Sympathy for the Devils...

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu May 20, 2021 2:09 pm

Freedom Rider: The Palestine Litmus Test
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist 19 May 2021

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Freedom Rider: The Palestine Litmus Test

President Joe Biden continues to proclaim endless support of apartheid Israel, but millions have decided that defense of Palestinian rights and lives is the only civilized response to barbaric aggression.

“The U.S. uses its veto power on the United Nations Security Council to prevent the international community from using its voice.”


There aren’t many issues which clearly and unequivocally delineate right from wrong. The question of justice for the Palestinian people and their right to be protected by international law is one which gives no wiggle room for ifs, ands, or buts. Israel’s apartheid system is of such long standing and is so brazen that millions of people feel not only outrage but an insult to their own personal integrity and now speak up though they once demurred.

The state of Israel periodically decides to bomb Gaza, evict Palestinians from their homes, or attack the al-Aqsa mosque. They have done all of those things in recent weeks, during the holy month of Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr celebration no less. Israel continues its practice of violating international law by carrying out collective punishments against civilian populations.

As always, the deaths are disproportionately among Palestinians. The dead are largely on one side while the other suffers few casualties.

“Israel’s apartheid system is of such long standing and is so brazen that millions of people feel not only outrage but an insult to their own personal integrity.”

The attacks on Palestinians have been ongoing since the Nakba catastrophe of 1948 but are always followed by protest and condemnation from throughout the world. From the moment the state of Israel came into being it carried out massacres, invasions, and theft of land. Each time its protectors in the United States come to its aid. The U.S. uses its veto power on the United Nations Security Council to prevent the international community from using its voice and gives the impression that war crimes are accepted when the opposite is true.

President Joe Biden continues in the path of his predecessors, proclaiming endless support of apartheid Israel. A State Department spokesperson couldn’t bring himself to even express mild concern over the deaths of Gazan children.

Some of the usual suspects are still at large, so craven that they won’t even speak up for themselves. The Reuters news agency described the Israeli destruction of a building housing the Associated Press and Al Jazeera in Gaza in a twisted passive voice. “Gaza tower housing AP, Al Jazeera collapses after missile strike -- witness.” The Israeli government sent a message to the international media that they would be targets, and Reuters obeyed the dictate by violating the most basic rules of journalism. They are so fearful that they wouldn’t explain the basic who, what, when, where, why and how that every school child knows are an integral part of reporting.

“The U.S. uses its veto power on the United Nations Security Council to prevent the international community from using its voice.”

While the corporate media continue tales of phony equivalency and act as stenographers for the state, thousands of people ignored them and took to the streets in protest. It is true that Israel continues its stranglehold on politics in the U.S. and throughout the NATO imperialist alliance. While officials throughout these nations ignored the reality of deaths of Gazan civilians, including entire families, protests took place in Washington, London, Paris and other cities in defiance of political leadership.

What of Black political leadership in this country? Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) rose to the occasion with clear condemnation of Israel on the floor of congress. Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Andre Carson and Cori Bush all made unequivocal statements decrying Israel’s actions. This development is an important one, as the hangover from the Israeli lobby targeting of CBC members is seeming to dissipate. These CBC members are like millions of people, appalled by scenes of the Israeli Defense Forces violating the sanctity of al-Aqsa and lynch mobs attacking Palestinians at will.

“Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Andre Carson and Cori Bush all made unequivocal statements decrying Israel’s actions.”

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang didn’t get the memo announcing a political change and he issued the same tired statement about “standing with Israel” but ordinary people gave him a piece of their minds. He was disinvited from a Ramadan event and had to backtrack, calling his original comment “overly simplistic” and declared that he mourns for Palestinian lives too.

Israel may have finally gone too far. The moment when all of the people cannot be fooled has arrived. The proof of atrocities is too easy to find, and the deaths of little children are universally abhorred. Only those most slavishly devoted to the establishment are going along with the narrative of Israel’s alleged right to defend itself by destroying homes and hospitals.

The fence straddlers have had their day. The assault on the consciences of millions of people may have finally brought about the sea change that was needed. Defending the human rights of Palestinians is right, and any equivocation on the matter is wrong. The issue is black and white. There is no room for gray.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/freed ... itmus-test

Well, I hope so, but don't expect so much from the US public as our primary sources of information as nothing but State Dept puppets. Witness this CNN video report, supposedly a 'timeline' but curiously omitting Hamas's warning to Israel to desist in it's aggressions in Jerusalem some hours before it initiated the first barrage. This was entirely in Israel's ability to prevent, the false equivalency is nauseating. Doesn't fit he narrative, huh, Joe?

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/20 ... -conflict/
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Fri May 28, 2021 1:55 pm

Freedom Rider: Biden Breaks His Promises
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist 27 May 2021

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Freedom Rider: Biden Breaks His Promises

Black people have nothing to show for a Biden presidency despite turning out in droves to put him in office.

“If the Republicans are seen as the only enemy then we have already lost.”

Joe Biden has yet to make good on any campaign promise he made to voters. The $2,000 stimulus became just $1,400. There is no minimum wage increase. He promised a public option for the Affordable Care Act but now says that isn’t going to happen. He is cutting back on his infrastructure initiative, the American Jobs Plan, from $2.3 trillion to $1.7 trillion in order to placate Republicans and right wing Democrats. Biden said he supported a paltry $10,000 in student loan relief only to back away from that too.

So far his only positive policies are in regard to temporary tax benefits for families with children and additional unemployment payments. But that help is in danger as 22 states have said they will no longer accept this federal money. In typical fashion, Biden says his hands are tied and there is nothing he can do to help millions of desperate people. Apparently the federal government can’t figure out how to write checks anymore.

Biden supporters advocated the need for harm reduction in the campaign against Donald Trump. They knew that Biden was always on the right wing of the putative left party and made their case by raising the specter of another Trump term. But no one was honest about the true nature of the political system in the U.S. The sad fact is that dependence upon either wing of the duopoly is a losing proposition.

“Biden says his hands are tied.”

The absence of a strong and well organized movement means that harm reduction is always a fantasy. The Democratic Party establishment chose Biden to be the nominee and didn’t get the pushback that was needed against their backroom deal making. Unscrupulous Black operatives derided anything other than obedience to their bosses. We were told to go along and be quiet and that any other response meant the return of Trump. The lack of demands set us up for failure, propaganda about cutting poverty, and phony progressives taking a dive instead of standing up for the people. Black people have nothing to show for a Biden presidency despite turning out in droves to put him in office.

The moment is ripe to acknowledge that this system is a complete sham and exists only to help the 1% do as much as they can to oppress the 99%. We will live with a cycle of Republicans and Democrats who use different methods but always end up working against our needs.

Black politics will have to be recreated by people acting independently from the class of political misleaders. If not, we face a cycle of Democrats losing after they fail to make good on their promises, who are then followed by Republicans who sneak into office using voter suppression tactics which work when there is a lack of enthusiasm for the do nothing Democrats. It is time to get away from this vicious cycle.

“Unscrupulous Black operatives derided anything other than obedience to their bosses.”

This is not the moment for timidity. The faux progressives have to be called out as much as the Democrats most conservative members. They work together after all, each one willingly going along with their role which allows all of them to fool the rank and file into thinking that one side is good while the other is bad. If the Republicans are seen as the only enemy then we have already lost. They all must be seen as our adversaries whom we must oppose strongly and publicly.

This obvious fact is not lost on Nancy Pelosi or the rest of the leadership. They keep the Capitol building off limits and use the Trump supporters’ January 6 riot as their excuse. What they really fear is that the left may learn a lesson about bringing their demands directly to Washington. The House of Representatives recently approved $1.9 billion for the Capitol police force, an unnecessary sum of money that will be used to keep out the left and not Trump dead enders.

If history is any guide, the Democrats will lose their razor thin margins in the 2022 midterm elections. Should that be the case, Biden’s obfuscations will be the cause. The Trump trauma will have diminished and millions of people who made great efforts to vote for Biden will instead ask what he has done for them lately.

Regardless of the outcome, the tired notion of harm reduction must be thrown into the trash can of history along with the democratic party. No one should be shocked when the only promises kept are those made to the donor class. Biden’s only truthful statement was saying that nothing would fundamentally change.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/freed ... s-promises

Yep, 'lesser-evilism' ain't no great incentive to make an effort to get out and vote. Which explains why the Dems need voting to be effortless as possible. But the Republicans feel no need, their 'base' is fired with enthusiasm for a reactionary culture war, the result of the Amerikan education/entertainment system. Furthermore, they gotta strike while the iron is hot, there will be no 'Trumpism' after that blowhard's demise.

The superficial embrace of 'diversity', their showpiece scam for keeping the sheep in the corral does not reflect any change of heart but rather attention to the trend of Big Capital. It certainly would not occur to Biden or 'Cop' Harris without prompting from that direction. And if it comes from capital it's bad for us, they give away nothing, real change must be wrested from them.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 01, 2021 4:21 pm

SACRIFICED AT THE ALTAR OF DEMOCRATIC PARTY FEALTY
Posted by Greg Godels | May 29, 2021 | Featured Stories | 2

Sacrificed at the Altar of Democratic Party Fealty
BY GREG GODELS
May 17, 2021



The COVID pandemic called into question many of the deeply held, foundational beliefs of twenty-first century capitalism. “Universal truths” like the efficacy of just-in-time production, the sanctity of fiscal restraint, the necessity of balanced budgets, and the sin of direct cash handouts were either shattered or unceremoniously discarded. For those able to think beyond the reformist box, the global pandemic challenged the very legitimacy of capitalism.

But perhaps the greatest myth-busting consequence of COVID was the mirror it held up to the US healthcare system or, more accurately, the US health consumer/insurance industry.

Of course, most US citizens have long expressed a preference, when properly asked, for a universal system shorn of private insurance, like the original Medicare or a publicly financed, executed, and administered system like the Veterans Administration healthcare system.

It is no secret that, despite widespread support, the US public has been denied its choice by politicians shamefully influenced by the campaign contributions, the intense lobbying, and out-and-out graft of profit and “non-profit” networks, insurance and drug companies, and the political heft of others parasitic on a profit-driven system. While the public surely deserves better, it is mired in a system of increasing complexity, blind, confusing choices, and unfettered cost increases.

The hucksters of private initiative, competition, and choice never explain that profit-seeking always produces and reproduces deception, consumer uncertainty, and unequal outcomes. They have argued persistently against reform because it would reduce the choices available to the “consumer.” This free-market hocus-pocus remains the default argument of the healthcare industry. But they curiously abandon their commitment to real choice when it comes to the Medicare-for-All option. That choice is foreclosed.

So, when the COVID virus struck the US, the ensuing rapid spread of cases, the shortage of hospital facilities, staff, and equipment, and the obscene rise in deaths exposed the lack of a comprehensive, universal, people-first public health system. States scrambled to find individual solutions to common problems; political calculations overrode human suffering; finger-pointing abounded; and states, municipalities, and systems hoarded scarce resources. Waves of new infections overwhelmed the patchwork, disorganized, and incoherent free-market approach.

Thus, a great opportunity was presented by the catastrophic COVID response of the richest country in the world, an opportunity to popularize the advantages of alternatives to an unpopular, failed system clung to by corrupted politicians and profiteers.

Indeed, many in the single-payer, Medicare-for-All movement seized this tragic, but instructive moment. Many wrote, spoke, and organized around the devastating failure of private, competitive, profit-driven healthcare options. If anything good could come out of an embarrassing systemic failure, they argued, it would be that it underscored the need to move to a national system of universal and comprehensive healthcare delivered equally to all.

But political opportunism infected far too many who saw a chance to link the COVID catastrophe solely to Donald Trump, rather than lay it at the doorstep of a failed system. Of course, it is possible to heap some blame, a lot of blame on Donald Trump while indicting the system as well. Unfortunately, the crushing imperatives of the two-party system and the emotionally unhinged determination to eliminate Trump at all costs came at a price: the systemic failure of the existing, profit-before-people model and its needed replacement were pushed to the neverland of empty promises. The failure to combat COVID was firmly attached to Donald Trump.

Blind loyalty to the Democratic Party has overshadowed any commitment to principle. Similarly, the fetish of personality, of form over content, has disabled the advancement of issues. Insofar as Trump was a creep, it was more important to heap blame on him for any and every failure of the system. The movement for single-payer was one of many casualties of this everything-and-everybody up against Trump.

It is a lazy opportunism to attribute long-standing policy failures, like that of the Rube Goldberg US healthcare system, solely to an unhinged blowhard like Donald Trump. A conventional Democrat (like Andrew Cuomo) would (and did!) fare little better within the disastrous US model.

Thus, any momentum gained by the COVID catastrophe’s discrediting of the US health-service industry is lost to the exigencies of the Democratic Party. We’ve gotten rid of Trump, but we’re stuck with a President who has declared that there will be no change to a universal system on his watch.

Meanwhile, capitalism’s champions are tirelessly carrying forward the fight to defend the for-profit system. Niall Ferguson, the popular conservative public intellectual known for his staunch defense of the British Empire, has written an essay published in The Wall Street Journal, arguing that had only the politicians taken the same tact as their counterparts did with the 1957 “Asian” flu, the US would have had far better outcomes (Ferguson is famous or infamous for his counterfactual histories).

Buried among a barrage of seemingly disconnected data and slippery comparisons is his thesis: “In 1957, the U.S. rose to the challenge of the ‘Asian flu’ with stoicism and a high tolerance for risk, offering a stark contrast with our approach to Covid-19.”

Ferguson’s recipe of benign neglect (“Eisenhower did not declare a state emergency. There were no state lockdowns and… school closures.”) stands in stark contrast to his detailed touting of the speedy, efficient development of a vaccine in 1957. He feels no logical discomfort in hailing personal risk-taking and institutional diffidence while, at the same time, praising the government’s speedy, effective vaccine development as significant for success in 1957!

We learn that the hospital-beds-per-thousand-people ratio was at an all-time high (9.18 per 1000) in 1957, over three times greater than in 2020. Ferguson also credits this far-greater capacity decisively to the ‘success’ of 1957. Yet he surely knows that it was his beloved Thatcher (and Reagan) who fueled the market fundamentalism behind the shrinkage of available hospital beds in the interest of capitalist ‘efficiency’ and profit.

Bathed in nostalgia for the fifties (Elvis, teenage boomer affluence, the Beat generation), Ferguson constructs an idealized world of minimal government, stolid Republican leadership, Cold War smugness, and ethnic hierarchies fearlessly confronting a pandemic and offering an alternative (counterfactually) to our own COVID experience.

If Ferguson’s fantastic, idealized model for confronting a deadly pandemic is the best that the left has to fear, then it has little to fear from his conservative ideological corner.

But the opportunism of the center-left is a huge barrier to securing a rational, universal healthcare system. Indeed, crass calculation infects the behavior of the ‘practical’ left on all issues. By answering every call of the Democratic establishment to put aside a burning issue in order to secure the victory of a ‘winning’ candidate, they guarantee that the burning issue becomes a forgotten issue.

Understandably, mass sentiment may run counter to majority interests, given that the masses are constantly bombarded with fast-food news and conformist commentary on media networks. But there is nothing understandable about liberals and ersatz socialists who willingly defer pressing vital initiatives to the service of a soulless Democratic Party.

With Trump, it was the politics of tone that captured the attention of the center-left and drew its scorn. Beneath his outrageousness and his dismissive violation of political etiquette, there was little more than another pamper-the-rich tax scheme and bilious rhetoric. The ship of state continued on course, serving the rich and powerful, overfeeding the military-industrial complex, and terrorizing any country that defies US dominance.

And now with Biden, the ship continues with a new pilot, but essentially on the same course. Certainly, there are adjustments, less bluster, less vulgarity. But that only boosts the politics of tone.

Yes, Biden has projected some ambitious, useful, and large-scale initiatives, but with the condition that he must achieve agreement from some of his Republican counterparts. The belief in such a rapprochement is either naive or a calculated ruse. As fear of inflation mounts, the retreat from ambitious action will accelerate. Biden is the new Obama, not the new FDR.

Allowing the Democratic Party to hold good, power-shifting, life-changing initiatives hostage to electoral success is a strategy that has not and will not work for the good of the people.

History teaches many lessons; we can’t afford to continue to ignore them.



Greg Godels can also be read at ZZ’s blog (zzs-blg.blogspot.com)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 03, 2021 1:55 pm

Return of the Lab Leak Conspiracy Shows Biden is a Democrat with Trumpian Characteristics on China
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor 02 Jun 2021

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Return of the Lab Leak Conspiracy Shows Biden is a Democrat with Trumpian Characteristics on China

Now Biden and his top allies have given credence to the lab leak conspiracy, as they escalate their confrontation with China.

“U.S. intelligence pins blame on China for domestic ills and labels that country a ‘national security’ threat.”

Joe Biden has been praised by liberals and even much of the Left as a marked shift from Donald Trump’s erratic and embarrassing presidency. This position takes on a decidedly class dimension whereby elites and their hangers on walk in lockstep with the Biden administration’s political trajectory. Those heaping praise onto Biden ignore his neoliberal approach to domestic economic woes and express complete alignment with his foreign policy priorities.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Biden’s approach to China. National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell declared in late May that the “era of engagement” with China has come to an end. Before entering the Biden administration, Campbell was co-founder of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). CNAS is a D.C.-based think-tank which is primarily funded by the State Department and major military contractors such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and BAE systems. In other words, Biden’s “Asia Czar” is the perfect man for the job of escalating the U.S.’s New Cold War against China.

Biden’s approach to China has built upon Trump’s hostile posture in every respect. Biden has increased sanctions on China’s tech sector and his representatives at the State Department have shown an outright disrespect for Chinese diplomats. Biden has further committed to maintaining the U.S military’s presence in the Asia-Pacific while declaring that the 21st century will be a U.S. battle for “democracy” against China’s “autocracy.”

“Biden’s State Department have shown an outright disrespect for Chinese diplomats.”

The current administration has been most Trump-like in relation to the propaganda campaign of the U.S.’s New Cold War. Biden has doubled down on unproven claims of “genocide” in Xinjiang. During the eleven-day Israeli assault on Gaza, the U.S. State Department declared without any evidence that Xinjiang was an “open-air prison.” On May 26th, Biden demanded that U.S. intelligence services review a more than year-old claim that COVID-19 was either produced or released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The lab leak conspiracy has resurfaced in recent months after Trump’s former CDC Director Robert Redfield stated that he believed COVID-19 emerged from a lab. Redfield is a renowned Evangelical whose credentials have been subject to scrutiny due to his former relationship with the Americans for a Sound HIV/AIDS Policy (ASAP), a rightwing NGO which led the charge in promoting abstinence-only and other hard-right Christian values as a response to HIV/AIDS.

The lab leak hypothesis has long been debunked as an evidence-free conspiracy with links to the far right. An analysis by FAIR found that corporate media reports utilized quotes from National Endowment for Democracy-funded far right activist Xiao Qiang and a 2018 State Department Cable which mentioned zero concerns of safety hazards as the principal sources to back up the lab leak claim. Tucker Carlson joined in on the fray later in 2020 to platform Yan Li-Meng’s assertion that the virus was created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Li-Meng possesses connections to Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui’s Rule of Law Foundation and her research has been discredited by the Hong Kong university from which she defected.

“Biden has doubled down on unproven claims of “genocide” in Xinjiang.”

Now Biden and his top allies such as Dr. Anthony Fauci have given credence to the lab leak conspiracy. Biden’s call for an intelligence investigation comes amid unsourced intelligence reports that claim doctors in Wuhan became ill just prior to the spread of the virus. Similar to Russiagate, U.S. intelligence has run with an entirely unsourced narrative that conveniently pins blame on another country for domestic ills and labels that country a “national security” threat.

Genuine leftists are often called conspiracy theorists for questioning power, making the term itself toxic in political discourse. It is important to remember, however, that conspiracies do exist and that those in power are the ones with the means and the ends to carry them out. The lab leak conspiracy, like Russiagate, has been a key cog in the U.S. propaganda war against China. For more than a year, U.S. officials and media outlets have casted blame and skepticism onto China for the spread of COVID-19. The propaganda has worked. More than half of the U.S. population believes China should pay reparations to the world for the spread of COVID-19 and public opinion of China has reached a new low.

The lab leak conspiracy is an effective psychological operation because it is difficult to imagine evidence that could disprove or prove the claim. When Russia was accused of “hacking” or “influencing” the 2016 election, even the most astute observers of geopolitics tended to fall for the Cold War bait that it was plausible Russia possessed both the desire and capacity to prevent a Hillary Clinton presidency. China’s image in the U.S. psyche as an even more formidable “Yellow Peril” archetype of a communist “dictatorship” to Russia has ensured that majorities of U.S. and Western minds were already primed to believe that the People’s Republic of China was capable of releasing a bioweapon upon the world. Racist characterizations of China in the U.S. corporate media have revived the “Sick Man of Asia” stereotype and given U.S. intelligence all the ammo it needs to lend credence to the lab leak conspiracy.

“Racist characterizations of China in the U.S. corporate media have revived the “Sick Man of Asia” stereotype.”

It is therefore important to remember the two biggest accomplishments of Russiagate, an intelligence conspiracy Biden supported:

Russiagate gained full support from Democrats for the New Cold War. This included the manufacturing of consent for sanctions, enhanced NATO presence along Russia’s borders, and a more intense campaign of suppression against anti-war journalists and activists.
Russiagate deflected blame for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss onto a foreign power and shielded the Democratic Party for its role in the rise of Donald Trump.
The lab leak conspiracy is serving similar ends in a moment of intense crisis for the United States. A Zero COVID-19 strategy was never implemented in the United States. The U.S.’s failure to contain the pandemic is clearly demonstrated in the more than 500,000 pandemic-related deaths suffered from the virus on U.S. shores. Enthusiasm for an economic “recovery” masks the fact that the U.S.-led capitalist economy continues to shrink amid massive bailouts for speculators and the ever-increasing destitution of the working masses. The lab leak conspiracy deflects blame for these and all other problems onto China.

Yet China is clearly not the problem. China has contained the pandemic and is set to grow more than six percent in the next year. China defeated extreme poverty during a global depression. Its model for state-driven economic development and multipolar international relations has become increasingly attractive to many around the world who find themselves crushed under the weight of the U.S.’s regime of endless war and austerity, especially in the Global South.

“The U.S.’s failure to contain the pandemic is clearly demonstrated in the more than 500,000 pandemic-related deaths suffered from the virus on U.S. shores.”

That Biden and his administration see China as a threat should come as no surprise. Biden and the Democrats are committed to only one constituency: finance capital. All promises to cancel student loan debt, implement a public option, or reel back Trump’s immigration policies have been broken in service of Biden’s corporate donors. Biden has bombed Syria, fully supported Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, and given a blank check to the Pentagon. Finance capital no longer sees the possibility of a compliant China in the world economy and therefore wants to arrest its development via the military industrial complex.

Biden is thus doing his best Trump impression by urging a U.S. intelligence review into whether the COVID-19 virus has origins in a singular research institute in Wuhan. His deep dive into the lab leak conspiracy validates Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump’s racist epithet that COVID-19 was the “China virus.” The World Health Organization (WHO) has already begun investigating the origins of COVID-19 . Interference from nefarious spooks in U.S. intelligence threatens to undermine future research into the origins of COVID-19.

It shouldn’t have to be said that pandemics fall well outside of the scope of U.S. intelligence. U.S. intelligences have played a key role in deploying chemical and biological weapons in numerous wars on Global South countries such as Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. One of the authors of the Wall Street Journal report that revived the lab leak conspiracy, Michael R. Gordon, was also spreading rumors of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Iraq nearly two decades ago.

Biden is nothing more than a corporate Democrat with Trumpian characteristics. He wasn’t lying when he said that nothing would fundamentally change under his watch. Now that is a conspiracy truly worth our attention.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/retur ... tics-china

If it goes on all the time, if it appears to be standard operating procedure, is it accurate to refer to these activities as 'conspiracy? 'Conspiracy' implies secrecy, it implies an aberration. This and a hundred other occurrences are neither, they are in our face and dare us to trust our lying eyes. Rather, we should make plain that it does go on all the time, that this is the true nature of bourgeois governance. That, I think, will relieve us of a lot of the distracting reformism.

A petty complaint, perhaps, but we shouldn't give reformism an inch. And we should distance ourselves from the whack-jobs.

Joe Biden is the piece of crap we always knew the 'Senator from MasterCard' to be. He also seems to possess a greater amount of cynicism than the average high level pol, which is appalling.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 08, 2021 2:26 pm

The most dangerous word for Democrats in 2022

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Updated 11:05 AM ET, Mon June 7, 2021

(CNN)A Democratic post-mortem of the 2020 election reveals this troubling reality: Many voters were convinced by Republican attacks that the Democratic Party and its candidates embraced socialism and other radical views.

"Campaign public discourse -- in paid media, earned media, and direct voter contact -- and message and opinion research indicated that voters recalled attacks related to 'radical socialists,' 'Defund the Police,' and related messages," read a section of the report, which was conducted by a series of Democratic advocacy groups including Third Way and the Latino Victory Project, and which was first obtained by The New York Times.
According to the analysis, a six-month deep dive into the messaging in various 2020 contests around the country, the socialism attack was the one that stung the most. Again, here's the report:

"The socialism attack was called out by many Members of Congress and candidates who were not successful who believe it hurt campaigns in states and districts with immigrant populations that fled socialist governments, including among Venezuelan, Cuban, Vietnamese, and Filipino voters."
The results in 2020 House races bear that out. Democrats were swamped in heavily-Cuban south Florida (losing the 26th and 27th districts) as well as as in California, where they lost three seats with considerable Hispanic and other minority communities. (Republicans netted a surprising 12 seats nationwide.)


The report, viewed broadly, should sound the alarm for Democrats looking to 2022 -- even as the party finds itself in a civil war between its liberal and moderate wings over election reform and the use of the filibuster more broadly.

(On Monday morning, New York Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman called West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin "the new Mitch McConnell" in an interview with CNN's "New Day." Manchin announced in an op-ed on Sunday that he would not vote for the "For the People Act" and would oppose any effort to get rid of the legislative filibuster.)
The party is deeply divided over the right way forward -- whether to continue to work for compromise with Republicans (as Manchin and President Joe Biden are advocating) on major issues or whether to push through as many liberal priorities as possible before the 2022 election (as Bowman and lots of his fellow liberals in Congress support).

The Democratic post-mortem suggests that if Democrats attempt to take the latter, liberal route, the likelihood of them keeping their House majority come next November is considerably weakened. (Traditionally, the president's party loses a considerable number of House seats in his first midterm election in office; Republicans lost 40 House seats in the 2018 midterm election while Democrats lost 63 House seats in the first midterm election of Barack Obama's presidency.)
The problem, of course, is that the liberal base of the party is ascendant. Aside from Biden, the best-known Democrats in the party are either well-established liberals like Speaker Nancy Pelosi or avowed democratic socialists like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
And while democratic socialism is not the same thing as socialism, that nuance has been glossed over in past Republican attacks -- and, as the post-mortem makes clear, voters don't tend to see that nuance either.
Republicans, of course, see opportunity here. In his return to the 2022 campaign trail over the weekend in North Carolina, Trump insisted that "Joe Biden and the Socialist Democrats are the most radical left-wing administration in history" at one point. At another, he insisted that "the socialist Democrats quest for whatever it is they're looking for, because nobody knows, I don't even think they know, truly knows no bounds."
Trump's rhetoric is only the leading edge of what will be a main thrust of the Republican argument against total Democratic control in Washington heading into the 2022 midterm elections. And the timing of the radical socialist attack could hardly come at a worse time for Democrats -- landing, as it does, right in the middle of a fight over what the second half of Biden's first two years in office should look like.

https://us.cnn.com/2021/06/07/politics/ ... index.html
" Third Way and the Latino Victory Project", hmm.Third Way we know all too well, and if Bill Clinton's association with this outfit doesn't poison your opinion then I dunno about you... LVP is another establishment project, substituting identity for class and ideology, our common distraction and affliction these days. If ya didn't know something like this was coming then you haven't been paying attention. The Democratic Party is every bit as ruling class as the Republicans though their approaches are different. The accusation of 'socialists!'has been around since FDR, has never been remotely true, but plays directly into the indoctrination which passes for education and entertainment in these parts. It's like the accusation. "When did you stop beating your wife?", any answer is inadequate. Part and parcel of being the 'lesser-evil', always caught between the rocks of rhetoric and actual policy. Republicans don't have that problem, they tell ya who's gonna get screwed then do it.

I should be amazed if the Dems don't get their ass's beat in the mid-terms. Not only is it a historical pattern, Biden assures this outcome by dismissing and ignoring the party left which got him in office. The series of planned retreats which are hailed as pragmatism by ruling class flappers(Yeah, I read 'Gulliver' recently) will put on full display the treachery of Bernie and his Sheepdogettes. Cause if Bernie didn't see this coming then he's gone deep in 'Oldtimers'. So, there's gonna be serious disenchantment in that quarter.("I can't believe my old buddy Joe would do this.." Really?)

The eternal pursuit of 'the middle', the 'independents' or whatever appellation this season is has always been an exercise in controlling the narrative, setting the boundaries of the conversation. It is a joke, and the joke is on us. That plurality of eligible voters who chose not to chose can safely be assumed to be majority left-bent, particularly if there is good leadership, and would swamp them 'I don't knows' the parties putatively struggle over.

Persons who dream of the Democrats becoming an actual, effective party of the Left are deluded and ignorant of history. The Dem bosses WILL NOT let that happen, and will lose multiple elections if necessary to prove that point. That's the inevitable outcome, because class rules.

And away we go!
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 10, 2021 2:03 pm

This is the face of the Democratic Party, circa 2021?
Chris Cillizza
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Image

Updated 6:30 PM ET, Wed June 9, 2021

(CNN)Ask anyone: The Democratic Party is growing more diverse, younger, more liberal and averse to the establishment.

Except that in the single biggest contest of 2021 (and the one with the most national implications for the 2022 midterms), Democrats in Virginia just nominated a 64-year-old White guy who came to prominence in party politics as a confidant of the Clintons?
Yes, I am talking about none other than Terry McAuliffe, who cruised to the Virginia gubernatorial nomination on Tuesday and will represent the party in the November general election against Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin.
McAuliffe is a pillar of the Democratic establishment and has been so since the early 1990s, when he led fundraising efforts for President Bill Clinton. Heck, he served as chair of the Democratic National Committee -- the ultimate insider gig! -- for four years in the early 2000s.

What makes McAuliffe's wire-to-wire victory in the Democratic primary even more remarkable is that the field, aside from McAuliffe, was decidedly diverse.

Both former state Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, who finished a distant second to McAuliffe with 20%, and state Sen. Jennifer McClellan, who finished third, are Black women. (The fourth-place finisher -- Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax -- is also Black.)

https://us.cnn.com/2021/06/09/politics/ ... index.html
Yep, sure is. It's Third Way or the highway in the Democratic Party. Honest leftists should shun these plague dogs and forego the clothspin to the nose expedient. I mean, jfc, how long? Ignore the sheepdog's rhetoric, look at their voting record from the perspective of effect, not sentiment. Anyone can make throw-away votes that effect nothing but make campaign fodder.

Aren't you tired of being made a fool of?
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 18, 2021 1:40 pm

America’s soup-brained president says the U.S. never interferes in other countries’ elections
Posted Jun 18, 2021 by Caitlin A. Johnstone

Originally published: CaitlinJohnstone.com

During an astonishingly sycophantic press conference after the Geneva summit with Vladimir Putin, President Biden posited an entirely hypothetical scenario about what the world would think of the United States if it were interfering in foreign elections and everybody knew it.

When AP’s Jonathan Lemire asked the president of the most powerful government in the world what “consequences” he’d threatened the Russian leader with should the Kremlin interfere in U.S. elections going forward, Biden meandered his way through one of his signature not-quite-lucid word salads, and then said the following:

Let’s get this straight: How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries, and everybody knew it? What would it be like if we engaged in activities that he is engaged in? It diminishes the standing of a country that is desperately trying to make sure it maintains its standing as a major world power.



The fact that the entire press corps did not erupt in side-splitting laughter at this ridiculous utterance is in itself proof that western news media is pure propaganda. The United States has directly interfered in scores of foreign elections since it began its ascent to global domination at the end of the second World War, to say nothing of all the coups, color revolutions, proxy conflicts and regime change military invasions it has also participated in during that time. The U.S. openly interfered in Russia’s elections in the nineties, and literally just tried to stage a coup in Bolivia by interfering in its democratic process. The U.S. is far and away the single most egregious offender in the world on this front, which is largely why it is perceived around the world as a greater threat to democracy than any other government.

This is not a secret, internationally or in the United States. Anyone who has done any learning about the U.S. government’s actual behavior on the world stage knows this. Hell, a former CIA director openly joked about it on Fox News a few years ago.

Fox’s Laura Ingraham unsurprisingly introduced former CIA Director James Woolsey as “an old friend” in a 2018 interview about Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 alleged members of a Russian troll farm, in which Woolsey unsurprisingly talked about how dangerous Russian “disinformation” is and Ingraham unsurprisingly said that everyone should actually be afraid of China. What was a bit surprising, though, was what happened at the end of the interview.

“Have we ever tried to meddle in other countries’ elections?” Ingraham asked in response to Woolsey’s Russia remarks.

“Oh, probably,” Woolsey said with a grin.

But it was for the good of the system in order to avoid the communists from taking over. For example, in Europe, in ’47, ’48, ’49, the Greeks and the Italians we CIA-

“We don’t do that anymore though?” Ingraham interrupted.

We don’t mess around in other people’s elections, Jim?

Woolsey smiled and said said “Well…”, followed by a joking incoherent mumble, adding,

Only for a very good cause.

And then they both laughed.


The fact that not one person in the press pool questioned or criticized Biden’s outrageous remarks tells you everything you need to know about the western media and what its real function is. This is further illustrated by the rest of the behavior of these odious propagandists during the summit, which was illustrated quite well by the glowing praise of Democratic Party insider Andrea Chalupa on Twitter:

“The winners of #GenevaSummit2021 are the White House press corp,” Chalupa said.

Excellent questions confronting Putin and challenging Biden on holding a summit with a ruthless dictator. And they literally held their ground when shoved by Putin’s security and propagandists.

That actually says it all. Western reporters are forbidden by their oligarchic owners from ever confronting power in any meaningful way; the closest they’re ever allowed to get to punching up is challenging the leaders of CIA-targeted governments, and demanding to know why their own officials aren’t being more hawkish and aggressive toward those leaders.

As RT’s Murad Gazdiev pointed out, “ABC, NBC, BBC, CNN, and many other Western outlets were invited for Putin’s press conference. No Russian media was invited to Biden’s press conference.” The whole thing was a navel-gazing, masturbatory cold war propaganda orgy where western “journalists” made up fantasies about their soup-brained leader staring down Putin, where they yelled nonsense about Alexei Navalny at the Russian president and then fangirled at Biden’s response.


Real journalists go to Belmarsh Prison for exposing U.S. war crimes. Western propagandists ask Putin why he’s such a doodoo dumb dumb poopy head and then dream about Pulitzers all night.

Western news media exists to funnel propaganda into the minds of the public. It is controlled by plutocrats who work in alliance with opaque government agencies to weave narratives about why the U.S. government needs to do the things it had already planned on doing anyway. This gets more obvious by the day.

https://mronline.org/2021/06/18/america ... elections/
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:27 pm

Appearance Versus Essence: Biden is Stabilizing, Not Ending, Neoliberalism
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor 23 Jun 2021

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Appearance Versus Essence: Biden is Stabilizing, Not Ending, Neoliberalism

For neoliberalism to truly end, austerity and privatization must also come to an end and universal public programs such as nationalized healthcare and free higher education must exist within a context of peace.

“A massive increase in the standard of living of workers and oppressed people must occur before neoliberalism can be declared ‘dead.’”

Since Biden announced upwards of $6 trillion in federal spending priorities last April, including $2 trillion for new infrastructure, a range of economists and media outlets in the United States have sounded the death knell for neoliberalism. The logic is simple. Biden’s proposals raise federal expenditure to a level not seen since World War II. Instead of seeking corporate leadership to fund increased spending, the Biden administration has verbally committed to tax increases on the wealthy.

Trillions in new federal spending proposals excited some Democrats who agreed with Bernie Sanders’ assertion that Biden would represent the most progressive U.S. president since FDR. Such excitement was always misplaced. While Biden has committed to passing some version of his proposals, he has also demonstrated an obsession with bipartisanship. Negotiations with Republicans have already yielded significant concessions including a $1 trillion reduction in his infrastructure plan .

What form Biden’s proposals will ultimately take remains unclear. Republicans may no longer possess a political majority in Congress but inevitably benefit from the Democrats’ willingness to compromise the needs of their base to satisfy the capitalist class in control of both major parties. It is therefore necessary to revisit a key aspect of the Marxist philosophy of materialist dialectics: the struggle between appearance and essence.

“Negotiations with Republicans have already yielded significant concessions.”

Materialist dialectics explain the development of political economy in terms of contradictions, or a struggle between opposites which is in constant motion and rooted in the material world. Capitalists cannot exist without exploited labor, racism cannot exist without an oppressed race and an oppressor, and so on and so forth. How these contradictions ultimately change is by no means linear and is shaped by conflict—both in the form of objective developments within the overall system and the subjective efforts of social classes to assert or reinforce their interests (a contradiction in and of itself).

Appearance refers to what is readily visible to the naked eye. The essence of any phenomenon, especially a social system such as capitalism, is generally shrouded in an ongoing struggle between the hegemony of the dominant class and the material reality of the exploited classes. Biden’s federal spending plan, for example, appears to be a departure from neoliberal orthodoxy of the past two generations. The essence of Biden’s budgetary priorities, however, is firmly grounded in neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is generally defined as the placement of the private marketplace in command of society. This takes the form of tax reductions, austerity measures, and the full-scale privatization of state functions. Such a definition is limited to the appearance of the capitalist system and often disregards its essence. The diminishment of public assets and labor power is an important aspect of neoliberalism but does not reflect the essence or the quality of the system itself.

“Biden’s budgetary priorities are firmly grounded in neoliberalism.”

In essence, neoliberalism is an epoch of capitalism whereby the general crisis of the system is mitigated by the increased enrichment of capital at the expense of the people and the planet. In 2007-08, the United States addressed economic collapse by empowering finance capital through trillions worth in bailout dollars . Federal debt was used as an excuse to target public entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security. The Obama administration worked diligently with Republicans to privatize schools and pass a law that solidified the role of for-profit insurance companies in the administration of healthcare.

It is important to remember that Biden entered the Oval Office amid an unprecedented crisis in the history of capitalism. The world was (and still is) struggling with a deadly pandemic that triggered a history-altering economic crisis. Biden’s spending plans represent the bare minimum of what is required of the capitalist class to remedy a fraction of the economic damage caused by the U.S.’s failed pandemic response. While comparative to World War II numbers in aggregate spending, Biden’s proposals will only increase public investment in production by 0.5 percent of overall GDP , from 3 to 3.5. Private corporations and banks remain in the driver’s seat of investment and production.

The essence of neoliberalism is reflected not only in the quantity of public expenditure but also in its quality. Neoliberalism is defined both by the expansion of capital’s supremacy and the limitation of what is possible. A massive increase in the standard of living of workers and oppressed people must occur before neoliberalism can be declared “dead.” The last real rise in the standard of living of workers in the United States occurred following World War II when a combination of worker organizing and federal investment in jobs led to an increase in the social wage , albeit at the relative exclusion of a large portion of Black America, Indigenous people, and people of the Global South.

“Biden’s proposals will only increase public investment in production by 0.5 percent of overall GDP.”

The same cannot be said about Biden’s proposals and whatever negotiated form they may take in the future. On the campaign trail, Biden promised to cancel student loans, implement a public option, and raise the federal minimum wage to $15 dollars per hour. All of these proposals have been left out of debates over federal spending . Also left out is a jobs guarantee and a change in labor law—both of which are necessary if the condition of labor is to improve and the balance of power is to shift from the capitalist class to workers. Instead, Biden has requested the largest military budget in U.S. history at $753 billion to further satisfy the profits of military contractors.

Massive infusions of federal dollars alone do not alter the essence of neoliberalism, especially when a large portion of them will go to bolstering the New Cold War on China economically and militarily. Thus, it is premature if not dangerous to declare neoliberalism dead just because the Biden administration has been forced to increase federal spending. To do so is an exercise in political dishonesty and offers a window into how low expectations have become.

For neoliberalism to truly end, austerity and privatization must also come to an end. Universal public programs such as nationalized healthcare and free higher education must exist within a context of peace. White supremacy must be uprooted from the base of society. Neoliberalism thrives on social chaos and disaster, but the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed how even the most rapacious stage of capitalism has its limits. Mistaking these limits for the death of the system itself only places further barriers in front of what is truly needed to bury neoliberal capitalism in its grave: a mass movement led by workers and oppressed people that is armed with demands and a sound strategy for exerting the necessary pressure on the state to either comply with the aspirations of the masses or face significant consequences.

That is the true definition of power to the people.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/appea ... liberalism

'Bout sick of this qualifying bullshit: if 'neoliberalism' is killed, then what? Do we get 'New nuevo-liberalism'(w/salsa on the side)? If we just call it 'capitalism' ain't that enough? Let's have an end to leaving the door open for reformers.

Any observer that didn't see this coming is blind or stupid. The 'bipartisanship' that Biden craves is nothing less than submission to the ruling class consensus. What we got is deja vu all over again 'cept this time instead of Republican health care we will get Republican infrastructure spending. The Dems will hang their name on it which will only go to show their class characteristics. All that climate concern and Great Society retread weren't nothing but lip service and all the progressives can do is suck on it. Again.

Not 'bringing home the bacon', not even standing up for them what brung ya, the Dems will be stomped like roaches in the midterms, but I think Biden is OK with that. 'Anything but communism'.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 26, 2021 2:07 pm

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Competence meets in–. Blinken, Nod, Vlad, and Sergei in Geneva. (www.kremlin.ru / Wikimeda Commons.)

“Something happened in Geneva.”
Posted Jun 25, 2021 by Editor

Originally published: “Something happened in Geneva.” by Patrick Lawrence (June 22, 2021 )

That grand encounter of Presidents Biden and Putin in Geneva way, way back last week proves by many measures a nonevent. Correspondents assigned to cover the summit had to chicken-scratch for something to write as to its significance, and I will say from long experience that conjuring “news” and “analysis” when there is none and nothing to analyze is not any kind of funzies. If restoring ambassadors to their embassies in Washington and Moscow is the matter of greatest substance, we have a forgettable occasion on our hands. That bit of business could have been managed by way of an exchange of diplomatic notes.

Joe Biden’s first encounter with Vladimir Putin: b.f.d., one is tempted to conclude.

Our mainstream correspondents ran miles with the notion of “strategic stability,” which must, somehow or other, be more important than “stability” by virtue of the extra syllables. (So far as I can make out it means “Let’s not nuke one another,” a major, major advance in bilateral relations.) Biden was tough and stood up to Putin. Biden told off Putin on human rights and cyberattacks. Biden drew 16 red lines and trotted out the old “There will be consequences” bit. Biden, following Barack Obama, rerated Russia as a minor power.

The entire European tour, I read in a New York Times analysis, was a success: Biden showed the Europeans “America is back.” Biden reaffirmed NATO and guaranteed its future. Biden lined up the European Union behind America’s Sinophobic plans to confront the People’s Republic as Enemy No. 1.

If only some of this were true. None of it is, quite.

As I have written severally over the years, one reads The Times not to find out what happened but to find out what one is supposed to think happened. Then one goes in search of accurate accounts of what happened. So often, we find, Times correspondents (and of course those of the other major dailies) are unable to report what happened in a given case because so much of what happens in our time does not conform to the fantastic version of reality we are offered as reality. This is why the foreign sections of The Times and the others are so remarkably thin these days.

Parenthetically, I have never met an American exceptionalist who is not a dreamer, in some measure deluded, and at some level of consciousness a paranoid. Scratch an exceptionalist and you find beneath the skin a nostalgist who, like all nostalgists, cannot bear things as they are. Most correspondents, as those Americans they report upon, are reliably exceptionalist.

What, then, happened in Geneva?

To begin at the beginning, Geneva requires us to face a fact most of us have either flinched from, buried altogether, or noted in an offhand manner not devoid of mockery. The fact is this: We have a president who suffers some measure of senility and is in consequence incapable of fully executing his duties. Geneva brought this home in the starkest of circumstances.

I do not write this in a spirit of partisanship, or to ridicule, having no interest in the former and no inclination toward the latter. It is time we put all such ancillary things aside and look squarely at this reality: Our forty-sixth president, the latest in a long line indicating a declining direction in our leadership (and I do not exclude the clownish Obama), is not entirely competent. Looking at things squarely is not, of course, a favored or encouraged activity in our troubled republic. But given the magnitude of the implications here, it behooves us to consider this question carefully.

We can go on pretending otherwise if we wish, and many of us will, surely, but we cannot plausibly assume the rest of the world pretends with us. Does anyone assume the Europeans, to say nothing of the Russians and Chinese, do not notice the condition of our president? Some wise-guy reporter in Washington predicted pre-summit that Putin would cravenly cast Biden’s mental condition in the worst possible light. He was dead wrong. Putin went out of his way to note that he found Biden fully in command of himself and his policies.

Putin in part after the summit, this broadcast on Russian television:

Mr. Biden is a professional, and you need to be very careful when working with him so as not to miss something. He himself does not miss a thing, I assure you, and this was absolutely clear to me. Let me say it again: he is focused, he knows what he wants to achieve and does it very skillfully, and you can instantly sense it.

Think about the nature of these comments and the Russian president’s subtext. There can be only one reason Putin bent so far backward to praise the very things so evidently missing in Joe Biden’s capacities. I suspect others world leaders will act similarly to spare Biden and 325 million other Americans embarrassment in so extraordinary a circumstance as ours. But this, of course, does little good at the horizon. It does not make Biden any more capable.

Flubs in press conferences, more malapropisms than you’ve had hot dinners, Biden’s failure to remember what the Declaration of Independence is called—“the, you know, you know, the thing”—are small stuff in the end, the stuff of the jokes. An inability to conduct the affairs of state with a major world power is quite another. No room for ridicule or YouTube segments here. The matter is simply too grave.

Two highly consequential treaties—Open Skies and New START—tensions NATO provokes on Russia’s western flank, the Syria mess, the Ukraine mess, Russia’s hypersonic weaponry, Israel’s apparent intent to go for broke this time with the Palestinians, all the cyberbusiness—little to nothing got done in Geneva on any of these questions. Given how thoroughly Biden’s people scripted his appearance, I am convinced this was intentional. Get out there and posture for the “folks” back home, Mr. Prez. We’ll take care of the substantive stuff later.

Who, then, are the “we” to whom fall matters of state? There are three categories of unelected (and mostly unqualified) people to consider: There are the visible (Antony Blinken, et al,), the partly visible (Jake Sullivan et al.), and the invisible (comprised of a long list of et als). So far as one can make out, Sullivan has taken to the dugout since the fiasco in Alaska last March. Defense Secretary Austin seems to take orders rather than give them. And let us not speak of Kamala Harris, whose proximity to the Oval Office when its occupant is 78 is too frightening even to contemplate.

Netting this out, Secretary of State Blinken is charged with managing America’s international relations these next three and a half years. Blinken, as previously noted in these pages, is, like many others, a lifelong adviser suddenly handed executive responsibilities. And I challenge any reader to counter this assertion in the comment thread: This man has not articulated one original thought—and depending on how one counts maybe no thoughts at all—since taking the seventh floor at Foggy Bottom.

Blinken is all bromides on Twitter, and how tone-deaf he proves to be: We’re here to protect the people of Venezuela? We defend “the rules-based international order” while the U.S. pirates Iranian ships in international waters and sells stolen oil in the open market? Crocodile tears for Syrian children while Israel bombs Damascus nightly, the U.S. burns the nation’s wheat fields, and rather proudly blocks international reconstruction aid? Madeleine Albright, a Mr. Blinken on line one.

The Biden administration did not have a foreign policy prior to the Geneva summit, as also noted previously in these pages. Post–Geneva we are on notice that we will not have a foreign policy for the duration of Big Joe’s term. We will have a crew of Russophobes, Sinophobes, and what-have-you phobes, declared exceptionalists in all cases, looking backward rather than forward and making it up as they go along. Something else to focus the mind, I would say.

It was the separate press conferences after the (truncated) summit that prompted me to think through this piece. Putin fielded questions for nearly an hour, no notes, no choreography, international correspondents welcome. Biden appeared for 11 minutes, no Russian correspondents allowed, all questions pre-screened, those called upon listed on one of the cue cards Biden depended upon throughout.

The two transcripts—Biden’s minders refused a joint presser—are here (Putin) and here (Biden).

There is, of course, that doozy Biden delivered during those 11 minutes, when castigating Putin for Russia’s no-evidence-to-date intrusions into the American electoral process.

From the White House transcript:

Let’s get this straight: How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries, and everybody knew it? What would it be like if we engaged in activities that he is engaged in? It diminishes the standing of a country that is desperately trying to make sure it maintains its standing as a major world power.

And so it’s not just what I do; it’s what the actions that other countries take—in this case, Russia—that are contrary to international norms. It’s the price they pay. They are not—they are not able to dictate what happens in the world. There are other nations of significant consequence—i.e., the United States of America being one of them.


Esquire and The Hill picked this up. NBC News called it “such a bad look.” All the major dailies declined to touch it. A little while into his term, Trump called a television interviewer who was setting him up to denounce the Russians on this matter: “Do you think we are so innocent?” Wow. A major rip in the veil. Now we discover our mainstream press has not surrendered an inch in its defense of those exceptionalist mythologies that have led us into our quagmire of violence, subterfuge, interventions, and, indeed, meddling in the elections of countless other nations. Still against the rules to note what is to be found in any serious history text.

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On culture and the state. Rudolf Rocker. (Wikimedia Commons.)

What in hell is this? How Soviet can an American president and the clerks posing as reporters covering him get—in front of a Russian counterpart no less? It used to seem a touch o.t.t. to suggest a comparison between the American press and Pravda. I do not think this is any longer so. The American correspondents in Geneva assumed their assigned roles with evident enthusiasm—we have this in full view now. A Bloomberg correspondent who could not be more than 30 or so badgered Putin on the Navalny question, got nowhere, but professed delight when Biden “flashed me a toothy smile.”

You go, girl. Foreign correspondence now comes to heckling those the U.S. designates enemies, dignity and professionalism having nothing to do with the job. What correspondent still in possession of these attributes will not sleep soundly knowing the profession now rests in hands such as yours? Always remember: You are not a correspondent, you are an American correspondent—acting, of course, in the interests of the state you serve. Forget this and you will not find work.

I am reading a very worthy book by a man named Rudolf Rocker. (Hard to find, I should warn you.) Rocker was a 19th century German anarchist of the most interesting kind: a non–Jew who learned Yiddish as he made common cause with Jewish radicals in Germany, England, and finally America—that superb Jewish tradition all but erased from the histories now. Rocker’s great book is called Nationalism and Culture. In it he makes the argument that the state is antithetical to authentic culture and cannot (and does not) tolerate it. Culture that serves the state survives. Culture that does not does not.

The press in any given context is a cultural artifact, to state what is obvious. Now you know why NPR made its deal with the budget minders on Capitol Hill and turned itself into a broadcaster of happy talk and lousy reporting. (It is now down to reciting The Times’s front page for the morning news programs.) Now you know why The Timeshas turned itself into America’s Pravda (and I am no longer shy of the comparison).

We have no leadership: We have a superannuated man of fading competence in the White House who takes a lot of naps in the Ron Reagan mode. We have no foreign policy: We have amateurs rummaging day-to-day through the past in search of the present. We have no genuine press: We have more amateurs serving the state who think this is what they are supposed to do.

All of this might have been said prior to the Geneva summit, I suppose. As we flinch our way forward, most of us, Geneva leaves us with an idea of what the perils and costs will be.

https://mronline.org/2021/06/25/somethi ... in-geneva/

But Mr Lawrence don'cha see, he ain't Trump! Aside from Trump's assault on government science and the environment most of the vehement objections to the Orange Man were superficial, about 'appearances'. And that's what's really important to people whose politics are utterly superficial. So get yer priorities straight.

So what if the prez forgot how to get from first to second? Big Deal! That's why he's got all them smart people around him. Oh, wait...

Also

Whadda ya mean 'We', white man?

And

What was wrong with Pravda? It all depends upon which side you are on.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 29, 2021 1:31 pm

No one is laughing at Biden’s joke about U.S. interference in elections
June 26, 2021 Scott Scheffer

Image
Democratic Republic of the Congo Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by the CIA, as confirmed in the 1975–76 U.S. Senate Church Committee report.

At a June 16 news conference after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden was asked about the phony accusations of Russian interference in U.S. elections. Incredibly, he responded by saying: “How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries, and everybody knew it?”

The fact is that hundreds of thousands of people around the world have been victims of violence, been imprisoned and/or lost family members because of U.S. interventions in their elections.

The United States is the most prodigious rigger of elections in the world by far. Most often, the “victors” in the rigged elections were dictatorial right-wing figures that used bloody repression to help keep massive profits flowing into the vaults of U.S. banks and corporations.

‘Yanks to the rescue’

One example particularly relevant now is a covert campaign to fix the 1996 Russian presidential election. A cartoon caricature of Boris Yeltsin holding a U.S. flag above the words “Yanks to the rescue” was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1996.

Yeltsin “won” against First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov by 13 points — in spite of the fact that only months earlier, Yeltsin had been polling at 6% and communists had just won a majority in the Duma (parliament).

Zyuganov had been calling for a return to socialism. The historic freefall in living standards after the collapse of the Soviet Union fueled his popularity. With covert help and millions of U.S. dollars, Yeltin’s campaign spread fear that a Zyuganov victory would result in civil war.

CIA campaigns to fix elections or to overthrow newly-elected leftists and progressives are so numerous that Dov Levin, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, created a database that lists U.S. interventions in elections from 1946 to 2000.

Levin doesn’t count the bloody coups that have taken place soon after leftist victories. Still, Levin’s database lists 81 covert campaigns, most attributed to the CIA, to assure a victory for a pro-U.S. candidate. The tactics included threatening rival candidates, threats to withdraw aid and pumping money into ads to promote lies.

CIA braggards

Many U.S. politicians, former CIA officers and operatives are quite candid about U.S. interference when asked, differing only in how much they’re willing to reveal.

Regarding the 2000 election in Yugoslavia, President Bill Clinton made no bones about the fact that the CIA spent $40 million to try to defeat President Slobodan Milosovic. “I didn’t have a problem with it,” said Clinton.

Some operatives deny influencing elections altogether. Others, like former CIA Director Leon Panetta, admit that the agency’s method was often to “acquire media within a country or a region that could very well be used for being able to deliver a specific message” or work to “influence those that may own elements of the media.”

The consequences of U.S. election meddling are tragic. When the schemes are successful, they block plans for the targeted country to develop independently of the tiny clique of multibillionaires in the U.S. that exploit so much of the world. They impose deep poverty and repression.

Although the bloody overthrows and assassinations of newly-elected progressive leaders aren’t tabulated in Levin’s database, he acknowledges that his count would be much higher if they were.

Over the years, thousands have been massacred while the U.S. was eliminating anti-imperialist figures and progressives who already held office.

Assassination of Lumumba

Called the most important assassination of the 20th century by progressive Belgian author Ludo De Witte, the 1961 U.S./Belgian coup and assassination of Democratic Republic of the Congo Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was a profound setback to Africa and to all people fighting against colonialism.

The U.S. had been the first to recognize the claims of Belgium’s King Leopold, who murdered millions of Congolese people in the 19th century. By the mid-20th century the colonialists were robbing the country’s uranium for nuclear weapons, as well as other valuable natural resources.

Lumumba was determined to win control over his country’s resources and improve living conditions for his people. After Lumumba declared Congo to be independent of Belgian colonization, the CIA and Belgian intelligence whipped up secessionist movements in the mineral-rich areas of the country, and within seven months captured and executed the young anti-imperialist leader.

1953 coup in Iran

In 1953, the CIA — along with British intelligence — orchestrated a coup to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mohamad Mosaddegh and reinstall Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The popular Mosaddegh had spent his short time in office struggling to limit the amount of control the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP) had over the country’s oil, to alleviate widespread poverty in Iran. When the British refused even an audit, Iran’s parliament voted to nationalize the oil and expel foreign executives.

The U.S. and Britain had operatives lined up from among the various police forces and convoyed paid thugs into Teheran to launch the coup. Hundreds were killed in the coup itself, and SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, murdered tens of thousands over the next 25 years.

200,000 killed, ‘disappeared’ in Guatemala

In 1954, the CIA organized a coup to overthrow leftist Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz, to put an end to a revolutionary period that began in 1944 with a people’s uprising that toppled a military dictatorship and brought in President Juan Jose Arevalo.

Many foreign estates were confiscated and redistributed to peasants; landowners were obliged to provide adequate housing for workers; new schools, hospitals and houses were built; and a new minimum wage was introduced.

Arevalo was succeeded by Árbenz, who continued the process with more land reforms and the legalization of the communist Guatemalan Party of Labor. The United Fruit Company pressed the Eisenhower administration for action to safeguard its profits.

Using psychological warfare and an armed force of several hundred, the CIA overthrew President Árbenz. The Guatemalan people’s guerrilla armies courageously fought a series of brutal U.S.-backed dictatorships that targeted Indigenous populations most heavily. The toll of people killed and “disappeared” is believed to be at least 200,000 over 40 years.

There are many, many more examples that can be given, including the 2019 coup against Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Joe Biden knows this history. His pretense of U.S. innocence convinced no one and can never change the fact that each counter-revolutionary operation, each action to strengthen U.S. dominance, has galvanized anti-imperialist forces around the world.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2021/ ... elections/

And yet, and yet, when you confront the average Amerikan with this information, and probably the 'informed citizen' even more so, all you get is twenty flavors of denial. The degree of indoctrination and misinformation shames all those Cold War depictions of communism. It's a tough job but somebody got to do it.

Playing to the 'home-town crowd' Biden has disgusted most of the planet, for few have not been affected in their countries or neighboring countries. But hey, it's better than having Trump embarrass 'us', isn't it? Isn't it?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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