Raleigh
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Devila Merkel just keeps getting stupider and stupider:
“Recent attacks in Germany involving asylum-seekers would not change its willingness to take in refugees, Chancellor Angela Merkel has said.
She said the attackers “wanted to undermine our sense of community, our openness and our willingness to help people in need. We firmly reject this”.
Translation:
“Recent attacks in Germany involving asylum-seekers will not change our policy of bringing in cheap labor (keeping wages down and prices up). The people who put me in office have given me strict orders to keep the flood coming. Also, we are aware that divide and conquer works to keep the population in line. When you are fighting each other, you are not fighting us.
We have also trained you well in political correctness, and all we need do is call you a racist or bigot, and you will back down. Don’t try and bring in a ‘populist’ leader because our money and media connections will destroy him/her; we will kill them if we have to. Yes, some of you will be raped and murdered, but we have an agenda and we will follow through.
Nor will we end our wars against the Middle East countries that is causing this chaos and mayhem. They die, you die, it doesn’t really matter. This has nothing to do with compassion, otherwise we wouldn’t be destroying their countries to begin with. This is all part of our greater plan. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.”
War on poverty. War on drugs. War on terror. So many programs and so much money to be made off of each one. Ukraine’s President is ousted, Gaddafi is murdered, Saddam Hussein is murdered, Assad is fighting for his very survival, Putin is bad, Russia is being bankrupted and surrounded – all happening on our watch – and here we sit.
How many of you have called or written their respective politicians?
Forgot to post the link to Schwartz:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Schwartz_(author)
Hey, Tony, when are you going to reimburse everyone who bought the fake book? Don’t forget the interest! What, not going to happen? I thought not. If Trump was so much worse (and you weren’t writing a work of fiction, were you?), then you ought to be in jail for fraud.
Tony Schwartz, Trump’s ghostwriter on “The Art of the Deal”: 25 (1975 to 2000) years as a journalist for The New York Times, Newsweek, New York Post, Esquire.
“Schwartz founded The Energy Project in 2003 and launched The Energy Project Europe in 2005, with headquarters outside London. The company’s clients have included companies such as Google, Microsoft, and The Coca-Cola Company. He has delivered keynote addresses to audiences around the world and done leadership work and coaching with CEOs.”
Now, there’s a guy (living in his “sprawling house, on a leafy back road in Riverdale, New York”) who doesn’t want the status quo changed. He earned “a joint byline on the cover, half of the book’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar advance, and half of the royalties” (several million dollars). “Edward Kosner, the former editor and publisher of New York, where Schwartz worked as a writer at the time, says, ‘Tony created Trump. He’s Dr. Frankenstein’.”
So the guy who started his own business in 2003, working for very large corporations, advising them on how to get the most productivity out of their workers, now speaks up. “Starting in late 1985, Schwartz spent eighteen months with Trump—camping out in his office, joining him on his helicopter, tagging along at meetings, and spending weekends with him at his Manhattan apartment and his Florida estate. During that period, Schwartz felt, he had got to know him better than almost anyone else outside the Trump family.”
So this journalist/ghostwriter (but not really because he’s listed on the cover) put lipstick on a pig? Did he lie then? Oh, he just embellished the truth so as to make his ticket to riches look better, so he could sell books? So he lied for profit then? Who approached whom? Did Trump approach him and ask him to write a book, or did he or the company he worked for approach Trump? Makes a difference.
If somebody follows you around for 18 months and wants to sell books by making you look better than you are, who are you to say, “Hey, start over, you made me look too good”?
All I can say is that Trump must be way ahead of Hitlery in the polls because the ants are crawling out of the woodwork now. If this guy embellished, told untruths, then why should anyone believe the other books he’s written? When is he going to come out and declare to the CEO’s of the corporations he’s hired by that the books he has written since are just a bunch of sh*t he made up? If he stretched the truth, who’s to say he isn’t doing so right now?
Trump is very, very rough around the edges, but you can’t just dismiss everything he’s saying. Some of it, if he follows through, will help the average American citizen. And the elite are worried about him changing things. Well, elite, the people have had enough of you changing things just to suit yourselves. They are worried sick that this guy will get in, and they’re doing everything they possibly can to see that that doesn’t happen. They might be surprised.
Screw off, Schwartz.
Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton. Way to fold, Bernie!
“Bernie Endorses Hillary.
How disgusting is that?
Not surprising. Predictable in fact. But disgusting nonetheless.
Not proud to admit that, over the past couple of months, I have preyed on naive liberal friends who actually believed that Bernie was going to act independently, take it to the convention, wreak havoc on the corrupt Democratic Party.
I bet that he wouldn’t, that he was not an Independent, he was Democrat as they come, that he would endorse Hillary before the convention. […]
During the battle over Obamacare on the Hill, I asked Sanders why he was supporting Obamacare when he stood for single payer.
I pointed out what he already knew — that they are two different systems — Obamacare controlled by the health insurance companies and written by their lobbyists — single payer a public system that cuts the health insurance companies out of the game.
Sanders snarled at me, told me not to lecture him and walked away in a huff.
Into the arms of the corrupt Democratic Party.”
All those people who believed and rallied for him, gave him donations, all for not – he caved and has run into the arms of someone who, on the face of it, is nearly his exact opposite, Hillary Clinton. What a sell-out.
Babble – buddy, take a deep breath. The U.S.S.R. was a terrible thing for people, but it is understandable how that came about, isn’t it? I mean, how many Russians were wiped off the face of the earth when Hitler came to town? Of course they wanted to make sure that that never happened again by creating a huge buffer zone. And the U.S.S.R. did become a prison.
But things have changed. Get in the game, Babble. Now Russia is finding herself surrounded again – again! What’s she going to do? When you go around pushing people, don’t be surprised when they push back. The aggressors here are the West, the U.S. in particular. If you can’t see that, then I have no hope for you.
And Russia is going to get “kicked in the teeth”? Really? No, Russia, if pushed, might be tempted to use nuclear weapons, and then the West would retaliate, and some other animal (because it won’t be a human – there’ll be none left) will be crawling over what’s left of your teeth in a few year’s time. This isn’t a game of Risk nor army men moved back and forth on a board. This is real and could get all of us killed.
Babble, dream on.
So the FBI will lay no charges re Hillary’s emails. Well, ain’t that surprising! Not. Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch (U.S. Attorney-General), who both met coincidentally on the tarmac in Arizona (not) said that they spoke about their grandchildren for that half-hour on her government jet. Here’s how the grandchildren might have entered the conversation:
“Bill: So, Loretta, are you enjoying your grandchildren?
Loretta: Yes, very much. They’re so much fun.
Bill: So, Loretta, can you imagine living without them?
Loretta: No.
Bill: That would be awful, wouldn’t it, Loretta?
Loretta: Yes (spoken tentatively).
Bill: Yes, I too could not even fathom the suffering I would feel if I ever lost my grandchild. I mean, it would rip your heart out, right, Loretta?
Loretta: (Silence)
Bill: Well, I’d best be off now. It’s been good talking to you, Loretta.”V. Arnold – yes, it all depends on who writes the history. I like what the author said: “So slavery provides the fuel for the development of this modern society that some are able to enjoy, which is one of the reasons why when I used to have conversations with certain friends from abroad about how they wanted to build a society like the United States, well, I would say, well, you know, find millions of people to work for free for a few centuries and you can have a modern society too.”
And I found it interesting as well that young children from the U.K. (whose parents had either died or had signed their children’s lives away) were brought to the U.S. to work in the fields, by the thousands, but at least they got their freedom when they turned 21. And the U.K. got rid of their convicts too, sold them off to slave in the fields; why house and feed them when you can make a profit selling them off to the Americas.
History just keeps repeating over and over. We all live in a form of slavery, even though many don’t realize it. That there was a split between England and the colonies re slavery is not surprising. Follow the money. Same with the Syrian refugees. Follow the money. They’re not doing this out of compassion.
“July 4th is America’s most important national holiday celebrating American independence from Great Britain. On July 4th, 1776, America’s Founding Fathers declared that the Thirteen Colonies were no longer colonies but an independent country in which the Rights of Englishmen would prevail for all citizens and not only for King George’s administrators. […]
In this American assertion of self-determination citizens of Great Britain were not allowed to vote. Therefore, according to Washington’s position on the votes in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine – the former Russian territories of Donetsk and Luhansk – America’s Declaration of Independence was “illegitimate and illegal.”
If I remember correctly, I don’t think the native population of Hawaii had a vote, nor the American Indians, nor the Hispanic people inhabiting California and Texas. These lands were just stolen by the “exceptional ones”. Ain’t it just like bullies to be paranoid? It is because of what they’ve done that they worry about others doing the same.
Babble – I’m pretty sure you’ve been into the sauce. Paul Craig Roberts:
“We are constantly informed by the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, numerous senators and representatives, by NATO commanders, by EU politicians, by presstitutes, and others, that “Russia has invaded Ukraine.”
Take a minute and think about this extraordinary lie. Clearly, evidence is no longer a factor in determining what is occurring. Assertion only rules. Take a second to look outside The Matrix. Is it really possible that Ukraine would still exist if Russia invaded? I would bet my life that within 60 hours of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine would again be part of Russia.
Remember August 2008 when the US and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian army invaded the peacekeeping realm of South Ossetia, killing Russian peace-keeping troops and Ossetian civilians. Putin was at the Beijing Olympics, but Russian armed forces quickly smashed the American/Israeli trained and equipped Georgian army. Putin held Georgia in his palm.
What did Putin do after delivering this lesson in the superiority of Russian arms? He released Georgia and returned home.
So how is it that Putin, according to the entirety of the Western political establishment and media whores, is determined to rebuild the Soviet Empire? Putin held Georgia. No power on earth could have forced him to release Georgia. But Putin withdrew Russia’s forces and released the country. The former Georgian president is now an American operative in Ukraine.
If you consider the number of outsiders, including US citizens and the former president of Georgia, who serve in the Ukrainian government, it raises questions about the so-called “Maidan Revolution” in February 2014. If this really was a popular uprising, and not a Washington orchestrated coup, why is there such a shortage of Ukrainians to form the new government that foreign citizens have to be brought in to rule the country?”
Report to Supporters: The British Woke UP — Can The Americans?
“What is remarkable is that in the face of rising resentment by the “losers” from neoliberalism – the 99 Percent – only the nationalist right-wing parties have criticized the EU’s neoliberalism and the T-TIP. The formerly left-wing Socialist parties of France and Spain, German Social Democrats, Greek Socialists and so forth have endorsed the neoliberal, pro-financial program of austerity and rollbacks on labor union power, wages and pensions.
So the riddle is, how did originally pro-labor parties become anti-labor?”
They get corrupted over time.
“The same thing may be said of political parties. Every party that identified with the left in the Progressive Era – the Labour and Socialists parties of Europe, and the progressive Democrats in the United States – have now moved to the neoliberal right as it has become part of “the establishment.”
It is as if left and right parties have switched positions politically. The socialist left is not protesting against eurozone austerity, but is applauding it. Like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in Britain, they have become Thatcherite, pushing privatization and corporatism.
For example, last week the Democratic National Committee rejected Bernie Sanders’ urging that the platform for this year’s elections reject the TPP and TTIP.
This leaves it to Donald Trump to denounce the Democrats as supporting corporatism at the expense of labor. It puts him in the position of Nigel Farage in Britain or Marine Le Pen in France, or the nationalists in Austria and Hungary.”
This leaves it to Donald Trump to denounce the Democrats as supporting corporatism at the expense of labor. It puts him in the position of Nigel Farage in Britain or Marine Le Pen in France, or the nationalists in Austria and Hungary.”
The Silence of the Left: Brexit, Euro-Austerity and the T-TIP
An upside down world. But “Bernie Sanders’ camp was able to place restoring the Glass-Steagall Act in the final draft of the Democratic Platform and get a unanimous vote on the measure from the Drafting Committee.”
Clinton Says Wall Street Banks Aren’t the Threat, But Her Platform Writers Think They are
One giant revolving door: “Ex T-Man Geithner Cashing in on Wall Street”.
How many of you think Geithner feels any guilt or shame? Do psychopaths feel guilt or shame? Not part of their vocabulary.
Slick Willy rides again:
“So the Attorney General of the United States just happened to run into the former president of the United States who just so happens to be married to a woman running for president, who just happens to be under federal investigation and they just happened to have a 30 minute meeting aboard a government owned airplane and we’re to believe that all they talked about was their grandchildren?
If you believe that, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn you may want to consider buying.”
Loretta Lynch, how unethical are we? The Attorney-General of the United States doing this? What part of your last name do you not understand?
She was recommended for the job by Eric Holder. Yeah, like that’s a good reference (not)!
“She was a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2005.”
https://www.blackenterprise.com/news/10-facts-about-loretta-lynch/
Yet another member of the Federal Reserve, and another shining example of an upright Ivy Leaguer, just like Hitlery. Harvard Law School must be so proud!
Nigel Farage is interviewed after his speech in European Parliament. What he says makes good sense. Farage comes on at 0:44. He wants free trade, but no freedom of movement, and he says if Merkel doesn’t go along, there will be a lot of unemployed German car workers soon. When Farage steps down from the European Parliament, he could become a comedian. That guy makes me laugh.
Merkel has her own ideas, saying that the U.K. can’t cherry-pick what they want.
“In a speech to the Bundestag on Tuesday morning, Ms Merkel spelt out to London that the EU’s internal freedoms were indivisible — if Britain, like Norway, wanted access to the internal market then, like Norway, it would have to accept freedom of movement.”
https://mishtalk.com/2016/06/28/no-cherry-picking-says-merkel-risk-of-trade-collapse-says-mish/
Nassim – interesting. So you’re saying that the U.S./Saudi Arabia/NATO purposely “hit” Turkey in order to teach Erdogan a lesson. Here I was thinking that Erdogan didn’t move unless told to by the U.S., but, you’re probably right, because he seems like a loose cannon. I also think that when the tax haven money of Cameron’s father was leaked, that too was not a mistake (as some have suggested); they aimed directly at him. Could be they aimed at Jo Cox too in order to get what they wanted.
Nigel Farage got a booing in the European Parliament today, but he took it all in stride.
Carbon – you’re probably right. That’s actually a smart move on Putin’s part. If he gets too cozy with Putin, the U.S. will just take him out. Still, Erdogan’s apology is something new in the right direction. Hopefully it’s a sign that all is lost in Syria as far as the overthrow of Assad and that they’re going to cut their losses. People everywhere are showing contempt for the U.S. Thanks, Carbon.
Carbon – good article. Whatever the U.S. and its NATO puppets were doing in that region, it’s clear it hasn’t worked out the way they wanted. Russia went along with the ceasefire; it’s just that nobody else did. Now they are bombing the heck out of anything that moves, moderates be damned. I think Erdogan is smelling defeat.
Turkey is being hammered by Russian sanctions and loss of Russian tourists. And good luck getting into the EU! No way. He’s also smelling Trump in the air. Maybe Erdogan is starting to realize that he might end up being surrounded by hostile enemies instead of the other way around. The U.S. will hang him out to dry, if need be. The rat is jumping off the ship because the ship is going down, but just think of all the money that this rat (and many others) made off Syrian oil and arms shipments before it started to list. Their bank accounts now bulging, it’s time to pull out.
Any money Erdogan and his family (plus his friends) made off dirty deals should be clawed back and sent to help the Syrian people rebuild their country. Same with all others who benefited from this war. Claw back the money and open up the jail cells.
Very interesting 16-minute debunking of what happened in Britain today (the tragic death of a British MP). Apparently, according to these fellows, the gunman did not shout “Britain First”, the eye-witness shopkeeper who supposedly heard these words – well, he apparently didn’t – and yet that’s what’s plastered all over every newspaper, including the free newspaper (the London Evening Standard) that everyone in Britain gets when they’re coming home from work on the trains. According to reports, this man was mentally unstable and was having an altercation with someone else when the female MP stepped in to help.
Who knows what happened. But here is their side.
Nassim – Nigel Farage is a gem. Britain is very lucky to have him. It’s just too bad people didn’t listen to him years ago. Of course, people only act or change when things become really, really obvious, like in-your-face obvious. Nigel Farage was able to see far down the road, see the consequences. Thank goodness he’s hung in there. Many wouldn’t have. He’s been called every name in the book, even a “nationalist”. Horrors! Imagine wanting to have your own nation, a nation with a culture. As Farage said, even his so-called enemies are now trying to be his friends.
A director once said, “You are always ready to begin a project just at the very end.” Because everything has been done, the bad things or things that didn’t work out have been realized and rejected, what is right and workable has emerged. All pain and struggle has been worked through. That is what is necessary for a nation, or even a person. You end up with what you really didn’t know you knew.
Brexit must pass. If it doesn’t, I truly believe Great Britain will be lost.
Thanks, Nassim.
Here’s Paul Craig Roberts on Brexit. I haven’t listened to it yet, but here it is:
And here is the other wave coming from Africa to Italy, through Libya.
“But there is another humanitarian crisis in Europe we have heard much less about: the roughly 200,000 migrants and refugees who left Africa for Italy since last year. […] This summer, as the Mediterranean waters calm, African migrants and refugees are expected to set sail in record numbers. According to a recent joint Interpol-Europol report, an estimated 800,000 or more will attempt to reach Europe from Libya.”
This has been going on for years; the numbers are just increasing.
“All the men at the house said they know someone who has made it to Italy or France — an uncle or a friend. The fruits of their journeys are on display in their home villages, where the beneficiaries have new smartphones, televisions or houses. The families of the men here wonder why they cannot have this, too. If they return home empty-handed, they fear they will be rejected.”
So millions will be flooding into Europe, chasing the dream. You can see from the pictures that one is wearing Adidas track pants, holding an Ipod, the other wearing a gold chain, rings. Rents will increase in Europe because of the influx, prices will rise, and conditions will worsen. Like others have found out, as prices rise, there soon is nothing left to send home in the way of remittances.
Africa just moves north.
I remember a few weeks back an article speaking about the hold-up in sending refugees from Greece back to Turkey. The person doing all the holding up was from the U.N. I looked her up. She graduated in 2009. She had all the useless, but required degrees, had done all of her internships, jumped through all the hoops. You could see her working her way up through “the system”. And now she was in charge of sending them back. Turkey was not safe, she said. Oh, and what about their legal counsel?
What about the fact that they had been safe in Turkey before they left Turkey, or should I say before they were “enticed” away from Turkey by Merkel and the EU? I came away thinking just this: that TPTB did NOT want the refugees sent back, simple as that. She was being used to bring this about, stall. Just as international NGOs are used to stir up trouble, to create humanitarian crises. They create the crisis, then direct the human cattle in the direction they want them to go in.
The dead Syrian boy washed up on shore (the famous picture) would NOT have shown up in every major newspaper unless they wanted to sway the public, which is what they wanted to do. Germany wanted cheap labor, Sweden was just plain stupid. But let’s call a spade a spade: they created this crisis and wanted the Syrians. Simple as that, otherwise they would have been stopped. In their tracks.
So Brussels and Germany have now had their fill; the public is starting to get antsy, countries are starting to get angry, politicians are getting nervous. Time to speed up the send-back.
Greece has been governed by fools. They should not have allowed their country to be a path to the North. You want new slaves, Germany? Well, go to Turkey and put them on planes. Don’t pretend that it’s all about humanity.
Rolling Stone’s article entitled “Why It’s Time to Repeal the Second Amendment” is being pummelled. Just shy of 14,000 comments, 99% of them against David Cohen’s viewpoint, saying that without the Second Amendment you can have no First Amendment, that Switzerland has a standing militia and they don’t have problems (every household is armed).
Good luck getting weapons off the U.S. citizens.
What the heck is up with avocados? Read recently where one lady said that if she had another avocado on her salad, she was going to scream. She said California is swimming in them. Maybe the Asians have given up Rhino horn or bear paw in favor of ground avocado pits? That’d be good for the Rhinos and the bears.
Doly – interesting points. Thanks for posting. I agree with many of your points, but disagree with you on Clinton. She is a warmonger, and she will put all of us in harm’s way with Russia. Bank on it.
“It’s easier to make people to conform when minorities are taken out of the way, if not literally (like Hitler) at least by reducing their status to the point where they’re a lot less visible.”
Trump has no problem (and neither do the U.S. citizens) with the legal immigrants. It’s the illegals they have a problem with. The U.S. citizens end up paying for these illegals (health, education, housing). They end up lowering the citizens’ wages (because there are so many of them) and housing prices and rental rates rise (because there are more people looking for accommodation). This is all lose-lose for the U.S. citizens, not win-win.
“…the first thing he plans to do when he gets in office is to destroy the independence of judges. ”
Trump has spoken out against the judge presiding over the Trump University case. I agree with him. The judge, who belongs to La Raza (which promotes helping Latino illegals), has a clear conflict of interest and should have excused himself from the case (as many judges have done in the past), especially since one of Trump’s policies is to stop the flow of illegals across the Mexican border. There is a clear conflict here, and no one can deny that.
“…stop journalists from saying things he doesn’t like.” I don’t think Trump has said that. I think he’s referring to the fact that almost all of our media (yes, even CNN) is owned by approximately 6 major corporations. There is a monopoly on information. It’s no wonder the average American citizen is ill-informed. They’re not getting the other side on serious issues. So much information is purposely left out. We need to break up the media monopolies (just as with the major banking corporations) so that we can fair and honest reporting. Where are the investigative journalists? They’re still around, but they are silenced by the bought-and-paid-for monopolies.
“…and religious discrimination is likely to become policy.” Likely? Why? I don’t think anyone, including Trump, is advocating that. People can practice whatever religion they choose, so long as they don’t cause harm to anyone in so doing.
Wiki “Oligarchy” page: “Oligarchy (from Greek…), meaning “few”, and ἄρχω (arkho), meaning “to rule or to command”) is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people.
“Some contemporary authors have characterized current conditions in the United States as oligarchic in nature. Simon Johnson wrote that “the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent,” a structure which he delineated as being the “most advanced” in the world. Jeffrey A. Winters wrote that “oligarchy and democracy operate within a single system, and American politics is a daily display of their interplay.” […]
In 1998, Bob Herbert of the The New York Times referred to modern American plutocrats as “The Donor Class” (list of top donors) and defined the class, for the first time, as “a tiny group – just one-quarter of 1 percent of the population – and it is not representative of the rest of the nation. But its money buys plenty of access.”
French economist Thomas Piketty states in his 2013 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, that “the risk of a drift towards oligarchy is real and gives little reason for optimism about where the United States is headed.”
A study conducted by political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton University, and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, was released in April 2014, which stated that their “analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.” The study analyzed nearly 1,800 policies enacted by the US government between 1981 and 2002, and compared them to the expressed preferences of the American public as opposed to wealthy Americans and large special interest groups. It found that wealthy individuals and organizations representing business interests have substantial political influence, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little to none. […]
Gilens says that average citizens only get what they want if wealthy Americans and business-oriented interest groups also want it; that is, economic elites and their interest groups are influential, and that when a policy favored by the majority of the American public is implemented, it is usually because the economic elites did not oppose it. […]
In a 2015 interview, former President Jimmy Carter stated that the United States is now “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery,” due to the Citizens United ruling, which effectively removed limits on donations to political candidates.”
This is really a very good article, “Feel the Hate”. The fakers are laid bare.
“Obama’s time in the White House office has been a big wet kiss to the super-rich and powerful (whose wealth has concentrated yet further under his presidency) combined with a raised middle finger pointed in the direction of the party’s progressives and the nation’s working class majority. As the investigative researcher Eric Zuesse noted last summer, “Under Presidents G.W. Bush and Barack Obama, economic inequality in America has been more extreme, for more years, than under any Presidents in all of the previous U.S. history. But, at least, Bush didn’t pretend to care about it. Obama does. He pretended to a concern for justice which he never really had; he was always merely faking liberalism.”
Faking liberalism while serving the wealthy few was also a defining aspect of Bill and Hillary’s first two terms as co-presidents. During their first eight years atop the executive branch, the Clintons advanced the neoliberal agenda beneath faux-progressive cover in ways that no Republican president could have pulled off. […]
Hillary can pretend to be against the TPP for vote-getting (and progressive Democrat-pleasing) purposes in the primary season. Top corporate lobbyists know that this is just populism-manipulating politics as usual and that she can be counted on to advance the “free trade” agenda once she gets back into the White House. As Secretary of State (2009-2013), Hillary repeatedly voiced strong support of the TPP. In Australia in November of 2012, she said that “TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements for open free, transparent, [and]fair trade…” She has already suggested that she will put the arch-neoliberal Goldman Sachs Democrat Bill Clinton in charge of White House economic policy once she returns.”
So Hillary is going to put Bill in charge of economic policy? Look out! I wonder what he’ll repeal this time around. Read this article. It’ll bring everything back into clear focus.
V. Arnold – U.S. citizens are indeed uneducated re their government. They watch the spin doctors on CNN and actually believe them. It’s not that the media outright lie in most cases. They spin, provide SOME facts, but it’s what they leave out, by omission, that takes its toll. Most people do not have the time (as we have) to question everything; in fact, they don’t even know they have to. I used to trust my government. I didn’t think they’d ever try to knowingly screw us over. But how wrong I was.
Of course, once you do start reading, once something, anything, piques your interest, you read something you really disagree with, you do start reading, and then all of a sudden you start reading something else, and if you continue, it eventually becomes clear. But that takes time and if you’ve got children and a busy life, a job, a long commute, it’s very hard to keep up.
I’m not making excuses for them, just to say that you don’t know what you don’t know. Many people following economics (which leads into politics, foreign policy, etc.) started because they were either being screwed or they wanted to know how to make more (follow the money). Most people don’t have two dimes to rub together. When a lot of people lost their homes (bit off more than they could chew), a few people suddenly got smart and started asking questions.
For those who don’t know what’s happening, it will take a big crisis to wake them up. They’re not stupid; they’ll listen when someone can spell it out in simple, honest terms (something we don’t get from economists, the media, etc.)
Many who do know what’s happening simply follow in order to make more money. They really could care less who is getting screwed; they just want more.
“Hillary is closer to Mussolini than Trump is to Hitler.” Yes, unfortunately I think by a long shot.
Had a good article on how private prisons keep their prisoners in jail/prison for longer than public ones, but I can’t find it at the moment. You can always trump up something a prisoner has done wrong when it means you will pocket more money if he spends more time in jail.
Private for-profit prisons are making a lot of money.
“In Arizona, three private prisons are operating with a 100 percent occupancy guarantee, according to Mother Jones. There’s even a lockup quota at the federal level: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention budget includes a mandate from Congress that at least 34,000 immigrants remain detained on a daily basis, a quota that has steadily grown each year, even as the undocumented immigrant population in the United States has leveled off.”
https://news.vice.com/article/how-private-prisons-are-profiting-from-locking-up-us-immigrants
This is one industry that probably loves when illegals cross the border, more product for their prisons. And several times I’ve read how the prisons are actually being used by corporations as a source of cheap labor. I couldn’t believe the brand-name corporations who were using the prison populations to manufacture stuff.
So the American taxpayers pay to house these prisoners (so that the private prison system gets rich) and corporations get rich by hiring prisoners for next to nothing. Hey, another win-win situation. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. What a formula!
Debtor’s prisons, shades of Dickens’ Little Dorrit. Not a good sign at all. I remember Karl Denninger saying a few years ago how unfairly the people of Ferguson were being treated, and yesterday he had a piece on Oklahoma:
“Now, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol has a device that also allows them to seize money on prepaid cards.
It’s called an ERAD, or Electronic Recovery and Access to Data machine, and OHP began using 16 of them last month.
Here’s how it works. If a trooper suspects a person may have money tied to some type of crime, the highway patrol can scan and seize money from prepaid cards. OHP stresses troopers do not do this during all traffic stops, only situations where they believe there is probable cause.
“We’re gonna look for different factors in the way that you’re acting,” Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John Vincent said. “We’re gonna look for if there’s a difference in your story. If there’s someway that we can prove that you’re falsifying information to us about your business.”
That’s right, if you don’t tell the trooper exactly what you’re doing (or he simply doesn’t believe you) he will drain your entire bank account and any other card he can hit with his “magic device.”
That’s called armed robbery, I remind you, seeing as he has a gun and is prepared to use it.”
John Day – hopefully these emails help put the old girl behind bars, but I’m not going to hold my breath. I heard Google was helping out Hillary too, manipulating their search engines so that favorable searches came up for her, but not for Sanders or Trump. Sickening.
Also heard Elizabeth Warren said she is “all in” for Hillary Clinton to win, that she’s going to fight hard for Hillary. Oh, Elizabeth Warren, you just went down in my eyes. How she could campaign hard for the psychopathic warmongering Clinton is beyond me. Same with Bernie. He’s was campaigning for things that were opposed to what Hillary was saying, and yet now he’s going to endorse her? What?
I thought Bernie and Elizabeth were for the average working guy. I guess not.
earlmardle – Obama will go down as the worst ever U.S. president, and he deserves every bit of that “worst ever”.
Bernie Sanders might be able to string a sentence together, but so can Obama. How did that work out? Bernie Sanders chose not to go after Hillary Clinton.
And Hillary? She too can string a sentence, because she is polished at it, but what is she really saying? More wars, secretive trade agreements, amnesty for illegals, Wall Street protector, millions for speeches, Clinton Foundation. I haven’t gone time for this. She would be absolutely disastrous for the U.S.
Trump at least is questioning NATO, the need for endless wars, the secretive trade deals, the offshoring of jobs, unfair trade deals. He is not a seasoned politician; don’t expect the lies to flow out of him like they do with people like both Clinton and Obama.
After an interview with Hillary Clinton, Anderson Cooper even mentioned that she did not answer several of his important questions. She chose to skirt around them, refused to answer. At least Trump tries to answer questions. I think if the real Hillary Clinton (which I think all who are really looking can see her quite clearly) would stand up, we’d all be shocked. But at least she answers in complete sentences.
“Beijing has not just allowed shadow banks to grow much too big, it has used this growth to hide its actions behind. Local governments got most of their credit to build highways to nowhere from shadow banks. It’s really weird that the western press only catches on now.”
Some in the western press no doubt knew, but the lid was probably kept on until Western money was out of China. Let the vultures escape, then write the bad stuff.
I remember years ago that people were writing in blogs that they wanted to make offers on houses that people had walked away from, yet they couldn’t. The banks were selling these houses to their friends, big blocks of houses, and they weren’t available to the lowly public. As Dr. Diablo says, all controlled by the big boys so that all profits go to themselves and their friends. I mean, how are you going to buy elections if you don’t help yourself and your friends get filthy rich? Got to have that money for campaign contributions so as to ensure the status quo continues.
Babble – Russia is getting them too. I’ve posted articles on this. Search the internet to find the information as it probably won’t be in the Western media.
Birdshak – that’s only if they allow you to own any land. They could easily, with everything that’s happening currently, tax you off your land, confiscate your land, or throw you in jail for looking at them sideways.
We can’t see what the future holds, but we can see what has happened and what is happening now, and from that we can extrapolate where we’re going, and from where I’m sitting it doesn’t look good for us common folk. Unless these corrupt and psychopathic people are stopped, a fat chicken might only be something we dream about.
Nassim – yes, they change laws when they want to, make laws retroactive when they want to, and now here they are ignoring a court order when the court finds they have provided no evidence! Lawlessness. What’s next? Good link.
Trivium – I enjoyed Orwell’s Animal Farm, but could barely get through 1984. I finished it, but it made me feel hopeless, and we’re running parallel to what’s in that book. We’ll all be Winston’s soon.
The powers that be who are creating this madness are using “humanitarian” crises (see my link from the other day) to further their agenda, and most everyone is falling in lockstep. The bleeding hearts are aiding and abetting TPTB, yet they don’t even know it. They think they’re making a better world, caught up in singing Kumbaya, but they’re not watching what is truly happening behind the scenes and they’re going to be very sorry in the end. Because of their naivety and ignorance, they’re sending all children straight into 1984, and that makes me very angry. There’s lots of talk about sympathy, kindness, benevolence, humanity, there’s pats on the back for at least being better than the next guy, they feel elevated above the rest, more god-like, and then it sort of ends right there. With a huge period! End of sentence.
“People who REALLY care about refugees go WAY UPSTREAM and address the ROOT CAUSE as to why these people are impoverished and their countries war torn AND FOCUS THEIR ENERGY ON THE ROOT CAUSE.”
But swimming way upstream in search of the root cause is not what most people want to do. They just go along, follow the herd, put Band-aids on and clean up after TPTB. They’re building their own jail, but are oblivious to this fact. Absolutely in denial, don’t see the big picture – couldn’t stand far enough back if they tried.
I agree, the “root cause” is ALL that matters; all the rest is just mush.
“…but it was the Clinton administration’s Doctrine of Humanitarian Warfare before 9/11, that shut the door on the prohibition of aggressive wars by the UN Charter, remaking the map of the world into a borderless American hunting reserve by removing the principle of sovereignty and replacing it with “right to protect” (R2P)—or humanitarian pretext for use of force.
Clinton’s doctrine was an act of supreme, even witty, exploitation of liberal principles and commitment to policies of human rights. It was how the liberal left was induced to embrace war and imperialism as the means of defending human rights. The Carnegie Endowment cooked up the doctrine in 1992. Its report, “Changing Our Ways: America’s Role in the New World,” urged “a new principle of international relations: the destruction or displacement of groups of people within states can justify international intervention.” The report recommended that the US use NATO as the enforcer. It must be noted, too, that the principle of “humanitarian war” has no authority in international law. The Charter of the United Nations sought to outlaw war by making it impossible for unilateral interventions in the business of sovereign states by self-appointed guardians of human rights. The reason behind the proscription was not heartlessness but the consciousness that WW II had been the result of serial violations of sovereignty by Germany, Italy, and Japan—by militarist imperialism, in other words.”
The Great Leap Backward: America’s Illegal Wars on the World
Clinton came up with the Doctrine of Humanitarian Warfare: “The destruction or displacement of groups of people within states can justify international intervention”. As I said in my above post, that is what the U.S. is so exceptional at, displacing people. Syria, anyone?
So you just go around creating humanitarian problems and, voila, you and your NATO bully friends can pound whatever country isn’t doing your bidding into the ground.
After the simultaneous destruction of both Russia AND the United States via nuclear weapons, some would be happy to mutter with their last breath: “But WE won!” They actually believe there will be a winner here. The whole world will be destroyed. Seems like some are bent on pushing and pushing, and then just like the bullies they are, daring the other side to act. Insanity. Or they say that they’ll just use conventional weapons. Yeah, right, until somebody doesn’t.
Under the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 (which Russia was foolish enough to trust and sign):
“NATO’s pledge to Russia was conditional, not unconditional. It was that, as long as there was no security threat to Eastern Europe, there would be no permanent NATO troops stationed there. On these terms, the NATO-Russia Founding Act was agreed to, signed, and ratified:
‘NATO reiterates that in the current and foreseeable security environment, the Alliance will carry out its collective defence and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces.'”
Now I understand why somebody mentioned that NATO just keeps moving their troops around in order to get around the “permanent stationing” clause in the above quote.
Russia should have learned by now that the U.S. will just manufacture or engineer a humanitarian problem (using their NGO’s), create chaos and havoc through proxies, and then say, “Look, there’s a big security threat; we’ll have to go in.” Whatever fits, they’ll do it. They are great at dismantling countries. That is what they’re “exceptional” at.
Here’s what happened in Afghanistan before the Russians went in:
“Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”
That’s how the U.S. works, poking at countries until they react, and then they have the audacity to say: “Oh, look, they’re getting all aggressive!” As one journalist said, “NATO moves closer to Russia then blames Russia for being closer to NATO.”
Babble, you’re not Brzezinski, are you?
I must have missed this yesterday.
“Snowden, who has spent the last few years in exile in Russia, should return to the U.S. to deal with the consequences, Holder noted. “I think that he’s got to make a decision. He’s broken the law in my view. He needs to get lawyers, come on back, and decide, see what he wants to do: Go to trial, try to cut a deal. I think there has to be a consequence for what he has done.”
Eric Holder said Snowden “harmed American interests”. I’d say what Snowden did pales in comparison to what Holder did (no banker jailed). Mr. Revolving Door started out in government, went to Covington and Burling (white collar defense attorneys in Washington, D.C.), then back to government, and now back with Covington and Burling.
His stint as Attorney-General was laughable. Imagine the gall of this man, who is supposed to stand for justice, telling Snowden that he should come home and face the music when he never faced any music at all for his outrageous do-nothing behavior. This whole world is upside down.
