End of the Republic (USA) – on the semi-periphery

Why Christian Right failed, but succeeded

Posted on 2015/08/26 by jd

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Apparently, the US Christian Right did not study Gramsci.

Daniel Schlozman writes ‘…Americans have become less Christian and more secular. Around 1990, following a spate of scandals that engulfed leading evangelical pastors, the share of Americans identifying with evangelical denominations began to decline, from its peak at 34 percent to 27 percent. At the same time, public opinion on gay rights started its inexorable shift. New laws and norms around gay rights represent a huge setback for religious conservatives.

The Christian Right has also failed to build permanent institutions. So while it made white evangelicals into Republicans, the preachers and brokers who led the movement now have no role. Direct mail, not billionaires’ checks, sustained the movement, and when the checks stopped, each of the Christian Right’s marquee groups folded.

Without group intermediaries, white evangelicals have failed to build coalitions with other power centers inside the Republican Party and lost influence. Instead, conservative politicians appealed directly to white evangelical voters….’

Source: How The Christian Right Ended Up Transforming American Politics

Florida in 2000? Let’s not forget that Gore also lost Tennessee and Arkansas

Posted on 2015/08/15 by jd

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PAUL JAY: So there is a question I’ve always wanted to ask you. And this goes back to 2000 and the elections and the whole debate about whether or not you should have done something about Florida. As far as I know–and I’m persuaded from what I’ve seen that if you had made a big announcement that people shouldn’t vote for you in Florida, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference. I am persuaded that Gore lost the election, and not only lost it because he ran the stupidest, you know, lousiest campaign, not least of which was his ego trip of not allowing Bill Clinton to campaign for him, which he would have won if Clinton helped him–.
RALPH NADER: Certainly in Tennessee and Arkansas, which he both lost.
PAUL JAY: And then some. I mean, Clinton’s just–whatever you think of Clinton, he’s one of the great campaigners there is.
RALPH NADER: Yeah.
PAUL JAY: And he capitulates on the vote count. So on any number of things, without question the absolute blame is on Gore and American politics
Source: On Florida in 2000 and What to Do Next – Ralph Nader on Reality Asserts Itself (3/3)

No, Obama is not trying to shut down his Guantanamo Gulag

Posted on 2015/08/15 - 2015/08/15 by jd

Tariq Ba Odah

‘The administration of President Barack Obama urged a federal judge on Friday not to order the release of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who has been on hunger strike for more than eight years and is described by his lawyers as being at risk of imminent death.’
via AP: USA resists immediate release for Guantanamo hunger striker

and…

‘U.S. intelligence and military officials cleared him for release five years ago from the Guantanamo detention center…’
via Reuters: Detainees’ lawyers question Obama commitment to close Guantanamo

https://twitter.com/MazMHussain/status/632383003323428868

Video and photo (above) from Witness Against Torture

John Pilger: Why the Americans want to destroy Assange and why the Swedes are helping

Posted on 2015/08/13 - 2015/08/13 by jd

John Pilger writes: ‘…The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks continues to expose criminal activity by the US, having just published top secret US intercepts – US spies’ reports detailing private phone calls of the presidents of France and Germany, and other senior officials, relating to internal European political and economic affairs. None of this is illegal under the US Constitution.

[….]

Contrary to its 1960s reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA “renditions” – including the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and in WikiLeaks cables. In the summer of 2010, Assange had flown to Sweden to talk about WikiLeaks revelations of the war in Afghanistan – in which Sweden had forces under US command.

“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the multiple twists and dangers facing Assange, “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.”…’

Source: Assange: the untold story of an epic struggle for justice

Was the US Civil War About Slavery? (video)

Posted on 2015/08/11 - 2015/08/11 by jd

‘What caused the Civil War? Did the North care about abolishing slavery? Did the South secede because of slavery? Or was it about something else entirely…perhaps states’ rights? Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, settles the debate.’
— Prager University

How Dick Cheney Covered up himself on 9/11 – The New Yorker

Posted on 2015/07/28 - 2015/07/28 by jd

quote: ‘…While the photographs convey an atmosphere of crisis, their substance adds little to what is already known, from the 9/11 Commission report, Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side,” and Bob Woodward’s “Bush at War.” Like all three of these accounts, the photos put Cheney at the center of events. Perhaps this is the reason that the National Archives took more than thirteen years to post them to Flickr, whereas photos of Bush making calls from Air Force One were released almost immediately. The Cheney photos might never have come out at all, were it not for a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Colette Neirouz Hanna, a producer who has worked on more than ten documentaries about the Bush Administration for “Frontline.”

It is striking how much information about September 11th still remains secret. Most significant, perhaps, are the twenty-eight sealed pages of the 9/11 Commission report. One congressman told Lawrence Wright that they contain information “about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” More than thirteen years after the attacks, they remain classified. So are large chunks of the F.B.I.’s meticulous reconstruction of the hijackers’ pasts, a table with more than three thousand items running from the September 1, 1968, birth of Mohammed Atta, in Egypt, to the September 12, 2001, discovery of Nawaf al-Hamzi’s car, at Dulles Airport. It is impossible to know what events were redacted from the chronology, but surely they would yield insights into how and why the attacks occurred, and how our systems of defense failed to intervene beforehand.

At the beginning of his Presidency, George W. Bush signed an executive order claiming that the White House has the authority to hold back the records of former Presidents indefinitely. This move was challenged in federal court and later reversed by President Obama. But the decision to withhold the Cheney photographs for thirteen years is evidence that little has changed.

via How Dick Cheney Looked on 9/11 – The New Yorker….’

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CIA: Psychologists have an obligation to the nation

Posted on 2015/07/10 by jd

what kind of Nazi shit is this???

‘…The report concludes that some of the association’s top officials, including its ethics director, sought to curry favor with Pentagon officials by seeking to keep the association’s ethics policies in line with the interrogation policies of the Defense Department, while several prominent outside psychologists took actions that aided the C.I.A.’s interrogation program and helped protect it from growing dissent inside the agency.

The C.I.A. chose Mel Gravitz, a prominent psychologist who was also a member of the agency’s advisory committee. In early 2003, Mr. Gravitz wrote an opinion that persuaded the chief of the agency’s counterterrorism center that Mr. Mitchell could continue to participate in and support interrogations, according to the Hoffman report…..

Mr. Gravitz’s opinion, which the Hoffman report quotes, noted that “the psychologist has an obligation to (a) group of individuals, such as the nation,” and that the ethics code “must be flexible [sic] applied to the circumstances at hand.”

via Psychologists Shielded U.S. Torture Program, Report Finds – The New York Times.

The International Monetary Fund Says Trickle-Down Economics Doesn’t Work

Posted on 2015/07/09 - 2015/08/13 by jd

It is a testament to the power of global state ideology and its media system that this paragraph’s contents are not more widely known – especially considering the source!

‘…"If the income share of the top 20% (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20% (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth," the report says.

The paper looks at 159 advanced and developing economies between 1980 and 2012, investigating how income is distributed in each society and its level of national growth. It finds that when the income share of the top 20% increases 1%, economic growth is then down 0.08% in the following five years. At the same time, a 1% increase for the bottom 20% leads to increased GDP of 0.38% in the following years…’

via The International Monetary Fund Says Trickle-Down Economics Don't Work | Co.Exist | ideas + impact.

Eric Holder’s Revolving Door of Legal Corruption

Posted on 2015/07/08 by jd

This is why his Justice Department coordinated repression against the Occupy Movement and he is now being rewarded for it.

‘[Obama’s U.S. Attorney General (Min. of Justice) Eric] Holder also did a great deal to protect big banks during his tenure at the Department of Justice.

As journalist Lee Fang pointed out in the Intercept on Monday, “The Department of Justice under Holder not only failed to pursue criminal prosecutions of the banks responsible for the mortage meltdown, but in fact de-prioritized investigations of mortgage fraud, making it the ‘lowest-ranked criminal threat,’ according to an inspector general report.”

Moreover, Holder is famous for his ethos and phrase: big banks are “too big to jail.”…’

via After 6-Year Tenure Not Prosecuting Banks, Eric Holder Returns 'Home' to Defend Them | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

Tavis Smiley Interviews Chris Hedges (June 8, 2015)

Posted on 2015/06/20 by jd

https://youtu.be/ANxy9KGO2iQ

‘Chris Hedges describes how the media’s inability to do its job has weakened our democracy, and why the public’s loss of faith in traditional mechanisms of power has placed us on the brink of revolution.’

via The Tavis Smiley Show on PBS — Interview with Chris Hedges | June 8, 2015 – YouTube.

liberté / sécurité

Posted on 2015/06/20 - 2015/06/20 by jd

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— Le Journal du Siècle.

WikiLeaks leaks 17 secret documents of the ‘Trade in Services Agreement’

Posted on 2015/06/04 by jd

If it were not for Wikileaks would have anyone ever heard of TISA?? Short answer: No.

Thank you Julian Assange

https://wikileaks.org/tisa/

WikiLeaks releases today 17 secret documents from the ongoing TISA (Trade In Services Agreement) negotiations which cover the United States, the European Union and 23 other countries including Turkey, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Taiwan & Israel — which together comprise two-thirds of global GDP. "Services" now account for nearly 80 per cent of the US and EU economies and even in developing countries like Pakistan account for 53 per cent of the economy. While the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has become well known in recent months in the United States, the TISA is the larger component of the strategic TPP-TISA-TTIP ‘T-treaty trinity’. All parts of the trinity notably exclude the ‘BRICS’ countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
via WikiLeaks – Trade in Services Agreement.

Global Capitalism means no transparency or real democracy

Posted on 2015/06/02 by jd

Representative Democracy is not compatible with Global Capitalism, apparently.

‘…Australian politicians have been told they can view the current confidential negotiating text for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, but only if they agree not to divulge anything they see for four years, despite expectations the deal could be finalised within months.
[….]

The requirements listed were as follows:

“I will not divulge any of the text or information obtained in the briefing to any party, I will not copy, transcribe or remove the negotiating text” and “I further acknowledge that the negotiating text is confidential and sensitive; disclosure of the negotiating text may affect adversely TPP negotiations and Australia’s relations with other TPP partners.”

It concluded: “I therefore agree that these confidentiality requirements shall apply for four years after entry into force of the TPP, or if no agreement enters into force, for four years after the last round of negotiations.”…’

via Australian MPs allowed to see top-secret trade deal text but can't reveal contents for four years | Business | The Guardian.

Jeb Bush likes ‘scientific’ racist Charles Murray

Posted on 2015/05/26 - 2015/05/26 by jd

Jeb Bush says
‘I like the Charles Murray books, to be honest with you, which makes me a total nerd.’

scroll video to 53min40sec…
http://www.c-span.org/video/?325690-1/national-review-institute-2015-ideas-summit

jeb

US Food Stamps Offer Best Economic Stimulus

Posted on 2015/05/25 - 2015/05/25 by jd

Of course, the elite economists already know this – but who pays their salaries?

CNN.com / January 29 2008: ‘…The industry research firm Moody’s Economy.com tracked the potential impact of each stimulus dollar, looking at tax rebates, tax incentives for business, food stamps and expanding unemployment benefits.

The report found that "some provide a lot of bang for the buck to the economy. Others … don’t," said economist Mark Zandi.

In findings echoed by other economists and studies, he said the study shows the fastest way to infuse money into the economy is through expanding the food-stamp program. For every dollar spent on that program $1.73 is generated throughout the economy, he said.

[….] Finally, Moody’s report says business incentives such as tax breaks for buying new equipment – so-called accelerated depreciation – would give the least bang for the buck and potentially provide the slowest infusion of money. A dollar spent there would generate only 33 cents in the economy because, Zandi said, it takes longer for businesses to implement any benefit received….’

via Food stamps offer best stimulus – study – Jan. 29, 2008.

A Majority of US Public School Students Live in Poverty

Posted on 2015/05/25 - 2015/05/25 by jd

I have no doubt that this is true, but how can this be true? WTF happened, America??!

‘Released by the Southern Education Foundation, the new analysis (pdf) used the most recent national census figures available to confirm that 51 percent of the students across the nation’s public schools were low income in 2013. According to the report’:

‘In 40 of the 50 states, low income students comprised no less than 40 percent of all public schoolchildren. In 21 states, children eligible for free or reduced-price lunches were a majority of the students in 2013.

Most of the states with a majority of low income students are found in the South and the West. Thirteen of the 21 states with a majority of low income students in 2013 were located in the South, and six of the other 21 states were in the West.

Mississippi led the nation with the highest rate: 71 percent, almost three out of every four public school children in Mississippi, were low-income. The nation’s second highest rate was found in New Mexico, where 68 percent of all public school students were low income in 2013.’

via ‘A Nation in Decline’: Majority of US Public School Students Live in Poverty | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

‘Redacted’ is the new American hero

Posted on 2015/05/20 - 2015/05/20 by jd

Redacted,
Snowden,
Manning…

‘A CIA interrogator of "high-value detainees" filed a complaint in April 2013 with the agency’s internal watchdog in which he sought "whistleblower protection," claiming the CIA punished him as a "reprisal" for him cooperating with investigations into the treatment of detainees. The punishment, he said, was the CIA failing to reimburse him for legal fees he incurred as a result of the investigations. [….]

"[Redacted] contacted the CIA Office of Inspector General via the Report Fraud electronic database alleging reprisal," says the April 12, 2013 closing memorandum in the interrogator’s case. "[Redacted] alleged that [redacted] legal fee reimbursement claim to the CIA was intentionally delayed by Office of General Counsel (OGC) personnel as reprisal for [redacted] cooperation with OIG investigations and other matters involving the Detainee Interrogation Program. [Redacted] served as an interrogator with the Renditions and Detention Group (RDG) of the [CIA’s] National Clandestine Service (NCS)."

via A CIA Interrogator Said the Agency Punished Him For Cooperating With Torture Probe | VICE News.

Josh Marshall explains the Clintons and nutty reactions to them

Posted on 2015/05/19 - 2015/05/19 by jd

Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton

essentially: Bill and Hill, are just ordinary criminals – nothing to see here.

and I agree. But why should criminality be accepted in politics, at all??

Josh Marshall writes:
‘Here’s my take on the Clintons. They’ve used their fame and power to enrich themselves, which is of course an outrage since it makes them always indistinguishable from the Bush family. (In other words, we need Jeb to bring honor and dignity back to the Oval Office.) On the Foundation, Bill Clinton has dedicated years of his life both to charitable activities and to perpetuating his most presidential of post-presidencies. They play close to the line. And part of the exhaustion of observing them is the refusal to play by rules tighter than those applied to anyone else, fully knowing the scrutiny that will later be applied to them – and all of this entangled with the freak show conspiracy theories that inevitably bubble up around them, a symbiotic embrace of grievance, aggression and derp. It’s painful to admit but the two sides feed on each other. I start out thinking, I’m happy to let them deal with this on their own. And yet the charges become so overblown and nonsensical, the conventional wisdom in the press marches us so wildly in advance of any actual facts, it just becomes too much for me to take. Seeing them again at the center of these wild and carnivalesque conspiracy theories, grand overstatements and or simply evidence-free accusations puts me in the mind of Michael Corleone’s infamous line: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”…’
via Clinton Foundation-palooza Hurtles Toward Its Vince Foster Moment.

US Congress Votes Keep Guantánamo Bay open 4Evar!

Posted on 2015/05/16 by jd

‘An amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act that would provide a framework for closing the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, failed on a vote of 174-249….’
via House rejects bid to close Gitmo | TheHill.

American ‘Democracy’ is a Big Business, and a scam

Posted on 2015/05/10 by jd

also watch the video below from Iowa in 2012

‘…in 2008, something truly remarkable happened. Greasy little snake-oil salesmen like Mike Huckabee realized that if you run for president on a platform of fetuses and Jesus, you can make so much money that you’ll have to buy wheelbarrows to carry it all away. It doesn’t matter if you’re facing certain defeat; quack the proper crap, and the segment of the population who thinks dinosaurs never existed because they aren’t mentioned in the Bible will vacuum up quarters from between the couch cushions and send them to you. Combined with the vast cash coming in from the big-money donors, it’s better than winning the lottery.

In 2008, the Republicans had some fairly heavyweight contenders. Romney, Giuliani … but Mike Huckabee stayed in the race, and stayed in the race, and stayed in the race even though he knew the exercise was a fool’s errand. In primary after primary, he pulled 25 percent of the vote, slicing the hamstrings of the major candidates by sucking up the votes from the no-dinosaurs-because-Jesus people, until he eventually ran the other contenders off the road, and John McCain won the nomination by default … and then picked Sarah Palin as a running mate, and the rest is sadly hilarious history.

Huck ain’t care. He got paid deep, and is a trend-setter in his own fashion. The phenomenon took root in 2012, and has quite simply exploded on the eve of the 2016 race….’

via William Rivers Pitt | How to Run for President for Fun and Profit: 2016 Edition.

from January 2008:
‘Kathy Kelly and Chicago based Voices for Creative Non Violence, along with Des Moines based Catholic Peace Ministrys staged a non violent Peace action at the campaign office of Presidential candidate Mike Huckerby. The peace activists are ask all candidates to agree to end the war in Iraq among other peaceful actions, if elected to the office of president. Some folks were arrest in the action.’

Representative Parliamentary ‘Democracy is a religion that has failed the poor’

Posted on 2015/05/09 by jd

Giles Fraser writes about this week’s UK election:

‘…What difference did my vote make? Why indeed do people vote, and care so passionately about voting, particularly in constituencies in which voting one way or the other won’t make a blind bit of difference? And why do the poor vote when, by voting, they merely give legitimacy to a system that connives with their oppression and alienation? The anthropologist Mukulika Banerjee suggests a fascinating answer: elections are like religious rituals, often devoid of rational purpose or efficacy for the individual participant, but full of symbolic meaning. They are the nearest thing the secular has to the sacred, presenting a moment of empowerment.
But is this empowerment illusory? Is, as Banerjee asks, “the ability to vote … a necessary safety valve which allows for the airing of popular disaffection, but which nevertheless ultimately restores the status quo. In such a reading, elections require the complicity of all participants in a deliberate mis-recognition of the emptiness of its procedures and the lack of any significant changes which this ritual brings about, but are a necessary charade to mollify a restless electorate.”…’

via Democracy is a religion that has failed the poor | Giles Fraser | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Chelsea Manning, Political Prisoner and American Citizen

Posted on 2015/05/06 by jd

…I believe that when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship. There is a bright distinction between citizens, who have rights and privileges protected by the state, and subjects, who are under the complete control and authority of the state…
via We're citizens, not subjects. We have the right to criticize government without fear | Chelsea E Manning | Comment is free | The Guardian.

How Glenn Greenwald explains Baltimore to Brazil

Posted on 2015/05/05 - 2015/05/05 by jd

Elias Isquith: You’re in Brazil; what has the unrest in Baltimore looked like from outside the U.S.?

Glenn Greenwald: I think that sometimes it’s hard for people who are Americans and living in the United States to appreciate the vast gap between how they’re taught to think about America and how the rest of the world perceives America. This has probably been one of the most eye-opening things for me from living outside the United States now for as long as I have, which is an appreciation of just how viscerally the rest of the world sees that discrepancy. Obviously there’s polling that shows that if you ask people around the world who the greatest threat to world peace is, overwhelmingly they’ll say the United States, which most Americans find bizarre, to the extent that they’re aware of it at all.

The perception that America has a radical problem with race and that it has become an extremely abusive penal state are very widespread in the rest of the world — or at least lots of parts of the rest of the world — and it’s also quite accurate. Just from my own experience, when I talk to people in Brazil about things like Ferguson or Baltimore, there’s not a surprise or bewilderment; it’s sort of a confirmation of the fact that America has a serious problem with racism and that police abuse and this abusive penal state seems to be getting worse.
via “It’s pure authoritarianism”: Glenn Greenwald exposes the link between Baltimore’s uprising and the NSA – Salon.com.

Noam Chomsky speaking to Chris Hedges about America today…

Posted on 2015/04/28 by jd

Noam Chomsky speaking to Chris Hedges about America today…

“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies.”

“I listen to talk radio,” Chomsky said. “I don’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing.”

via Chris Hedges: Noam Chomsky Has ‘Never Seen Anything Like This’ – Chris Hedges – Truthdig.

Ten times the amount of US Gov’t informants since J. Edgar’s day

Posted on 2015/04/16 - 2015/04/16 by jd

‘…Torres isn’t an all-American guy. He’s an FBI informant, one of more than 15,000 domestic spies who make up the largest surveillance network ever created in the United States. During J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO operations, the bureau had just 1,500 informants. The drug war brought that number up to about 6,000. After 9/11, the bureau recruited so many new informants — many of them crooks and convicts, desperate for money or leniency on previous crimes — that the government had to develop software to help agents track their spies….’

via The FBI Informant Who Mounted a Sting Operation Against the FBI – The Intercept.