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The Nature of Foxes

Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2020 11:02 pm
by chlamor
The Nature of Foxes

Check out a dozen economic histories of the Great Depression and three quarters of them will report on how the Depression was "caused" by the Stock Market Crash or Hoover policies or real estate speculation in Florida in 1928. The super-heated speculation immediately preceding every single major crisis is not connected with the oceans of cash which always flood their system. Instead, it is all attributed to some individual human foible... just as today.

To paraphrase Malcom, they put a fox into the chicken coop and are surprised when it starts to kill chickens. "I always fed that fox. That was my pet fox. I told that fox to be friends with them chickens." It is so stupid. You can shoot that fox. You can throw that fox out. But, the one thing you cannot do is to expect that fox to stop being a fox.

You can see that shocked look on the faces of various Captains of Finance when they are being lectured by some corrupt congressperson about "greed". Inside, they are thinking, "say what?" Everything about the society is organized around greed, self-aggrandizement, and obsessive individual interest. It is the sole arbiter of a life lived "well". You take that environment and you mix in a tsunami of cash - private equity funds, hedge funds, index funds, derivatives, the ability to trade at any time on the Cairo Stock Exchange, free credit... "and then you say what to me?"

The question they all really want to ask is, "How come we got away with this shit for two or three decades?"

How come?

Because the fucking fox wasn't hungry, that's how come.

~~ anaxarchos

Re: The Nature of Foxes

Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2020 3:07 pm
by blindpig
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What could go wrong?

Re: The Nature of Foxes

Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2020 6:36 pm
by blindpig
Monopolies have made America's Covid response worse
Opinion by Sally Hubbard at CNN Business Perspectives

Updated 9:20 AM ET, Mon November 30, 2020

As Covid-19 continues to spread, millions of Americans are losing their jobs, thousands of restaurants have closed for good and one in three small businesses surveyed by the nonprofit Small Business Majority said they won't survive beyond the next three months without additional funding. Yet the nation's most dominant corporations seem to be weathering the pandemic just fine.

In October, Facebook announced its revenue increased by 22% compared to last year, despite a major advertiser boycott over hate speech, and Amazon reported its profits increased by 197%. Google's YouTube, notwithstanding controversy over misinformation on the platform, saw a 32% increase in advertising revenue.
The strength of monopolies and oligopolies — where a few corporations rule an industry — has long come at the expense of the smaller businesses and entrepreneurs they muscled out of the competition. And now, as a result of monopolies' extractive business models, the rest of the economy must battle the pandemic from a point of weakness. For the US economy to recover from Covid-19, then, we must fight monopoly power.
Many corporate giants such as Facebook, Amazon and Google have obtained their dominant positions throughout the years in large part through anticompetitive acquisitions and conduct that violates antitrust laws, not by purely competing based on merit.
The House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, commercial and administrative law detailed Big Tech's anticompetitive abuses in a 450-page report released in October, stating that "there is mounting evidence that the dominance of online platforms has materially weakened innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. economy."
'Near-perfect market intelligence': Why a House report says Big Tech monopolies are uniquely powerful
'Near-perfect market intelligence': Why a House report says Big Tech monopolies are uniquely powerful
Whether the dominant corporations are Big Tech, Big Pharma or Big Agriculture, the problem is the same: A monopolized economy works for only a select few.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/11/30/perspecti ... index.html

Ms Hubbard, what part of 'Capitalism' do you not understand?

After it's so brief 'honeymoon' in the mid-19th century capitalism has done nothing but make everything worse. And yet dipshits like this scratch their heads and wonder 'what can be done' . When you look at the success that socialist states have had in addressing this pandemic the answer is obvious however forbidden to the stenographers of the State Dept and the slaves of the Chamber of Commerce.

Re: The Nature of Foxes

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2021 2:02 pm
by blindpig
BRASIL WIRE , FEBRUARY 24, 2021
Free Private Cities: Brazil’s New Libertarian Dystopia

An international Libertarian organisation is behind proposals to privatise Brazilian cities, creating vast luxury condominiums for the most wealthy, and removing democratic rights from their citizens.

Brazil’s federal government has been quietly exploring a grand libertarian experiment. Proposals have been put forward for the creation of privatised charter cities, special economic zones inspired by Honduras, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Dubai.

The proposals follow a very similar path to those being implemented in Honduras. This is no coincidence; the Central American nation has become the blueprint for the ultra-liberalisation of Latin American economies. These reforms are happening under authoritarian regimes brought to power by anti-democratic means, backed by the United States and its allies such as Canada and the United Kingdom. As Laura Gontijo warned in 2017, “Honduras today is Brazil tomorrow“, and correctly predicted that the coalition of military and corporate interests that was brought to power by the coup against Dilma Rousseff would not go quietly by democratic means.

The hemisphere’s latest laboratory for enforced ultraliberal economics, Honduras is pushing ahead with its own plans for private governance, in the form of special economic zones under the ZEDE programme. A futuristic centrepiece project, Próspera, on the island paradise of Roatán, was designed by Zaha Hadid architects, and has been met with fierce opposition and protest from the local population. What we see in the the Brazilian plans are the same theoretical and ideological blueprints, backed by a near identical set of international organisations, individuals and interests.

The new Brazilian charter cities would also be administrated by private companies, national or foreign.

Behind these plans in Brazil and elsewhere is a foundation called Free Private Cities, whose slogan is “The future of governance is private”.

Free Private Cities is the brainchild of its director, Titus Gebel, who according to the organisation’s website is “a German entrepreneur with a PhD in international law and an extensive worldwide network. He founded amongst others Frankfurt-listed mining company Deutsche Rohstoff AG, retired as their CEO in 2014 and emigrated with his family to Monaco. With Free Private Cities, he wants to create an entirely new product in the “market of living together”. If successful, it will fast-track knowledge and progress for humanity. Titus has dedicated the rest of his life to making Free Private Cities a reality.”

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In what he calls his proposal for a further development of human coexistence, Gebel claims: “Conventional systems are obviously reaching their limits in the 21st century. But there is a peaceful and above all voluntary alternative: Free Private Cities.”

Private companies would provide paid services in these new special zones which were previously offered by the government.

Gebel is also CEO of Tipolis, a consultancy specialised in implementing private governance, who state that their “mission” is “Next-level Zones: We are building the world’s most advanced Special Economic Zones. We work with Prosperity Zones, Free Private Cities, Charter Cities and other projects at the frontier of governance innovation. Our projects are semi-autonomous special jurisdictions, run by an operating company. They offer companies and residents the basic services of a government as a one-stop-shop. The operator is entitled by the host nation, based on a special zone law. They enable countries to achieve economic growth, attract foreign investment, reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals and leapfrog development by using best practices from all over the world.”

Tipolis partners and clients include FEMOZA (World Free and Special Economic Zones Federation), the Institute for Competitive Governance, which “wants to show the world a better way to better government” by encouraging the “research and development of relatively small but deeply innovative special jurisdictions”, and the fanciful Seasteading Institute which seeks to construct autonomous tax-free floating cities in international waters.

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Brazilian Ambassadors

Free Private Cities has four Brazilians amongst its team of forty-one ambassadors. Thirty-nine are white men.

The ambassadors have the recognisable profile of Brazilian libertarians – or anarcho capitalists as some like to call themselves – as typified by Partido Novo, Instituto Milenium, and fellow Atlas Network member Movimento Brasil Livre, which campaigned for both the 2016 coup, and for Jair Bolsonaro at the 2018 election. These and other electoral sectors now often argue that their vote was not for Bolsonaro, but for the economic programme of ultraliberal economy minister Paulo Guedes. Conservative Veja magazine even claimed at the time that Guedes would effectively be “president”, should the far right candidate be elected.

Raphaël Lima, from Curitiba, is the “Libertarian activist and entrepreneur” founder of Ideias Radicais, which has promoted Free Private Cities in Honduras to a Brazilian audience. Pedro Dias, from Lagarto, is an economist, a student of the Austrian School of Economics, and and translates material on private governance into Portuguese. Bruno Carlos, based in Rio de Janeiro graduated in “Leadership Development”, from the United States’ John Maxwell Co. institute and is head of ZeroVinteUm, “a project that seeks to bring and develop new leaders with an exclusive method in the seven areas of influence of society.”

Last of the four, Rodrigo Quercia describes himself as a “profound strategic thinker”. Quercia is the CEO of the Brazilian conglomerate Grupo SolPanamby “…concentrating in real estate development and large land development projects.” Born in São Paulo, Quercia claims to have “experienced first-hand the devastating effects poverty can have” and insists that “the causal role that bad governance has in generating impoverishment drove him to focus his efforts on sustainable socioeconomic development through governance reform.”

This is a familiar libertarian trope, poverty reduction is regularly cited as a theoretical advantage of private governance, without credible supporting evidence. Conversely the nebulous concept of “bad governance” (read: popular participation) is deemed responsible for poverty, and an economic system which both requires and perpetuates it is absolved.

Quercia has indeed seen bad governance up close, as his father Orestes was both former Governor of São Paulo and Mayor of Campinas, where he faced various accusations of corruption, including involvement in the Odebrecht bribery scheme (which was later used as a premise to bypass Brazil’s democracy), alongside non-competitive tenders with Israeli technology producers, and irregularities over the privatisation of doomed airline, VASP.

Now a director at Tipolis, Quercia worked in the investment banking sector both in Hong Kong and Brazil, and has brought Free Private City experience home directly from the Honduras Próspera project which, according to its website, is is partnered with the government “to launch the first hub for sustainable economic development on the island of Roatán – breaking ground in 2020. This semi-autonomous zone is built on the Próspera Platform and anchored in the Honduran Constitution.”

For decades Brazil’s urban development model has been moving back to its colonial past, towards enclosed private condominiums, walled citadels rising out of the countryside and from the sprawl of cities such as São Paulo. The Alphaville concept took this a stage further, with entire neighbourhoods constructed in the form of gated communities, and Rio’s Porto Maravilha project became effectively a city within a city.

But with libertarian ideology now running amok within the Bolsonaro government, the proposed charter cities have become an apparent logical conclusion for this type of development.

Democracy can wait

In 2020, with its Real currency at an all time lows against the Dollar, Brazil’s Senate unexpectedly approved a bill opening up ownership of rural land to foreign companies and individuals. Supporters claimed it would lead to R$50 billion of (cut price) foreign investment in the country. One condition of the new legislation, if passed by Congress, would be that foreign ownership of the land must “fulfill a social function.”

Failure to include any provision for democratic participation is cited as a “vulnerability” of the charter cities project.

Thayná Schuquel earlier reported for Metrópoles that Brazil’s federal government was studying the effective privatisation of entire cities. That month, the National School of Public Administration (Enap) held a seminar to debate the concept. Geanluca Lorenzon, director of the Special Secretariat for Bureaucratization, Management and Digital Government at Paulo Guedes’ Ministry of Economy, stated that they are dedicated to implementing the charter city model.

“Our research, so far, has indicated that we will be able to move forward with this proposal. We will have a project designed, and are thinking about how we will implement it. It is a topic that has a good reception and deserves to be studied and passed”, said Lorenzon. In 2019’s Provisional Measure for Economic Freedom, the government included a proposal for charter cities. Despite the bill did not passing Congress, Lorenzon believes that parliamentarians are open to the idea. “We made a political test and proposed an amendment that would provide for a special economic zone by state. It was a clause that served to test the waters of Congress on the topic,” he said. It is unclear when the newest proposals will reach Congress.

Failure to include any provision for democratic participation is cited as a “vulnerability” of the charter cities project. The privatised municipality model presented for implementation in Brazil coldly acknowledges that: “Charter cities tend to be organized, at least in their early stages, as technocracies and non-democracies and can become ‘luxury condominiums’ for the richest strata of the population”.

https://www.brasilwire.com/free-private ... -dystopia/

Re: The Nature of Foxes

Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 10:19 pm
by blindpig
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Intersectional Imperialism: A Wholesome Menace

March 20, 2021 By Alexander Rubinstein – Mar 16, 2021

With Trump-style nationalism out the door, a new era of imperial ideology is upon us. This mutation of the empire’s dominant dogma is manifesting throughout global institutions of economic, political and social control and is materializing in a myriad of conflict theatres.

In order to identify where woke imperialism exists, we have to define it first. So what is it? It’s certainly not the first iteration of hegemonic domination buttressed by moralism.

The doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was officialized by the United Nations in 2005, but its roots really trace back to the NATO bombing campaign of Yugoslavia. During the Obama years, the term “humanitarian intervention” caught on as the main moniker for such actions.

Woke imperialism should be understood as a maturation of these concepts. As corporations have increasingly embraced “rainbow capitalism” to keep up with the sensibilities of an increasingly liberal US public, so too have institutions of United States imperialism refined their pitches to reflect the increasing popularity of identity politics.

This phenomenon has not gone unnoticed. As with everything on the internet, it has become the subject of memes, with an image of two US B-52 Stratofortress bombers having gone particularly viral. The image shows one B-52, labelled “Republicans,” dropping bombs. Another B-52, labelled “Democrats,” is also dropping bombs, but this time with a giant Black Lives Matter sticker and a rainbow flag emblazoned on its exterior.

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What both of the above memes can’t express, given their limited format, is the variety of methods of exerting imperial control, as it takes many forms beyond bombings. And not all of this can be chalked up to the presidential transition. We know that the State Department and three-letter agencies were hardly on-board with President Trump’s approach to foreign policy, nor his cultural proclivities.


So while a lot of the trends identified in this article existed during the Trump administration, they are undeniably being ramped up by Biden’s. For example, in the first 10 days of this March, Women’s History Month, the State Department tweeted 26 times about “women,” compared to 10 times during the same period of the 2020.

The Noble Anti-Triggering Organization (NATO)
Earlier this month, NATO tweeted a flashy video claiming “diversity is our strength.”

In light of NATO’s virtue signalling, it’s important to remember that many of the early leaders of NATO were Nazis who dreamed of a Germany that was anything but diverse and inclusive. To this day, NATO has continued to support neo-Nazis in countries like Ukraine, while NATO states that hold permitted rallies honoring Nazi collaborators are only just now cancelling the marches because of the coronavirus, rather than stopping the glorification of Nazism.


As I reported following the launch of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, as he railed against neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, Biden worked with neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tahnybok, with the man who is now White House National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, serving as their go-between. Leaked audio from 2014 has Victoria Nuland, Biden’s nominee for Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Blinken, admitting as much.

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A photo of the Azov Battalion – a regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine(This photo a gift that keeps giving, stupid Nazis, bp)

In terms of NATO’s championing of inclusion for people of color, its crowning achievement in this regard came following its bombing of Libya, which gave cover for jihadist militias to sodomize Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to death with a bayonet and paved the way for the reintroduction of slavery on the African continent.

Outside of its halls of power in Brussels, this is what NATO-sponsored opportunity initiatives for people of color looks like.

As the kids say, “big yikes.”

The State Department Becomes an HR Department

The slogan used by NATO, “Diversity is our strength,” reproduces, verbatim, a major campaign theme from Kamala Harris and Joe Biden himself. The talking point was also used last year by the Central Intelligence Agency.


Perhaps the one to make the most use out of the theme is Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who has said the following:

“Diversity and inclusion make us stronger, smarter, more creative, and more innovative. And our diversity gives us a significant competitive advantage on the world stage.
Diversity makes any organization stronger—and for the State Department, it’s mission-critical.
We’ve invested in diversity and inclusion to have a diplomatic workforce that reflects the diversity of our country.”
Recently, the State Department promoted Blinken’s appearance on Hillary Clinton’s podcast, advertising that the two discussed “diversity and inclusion at the Department, American engagement, Russia, China and more.”

The State Department, under Blinken, is so married to the concept that he created at the department a Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer position which “will report directly to him,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said, adding, you guessed it, “Diversity and inclusion make us stronger, smarter, more creative, and more innovative.”


The DoD Seeks “Force Multipliers”
The Department of Defense is another leading institution in this trend.

Last week, conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked the Pentagon. It started with Joe Biden announcing that, under his and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s leadership, the military would be taking steps towards making itself more inclusive to women with policies including an overhaul of hair style restrictions and “maternity flight suits for women.”

While pregnant women are generally banned from riding roller coasters, a policy of allowing them to fly fighter jets does not seem to me to have their best interests in mind, nor those of their children.


While Carlson blasted these policies, his criticism missed the crux of the issue as he argued that they made the US military weaker. The real goal of these policies, however, is to freshen the military’s face for a liberal citizenry. As the Airforce put it in January, “diversity” is a “force multiplier.”

In response to the Fox segment, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby—formerly the spokesperson for the State Department under Obama—clapped back at Carlson in a press release entitled “Press Secretary Smites Fox Host That Dissed Diversity in U.S. Military.”

“The United States military is the greatest the world has ever seen because of its diversity,” the press release began.

Kirby went on to note that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (a black man whom the media celebrated for breaking a “brass ceiling,”) had said earlier in the week that the “lived experience” of a diverse fighting force factors “into our decision making.”


That same speech was featured on the Defense Department’s website under the headline “Biden Showcases the Strength, Excellence of American Military Diversity.”

In other news on Secretary Austin, according to another Pentagon press release, he “welcomed the expanded role for NATO Mission Iraq” last month. That “expanded role” means beefing up the number of NATO troops occupying the country from 500 to “4,000 or 5,000,” according to Reuters.

The Central Idpol Agency

Not to be outdone by the State Department or Defense Department, following the inauguration of Joe Biden, the CIA has begun conducting a “digital facelift” to appeal to Generation Z in light of their politics leaning more towards radical liberalism than previous generations.

“We had to go where the talent is,” Sheronda Dorsey, the CIA’s deputy associate director for talent, told the Wall Street Journal. She added that the CIA is looking to “increase racial, cultural, disability, sexual orientation and gender diversity so that its workforce is ‘reflective of America.’”

The Wall Street Journal goes on to write that “Today, the CIA’s digital face-lift coincides with a new presidential administration. [John] Brennan, whose directorship ended in 2017, says the Biden administration has sent out a ‘very strong signal on diversity’ with its intelligence appointees, including the first-ever female director of national intelligence, Avril Haines.”

Brennan, who was CIA director under Obama, with Haines sitting under him at number two at the agency, has more recently told MSNBC that he is “increasingly embarrassed to be a white male these days, when I see what other white males are saying.”

Brennan’s comments came in a discussion of congressional Republicans’ handling of the protests at the capitol in January. “They’ll continue to gaslight the country,” Brennan said.

While heading up the agency, Brennan oversaw the CIA as it illegally spied on Congress through hacking as they were investigating torture by the agency—and lied about it. Now he’s complaining about “gaslighting” by Congress. The whole episode has been largely forgotten by the US public as media were “stanning” the agency throughout the Trump era. Trump enemy number one, Nancy Pelosi, recently established a “diversity office” in the House of Representatives. Years ago, she helped the CIA coverup torture in addition to heavily backing the war in Iraq.


Finance Feminism

While technically “independent,” globally muscular financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are functionally a part of the US government, and like other institutions referenced in this article, are adopting identity politics as a means of whitewashing their anti-human agenda.


The DC-based World Bank’s president is chosen by the President of the US, with even their own website admitting “Traditionally, the World Bank President has always been been [sic] a U.S. citizen nominated by the United States.”

The U.S. is also the largest shareholder at both the World Bank and IMF, which is also based in DC. One leaked manual published by Wikileaks entitled “Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare” cites the World Bank and IMF as US “weapons in times of conflict up to and including large-scale general war.”

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“Army Special Operation Forces understand that properly integrated manipulation of economic power can and should be a component of unconventional warfare,” the document continues.

“As major decisions require an 85 percent super majority, the United States can block any major changes” at the World Bank, according to the Army document.

For International Women’s Day, the IMF hosted a discussion with Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen entitled “The Age of Womenomics.”

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“We have chosen this theme ‘the age of womenomics’ consciously,” Kristalina Georgieva, IMF Managing Director, said.

“Never in my life I have seen so many women in key positions where core economics and finance matter: you, as the minister of finance of the United States; Chrystia Freeland in Canada; Christine Lagarde my predecessor at the [European Central Bank]; Ngozi [Okonjo-Iweala] at the World Trade Organization; the very first woman president of a multilateral development bank, Odile [Renaud-Basso] at the [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development]…”


Wokeism Goes Global

Beyond promoting themselves as bastions of tolerance, imperialist institutions are also using wokeness to justify foreign resource extraction, violations of sovereignty and international law, military occupation and even coup d’etats.

In Syria, where the United States, European governments, Gulf state patriarchal petromonarchies and NATO ally Turkey have waged 10 years of proxy warfare via al-Qaeda-type sectarian insurgents, a champion of distinctly American identity politics has arisen: the YPG. For years, you’d have been hard pressed to find a leftist in the United States that did not give unquestioning support for the “Rojava women’s revolution.” The ostensible political project of Kurdish fighters in Northeastern Syria was even dubbed by Vice News the “Most Feminist Revolution the World Has Ever Witnessed.”

American anarchists, propagandized with pro-YPG literature and the ideology of “democratic confederalism” popularized by the late Zionist academic Murray Bookchin, and promoted by his daughter, Debbie Bookchin of the New York City-based “Emergency Committee For Rojava,” made names for themselves in leftist circles and on Twitter by joining up with the Kurdish fighting force called the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

While the Kurdish fighters in Syria were first backed by Obama, Trump continued to support them to “protect the oil.” In other words, so that the United States could profit from the extraction of assets rightfully belonging to the sovereign government of Syria. Now that Biden is in office, Kurdish fighters are once again becoming the subject of renewed media attention and adoration by the Western left.

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Glorification of the conquests by Kurdish forces in Syria reached a fever pitch during the Raqqa campaign. One group was established, which now has its own Wikipedia page despite its actual existence being dubious, by foreign queer anarchists called the “The Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army.” While the historic city of Raqqa was being destroyed to the tune of 70 percent, these feel-good headlines about a supposedly revolutionary and inclusive alternative to statism that the Kurdish fighters and their allies represented dominated the narrative on the left.

Before we move away from Syria, it would be irresponsible not to mention the story of Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, the “Gay Girl in Damascus.” The fake persona was created in order to stir up anti-Assad sentiment from Western LGBTQ communities, but it was exposed as the charade of a white American man named Tom MacMaster by Palestinian journalist Ali Abunimah after the “gay girl” was “kidnapped.”

Now that Biden is in office, these kinds of dirty tricks to promote the dirty war on Syria are making a comeback. Based on an article in Jacobin, a new movie is in the works entitled “Stefan Vs. ISIS.” It is billed as a “Story Of Non-Binary Millennial Who Joined The Kurdish Freedom Fighters” by Deadline in a March 5 article. While the Jacobin writer of the original story, Connor Kilpatrick, has co-writing credits, Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara is set to co-executive produce the film.

One Middle East-based reporter complained to me that these journalists are now poised to profit from a war they helped sell in the first place, and are placing the identity issues of a Westerner at the center of the conversation around the battle against ISIS rather than the scores of Syrians and Iraqis who lost their lives fighting them. “The Syrian war,” they said, isn’t for a bunch of foreign leftists “to turn into a romantic ballad to identity issues. Kurds are super traditional, no way is even the YPG into this gender fluidity stuff.”

In a similar vein, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s production company was reported in late January to be working on a TV series adapting the book “The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice” by Gayle Lemmon for the screen. Following an intense bidding war over the rights to adapt the book, Deadline reported that “For the Clintons, the property feels like the perfect IP to help launch their banner given the subject matter and strong women that helped Lemmon write it.”

Last week, Lemmon joined Meghan McCain on The View to talk about her book. McCain’s father, the late John McCain, was the most militaristic senator in modern US history and a major promoter of the proxy war in Syria. The Senator even met with so-called “moderate rebels” with the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Army who turned out to be responsible for the kidnapping of 11 Shia Muslims.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, where the United States maintains its longest-running regime change fail, or “L,” I recently noted how Biden plans to keep “residual forces” there to continue occupying the country despite the agreement reached between the Taliban and the Trump administration to have a full withdrawal.

German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle is warning that “Afghan women risk losing their rights in a new political setup.” Now, the Biden administration is looking to negotiate the deal wherein “all options remain on the table.”

Earlier this month, Vox News reported on “internal debates” within the White House over a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Reportedly, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley made the “impassioned—and at times ‘emotional’” argument—that should US forces withdraw, women’s rights in the country “will go back to the Stone Age.”

Yet, while there is no doubt that the Taliban has little respect for the rights of women, that was hardly a concern of Joe Biden when he promised in October 2012 that “We are leaving in 2014. Period.”

But speaking of the Stone Age, the US has dropped around 25,500 bombs on Afghanistan since Biden’s promise if you add up the monthly figures published by the US Airforce.

And those bombs don’t come cheap, so it should come as no surprise that Milley went on to argue that since the US has spent so much “blood and treasure” in the country in the past decades, it is not worth it to leave.

To put it in the parlance of Zoomers, General Milley wants America to “secure that bag.”

Somebody should tell the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman that “this ain’t it, chief.”

Wokeism isn’t just a useful tool of empire in the ostensible fight against terrorism, but also in the fight against socialism. In Ecuador, where the US is backing a faux left candidate as an alternative to the socialist frontrunner in the country’s presidential elections, identity politics have been deployed to drum up support for a neo-liberal.

Journalist Ben Norton exposed Yaku Pérez, billed as an indigenous eco-socialist, for his ties to the US government. After Pérez came in third place in the first round of Ecuador’s presidential election, disqualifying him from the runoff, the US embassy called him to reassure that he would be a part of it. Since then, Pérez has called for a military coup and for his socialist opponent, Andrés Arauz, to be criminally prosecuted.

Norton also points out that Pérez’s wife Manuela Picq, is an adviser to him and is helping to manage his campaign. Picq’s background is as an academic focused on sexuality and gender studies.

As we proceed into the Biden years, identity politics, intersectionality—in a word, wokeness—will be increasingly used to justify the exploits of a racist empire. That is, unless the left is able to adopt a doctrine to counter the empire’s dogma instead of continuing to play into its hands.

The Roman historian Tacitus said “Great empires are not maintained by timidity.” This may be true, but today, the maintenance of empire is justified by its inclusivity. The ability of the US to “flex” on the world stage is contingent on its ability to reference the diversity of its ruling class.

There’s the tea.

Featured image: My suggested cover image for Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s TV series (Alex Rubinstein)

https://orinocotribune.com/intersection ... me-menace/

Re: The Nature of Foxes

Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2021 1:04 pm
by blindpig
THE US IGNITES THE COLD WAR AGAINST RUSSIA AND THE "AXIS OF EVIL"
26 Mar 2021 , 10:24 am .

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Washington accuses Russia and other countries of influencing and interfering in the 2020 US elections (Photo: Eniola Odetunde / Axios)

The latest unclassified report from the US intelligence services calls into question the intelligence of the gullible and unwary and of the very bodies that make up the US empire's security apparatus, stating that they "assess" the fact that Russia and others Countries not aligned with State Department policy worked to "undermine" the 2020 elections.

Perhaps not fresh news is the fact that the intelligence council made up of the CIA, the State Department, the Justice Department, the National Security Agency and other US organizations is republishing a report whose "analytical conclusions" are based on in fraudulent assumptions.

The balance of the conglomerate of agencies published in mid-March is brief and suggests that it has a political intention or that the feared US security agencies are in frank decline.
"The analytical judgments set out below are identical to those in the classified version, but this declassified document does not include all supporting information and does not address specific intelligence reports, sources or methods," the input report says, and the cartelized press projects this as an unquestionable truth.
The excuse of showing the report without further proof of what it claims is that "you may publicly disclose the full extent of your knowledge or the specific information on which you base your analytical conclusions, as doing so could jeopardize sensitive sources and methods, and jeopardize the Intelligence Community's ability to collect critical foreign intelligence. "

If there is an element that must not be lost sight of with each report of this nature, it is the action that is taken after its publication, which is usually financial and sanctioning. In this case, the degree of truth does not matter, as long as the corporate media projects it as true. His role is key in promoting American exceptionalism.

The search for an enemy (internal and / or external) serves to endorse the problems of a nation, especially if the state-corporations-media consensus serves as a reality check for the average American. That's why the most common debates last year were between Nazi cowboys and hopeful enthusiasts hoping for a change in policy, both internal and external, with the Biden-Harris formula.

RUSSIAGATE IS BACK
This minimal context serves to understand how, currently, almost five years later, they are dusting off the Russiagate case again, a term coined and used by the Democrats to designate the accusations of interference by Russia in the 2016 US presidential elections, where magnate Donald Trump was elected.

And it was precisely the Intelligence Community of the United States that conveniently brought it up, dictating conclusions to cover up the defeat of Hillary Clinton, but also to clean up her reputation after revealing the misuse of her email system , which she violated government policy as he handled classified information from the State through his personal mail.

A controversial conversation between her and her campaign manager, John Podesta, in addition to sex scandals, was also exposed. All of this resulted in interrogations by the FBI and many last minute deleted emails by Clinton. Another detail was the: "From time to time I have questions in advance", which he wrote in the subject of an email. Later it was learned that a former CNN collaborator "gave notice to the Clinton campaign of a question that would be asked at a news channel event, according to leaked emails," statements that were harshly criticized by Trump during that campaign. 2016.

But the defeat of the Democrat and the entire establishment machinery was not the fraudulent performance of her party and her mediocre electoral campaign. According to American logic, the person responsible was an alleged spy network by the Kremlin to influence these results. According to the report, President Vladimir Putin ordered a lobbying campaign whose goal was to undermine public faith in the democratic process of the United States, denigrate Hillary Clinton and her potential victory, while claiming that the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in a joint statement with 17 intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security (DSN) stated that Russia hacked into the Democratic National Committee (CND) and leaked its documents to WikiLeaks. .

US intelligence agencies said at the time that Putin personally led the operation. CIA Director John O. Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, and the DNI agreed on the purpose of Russia's alleged interference in helping Trump. Several computer security companies stated that the cyber attacks were committed by Russian intelligence groups Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear.

Back then, as now, President Putin denied the unsubstantiated accusations and so far no evidence of the alleged attack has been shown. Consequences did exist: On December 29, 2016, the United States expelled 35 Russian diplomats, denied access to two Russian-owned precincts, and extended existing "sanctions" to Russian entities and individuals.

As you can see, responsibility for America's political crisis was placed on Russia, one of its scapegoats.

With the return to power of the Democrats, the tricks that were paused during the time that Trump ruled also return. And it is not that the president tycoon has not used the resource of blaming others for the nation's problems, but in his case the focus was not on Russia. Apparently it is a constant that US policy looks for a way to place the focus on others to hide endogenous political, economic and social crises. The person responsible for the problems of the North American country will always be someone else: the enemy of the moment.

Commenting on the present tense, journalist Joe Lauria argues that the current maneuver by the US intelligence services "was intended to pave the way for more sanctions against Russia and Iran and provided political cover for Joe Biden."

On the other hand, he refers that the report "was swallowed without skepticism by the corporate media, playing its role of disinformation to the American public without questioning it," thus revealing the corporate media-State conspiracy to carry out the plan. That said media assume every detail of the report as true and are not able to question or ask questions about it, appealing to a basic principle of the profession, causes a lot of suspicion.

"Any journalist worth his salt would never accept a 'trust us'", reflects Lauria. And it is under that same principle in 2016 the conglomerate of intelligence agencies with one voice released the report where the Eurasian nation was accused of interfering in the presidential elections of that year.

At that time with "great confidence" they would come to the conclusion that Putin interfered in favor of Trump in 2016. Apparently "trust us" and "with great confidence" is enough for the cartelized press to establish and multiply these truths.

THE SAME STRATEGY
Everything seems to indicate that creativity is not a strong suit of the US intelligence offices either. This year, after a full presidential term, they are again using the same strategy: accusing others of interfering in their elections and creating a campaign against their stability. The difference is that the actors change and others join.

This year the candidate is not Clinton, but Biden, and they include other countries of the "Axis of Evil", in this case Iran, to participate directly together with Russia in the creation of a negative image of the United States.

"We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a number of Russian government organizations carried out influence operations aimed at denigrating the candidacy of President Biden and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating the sociopolitical divisions in the United States, "the unsupported report reads.

Isn't it the same argument?

Image
Biden basks in an "external enemy" to confront his country's problems (Photo: Eleanor Shakespeare / Time)

ANYTHING THAT IS AGAINST THE CONSENSUS
In the report they also point out that there are Russian state and proxy actors that pay tribute to the interests of the Kremlin. "A key element of Moscow's strategy in this electoral cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to promote narratives of influence," which undermines political stability and thereby creates a negative image of the country. This included - according to the report - misleading or unfounded accusations against President Biden, American media organizations, officials, in short, the establishment.

Veteran UN foreign affairs journalist Lauria points out that, although the report does not say so, it is reasonable to assume that the pro-Russian voices are nationals who question US activities abroad, those who do not legitimize internal policies that affect its citizens and this is precisely the opposite of what intelligence offices do. For the structure that governs the North American country, legitimate and independent criticism is falsely associated "with a hostile foreign power."

In another order, Lauria does grant some truth in the gringo intelligence report. And it is the fact that Russia can benefit from the weakness of the United States should it lose ground in the field of geopolitical relations.

However, that weakening is not caused by the Eurasian country, but by Washington's own clumsiness in managing its influence. In any case, and without the intention of contradicting the journalist, the Russian benefit would be to be able to develop and establish geopolitical relations without this implying a confrontation. Who seems to have not realized that the bipolar world ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union is the United States, which maintains its retrograde policy when what is currently being projected is multilateralism.

It is necessary not to ignore the argument that it seeks to promote a campaign of discredit against President Biden, as if the record of sexual harassment, pedophilia and corruption that clothe the Democratic politician and others of that party were not enough. Again, it is someone else's fault.

IRAN ON STAGE
Under the same accusation scheme against Russia, the report points to Iran as a direct actor in the electoral destabilization attempt. Given this, it is worth wondering if it is not an absurdity, if not clumsiness, that the Persian country, one of the most affected by the US blockade and whose leader was assassinated by order of the outgoing resident, may have interests in the internal conflicts of the United States.
"We assess with high confidence that Iran carried out a campaign of influence during the 2020 US election season with the intention of undermining former President Trump's reelection prospects and furthering his long-standing goals of exacerbating divisions in the United States, creating confusion and undermine the legitimacy of US elections and institutions, "he states, while noting that" Tehran's efforts were aimed at denigrating former President Trump. "
BIDEN AND THE DEEP STATE
This association is not unreasonable if you take into account the position of various officials today and the positions they held during the Obama administration.

The journalist quoted above maintains that he is not exaggerating when he says that US intelligence leaders "hated Donald Trump and love Joe Biden." Likewise, he maintains that it is not a partisan question, but rather by whoever is more complacent or not with the "deep state" that governs in that country. The previous president, being an anti-globalist conservative, was a hindrance because in a way he was autonomous in the decisions that are made to sustain the American establishment.

The fact that the report tries to show a strong Biden and ignores his participation in the coup in Ukraine in 2014 is not a sign of strong support for his figure, but an act of non-aggression with a president manageable by the structure imperialist. It is not the almost octogenarian president who is stomping, it is the power that sustains him.

A day after the report was released, Biden said Russia would "pay a price" for its "meddling" with new "sanctions" from the United States, not as revenge for undermining its democracy, but to weaken states that do not bow. . The States that do not comply with its designs become part of the list of the countries of the "Axis of Evil" and that can only be seen by finding out who it is "sanctioning".

It is not the first time that Washington has built the figure of an enemy. Previously, and with good reason, this place was occupied by the Soviet Union in the times of the Cold War, as well as Islam at the beginning of this century and Russia in the last decade. In addition to its autonomy, the Eurasian country is the recurring enemy because it retains the symbolic remnant of being the head of the Soviet Union bloc and, previously, it was erected as an empire in itself.

That is why the narrative is lined up against the classic enemy: Russia. One of the elements that constitute the construction of the "existential enemy" of the United States is its guilt for all the evils suffered by the Empire and its latent threat.

In the report presented, they conclude the following:

1.That there was no technical interference in any aspect of the voting (registration, ballots, tabulation or report of votes). Neither attempts to interfere. They differentiate between "influence" and "interference" when trying to technically alter the system.
2.That President Putin authorized the execution of "influence" operations against Biden and in favor of Trump.
3.That Iran influenced against Trump, but did not support another candidate and generally aimed to undermine confidence in the legitimacy of US institutions. Iran's influence operations continue after the elections.
4.That China made no efforts to interfere. This is in the interest of stabilizing relations with the United States and considering that no result was sufficiently advantageous to risk retaliation. China would assess that there is a bipartisan consensus against it.
5.That there was some range of influence operations by other actors: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Cuba and Venezuela. In the case of Venezuela, they estimate that there was an antagonistic relationship between Maduro and Trump and that from here they would try, without success, to influence public opinion in the United States.
6.That there would be some attempts to interfere with electoral operations by isolated agents, but only directed at ransomware (data hijacking to demand financial rewards). It is assumed that they were not acts directed by other States, although there is little confirmation in this regard.
7.There were some isolated attempts by hackers to interfere, without success, in the elections.

How not to question a report that closes in the following way:
"Assessments are not intended to imply that we have evidence to show that something is fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedent."
Whether it is credible or not, the Empire does not care because ultimately what it needs is the justification to attack countries that unintentionally put its hegemony at risk.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/ee ... je-del-mal

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Re: The Nature of Foxes

Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2021 2:25 pm
by blindpig
Image

Fuck Mindfulness Workshops

Posted Mar 31, 2021 by Tithi Bhattacharya

Originally published: Spectre Journal (March 24, 2021) |
But, the changes have come, they have added up. You don’t think that the black petty bourgeoisie that we have in this country today pulled itself up by its own boot straps right? They rose on the backs of the kids who burned down the cities.
–A. Sivanandan1
If you look at American workplaces at the moment I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that antiracism was quite easy. The speed at which diversity training programs mushroomed in the aftermath of the anti-police uprisings of the past summer, along with specialist gurus leading them, could easily lead you to think that antiracism was a set of politics best practiced in the bowels of HR departments. No Black bodies left dying on streets, no police stations to burn, just a stack of Robin D’Angelo books and late afternoon management-led sensitivity training sessions.

US companies currently spend $8 billion annually on diversity training. This is despite multiple studies demonstrating that such training neither increases diversity nor stamps out racism. And yet they continue. They continue precisely because these HR exercises are not about dismantling white supremacy; they are about inoculating companies and universities against lawsuits from people who encounter racism and sexism at work.

Over the last decade, Wall Street giants like Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Smith Barney had to pay out millions of dollars to settle harassment claims, leading such firms to reevaluate their strategies around race and gender. The first of these was to demand that new hires sign contracts agreeing not to join class action suits. Their second and related move was to increase investment in diversity training. Even limited tools to protest against discrimination were thus taken away from employees while ushering them in to brightly lit company seminars on diversity.

We finally really went through the looking glass when McDonald’s responded to the Black Lives Matter protests with a powerful 1-minute video listing the names of George Floyd and others who have been killed, including Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, Botham Jean, Atatiana Jefferson, and Ahmaud Arbery. The fierce love and rage of the BLM protests were seamlessly marketized by a company that still refuses pay its overwhelmingly Black and brown workforce $15 an hour. As George McCary, a militant Black worker at McDonald’s put it:

I get paid just $8.25 per hour. That’s so low that the only bill I can pay is my phone bill, and I’m forced to turn to food stamps to eat.

But the final word on the culture of corporate diversity must go to the Minneapolis Police Department. Over the years they had become a model of diversity. Police officers were made to attend implicit bias trainings, mindfulness workshops, seminars on de-escalation and crisis intervention. But no soft music, soy candles, or breathing exercises stopped Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020.

These HR exercises are not about dismantling white supremacy; they are about inoculating companies and universities against lawsuits from people who encounter racism and sexism at work.

Because in brutally murdering George Floyd, he was merely fulfilling the purpose of the institution he served: the police.

PREDATORY INCLUSION
It is time we recognize 2 dangerous trends in this business of corporate diversity. First, that the language of diversity, masquerading as anti-racism, has become completely unmoored from social meaning; and second, because it is so, women and people of color are now hired as purveyors of violence to shield the system from criticism.

Black legal scholar Cheryl Harris2 uses the phrase predatory inclusion to describe how Black families are ensnared by predatory mortgages in the name of economic inclusion and sharing.

I want to repurpose that concept, predatory inclusion, to refer to all the women and people of color “elevated” to positions of power, in the highest levels of government, banks, universities, and corporations. It is a means to refract from any criticism and direct attention to the empty form of representation. It is also a way for the system to launder its violence.

Two years ago, Cinzia Arruzza, Nancy Fraser, and I published a manifesto in which we argued that the language and politics of feminism had to be wrested from Sheryl Sandberg, Hillary Clinton blessed-feminism and reanimated with the power of feminist strikes and occupations. We pointed out that it mattered not to women and men of the global South that the bomb or debt peonage headed their way was designed or unleashed by a woman. It is just as important today to rescue the politics of antiracist street fighting from a rainbow capitalism that seeks to tame it by either obscuring elite women’s role in mass incarceration, or else crowing that a person of color heads one of the most vicious immigration regimes of our times.

An instructive example of capitalism’s strategy is from Puerto Rico. During the 2010-11 militant students’ strike against privatization at the University of Puerto Rico, the University contracted a private security firm, Capitol Security, for $1.5 million to break the strike. The firm hired young men and women from Villa Cañona in Loíza, a predominantly Black and low-income neighborhood in a predominantly Black and low-income municipality, to tear down university gates and act as paid strike breakers.

The uprising was fighting police violence but not in acceptable, approved ways; they were fighting to damage capital.

As Marisol Le Bron’s powerful account of the strike documents, a municipal employee approached the young people with an offer of $10 an hour to “work” at the University. On an archipelago, Le Bron noted, “with official unemployment statistics hovering above 16 percent and where the federal minimum wage was $7.25 an hour, it is not surprising that youths from one of the poorest municipalities in Puerto Rico jumped at the opportunity Capitol Security presented.” The resultant struggle between university students and the poor, young people of color working as strike breakers, strained antiracist solidarities within the strike and weakened it. It took a young, Black, socialist striker, Giovannio Roberto, himself a product of racialized poverty, to cut through this strategy and speak directly to the youth and talk to them about their shared histories and common spaces of interests:

I am also from a poor barrio and I am also Black just like you all. When I was young, my parents couldn’t find work, just like you all who don’t find work now. And I lived for many years on cupones [federal assistance]. I lived until I was sixteen years old on cupones. Until I was sixteen… But what’s wrong? In this world we are not all equal. Why is Loíza un pueblo de negros [a Black town]? Why is Carolina un pueblo de negros? Why are Dorado and Condado considered pueblos de blanquitos [towns full of rich whites]? It’s called racism. It’s called institutionalized racism…They don’t want us to leave. Those born in Loíza stay in Loíza. Those born in Carolina stay in Carolina. When we come here to fight every day, it’s so that all of you also have an opportunity to break that cycle.

Roberto’s speech ended a night of violence with the extraordinary spectacle of these young striker breakers shaking hands with strikers in a moment of luminous solidarity.

CAPITALIST PREDATION HIDES BEHIND CORPORATE DIVERSITY

There were no soy candles or mindfulness seminars in the glorious Black uprisings of the past summer. What knit the protests together was a deep sense of injustice and a history of antiracist uprisings of the past. Women and men who rushed to the streets did not want a seat at capital’s table, if that meant the rest of their community was going to be fed scraps from it. The uprising was fighting police violence but not in acceptable, approved ways; they were fighting to damage capital.

Taking the lead from those global protests, as members of oppressed groups, we need to rebuild movements which represent our interests, not just our race, gender, sexuality, ability, national origin, religious background, and so forth. If our interests are bulldozed over in the name of “diversity” then the pain and harm caused cannot be mitigated with the assurance that the person wielding power over me shares my skin color.

That assurance is as vulgar as the email signature of land acknowledgement from a white administrator as she fires you from your job.

We want a return of the Black uprisings of the summer not because their target was for more Black people as CIA operatives, but because their aim was to dismantle a system that needs a CIA.

https://mronline.org/2021/03/31/fuck-mi ... workshops/

Re: The Nature of Foxes

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2021 11:38 am
by blindpig
HORSE MACKEREL ALONE AND GIFT BAGS

The Cayapo Image

20 Apr 2021 , 3:27 pm .

Image
The existing ideologies exhausted all justification of the current murderous system of the species and nature (Photo: El Cayapo)

Now we are like horse mackerel out of the school, turning the same stone.

From the roots of humanism various thoughts were born; Of them, the only one that was consolidated was liberalism, since it could be built physically, while it was subjected to experiment, to systematization, to the practice of what was thought, to discard and take advantage of what did not serve it and what that served him. It was also able to create a practical theoretical method, but above all things, it generated a mode of production and a new social elite, capable of naming and naming itself; creating historical memory in the story of his existence as a superior being; The others, belonging to various social classes, mostly sons of royalty and feudal courtiers, come to a halt, fundamentally religious, generated utopianism, socialism, communism, anarchism and other isms,

Despite the analyzes and warnings of Mr. Carlos Marx, the majority remained in criticism or in the attempt to take power away from the bourgeoisie; They never had a method, experiment, practice, they never created another mode of production outside the brain, they only remained in hope, chimera and illusion, and despite the fact that in some places power was taken or taken from the elites, the return was repeated, like horse mackerel to the same stone.

Since then, capitalism has developed as an exploitative warrior system, which has even used its adversaries to strengthen itself, when after the defeats it seizes the new tactics, strategies and combat methods created by the opponents, which it systematizes and he uses it as repower, while he convinces the majority of us by selling us as an illusion the possibility that, by working, slaves will become rich and free.

Since then, prisons, asylums and cemeteries have been filled with the illusions, the massacres are repeated one after another every day on the planet, the carnage does not end, the species lives crammed in the neighborhoods and urbanizations, just as if we were a shed of chickens or pigs, where they attack us with fodder, drugs and antibiotics, but the epidemics that kill millions annually by different means are always lurking, from time to time it escapes from the hands of the caretakers of the sheds and the controlled epidemic it becomes, or the interests turn it, into a pandemic, which they also take advantage of.

The information devices of this system, and the organization in general, make us see everything separately and that each event has its own culprit or scapegoat: a pandemic, a virus, an uprising, a government, drug addicts, traffickers, and so on. infinity, we carry a corral full of scapegoats: that if you kill, imprison or remove responsibility to one of them, it is immediately replaced by another and no one notices that the corral is still full. We cannot continue to see the events that are occurring in the world as events of countries, institutions or individuals: we need to understand them as a consequence of the actions of a system that exercises dictatorship on the planet.

If we look at the cases of Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe separately, we will find ourselves in a dead end, millions of words have been used to condemn Lenin Moreno, Bolsonaro, Macri, the sopho hundred failed presidents of Peru, Ecuador , Argentina, Paraguay, to the drug parades of GaviriaSantosUribeDuque, and their ministerial trains, to the thousands of rulers of Europe, America, Asia, Africa, whom no one remembers anymore, the United States and its Trump, Obama, Biden, Bush Clinton, against whom the left and its brainy analysts scold themselves by calling them crazy, monsters, senile, murderers, clumsy, brutes, thieves, stealing cradle, and blaming them for all the evils, but if it is black, woman, Indian or of the Democratic left, they are happy because it will bring imperialism to the waist, and they laugh at their thanks.But when, as in the case of Obama, who invaded half the world without even declaring war on him, then they become depressed and four or eight years pass, they overcome the mouse and ... optimism returns: now it is true that imperialism was screwed, because the goat or the imperialist has been or will be supplanted.

There are also constant cases of corruption, intervention and justification of massacres and coups d'état perpetrated against the peoples, endorsed by the Red Cross, the UN or the OAS with their Blue Helmets, rapists of children, thieves and murderers, prevalidated of their supra extraterritorial power, its Reporters and Doctors Without Borders, its NGOs of whatever right we can imagine, its Amnesty International and its diplomatic efforts, always in favor of the all-powerful transnational corporations.

After all conflicts we learned through declassified reports that behind them was the interest, oh coincidence!, For gold, diamond, oil, forests, coltan, water, lithium, drugs or strategic positions. But the discourse is the defense of freedom, democracy, civilization, progress and the sacrosanct values ​​of private property against dictatorships, terrorism, the Taliban, the Arabs, the Persians, the Indians, the Chinese, the Chavistas. ; in short, against everyone, do not let the territories and resources that exist there be taken away.

The fighters, mostly religious in conduct, even if they call themselves left-wing radicals, use exorcizing words, whatever that is: let imperialism die, down with such a dictator, never again this or that, put the corrupt in prison, let the corruption and torture, that the disappeared appear, no more theft of land from the Indians, no more death of women, blacks, peasants, fishermen, whales, baboons or plankton, freedom for political prisoners, no more exploitation, that we all can be and do whatever we want, fascists, murderers, bourgeois, sell-out. All this in the fervent belief that this is enough and more than enough to solve problems.

All those words are addressed to an old father, an older brother, located beyond the seas, who considers himself out of all evil, who is above God and the devil, administrator of morals and good customs, so that This intercedes and solves problems, calls the attention of these little miscreants, puts them on the waist, forces them to fulfill their promises, and much more. Nobody tries to understand that those institutions, like the UN and the OAS, those governments, those countries like the Europeans to whom great virtues are attributed or complaints are directed at them, are the same ones subjected by the same transnational corporations that subjugate everything. the planet.

But nobody makes a record of the everyday, of the innumerable massacres around the planet to steal forests, divert rivers, pollute seas and oceans to produce wealth, that is, murder life to accumulate death in the name of democracy, freedom, progress, development and civilization of corporations.

Through the media we are ideologized with the fragmentation of the facts, nothing has a connection, everything is separate; Colombia has nothing to do with Brazil, Ecuador with Peru, Venezuela with Haiti, and much less can we imagine that we are connected with the Arabs, Chinese, Persians or Indians; Nobody perceives the connection of all the separated with the transnational corporations and their plans, everything is spoken in a disjointed way, but each one drinks Coca-Cola or Pepsi, buys cars, weapons, conflicts in all territories, and we all sell oil, gold or coltan at the price that the corporations want, and if not, there will be a blockade, invasion, war.

However, each government sells its speech as if it really existed independently, as if the entire planet was not governed by transnational corporations. There is talk of and from the media as if they were independent, as if they did not belong to these same corporations, and reporters, journalists or misnamed social communicators believe the story that they are free and not the simple wage earners of big capital.

We speak of the school apparatus, as if each country were autonomous and did not obey the same ideology, which is the humanist one, and thus with all established institutions, where each one plays its role as a facilitator of the proper development of capitalism and its consequences.

In the news, they are not transnational corporations that, depending on their interests, instigate governments, buy officials, create opinion matrices, on this or that thing. Let us take the close example of Brazil and the Lava Jato case , a judicial trap where several birds are killed with a single stone, a corruption scandal is set up where not only the Brazilian State with its parties, the presidency, the judiciary, the legislation, diplomacy, the army, but also the four large transnationals with which Brazil obtained surplus value from planetary labor were destroyed: we are talking about Embraer, Odebrecht, the meat industry and Petrobras.

The Colombian, Peruvian, Ecuadorian, Mexican and other states were attacked for corruption. Later it is known that behind them were security agencies of the North American government that, of course, work for large corporations.

What's behind it all? The aforementioned: Brazil has between 150 to 200 million labor force that from now on will be subjected to starvation or subsistence prices; It is a vast territory, with many resources in forest, water, oil, and worse still, the deterioration of Brazil will affect neighboring states, particularly Venezuela, which has already been tried and condemned by the corporations.

The whole story of the failed states, drug traffickers, outlaws, was a construction of very short dates of transnational corporations where institutions, diplomats, government officials became accomplices, directed by corporate plans that seek, with a blow, to control without state restrictions all planetary resources.

Meanwhile we are aware of the rating, the trends in networks, and how beautiful the presenter is dressed or the laugh that the drugged Porky or the crazy Bolsonaro produces, or the senile acts of Biden, while the horse mackerel gives turned on the same stone.

https://misionverdad.com/chavismo/el-ju ... -de-regalo

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Re: The Nature of Foxes

Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 1:29 pm
by blindpig
South Carolina’s governor loyal to the rich during pandemic
Matt ColburnMay 4, 2021 32 3 minutes read
Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... osts/94278

In early March, South Carolina’s governor Henry McMaster ordered all state agency directors to submit plans for bringing state employees back for in-person work at 100% capacity. This, like much of McMaster’s criminal negligence during the pandemic, has been met with resistance.

State employees themselves questioned the governor’s decision to transition back to 100% in-person work. One worker called the decision, “irresponsible and rushed.” Only about 25% of South Carolina’s population is fully vaccinated at this point.

The South Carolina ACLU filed a lawsuit asking for the governor’s orders to be halted on the grounds that it exceeds his authority and unnecessarily puts non-essential workers and their families at higher risk of infection. The court denied that request but ACLU plans to appeal.

One thing is certain: every action McMaster has taken since the pandemic began has been to support and push forward the interests of the state’s big business at the expense of the health of workers.

A week after the state’s first reported COVID case on March 5, 2020, the governor called a state of emergency and over the next three weeks he went on to close schools and dine-in service for restaurants and bars, but only partially closed retail stores and non-essential businesses—leaving most open.

A few more were closed in April 2020, with the addition of travel and boarding restrictions in “high-risk” areas. It was not until well over a month after McMaster’s initial state of emergency declaration that the state government finally closed ALL non-essential business/retail stores, along with a “Home or Work” order that restricted travel to that necessary for getting essential services and going to work at an essential workplace. All of this was absurdly short lived.

As cases steadily climbed—going against logic—McMaster announced plans for ALL retail stores to reopen by April 21, 2020. Then in early May, he lifted the “home or work” order. The following week, he allowed for indoor dining and the reopening of public boat landings. By the end of May 2020, we saw a complete reopening of all “close-contact provider” services—barbershops, gyms, salons and so on.

In the early months of the pandemic, McMaster’s administration created a task force called “accelerateSC.” The task force was mostly constituted of business owners, CEOs and politicians—people who produce nothing and whose lives were slightly inconvenienced by the pandemic at most. The only damage they were concerned with mitigating was to their profits. It is these people who were given the power to make literal life and death decisions for South Carolina’s workers.

The task force of 20-plus members had only two physicians. There were no nurses or “front line” workers, but the group included a CEO of a pharmaceutical company. There were no factory or plant workers but there was the co-owner of a food manufacturing plant. There were no waiters, line cooks, dishwashers, or hotel workers, but the lead chair of the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association was among the 20.

McMaster has also done little to hide his disdain for the state’s public school teachers. In June 2020, he attempted to allocate $32 million from the CARES act to private schools, even going so far as to praise these schools for having in-person learning five days a week. This move was shot down by the state’s supreme court for being in direct violation of the state’s constitution—which prohibits using public funds “for the direct benefit of private schools.”

To add insult to injury, during the first phase of the vaccine rollout in February, McMaster, along with the state superintendent, called for school districts to present plans to return teachers to face-to-face learning—while simultaneously not including teachers in the list of workers in occupations that would be vaccinated first! He justified this by saying that schools were not “at-risk environments:” a blatant lie. The teachers have only recently become eligible to receive the vaccine.

The number of COVID cases from April to July 2020 show how each action, or rather inaction, of McMaster contributed to the increased transmission of the virus, and hundreds of preventable deaths. The number of cases spiked from 124 on average per week in April to over 1,500 on average per week in July. Over 9,500 people in South Carolina have died from COVID thus far.

At first glance, one might look at McMaster’s actions as that of an incompetent or foolish individual in leadership. This would be a mistake. McMaster’s actions are calculated to keep the flow of profits into the hands of the state’s ultra-wealthy uninterrupted.

It is no coincidence that McMaster rescinded the dine-in service ban for restaurants and bars just in time for tourist season.

Working class people in South Carolina should really ask who benefited the most from McMaster’s actions? The workers who over a year later still face eviction and unemployment? Or the owners whose wealth grew during the pandemic?

The capitalist system is not incapable of addressing the pandemic, because there is no fundamental scarcity of resources. But the capitalist political leadership in South Carolina has shown it is unwilling to act in our interests — and that is to blame for the preventable death and suffering of thousands of working people.

https://www.liberationnews.org/south-ca ... rationnews

Last year Gov Foghorn Leghorn, when he began lifting the most effective of the pandemic safety measures, stated "The business of South Carolina is Business!" Ya can't make this shit up and I'm surprised this writer didn't include that morsel. Here is SC the veneer of pretend concern for the working class is particularly thin, our previous governor, the uber-opportunist Nikki Haley said she wore pointy high heels in order to kick union organizers out of the state. Mean and vicious as they are that sort of honesty is sort of refreshing compared to the Dems, mealymouthed, treacherous knife-in-the-back artists when not just pathetically useless.

Re: The Nature of Foxes

Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2021 1:22 pm
by blindpig
DUNHAMMER: THE OPERATION THAT COULD CLOUD BIDEN'S VISIT TO EUROPE
11 Jun 2021 , 12:12 pm .

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Biden's visit to Europe for the G7 meeting is preceded by suspicion caused by the hacking of calls and emails by the United States when he was Obama's vice president (Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP)

The recent arrival of US President Joe Biden to European lands is preceded by a scandal that could influence the diplomatic agenda that the Democrat intends to develop on his first visit since he was elected last December.

" SOMETHING SMELLS ROTTEN IN DENMARK"
This is the revelation of more data about the case in which the Danish intelligence services colluded with the United States National Security Agency (NSA, for its acronym in English) to hack phone calls and emails from other European governments . Although this was during the previous Obama administration, in which Biden was vice president, there is no reason to believe that the practice was stopped despite claims by Washington to the contrary.

The operation would have been dubbed "Operation Dunhammer" and allowed US espionage to obtain data using the telephone numbers of political leaders as search terms.

The Danish government provided access to its communications systems so that the United States could monitor neighbors such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, then-German Foreign Minister and current German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and former German opposition leader Peer Steinbrueck.

In addition to prominent German political figures, the NSA also intervened in the communications of senior officials from Sweden, Norway and France, according to the data studied, covering the years 2012 and 2014.

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Recently it became known of the participation of the Kingdom of Denmark in the intervention of the cell phone of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel for more than 10 years (Photo: Bellenews)

An internal working group of the Danish Defense Intelligence Service determined in 2015 a secret investigation that was revealed on May 30 by Danmarks Radio (DR, Danish Radio) in collaboration with journalists from SVT, NRK, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, WDR and Le Monde. DR confirmed, through nine sources, that the Danish Intelligence Service leaders were aware of the NSA espionage, but this did not seem a reason to cease cooperation with the US agency. Already last year the internal scandal was such that it caused the dismissal of those leaders.

REACTIONS OF (NOT SO MUCH) OUTRAGE
There were responses and comments at various levels in European governments, measured outrage as a common factor.

French President Emmanuel Macron declared that "The case goes back years. But if the information is true, it is not acceptable, even less among European allies", after his bilateral consultations in virtual format with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose telephone number was He has been subjected to wiretapping by the United States for years, and said: "What I said then is still valid now. There can be no spying between friends," adding that he expects "total clarity" about the recent revelations.

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The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, has appealed to the status of "ally" of the United States by expressing his disagreement with the espionage practices of the NSA to the European political class (Photo: Nicolas Tucat / AFP)

The German federal government, through its spokesperson Steffen Seibert, declared at a press conference that it is not willing to confirm whether it will continue to cooperate with Danish intelligence agencies and "has taken note of the report and is in contact with all national and international organizations. relevant to clarify ".

Peer Steinbruck, a former German finance minister and one of the alleged targets of US espionage, called the situation scandalous.

Norwegian Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen stated that Oslo "will take the allegations seriously" while his Swedish counterpart Peter Hultqvist demanded "to be fully informed on matters that concern Swedish citizens, businesses and interests" . In his statements to the national broadcaster SVT he added: "And then we have to see what the response of the political party in Denmark sounds like." It has officially contacted France and Germany, as well as the United States for clarification.

Jens Holm, a member of the Swedish Parliament for the Left Party, called for the names of politicians who were spied on by the NSA to be revealed, adding that the situation evokes memories of the Cold War.

The European Commission (EC), staying on the sidelines, recalled: "There is not much to comment on by the EC in general terms. The affairs of national intelligence services are a national competence, it is up to the national authorities to supervise their own services. "said community spokesman Christian Wigand.

He added that "The data that travels outside the European Union must remain secure. It is a very important matter for us. We have intensified negotiations with the United States about it," trusting that they will be able to find a solution and emphasizing that, in the meantime, they have other tools they can "use as a security measure."

SNOWDEN: "BIDEN IS DEEPLY INVOLVED"
The secret internal investigation into the so-called "Operation Dunhammer" originated from suspicions that Danish intelligence provided the United States with access to its Internet cables and after the leaks of Edward Snowden, who in 2013 revealed a large number of documents on the working methods of the NSA.

The former CIA and NSA contractor, who lives in Russia after unveiling the US massive espionage program and seeking asylum in Moscow, spoke out after DR's release and accused Biden of being "deeply involved" in the situation.


Among Snowden's explosive revelations at the time is that the Obama administration was implicated in spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel. At that time, the German government confirmed that it had information that pointed to the fact that US espionage had tapped a cell phone that Merkel used between October 1999 and July 2013, and also revealed that the Chancellor had called Obama by phone to demand an explanation. .

At the time, the White House did not categorically deny the espionage, but said that the phone of the head of the German government was not tapped at that time and would not be in the future.

Following the leak, Snowden was charged with theft of government assets, unauthorized communication of national defense information and voluntary disclosure of classified intelligence communications. However, before that, senior US intelligence officials had publicly repeated that the NSA had never knowingly collected information from private phone records.

ARMIES BEHIND ENEMY LINES: A PRACTICE WITH A LONG PAST
A comprehensive investigation by Swiss historian Daniele Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe , details how military secret services in certain European states such as Denmark were involved in serious crime and terrorist acts, regardless of whether his superiors knew it or not.

During the Cold War, NATO and the CIA sponsored numerous Stay-Behind networks (spies "behind enemy lines") in many European countries with the intention of activating them in case the Warsaw Pact countries attacked them or some Communist party in these countries come to power democratically, or there would even be some "threat" to the status quo favorable to US interests.

These groups were funded, armed, and trained in covert resistance activities, including assassinations, political provocation, and disinformation tactics. The most famous of these NATO operations was Operation Gladio , whose existence in Italy was recognized by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in 1990, but the aforementioned networks also existed in Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg. , Norway, the Netherlands and Portugal.

In Italy they were responsible for terrorist actions such as the Peteano massacres (1972), the Piazza Fontana (1969), the Bologna train station (1980) and the failed Borghese Coup (1970).

In Latin America its analog was Operation Condor led by Licio Gelli, head of the Propaganda Due (P2) lodge, Stefano Delle Chiaie and several members of the board of former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla who were members of the P2 Lodge, such as Raúl Alberto Lastiri and Emilio Eduardo Massera. Also José López Rega, advisor and minister during the government of Isabel Perón and founder of Triple A.

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The "Massacre of Piazza Fontana", with 16 dead and 58 wounded, was carried out in 1969 by NATO's Gladio Network and by far-right terrorists, supported by the Italian Security Forces (Photo: ANSA)

The Gladio networks were, and possibly are, linked to neo-Nazis and other fascist movements in almost all European countries. In Denmark, the "Absalon" group worked since 1945 with the same task and coordinated with the rest of the networks. It was named after a Danish bishop of the Middle Ages who fought the Russians sword in hand, and "consisted only of men with very conservative ideas and whose anti-communism was therefore beyond doubt", a former member of the red in 1990.

Ganser details that the "Absalom" network was for many years under the direction of EE Harder, who was nicknamed "The Bishop". It also recounts the revelations of the former CIA director, William Colby, on how "it was necessary to coordinate the action of these networks with the plans of NATO, direct their radio antennas towards the future destinations of exile and hide the equipment provided by the CIA. in hiding places under the snow, with a view to its future use ".

Gladio's focus in Denmark was Ebbe Munck, a central figure in the Danish secret services and veteran of the resistance, who later became a diplomat and one of the advisers to Queen Margaret of Denmark. The secret army was integrated into the FE (Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste) military secret services. Although weapons were scattered throughout Danish territory, they were never used in terrorist operations.

The officers of the "Absalon" network were trained in clandestine missions and special operations with agents of the other European Stay-Behinds, NATO, the CIA and MI6. The Danish press revealed how they also participated in particularly sensitive operations in the communist countries of Eastern Europe, secretly traveling to the United States for special training, probably at the CIA special operations training centers or at the headquarters of the CIA. special forces, at Fort Bragg.

He also maintained a close link with NATO and the FE according to the scheme already applied in Italy, Belgium and France, and over time he gave up secret operations to create organizations that would serve as a front to promote his own ideology under the name of Pindsvinet .

The history of Gladio in Denmark does not surprise the organic linkage of American intelligence with the Danish military intelligence services, as there is also the same connection with the rest of Europe.

CROSS AGENDAS
Biden's visit to Europe aims to reorder the relationship of the United States with the rest of NATO after the distancing generated by Trump, who maintained a compulsive effort to subordinate the old continent and a little enthusiasm with the offensive nature of the Atlantic alliance. The former president accused NATO of taking advantage of his country, insulted the EU and left a G7 summit in Canada in 2018.

To this is added the European belligerence in the face of tensions on the borders of Ukraine and the unsuccessful attempts by the elites of the United States to stop the advance of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that would link Germany and Russia as strategic partners, before which Biden has considered lift unilateral coercive measures against the energy project.

Also the lack of reciprocity from the Biden administration following the EU decision to reopen its doors to American travelers caused both discontent and bewilderment following the announcement of the withdrawal from Afghanistan without any actual prior consultation.

Espionage may be an uncomfortable topic within NATO, but more because of the alliance's familiarity with the practice, it has always been a sign of attempted dominance (if you trust, not spies). No voices have been raised in Europe demanding the commercial advantages that the US military-industrial complex obtains through espionage on issues as dense as defense.

The balance in the purchase and sale of weapons is simply turned towards the United States, especially when the Big Tech, which recently showed partiality for Biden in the last electoral process, are one more tool of espionage and advance without brakes in surveillance capitalism .

Finally, the question remains in the air about what would have happened if China, Russia, Iran or Belarus had been the countries involved in a network of spying on European government leaders: How many "sanctions" would have been applied?

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/du ... den-europa

Google Translator

They(USA) can't help it, being hegemon requires riding herd on your toadies as well as spying on declared enemies. Hegemony is weakened thanks to the ignorance and indifference of Trump. (funny how those 'qualities' can serve good purpose...) Late found resentment after decades of manipulation is only to be expressed when the author of these abuses of sovereignty is on the back foot.

However, the smoke and mirrors and jabbering pall beside one issue, Nord Stream 2. Can the Europeans be convinced, cajoled and threatened into abandoning the best deal in town at the behest of the US, hurting themselves and Russia but fattening purses in the US oil industry? That will be the crux of this biscuit, the bellwether.