emphasis in original).
Note that Comey now uses the phrase "extremely careless" instead of "gross negligence," despite using the latter phrase ― a legal phrase ― at the beginning of his July 5th remarks. That matters because at the beginning of those remarks he conceded "gross negligence" would lead to a statutory violation. So why the sudden shift in language, when from a legal standpoint "extreme carelessness" and "gross negligence" are synonymous ― both indicating the presence of a duty of care, the failure to meet that duty, and moreover a repeated failure on this score? Comey also avoids finishing his sentence with the obvious thought: that they may not have intended to violate criminal statutes, but they did nonetheless. Remember that, just like our hypothetical raver may not have intended to commit a Simple Assault by stepping on that poor young woman's foot, he nevertheless could be found to have done so; just so, had Comey accepted the statute as written, Clinton's "gross negligence" would have forced him to end the above sentence with the finding of a statutory violation, even if there had been no "specific intent" to do so.
This is how the law works. For poor black men, just not for rich white women.
5. Comey, along with the rest of Congress, left the impression, much like the Supreme Court did in 2000, that legal analyses are fundamentally political analyses. Not only is this untrue, it also is unspeakably damaging to both our legal system and Americans' understanding of that system's operations.
I'm a staunch Democrat, but I'm also an attorney. Watching fellow Democrats twist themselves into pretzels to analyze Clinton's actions through a farcically slapdash legal framework, rather than merely acknowledging that Clinton is a human being and, like any human being, can both (a) commit crimes, and (b) be replaced on a political ticket if need be, makes me sick as both a Democrat and a lawyer. Just so, watching Republicans who had no issue with George W. Bush declaring unilateral war in contravention of international law, and who had no issue with the obviously illegal behavior of Scooter Libby in another recent high-profile intel-related criminal case, acting like the rule of law is anything they care about makes me sick. Our government is dirty as all get-out, but the one thing it's apparently clean of is anyone with both (a) legal training, and (b) a sense of the ethics that govern legal practice. Over and over during Comey's Congressional testimony I heard politicians noting their legal experience, and then going on to either shame their association with that august profession or honor it but (in doing so) call into question their inability or unwillingness to do so in other instances.
When Comey says, "any reasonable person should have known" not to act as Clinton did, many don't realize he's quoting a legal standard ― the "reasonable person standard." A failure to meet that standard can be used to establish either negligence or recklessness in a court of law. But here, Clinton wasn't in the position of a "reasonable person" ― the average fellow or lady ― and Comey wasn't looking merely at a "reasonableness" standard, but rather a "purposeful" standard that requires Comey to ask all sorts of questions about Clinton's specific, fully contextualized situation and background that he doesn't appear to have asked. One might argue that, in keeping with Clinton's campaign theme, no one in American political history was more richly prepared ― by knowledge, training, experience, and innate gifts ― to know how to act properly in the situations Clinton found herself. That in those situations she failed to act even as a man or woman taken off the street and put in a similar situation would have acted is not indicative of innocence or a lack of specific intent, but the opposite. If a reasonable person wouldn't have done what Clinton did, the most exquisitely prepared person for the situations in which Clinton found herself must in fact have been providing prosecutors with prima facie evidence of intent by failing to meet even the lowest threshold for proper conduct. Comey knows this; any prosecutor knows this. Maybe a jury would disagree with Comey on this point, but his job is to assume that, if he zealously advocates for this extremely powerful circumstantial case, a reasonable jury, taking the facts in the light most favorable to the government, would see things his way.
Look, I can't possibly summarize for anyone reading this the silly nonsense I have seen prosecutors indict people for; a common saying in the law is that the average grand jury "would indict a ham sandwich," and to be clear that happens not because the run-of-the-mill citizens who sit on grand juries are bloodthirsty, but because the habitual practice of American prosecutors is to indict first and ask questions later ― and because indictments are absurdly easy to acquire. In other words, I've seen thousands of poor people get over-charged for either nonsense or nothing at all, only to have their prosecutors attempt to leverage their flimsy cases into a plea deal to a lesser charge. By comparison, it is evident to every defense attorney of my acquaintance that I've spoken to that James Comey bent over backwards to not indict Hillary Clinton ― much like the hundreds of state and federal prosecutors who have bent over backwards not to indict police officers over the past few decades. Every attorney who's practiced in criminal courts for years can smell when the fix is in ― can hear and see when the court's usual actors are acting highly unusually ― and that's what's happened here. The tragedy is that it will convince Americans that our legal system is fundamentally about what a prosecutor feels they can and should be able to get away with, an answer informed largely, it will seem to many, by various attorneys' personal temperaments and political prejudices.
No one in America who's dedicated their life to the law can feel any satisfaction with how Hillary Clinton's case was investigated or ultimately disposed of, no more than we can feel sanguine about prosecutors whose approach to poor black defendants is draconian and to embattled police officers positively beatific. What we need in Congress, and in prosecutor's offices, are men and women of principle who act in accordance with their ethical charge no matter the circumstances. While James Comey is not a political hack, and was not, I don't believe, in any sense acting conspiratorially in not bringing charges against Hillary Clinton, I believe that, much like SCOTUS did not decide in the 2000 voting rights case Bush v. Gore, Comey felt that this was a bad time for an executive-branch officer to interfere with the workings of domestic politics. Perhaps Comey had the best of intentions in not doing his duty; perhaps he thought letting voters, not prosecutors, decide the 2016 election was his civic duty. Many Democrats could wish the Supreme Court had felt the same way in 2000 with respect to the role of judges. But the fact remains that the non-indictment of Hillary Clinton is as much a stain on the fair and equal administration of justice as is the disparate treatment of poor black males at all stages of the criminal justice system. I witnessed the latter injustice close up, nearly every day, during my seven years working as a public defender; now America has seen the same thing, albeit on a very different stage, involving a defendant of a very different class and hue.
To have prosecuted Clinton, said Comey, he would need to have seen "clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information, or vast quantities of information exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct, or....efforts to obstruct justice..." When Comey concludes, "we do not see those things here," America should ― and indeed must ― wonder what facts he could possibly be looking at, and, moreover, what understanding of his role in American life he could possibly be acting upon. The answers to these two questions would take us at least two steps forward in discussing how average Americans are treated by our increasingly dysfunctional system of justice.
Seth Abramson is the Series Editor for Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University) and the author, most recently, of DATA (BlazeVOX, 2016).
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National Review
Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was "extremely careless" and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.
In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.
... ... ...
It is a common tactic of defense lawyers in criminal trials to set up a straw-man for the jury: a crime the defendant has not committed. The idea is that by knocking down a crime the prosecution does not allege and cannot prove, the defense may confuse the jury into believing the defendant is not guilty of the crime charged.
Judges generally do not allow such sleight-of-hand because innocence on an uncharged crime is irrelevant to the consideration of the crimes that actually have been charged. It seems to me that this is what the FBI has done today. It has told the public that because Mrs. Clinton did not have intent to harm the United States we should not prosecute her on a felony that does not require proof of intent to harm the United States.
Meanwhile, although there may have been profound harm to national security caused by her grossly negligent mishandling of classified information, we've decided she shouldn't be prosecuted for grossly negligent mishandling of classified information. I think highly of Jim Comey personally and professionally, but this makes no sense to me. Finally, I was especially unpersuaded by Director Comey's claim that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case based on the evidence uncovered by the FBI.
To my mind, a reasonable prosecutor would ask: Why did Congress criminalize the mishandling of classified information through gross negligence? The answer, obviously, is to prevent harm to national security. So then the reasonable prosecutor asks: Was the statute clearly violated, and if yes, is it likely that Mrs. Clinton's conduct caused harm to national security? If those two questions are answered in the affirmative, I believe many, if not most, reasonable prosecutors would feel obliged to bring the case.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/437479/fbi-rewrites-federal-law-let-hillary-hook
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Nov 14, 2015 | Economist's View
DeDude said...
Their low information voters like the idea of big bad gobinment agencies doing bad stuff to all of us and being responsible for whatever. The narratives always Trump reality.
ilsm said in reply to DeDude...
It all makes sense when the good of the few Trumps [means plundering of] the rest is considered a public good.
When avarice meets reality it attacks with diverting ad hominem [e.g. brainwashed socialists, etc.] and ever worse logic fallacies.Like Lacker's screed on inflation, actually selling deflation.
JohnH said in reply to ilsm...
So you call it a successful policy...based on what? Stock prices are up? The wealthy have grabbed most of the income gains?
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to JohnH...
"...based on what?..."
[Net reductions in monthly mortgage expenses obtained from refinancing at low rates, consumer credit discounts for all variable rate interest lines of credit, short term small business cash flow balancing operating loans at prime rate.
The wealthy got a little leverage trading done but only those that sold off stocks have made money from high stock prices. Those still holding shares may have nothing to gain except for losses.]
JohnH said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
The wealthy got a little leverage...
A little?!? Take a look at the chart: Capital's share of national income. It has really taken off--well above the trend line of the last 40 years--since ZIRP and QE.
No, Fed policy didn't cause increased inequality but it exacerbated it.
Now, please explain how "Net reductions in monthly mortgage expenses obtained from refinancing at low rates"...blah...blah translated into higher real median income per household, etc. You know, common measure of economic performance.
acerimusdux said...
Another right wing myth worth addressing is the idea that low interest rates cause asset bubbles.
But anyone with much experience in long term asset markets, such as the stock market or housing market, ought to realize that it is low inflation which tends to boost valuations for long term assets. The current very low inflation expectations are one of the main drivers behind high current US stock market valuations (using measures such as total market cap to GDP).
Looser money, because it encourages more inflation, should be expected to limit bubbles. Too tight monetary policy should be expected to cause them.
Right wing economics seems to be primarily based on first either ignoring or not understanding the importance of natural rates, and so blaming the Fed any time nominal rates seem low (or even moderate), and then on blaming anything else in the economy that seems to be wrong at them moment on those "low" rates (without any regard to logic, reason, or consistency).
Sad to see that even some Fed board members seem to be ignoring the importance of inflation in determing monetary policy. There is no sign at all yet of even meeting the inflation target in the CPI, PCE, or ECI, while the PPI continues to show deflation. Meanwhile market based measures (such as the breakeven rates) show expectations that continue to fall, with the Fed not expected by markets to meet it's target even within a decade. And some are still talking about hiking in December?
Ben Groves said in reply to acerimusdux...
It is hard to have inflation when commodity deflation is lowering inputs and we are having a nasty price war between Brick/Mortar and e-Commerce. That sounds like a large CPI decline (which means real retail sales are better than usual) that started in the 3rd quarter may accelerate in the 4th quarter. I am seeing prices of some foods, the lowest in 10 years. Milk is down to 15 year lows at some of my regions stores.
I don't think central banks though, think that is a bad thing. They only care about wage growth and their own trimmed inflation figures that factor in wage growth. So the Fed/Republicans are on the same page. Anything more is dialectics.
ilsm said...
As Krugman points out Murkan politics is dysfunctional, the GOP playing the Nazi role [from Weimar's demise].
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Last modified: February, 11, 2021
