Outside Influence

Posted on November 15, 2019 by camelotkidd

 

Who gets to decide US foreign policy, the president or the deep state?

That seems to be the pertinent question that’s left unsaid in the whole Ukraine-gate impeachment drama.

Also unsaid by the corporate media is the essential Ukraine backstory which began with the US initiating the overthrow of its democratically elected President Yanukovych in 2014. The coup was part of NATO’s eastward expansion after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, contrary to oral agreements with Washington, London and Paris that, in exchange for allowing Germany to reunite and then join NATO, the Western powers vowed not to extend the alliance into the former Communist states.

The West lied. Precisely the opposite occurred. NATO, led by its sponsor, the US, moved relentlessly east. 

However, for Russia, the Ukraine coup and attempts to seize the Russian Black Sea naval base at Sebastopol in Crimea was a bridge too far.

I’ve long maintained that Russia-gate was instituted as a way to keep Trump from improving relations with Russia and to lock in a new Cold War. The recent testimony from deep state officials and the exposure of the so-called whistle-blower have only deepened my suspicions.

His identity should have been public knowledge weeks ago and yet it took Real Clear Investigations, an alt-news website to publicly reveal what has been well known within the  Beltway for some weeks.

The alleged whistle-blower is said to be a 33 year old CIA analyst by the name of Eric Ciaramella who was an Obama White House holdover at the National Security Council until mid 2017. Consequently, he has deep partisan ties to former vice-president Joe Biden, former CIA Director John Brennan and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice as well as the DNC establishment. It gets better. Ciaramella ran the Ukraine desk at the Obama NSC and had close association with  Ukrainian DNC hyper-activist Alexandra Chalupa, who was up to her neck in Russia-gate.

Then there’s the witnesses who are testifying against Trump. They strike me as Russophobes who favor military aid to Ukraine. They also appear to be State Department careerists who think they set U.S. foreign policy and resent the president for intruding upon them.

My favorite so far has been National Security Council staffer Lt. Colonel Alexander S. Vindman, the self-labeled no. 1 Ukraine expert at the National Security Counsel. Rather than providing expert advice, Vindman was concerned chiefly because arming Ukraine was not proceeding quickly enough to suit him, an extremely risky policy which has already created serious problems with nuclear-armed Russia. Vindman Even Testified He Advised Ukrainians to Ignore Trump.

Here he is in his own words. “A strong and independent Ukraine is critical to US national security interests because Ukraine is a frontline state and a bulwark against Russian aggression.… The US government policy community’s view is that the election of President Volodymyr Zelensky and the promise of reforms to eliminate corruption will lock in Ukraine’s Western-leaning trajectory, and allow Ukraine to realize its dream of a vibrant democracy and economic prosperity.” But, he continued, “outside influencers are promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency. This narrative was harmful to US government policy. While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined US government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.”

It’s almost a dark comedy. When I was an army paratrooper my commander was a Lt. Colonel. He commanded a battalion of airborne-infantry. He didn’t make foreign policies.

Vindman should be regarded as a manifestation of the deep state thinking that has brought so much grief to the United States over the past twenty years. Seen in that light, his testimony, wrapped in an air of sanctimoniousness and a uniform, should be regarded as little more than the conventional thinking that has produced foreign policy failure after failure.

This is what impeachment is about, not high crimes and misdemeanors, but who lost Ukraine, and Syria, Libya, Yemen, and other countries that the Obama administration succeeded in destroying.

Of course, the corporate media is to blame as well. It twisted the news so as to cheer on such misbegotten policies just as it cheered on the twin invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by the Bush administration a dozen years or so earlier. This is why it’s furious with Trump for challenging the foreign policy establishment and why it now fills its pages with endless blather about quid pro quo’s just as it once did about Russian collusion.

Ultimately, Russia-gate was, and Ukraine-gate is, a struggle over policy.

What still amazes me is that in the age of Trump liberals have embraced the argument that having a deep state is a healthy part of American democracy in that it serves as a check or corrective element on a political system that has been corrupted and which no longer serves national interests. But that assessment surely might have been made before it became clear that many of the leaders of the nation’s intelligence and security agencies are no longer the people’s honorable servants they pretend to be. In fact, any examination of the ABC agencies that make up our intelligence community demonstrates that they serve the billionaire owners of America and not the citizens. These owners have succeeded in this deception by waging a vast covert operation, one that has conditioned the American public to believe that it’s the perpetual victim of foreign powers like Russia.

Trump is simply an outside influence.

Update:  “As it turns out, virtually the entire caste of whistleblowers and deep state testifiers now being called before the Impeachment Tribunal were in one way or another organized, financed or sponsored by the Atlantic Council.”

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Market Failure

Posted on November 9, 2019 by camelotkidd

 

I never though I would feel nostalgic for the Cold War but in retrospect it’s apparent that the contest between the two superpowers over which system delivered more comfort, freedom, and happiness to its citizens was a golden era.

For starters it was a time of significant social change. Many of our far-sighted leaders argued that racial segregation undermined the United States’ position in the Cold War, making capitalism look bad at home and abroad. Women’s rights also advanced due to the competition. The superior situation of women in the East Bloc was a constant and effective source of communist propaganda, which often drew interest from women in the western world. East German sexologists even found–and their government proudly boasted–that communist women had more orgasms than their luckless West German counterparts.

Our infrastructure and factories were modern and well maintained due to this clash of ideologies and worldwide competition over whose system of economic organization produced a better standard of living.

But the place where the average American benefited the most was in the wallet. The titanic clash of economic systems, with the threat of a communist revolution ever present, gave American workers more power to organize and demand better wages and benefits.

That was then. Now that our feral elite don’t have to worry about a communist revolution, conditions for workers suck. In fact, since the demise of the Soviet Union, wages and living standards throughout the West have stagnated, while what was once a fairly open and diverse economy of small shops and businesses has consolidated back to the way it was during the Robber-Baron era. Now our economy is dominated by monopolies and oligopolies ruled by billionaire plutocrats. Industry after industry–from media to airlines to insurance to hotels to social media to food–have become dominated by cartels of a small handful of companies.

In this sense, not only are billionaires a symptom of an absence of a healthy competitive economy, but they are also a cause of it: their taxes on other firms restrict growth and entrepreneurship, while their control over our government prevents change.

Going further, every billionaire is a market failure–a sign that competition has failed. In a healthy market economy there should be almost no extremely wealthy people simply because profits should be bid away by competition. In the textbook case of perfect competition there are no super-normal profits, and in the more realistic case of Schumpeterian creative destruction, high profits should be competed away quickly.

But, of course, in the US the notion of a free market is largely a propaganda construct. Thanks to Supreme Court decisions like Buckley v. Valeo, that equated money with free speech, billionaires are able to purchase our government. Follow up cases like 2010’s Citizens United decision have largely reduced democracy in the United States to its trappings. The public is engaged in a series of rather empty rituals.

I just finished reading Matt Stoller’s–Goliath–where he traces the history of American monopolies and the efforts to combat them. Stoller says that we’ve reverted to an economic system of monopolies due to the ideology of neoliberalism that’s been embraced by both parties. “It was a broad sweeping restructuring of our culture, the result of forty years of political choices, the same misfiring of institutions that led to the invasion of Iraq, and an endless series of gruesome social consequences. The men in suits told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, just as they told us taxpayer-funded bank bonuses were essential to the economy…The bailouts from 2008 to 2010 were not intended to stop a depression, they were intended to stop a New Deal. And so they did.”

Like the invasion of Iraq, the Wall Street Crash and government response demonstrated that the neoliberal and neoconservative shibboleths endless promulgated were simply lies, told to justify political and economic decisions that had already been decided.

A great example of this elite cynicism was this interview that George W. Bush did with Fox News’s Bret Baier in the aftermath of the 2008 Wall Street Crash. Struggling to justify the massive economic interventions his administration had just engineered, Bush confessed. “I’m a free market guy, but I’m not gonna let this economy crater in order to preserve the free market system.” Indeed, in the aftermath of the crash, first the Bush, then the Obama administrations took decisive action to resuscitate the ancien regime. They pumped hundreds of billions of public dollars into the major financial companies, created trillions in new money, and, in some cases, took control of private and quasi-private corporations.

Since the demise of the USSR we’ve been told in no uncertain terms that there is no alternative to the wealthy and their technocratic minions controlling our lives. We decided as a society that it would be a great idea to allow financiers and monopolists to organize our economy. As a result, today we have a matrix of monopolies controlling our lives and manipulating our communities and politics.

But the idea that there’s no alternative has always been a lie. There has always been a choice to organize our economy in a different fashion.

It’s up to us.

 

 

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Ferocious establishment resistance

Posted on November 1, 2019 by camelotkidd

 

Why has Trump’s foreign policy been such a shambolic disaster?

Much of it is his own fault as he’s clearly allowed far to many neoconservative ideologues into his administration due to Israel-first campaign funders like Sheldon Adelson. As a businessman turned politician and Washington outsider, Trump also has been at the mercy of Beltway insiders who’ve advised him and helped him choose the members of his administration.

However, in this imperial capital, the voice of the interventionist prevails. The media, the foreign policy elite, the think tanks, the ethnic lobbies, the Pentagon, the State Department, Capitol Hill, are almost all interventionist, devoted to America’s endless regime-change wars.  Thus, despite Trump’s campaign pledges he’s faced ferocious establishment resistance.

Even the corporate media has  finally admitted to this open secret. Last week The New York Times published a remarkable piece that essentially acknowledged the existence of an American deep state and its implacable hostility to Donald Trump.

This dynamic goes a long way towards explaining the Trump administrations foreign policy schizophrenia. In a nutshell, Trump wants to keep his campaign promises to end America’s endless wars but the deep state is committed to keeping them going. Trump also campaigned on a platform of improved relations with Russia. Yet, three years after his election, no real improvement has materialized and, if anything, they have deteriorated.

I’ve always believed that Russia-gate has been, at its very essence, the deep state locking in a new Cold war against Russia despite Trump’s campaign rhetoric. The intention was to cripple Trump’s presidency. If they couldn’t remove him from office, they could at least ensure he played by their rules rather than follow through on wild promises to end the wars in Syria and Afghanistan and normalize relations with Moscow.

It turns out I was right.

After a lengthy investigation, evidence is emerging that Russia-gate really was a coup against Trump. Former CIA chief, John Brennan, set up a anti-Trump Task Force at the CIA in early 2016 with the blessings of Jim Clapper. According to former CIA case officer Larry C Johnson, “Brennan reportedly took it upon himself to recruit foreign intelligence organizations, such as MI-6, the Aussies, the Italians and the Israelis, to help in spying on Trump and his campaign. He sold it as a “counter-intelligence” mission citing his fear that Trump was a Russian puppet. And these foreign services agreed to help. But they did more than passive collection. They helped create and implement covert actions, such as entrapping Michael Flynn as a foreign agent and cultivating and ensnaring George Papadopoulos.”

If you depend on the corporate media for your news all this will sound bewildering. That’s because the corporate media has been working with the deep state to depose Trump.

It’s always helpful to review recent history, living as we do in the United States of Amnesia. Lets recall that Trump’s election sent a shock wave through the Democratic establishment and that there needed to be a reckoning. How could it happen? Was Hillary Clinton truly the “queen of warmongers” while too aligned with Wall Street as Bernie Sanders and his supporters alleged? And did the DNC sabotage Bernie’s campaign as a result of these criticisms?

Those were hardly the kinds of questions that Democratic Party leaders and corporate media wanted to put in the national spotlight. Instead, they quickly shifted the focus to Russia.

Within 24 hours of Clinton’s concession speech, campaign manager Robby Mook and campaign chair John Podesta “assembled her communications team” at the national headquarters in Brooklyn “to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up,” journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes report in their inside-story book Shattered. “For a couple of hours … they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

For the Democrats, the traumatic reality of Trump’s victory called for a serious and well-grounded investigation of the key factors that led to the catastrophe. Such an exploration might have critically assessed their abandonment of many working-class voters in their pursuit of moderate Republicans and upscale professionals. The elitism of the DNC and failure to put forward progressive policies like a truly single-payer health care system or examine their disastrous trade policies failed to ignite enthusiasm or inspire turnout from the working class. But instead of scrutinizing these failures the Democrats blamed Vladimir Putin and the Russians.

The corporate media was quickly onboard with the anti-Russia campaign, implicated as they were with the smears of Sanders and celebration of the Democrats as the party of wealthy professionals. After all, the corporate media is largely composed of wealthy professionals who are liberal on cultural issues.

The result has been 3 years of relentless Russia-gate, interrupted only briefly with the fundamentally dishonest Mueller Report, then reenergized with Ukraine-gate and the impeachment proceedings.

Just as a thought experiment for my liberal readers, lets reverse the actors. Imagine that when Obama was elected in 2008 office intelligence operatives in tandem with the corporate media came up with a narrative that Obama was a traitor, groomed since his childhood in Indonesia to be a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda. Nor only that but leaked intelligence reports suggested that Obama was secretly conspiring with Osama bin Laden and moreover they were gay lovers!

Crazy huh?

It pains me to spend all my time defending Trump but the thought of a deep state that has a veto over our chief executive terrifies me. I didn’t vote for Trump and I’m not a fan, but basically I think the behavior of his enemies has been much worse and much more dangerous for our republic. If a deep state is allowed to make its own policies against the will of the elected officials why should we bother with holding elections?

Our founders provided a way to deal with boorish presidents. Defeat them at the polling booth. If the Democrats are serious about deposing Trump they need to put forward a candidate that appeals to the millions of working class citizens who’ve been disenfranchised by both parties.

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Russian Asset

Posted on October 24, 2019 by camelotkidd

 

It’s become apparent that questioning America’s disastrous empire-centric foreign policies will get you labeled a Russian asset.

Shortly before last Tuesday’s Democratic candidate debate the New York Times ran an article suggesting that Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard was an isolationist, was being promoted by Russia and was an apologist for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

Gabbard is being smeared as a Russian asset because she has the truth to inform the American people of the reality of US regime-change centric foreign policies. This isn’t a new thing. Gabbard has been attacked relentless by the Establishment since she announced that she would be running for the Democratic nomination.

It didn’t take long for Hillary Clinton to pile on. “I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton said in a transparent reference to Gabbard. “She’s the favorite of the Russians.

In reality, Gabbard is the only candidate willing to confront America’s warfare-national security state.

“Donald Trump has blood of the Kurds on his hands, but so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties who have supported this ongoing regime-change war in Syria that started in 2011… along with many in the mainstream media who have been championing and cheer-leading this regime-change war,” said the 38-year-old military veteran who went on to denounce how the US has sponsored Al Qaeda terrorists for its objective of overthrowing the government in Damascus. It was a remarkably damning assessment of US policy in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. And it was by no means the first time that Gabbard has leveled with the American people on the brutality and criminality of Washington’s regime change wars.

Tulsi Gabbard stands alone in telling the American people the plain and awful truth. US militarism is the fundamental problem. Ending its regime-change war in Syria and elsewhere and ending its diabolical collusion with terror groups is the way to bring peace to the Middle East and to spare ordinary Americans from the economic disaster of spiraling war debts.

I hope that Gabbard is afforded more time in the upcoming debates so that American citizens might learn the truth about the horror their government, military, media and politicians have inflicted on countries in the Middle East. They also might learn about the horrendous costs of this endless militarism on the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Americans, including millions of veterans destroyed by injuries, trauma, suicide, and drug abuse.

A guy can dream. Meanwhile, as a critic of empire and decidedly unpartisan thinker, I have a sneaking feeling that I’m a Russian asset too.

 

Update: Cognitive dissonance.

“As November 2020 draws nearer the screams to shut up and stop pointing at the truth are going to get louder and louder for political dissidents in America, even louder than the “shut up and fall in line” admonishments that Bernie-or-Busters received constantly in 2016. This will only be the voice of the empire yelling “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”’

 

 

 

 

 

 

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More Dangerous

Posted on October 18, 2019 by camelotkidd

 

Matt Taibbi calls the forces arrayed against Trump more dangerous than the Pro-Wrestler-Hall-of-Fame-in-Chief. “My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump.”

I agree.

There’s nothing in the Constitution about allowing secret intelligence agencies to vet our chief executives. This state of affairs could hardly be considered a democratic republic and instead has all the hallmarks of an empire.

I’m not a Trump supporter and I find many of his policies and actions to be abhorrent. That being said, these are not the reasons that the establishment has opposed Trump. Instead they’ve attacked him for the reforms that he campaigned on. If you’ll recall from the way back machine, Trump campaigned as a populist and, crucially, to the left of Clinton on foreign policy, raging against the disastrous free trade and financial arrangements that have left millions of hard working Americans behind, while criticizing the disastrous regime-change wars and promising to improve relations with Russia. He also enraged the neocons and liberal-interventionists with a devastating take-down of the invasion of Iraq.

I believe that Trump’s apostasy is the reason for the elite hostility towards him. After all, these domestic and foreign policies are the means by which the deep state maintains the US empire. We only have to witness the reaction to Trump’s decision to leave Syria to see this dynamic in real time. Republicans, Democrats and the corporate media have united in decrying Trump’s actions, which really amounts to keeping a campaign pledge by exiting one of the many disastrous regime-change wars.

It’s not just Trump who’s taking flak. The media’s shameful attack on Tulsi Gabbard demonstrates the enormous costs of challenging the bipartisan, imperial consensus that regards war as the natural state of affairs. Indeed, one of the most pernicious outcomes of Russia-gate is that now any criticism of the imperial nature of US foreign policy which cannot be labeled false or misleading gets labeled a talking point of Russia or Putin by those who support and defend the status quo of US world hegemony. It’s now literally a Kremlin talking point to blame both parties for the disastrous US foreign polices of the last decades.

Looking back back at everything that’s happened since Hillary lost the election provides a good perspective to the non-stop insanity of it all. For starters, Russia-gate has resulted in a climate where every move to improve relations with Russia is proof of the devious Putin’s control over Trump. Even the New York Times, normally the bastion of political correctness, depicted Trump and Putin as icky-gay-lovers. Then there was the non-stop freak-out over the possibility that Russian hackers tampered with our precious democracy and overwhelmed Facebook with their devious bots.

For me the most disconcerting reaction has been liberals, after decades of mistrust and hostility, turning on a dime and embracing the FBI and CIA as saviors while demanding that the secret intelligence agencies carry out a coup for the good of the country. Losing their minds doesn’t even come close to describing this cosmic transformation. Then there’s been the corporate media, led by the New York Times, coordinating a non-stop propaganda campaign against Trump.

I’m convinced that the bipartisan freak-out over Trump’s foreign policies coupled with the impeachment drive is part a larger war against populism that’s being waged worldwide by an feral elite that’s responsible for so much suffering. The impeachment hearings and the mass hysteria surrounding them are an attempt by these same elite to demonstrate the cost of challenging the imperial consensus.

You do not honestly believe they are going to let Trump serve a second term, do you? 

Not that Donald Trump is a populist hero. Far from it. Trump is a narcissistic reality TV star and pro-wrestler MC. As a presidential candidate he was cunning enough to recognize that 2016 was an anti-establishment election and use the avalanche of populist anger that had been building since at least 2008 when the bankers were bailed out while everyone else was left to twist slowly in the wind.

Here the dirty little secret–getting rid of Trump will not put the paste back in the tube. The populist anger is not going away. Americans and the other citizens of the world are no more thrilled about their future today than when the voted for Brexit and Trump and other populist candidates and measures.

 

Update:  A lawsuit by Judicial Watch has produced damning proof that Rod Rosenstein, former Deputy Attorney General, was a key figure in enabling, at a minimum, the deep state’s coup. Specifically, the lawsuit forced the release of 145 pages of Rosenstein’s communications that include a one-line email from Rosenstein to Mueller stating, “The boss and his staff do not know about our discussions.” They also include “off the record” emails with major media outlets around the date of Mueller’s appointment.

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Second Chance

Posted on October 3, 2019 by camelotkidd

 

I always knew that the national security state and their corporate media handmaidens would keep Russia-gate alive if for no other reason than to hide their culpability in the attempted coup against the president. And with Trump’s reckless style it was only a matter of time until the opportunity presented itself. Now it seems that Trump’s clumsy and stupid attempts to link Joe Biden and son to corruption in Ukraine has given Democrats a chance to revive their discredited Russia-gate crusade.

And make no mistake, Ukraine-gate is a second chance for them to depose a president who they never wanted while demonstrating the cost to any future leader who might have his or her independent thoughts about US foreign policies and our worldwide empire.

In discussing the US empire with fellow Americans one topic crops up repeatedly: We have to maintain an American empire for the good of the country and the world so the bad guys don’t triumph.

But that’s not how it works. The people that control and implement the US empire service a trans-national oligarchy that owns the banks and corporations that control our world. There able to do that without resorting to brute force by being able to control public narratives using media ownership, lobbyists and think tanks, thereby manipulating entire governments and international affairs.

Furthermore, in case you haven’t noticed it, you, as an average American, are expendable. Over the last 30 plus years corporations have ruthlessly dismantled and destroyed our manufacturing base and impoverished our working class, leaving millions of Americans to die deaths of despair. Meanwhile since 9/11 the US empire has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, while regime-changing Libya and attempting to overthrow the government of Syria. Since we invaded Afghanistan in 2001, we have spent more than $5 trillion and incurred liabilities for veterans’ disabilities and medical expenses of at least another trillion dollars, for a total of something over $6 trillion for military efforts alone.

This is money we didn’t spend on sustaining, still less improving, our own human and physical infrastructure or current and future well-being. We borrowed it, of course.  Estimates of the costs of servicing the resulting debt run to an additional $8 trillion over the next few decades.  Future generations of Americans will curse us for failing to invest in education, scientific research, and transportation. And for good measure, we’ll also leave them in hock for at least $14 trillion in war debt.

These forever wars and costs they incur expose an important reality. The agencies that make up the national security state or deep state are not there to protect and serve the American people. They are there to protect and serve the oligarchs, who profit from the forever wars and a continuation of the military/industrial/complex.

Meanwhile, the Ukraine-gate scandal has been driven by an account of a “heroic” CIA whistleblower, who felt obliged to report Trump’s phone call with the Ukraine president. However, we should always remember that when dealing in the world of deception and intrigue that defines intelligence operations, it is often difficult to determine whether any individual linked to an intelligence agency is telling the truth. Indeed, in the United States, there are examples of intelligence officials committing perjury and lying to Congress on several occasions with no consequences, and of intelligence officials feeding politically motivated and untrue information to agency assets in the media.

And this brings us to the other factor in the current scandal–the corporate media’s role in Russia-gate, and the fact that they colluded with the national security state to drive the narrative of treason. It should be obvious by now but the corporate media likewise does not exist to serve you but the service the powerful. Indeed, what we’re finding out is that the corporate media along with the new social media sites in Silicon Valley are there to serve the oligarchs that use the American empire to advance their agendas.

However, tribalism keeps Americans focused on their home-team media, with liberals glued to NPR and the New York Times, while conservatives believe every utterance from FOX News. Likewise, both liberals and conservatives are loyal to their teams turn at ruling the empire. Trump supporters fervently believe that their standard bearer is battling the deep state as he goes about pursuing the very same empire centric policies as Obama before him. And liberals, after decades of suspicion towards the CIA and FBI, immediately transform them into bastions of truth and integrity in their pursuit of Russia-gate. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

The only silver lining in the whole impeachment cluster-fuck is the potential to fatally discredit both of our corrupt oligarchic political parties while helping hasten the end of the American empire.

 

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Over there

Posted on September 27, 2019 by camelotkidd

 

My friends and loved ones grow weary of my focus on foreign policy. They’re much more concerned with the pressing domestic issues facing our country.

But what happens over there affects us over here. And what happens over there is largely the result of the US empire. Indeed, the US is the dominant hegemon with a worldwide empire of bases and client states.

This state of affairs seems to elude most Americans due to their ignorance of foreign affairs coupled with a sophisticated domestic propaganda narrative where the US is depicted ceaselessly as a selfless, indispensable nation upholding democracy and freedom.

Meanwhile, that whole empire thing will not stop intruding.

Yesterday Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi announced that impeachment proceedings against President Trump are underway due to a country–Ukraine –that most Americans couldn’t find on a map if their life depended on it.

With the Russia-gate hoax proving to be the “most fraudulent political scandal in American history,” as Princeton Professor Stephen Cohen puts it, now we have its twin–Ukraine-gate.

Both Russia-gate and Ukraine-gate concern the US empire and the national security state or deep state that’s metastasized under it’s malign influence. I firmly believe that both are the result of Donald Trump’s desire to deviate from the script of empire. If you’ll recall, Trump promised to end America’s regime-change-happy foreign policies and reset relations with Russia which had deteriorated drastically under his predecessor Barak Obama, who’d green-lighted the Ukrainian coup in 2014.

Going further, both of these manufactured scandals are attempted coups against a sitting president by the intelligence agencies that make up a key node of the national security state. And, of course, our vaunted “free press” is aiding and abetting this effort. It’s clear that the corporate media does not care about truth and they don’t care about justice. They do not care about holding power to account, because they exist only to serve power.

What’s humorous is that Ukraine-gate promises to imperil the DNC’s favorite candidate–former Vice-President Joe Biden. In fact it was Joe’s Biden big mouth that brought the issues back into light. In January 2018 he gave a talk at the Council of Foreign Relations and explained how he directly threatened (video) to withhold money to blackmail the Ukraine into firing a prosecutor general who was seen as corrupt:

“And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t.So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

Biden did that at a time when his son lobbied for the Ukrainian company Burisma who the prosecutor he wanted fired investigated:

“U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.”

There is no direct evidence that Joe Biden told the Ukrainians to stop the investigation into Burisma. But it was not difficult for the Ukrainians to figure out that ending the investigation into the company that Joe Biden’s son worked for would help them with further requests to him.

How will the Democrats and corporate media explain that what Trump did was wrong or even criminal while insisting that what Joe Biden did was above board?

Instead of attacking Trump’s for the horrid things he’s actually doing the Democrats are conspiring with the intelligence agencies to defend the deep state while engaging in the worst kind of political theater knowing full well that the American public doesn’t have a clue.

Personally, I think the Democrats need a big distraction because former CIA chief John Brennan is becoming the focus of the investigation into how Russia-gate began and proceeded. And if Brennan is indicted then the whole corrupt Russia-gate fabrication would come to light, including the treasonous Democratic role.

This is a clear cut case where knowledge of foreign policy would help make sense of an important topic and to see the impeachment proceedings for what they truly are–kayfabe.

The impeachment proceedings may not involve fellatio and a blue dress this time but they promise to be every bit as stupid.

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All about the Benjamins

Posted on September 19, 2019 by camelotkidd

 

I’ve talked about the deep state at length but the whole Epstein affair casts this dynamic in a much darker hue.

For instance, there’s no way that a serial pedophile blackmailer like Epstein went unnoticed by the vaunted intelligence agencies that make up a key node in our deep state. Or the corporate media, where proposed stories about him were killed at the behest of nervous editors.

And, what exactly does that say about the morality of the elite that govern us?

Personally, I think these despicable actions by Epstein and his enablers are emblematic of the decline of the US empire and that our elite are so desperate that they will do anything to stay in power. These are not the actions of a confident group.

What’s been fascinating about the Epstein affair is that it contains three overlapping themes–intelligence, finance and sordid criminality–that would seem to provide prima facia evidence of an American deep state. This deep state or national security complex or whatever you want to call it that directs the US empire ultimately represents the true power center–Wall Street and the too-big-to-fail banks that we bailed out in 2008.

Going further, the US maintains its empire largely through financial means where Wall Street is a major player. As Mike Lofgren describes in Anatomy of the Deep State–“It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice — certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee.”

And these bankers are desperate because the financial system is now sitting atop a $800 trillion derivatives bubble. Indeed, when objectively assessing the psychological state of our feral elite at this particular moment in history, it’s hard to not conclude that certain forces operating on behalf of the financial industry would go to any length– not excluding nuclear war- in defense of their failing system.

The enormous risk that these financial elite are taking in their quest to maintain global hegemony is not much different from a preemptive nuclear attack, (think an economic first strike). By attacking the price of oil to damage foes like Russia, Iran and Venezuela the deep state risks the shale gas industry in the US, where the whole edifice is propped up by massive loans that have to be repaid to the US banks. These loans would go up in smoke and with them, potentially, all the derivatives. A useful comparison to fully realize what numbers we’re talking about: the US public debt amounts to 18 trillion dollars. The derivatives markets, only of the six largest banks in America, amounts to almost 16 times the US debt!

The use of economic sanctions against enemies of the empire: the deliberate targeting of revenues from crude oil, freezing financial assets, rising inflation due to central bank money printing, and so on are the weapon with which the national security state is convinced that it can continue its role as a hegemon in the world.

Recent events in the Middle-East, with Iran shooting down an American spy drone and now the attack on a Saudi oil processing complex only add layers of intrigue while exposing the schism between the neocons and the financial operators of the deep state.

Neocon, Mike Pompeo, speaking to reporters on Wednesday about an attack on a Saudi Aramco oil refinery last weekend, proclaimed that not only was the attack definitely perpetrated by Iran, but that it was an “act of war” and a threat to American lives. “This was an Iranian attack,” Pompeo claimed without evidence. “We were blessed there were no Americans killed in this attack, but anytime you have an act of war of this nature, there’s always a risk that could happen.”

However, it’s obvious that Trump is listening to other counsel because so far he’s not taken the bait and ordered an attack on Iran. This was similar to when he was pushed to the edge of war over the downing of the spy drone in June and blinked.

I believe that the president is clever enough to understand that an attack on Iran would not only tank the financial system but also end his reelection chances. Indeed, if Trump ever strikes Iran he will be blamed for the disaster by the neocons, who despise him. And Bolton’s dismissal could be one of those Trump signals to the deep state stating that he does not intend to sabotage his re-election hopes in 2020 by starting a new war.

But, Trump being Trump is hastening the end of the American empire through his foreign policy decisions, where there is no longer even a pretense that the US might adhere to international norms, let alone laws or treaties. It is almost like a black political comedy.

That Chinese curse about living in interesting times sure seems to be coming true.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hack the narrative

Posted on September 12, 2019 by camelotkidd

 

A new report challenges the conventional narrative of 9/11.

Although you probably didn’t see it or hear about it on corporate media, a research team at the University of Alaska’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, led by Dr. Leroy Hulsey, Dr. Zhili Quan, and Professor Feng Xiao, Department of Civil Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, released yesterday for public comment their findings from a four-year study of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on September 11, 2001.  This is the first scientific investigation of the collapse of the building.   

The study, currently available as a draft, concluded that “uncontrolled building fires” did not lead the building to fall into its footprint — tumbling more than 100 feet at the rate of gravity free-fall for 2.5 seconds of its seven-second collapse — as has officially been claimed. Instead, the study — authored by Dr. J. Leroy Hulsey, Dr. Feng Xiao and Dr. Zhili Quan — found that “fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] and private engineering firms that studied the collapse,” while also concluding “that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global [i.e., comprehensive] failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.”

Amazing. 18 years after the fateful day and we still don’t know what happened. All we have to go on is the official narrative. You know–Sunni terrorists armed with boxcutters managed to highjack jetliners then fly them through the most heavily guarded airspace on the planet and into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Within hours of the attack, Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network were blamed for conceiving, planning, financing and coordinating the attacks.

Coincidentally, the attacks on 9/11 provided a casus belli for the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think-tank directed by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. PNAC recommended taking advantage of the defeat of communism to reinforce American hegemony by preventing the emergence of any rival. In its September 2000 report entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses, PNAC anticipated that US forces must become “able to rapidly deploy and win multiple simultaneous large-scale wars.” Unfortunately, according to the authors of the report, “the process of transformation […] is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”

What an amazing coincidence. Since the attacks on 9/11, the neoconservatives have been able to wage multiple, simultaneous wars across the Middle-East, turning the region into a caldron of failed states. It’s almost like they were following the Yinon Plan, or something. Which brings us to the elephant in the room–Israel. The neocons are a small group of ideologues. Most are allied with Israel. Some are dual-citizens. Since the late 1970’s the neocons have  created an ideology of American world hegemony, specifying that the chief goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any other power that could check US unilateralism. A key strategic objective of this policy is to fracture and balkanize the Middle-East.

Mission Accomplished.

Of course to maintain this ongoing narrative of the endless war-on-terror mandated by the attacks of 9/11 requires the aid of the corporate media but with all the investigative reporters holding our elite accountable that would prove impossible, right?

Oh, wait.

The corporate media has already told so many whoppers that anyone who believes them at this point is an idiot.

Still, the propaganda and censorship have only increased since Trump’s surprise election, with the corporate media labeling anything that deviates from their official narrative as “fake news.”

However, as evidence continues to mount that the official narrative is irrational, it becomes ever more clear that the reason for this media campaign is to prevent legitimate questions about 9/11 from receiving the scrutiny they deserve, even smearing victims’ families and ailing first responders to do so. “Never Forget” has become nearly synonymous with “Never question the official narrative.”

Yet, this 9/11 anniversary — with a new study demolishing the official narrative on WTC 7, with a new poll showing that more than half of Americans doubt the government narrative on WTC 7, and with firefighters who responded to 9/11 calling for a new investigation — is it still “crazy” to be skeptical of the official story?

Remember that everything we think we know is simply narrative.

Hack the narrative.

Update: No matter how hard the deep state tries to resurrect Russia-gate with a bullshit story about a spy in Putin’s inner retinue, the reality is that no country meddles more in our affairs that our erstwhile ally–Israel. Going further, there is much evidence that Israel was deeply involved in 9/11. See here, here and here.

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IBDYBD

Posted on September 5, 2019 by camelotkidd

 

The looming threat of global weirding has made it apparent that both our political parties are death cults and, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, money is their only true value.

I’d be remiss if I failed to mention ideology, where the Republicans have gone so far down the path of government is the problem and never the solution while the Democrats have embraced neoliberal privatization, but it’s still mostly money with GOP receiving the bulk of their campaign funding from fossil fuel interests and the DNC disallowing debate on the real national security issue so as to not upset their financial backers.

“The DNC Doesn’t Want a Climate Debate for a Reason” [Jacobin]. “While tech money is important, the biggest donors to the DNC in the 2020 cycle are overwhelmingly financial companies, whether hedge funds, private equity, or more traditional investment management. Obviously, most of these firms want to be able to continue to invest in fossil fuels as well as in companies looting the Amazon. Such companies are run by — and depend on the continued existence of — the very rich, our planet’s biggest liability. (Not only do they create immense pollution through private jets and multiple homes, the rich also support such lifestyles through immensely planet-ravaging investments.) The finance class does not want to hear plain talk about solutions to climate change; in many cases, they are getting rich from destroying the planet and do not wish to stop doing this. That’s probably why DNC head Tom Perez called the idea of a climate debate ‘dangerous.’ The DNC also seems to be trying to avoid two likely outcomes of a climate debate: Joe Biden looking bad and Bernie Sanders looking good.”

Last week Bernie Sanders released his version of the Green New Deal—a $16.3 trillion 10-year plan to get down to zero carbon in the power industry and in transportation. Immediately, the Democratic neoliberal establishment and corporate media decried it as “too expensive,” not “realistic” and not “prudent.” Just as they had with other proposals that would have averted the certain physical and fiscal disaster that climate change will cause.

In a sense, these groups are even more dangerous than the deniers in the Republican Party’s camp. As evidence that climate change is happening now piles up, the deniers are increasingly like Ike Turner who says, “Who you gonna believe? Your lying eyes or me?”

Unfortunately, it really is “all about the Benjamins”, with both parties trying to hold onto a system that is literally killing us, even as they and their billionaire backers prosper.

But why do we have to resort to such radical action? Why not a more “realistic” or “prudent” one?

The reason is because “realists” have been aiding and abetting climate deniers with appeals to slow walk the implementation of solutions for decades now. And every year the danger grows while the costs have skyrocketed. What’s become apparent is that most of these “realists”—including the DNC, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the neoliberal Democrats—seem more concerned with campaign contributions than they are with the safety of the American people.

This brings us face to face with the real problem in our society–the moderates. Since the demise of Russia-gate the corporate media has been replete with scary stories of right-wing extremists threatening our precious democracy, but it’s the moderates of both parties that we should fear. Of course, this is nothing new. During the first Cold War, C. Wright Mills wrote of a “crackpot realism”, where bi-partisan US foreign policy mandarins evoked national security to continue policies that posed the real danger of ending life on earth.

Sound familiar?

Indeed, both parties are set up to divert anger while pursuing the very same policies that have gotten us to this point.

Meanwhile, neoliberal policymakers and other elites in the US have developed a language and ideology to justify doing everything and anything possible to avoid any responsibility for the coming collapse and the global chaos it will cause. Among the more jaded of the financial profession they have a saying that really encapsulates this morality. “I’ll be dead, you’ll be dead” (IBDYBD), so don’t worry.

 

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