TBR News May 5, 2017

May 05 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 5, 2017: “The development of the Internet has been a blessing to some because of its plethora of information and a curse to others for the same reason.

This country has always been controlled by the leadership ground via their control of the major print and television media but the Internet has provided a cost-free alternative that had seriously undermined this control.

To counter this, the power structure has set up sites that present their point of view and while these sites do get visitors, the other ones negate their views.

Since the Internet has become a major factor in domestic and international business, trying to get control over it or shutting parts of it down, would be  a game not worth the candle.

It is entertaining to note that the Internet was initially created by DARPA, a branch of U.S. Army intelligence ,the same agency that set Julian Assange and WikiLeaks up in business.

Furious though it  may be at WikiLeaks for the damage it does to the Establishment, it is not possible for the Establishment to silence it or stop its devastating revelations that are so disrupting public confidence in government.”

Table of Contents

 

  • Official Government Disinformation Methodology
  • Sore loser Clinton continues to sully her legacy
  • Memory Loss in the Garden of Violence
  • The Triumph of James Comey
  • SECRECY NEWS
  • Germany rules out Turkish death penalty referendum
  • We don’t want you here’ – Muslims fearful as France prepares to vote
  • US-led coalition warplanes banned from Syria safe zones – Russian envoy
  • Amnesty International warns of rising violence in Rio de Janeiro

 Official Government Disinformation Methodology

May 5, 2017

by Harry von Johnston PhD

Prior to the event of printed, and later television, media, it was not difficult for the world’s power elites and the governments they controlled, to see that unwelcome and potentially dangerous information never reached the masses of people under their control. Most of the general public in more distant times were completely illiterate and received their news from their local priest or from occasional gossip from travellers. The admixture of kings, princes and clergy had an iron control over what their subject could, or could not hear. During the Middle Ages and even into the more liberal Renaissance, universities were viewed with suspicion and those who taught, or otherwise expressed, concepts that were anathama to the concept of feudalism were either killed outright in public or permanently banished. Too-liberal priests were silenced by similar methods. If Papal orders for silence were not followed, priests could, and were, put to the torch as an example for others to note.

However, with the advent of the printing press and a growing literacy in the piopulation, the question of informational control was less certain and with the growing movements in Europe and the American colonies for less restriction and more public expression, the power elites found it necessary to find the means to prevent unpleasant information from being proclaimed throughout their lands and unto all the inhabitants thereof.

The power elites realized that if they could not entirely prevent inconvenient and often dangerous facts to emerge and threaten their authority, their best course was not censorship but to find and develop the means to control the presentation and publication of that they wished to keep entirely secret.

The first method was to block or prevent the release of dangerous material by claiming that such material was a matter of important state security and as such, strictly controlled. This, they said, was not only for their own protection but also the somewhat vague but frightening concept of the security of their people.

The second method was, and has been, to put forth disinformation that so distorts and confuses actual facts as to befuddle a public they see as easily controlled, naïve and gullible.

The mainstream American media which theoretically was a balance against governmental corruption and abuses of power, quickly became little more than a mouthpiece for the same government they were supposed to report on. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, most American newspapers were little better than Rupert Mudoch’s modern tabloids, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing but during the First World War, President Wilson used the American entry into the First World War as an excuse for setting up controls over the American public. Aside from setting up government control over food distribution, the railroads, much industry involved in war production, he also established a powerful propganda machine coupled with a national informant system that guaranteed his personal control. In 1918, citing national security, Wilson arrested and imprisoned critical news reporters and threatened to shut down their papers.

Wilson was a wartime president and set clear precidents that resonated very loudely with those who read history and understood its realities.

During the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt, another wartime leader, was not as arrogant or highhanded as Wilson (whose empire fell apart after the end of the war that supported it) but he set up informational controls that exist to the present time. And after Roosevelt, and the war, passed into history, the government in the United States created a so-called cold war with Soviet Russia, instead of Hitler’s Germany, as the chief enemy. Control of the American media then fell into the hands of the newly-formed Central Intelligence Agency who eventually possessed an enormous, all-encompassing machine that clamped down firmly on the national print, and later television media, with an iron hand in a velvet glove. Media outlets that proved to be cooperative with CIA propaganda officials were rewarded for their loyalty and cooperation with valuable, and safe, news and the implication was that enemies of the state would either be subject to scorn and derision and that supporters of the state and its policies would receive praise and adulation.

The methodology of a controlled media has a number of aspects which, once clearly understood, renders its techniques and goals far less effective.

The American media, both press and television, has long been known for promoting sensationalism over accuracy on the one hand and practicing subservience to

Mainstream media sources (especially newspapers) are notorious for reporting flagrantly dishonest and unsupported news stories on the front page, then quietly retracting those stories on the very back page when they are caught. In this case, the point is to railroad the lie into the collective consciousness. Once the lie is finally exposed, it is already too late, and a large portion of the population will not notice or care when the truth comes out. A good example of this would be the collusion of the mainstream media with the Bush administration to convince the American public after 9/11 that       Iraq had WMDs, even though no concrete evidence existed to prove it. George W. Bush’s eventual admission that there had never been any WMDs in Iraq (except chemical weapons which the U.S. actually sold to Saddam under the Reagan / Bush administration) was lightly reported or glazed over by most mainstream news sources. The core reason behind a war that has now killed over a million people was proven to be completely fraudulent, yet I still run into people today who believe that Iraq had nukes…

Unconfirmed Or Controlled Sources As Fact

Cable news venues often cite information from “unnamed” sources, government sources that have an obvious bias or agenda, or “expert” sources without providing an alternative “expert” view. The information provided by these sources is usually backed by nothing more than blind faith. An example of this would be the Osama Bin Laden audio tapes which supposedly reveal that the Christmas “Underwear Bomber” was indeed Al-Qaeda:

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/osama-bin-laden-addresses-president-obama-audio-tape/story?id=9650267

The media treats the audio tape as undeniable fact in numerous stories, then at the same time prints a side story which shows that the White House cannot confirm that the tape is even real:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60N16I20100124

If the White House cannot confirm the authenticity of the tape, then why did the media report on its contents as if it had been confirmed?

Calculated Omission

Otherwise known as “cherry picking” data. One simple piece of information or root item of truth can derail an entire disinfo news story, so instead of trying to gloss over it, they simply pretend as if it doesn’t exist. When the fact is omitted, the lie can appear entirely rational. This tactic is also used extensively when disinformation agents and crooked journalists engage in open debate.

Distraction, and the Manufacture of Relevance

recent push for an audit of the Federal Reserve which was gaining major public support, as well as political support. Instead of reporting on this incredible and unprecedented movement for transparency in the Fed, the MSM spent two months or more reporting non-stop on the death of Michael Jackson, a pop idol who had not released a decent record since “Thriller,” practically deifying the man who only months earlier was being lambasted by the same MSM for having “wandering hands” when children were about.

Dishonest Debate Tactics

Sometimes, men who actually are concerned with the average American’s pursuit of honesty and legitimate fact-driven information break through and appear on T.V. However, rarely are they allowed to share their views or insights without having to fight through a wall of carefully crafted deceit and propaganda. Because the media knows they will lose credibility if they do not allow guests with opposing viewpoints every once in a while, they set up and choreograph specialized T.V. debates in highly restrictive environments which put the guest on the defensive, and make it difficult for them to clearly convey their ideas or facts.

TV pundits are often trained in what are commonly called “Alinsky Tactics.” Saul Alinsky was a moral relativist, and champion of the lie as a tool for the “greater good;” essentially, a modern day Machiavelli. His “Rules for Radicals” were supposedly meant for grassroots activists who opposed the establishment, and emphasized the use of any means necessary to defeat one’s political opposition. But is it truly possible to defeat an establishment built on lies, by use of even more elaborate lies, and by sacrificing one’s ethics?

Today, Alinsky’s rules are used more often by the establishment than by its opposition. These tactics have been adopted by governments and disinformation specialists across the world, but they are most visible in TV debate. While Alinsky sermonized about the need for confrontation in society, his debate tactics are actually designed to circumvent real and honest confrontation of opposing ideas with slippery tricks and diversions. Alinsky’s tactics, and their modern usage, can be summarized as follows:

1) Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.

We see this tactic in many forms. For example, projecting your own movement as mainstream, and your opponent’s as fringe. Convincing your opponent that his fight is a futile one. Your opposition may act differently, or even hesitate to act at all, based on their perception of your power.

2) Never go outside the experience of your people, and whenever possible, go outside of the experience of the enemy.

Don’t get drawn into a debate about a subject you do not know as well as or better than your opposition. If possible, draw them into such a situation instead. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty in your opposition. This is commonly used against unwitting interviewees on cable news shows whose positions are set up to be skewered. The target is blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address. In television and radio, this also serves to waste broadcast time to prevent the target from expressing his own positions.

3) Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.

The objective is to target the opponent’s credibility and reputation by accusations of hypocrisy. If the tactician can catch his opponent in even the smallest misstep, it creates an opening for further attacks.

4) Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

“Ron Paul is a crackpot.” “Dennis Kucinich is short and weird.” “9-11 twoofers wear tinfoil hats.” Ridicule is almost impossible to counter. It’s irrational. It infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage. It also works as a pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

5) A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.

The popularization of the term “Teabaggers” is a classic example, it caught on by itself because people seem to think it’s clever, and enjoy saying it. Keeping your talking points simple and fun keeps your side motivated, and helps your tactics spread autonomously, without instruction or encouragement.

6) A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.

See rule number 6. Don’t become old news. If you keep your tactics fresh, its easier to keep your people active. Not all disinformation agents are paid. The “useful idiots” have to be motivated by other means. Mainstream disinformation often changes gear from one method to the next and then back again.

7) Keep the pressure on with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. Never give the target a chance to rest, regroup, recover or re-strategize. Take advantage of current events and twist their implications to support your position. Never let a good crisis go to waste.

The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

This goes hand in hand with Rule #1. Perception is reality. Allow your opposition to expend all of its energy in expectation of an insurmountable scenario. The dire possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.

9) The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

The objective of this pressure is to force the opposition to react and make the mistakes that are necessary for the ultimate success of the campaign.

10) If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.

As grassroots activism tools, Alinsky tactics have historically been used (for example, by labor movements) to force the opposition to react with violence against activists, which leads to popular sympathy for the activists’ cause. Today, false (or co-opted) grassroots movements use this technique in debate as well as in planned street actions. The idea is to provoke (or stage) ruthless attacks against ones’ self, so as to be perceived as the underdog, or the victim. Today, this technique is commonly used to create the illusion that a certain movement is “counterculture” or “anti-establishment.”

11) The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem. Today, this is often used offensively against legitimate activists, such as the opponents of the Federal Reserve. Complain that your opponent is merely “pointing out the problems.” Demand that they offer a solution.

12) Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. The targets supporters will expose themselves. Go after individual people, not organizations or institutions. People hurt faster than institutions.

The next time you view an MSM debate, watch the pundits carefully, you will likely see many if not all of the strategies above used on some unsuspecting individual attempting to tell the truth.

Internet Disinformation Methods

Because the MSM’s bag of tricks has been so exhausted over such a long period of time, many bitter and enraged consumers of information are now turning to alternative news sources, most of which exist on the collective commons we call the internet. At first, it appears, the government and elitists ignored the web as a kind of novelty, or just another mechanism they could exploit in spreading disinformation. As we all now well know, they dropped the ball, and the internet has become the most powerful tool for truth history has ever seen.

That being said, they are now expending incredible resources in order to catch up to their mistake, utilizing every trick in their arsenal to beat web users back into submission. While the anonymity of the internet allows for a certain immunity against many of Saul Alinsky’s manipulative tactics, it also allows governments to attack those trying to spread the truth covertly. In the world of web news, we call these people “disinfo trolls.” Trolls are now being openly employed by governments in countries like the U.S. and Israel specifically to scour the internet for alternative news sites and disrupt their ability to share information.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Raw_obtains_CENTCOM_email_to_bloggers_1016.html

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090104/FOREIGN/882042198/1002

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/10793-twitterers-paid-to-spread-israeli-propaganda-internet-warfare-team-unveiled.html

Internet trolls, also known as “paid posters” or “paid bloggers,” are increasingly being employed by private corporations as well, often for marketing purposes. In fact, it is a rapidly growing industry.

Trolls use a wide variety of strategies, some of which are unique to the internet, here are just a few:

1) Make outrageous comments designed to distract or frustrate: An Alinsky tactic used to make people emotional, although less effective because of the impersonal nature of the web.

2) Pose as a supporter of the truth, then make comments that discredit the movement: We have seen this even on our own forums — trolls pose as supporters of the Liberty Movement, then post long, incoherent diatribes so as to appear either racist or insane. Here is a live example of this tactic in use on Yahoo! Answers.

The key to this tactic is to make references to common Liberty Movement arguments while at the same time babbling nonsense, so as to make those otherwise valid arguments seem ludicrous by association.

In extreme cases, these “Trojan Horse Trolls” have been known to make posts which incite violence — a technique obviously intended to solidify the false assertions of the notorious MIAC report and other ADL/SPLC publications which purport that constitutionalists should be feared as potential domestic terrorists.

3) Dominate Discussions: Trolls often interject themselves into productive web discussions in order to throw them off course and frustrate the people involved.

4) Prewritten Responses: Many trolls are supplied with a list or database with pre-planned talking points designed as generalized and deceptive responses to honest arguments. 9/11 “debunker” trolls are notorious for this.

5) False Association: This works hand in hand with item #2, by invoking the stereotypes established by the “Trojan Horse Troll.”

For example: calling those against the Federal Reserve “conspiracy theorists” or “lunatics”. Deliberately associating anti-globalist movements with big foot or alien enthusiasts, because of the inherent negative connotations. Using false associations to provoke biases and dissuade people from examining the evidence objectively.

6) False Moderation: Pretending to be the “voice of reason” in an argument with obvious and defined sides in an attempt to move people away from what is clearly true into a “grey area” where the truth becomes “relative.”

7) Straw Man Arguments: A very common technique. The troll will accuse his opposition of subscribing to a certain point of view, even if he does not, and then attacks that point of view. Or, the troll will put words in the mouth of his opposition, and then rebut those specific words. For example: “9/11 truthers say that no planes hit the WTC towers, and that it was all just computer animation. What are they, crazy?”

Sometimes, these strategies are used by average people with serious personality issues. However, if you see someone using these tactics often, or using many of them at the same time, you may be dealing with a paid internet troll.

Government Disinformation Methods

Governments, and the globalists who back them, have immense assets — an almost endless fiat money printing press — and control over most legal and academic institutions. With these advantages, disinformation can be executed on a massive scale. Here are just a handful of the most prominent tactics used by government agencies and private think tanks to guide public opinion, and establish the appearance of consensus:

1) Control The Experts: Most Americans are taught from kindergarten to ignore their instincts for the truth and defer to the “professional class” for all their answers. The problem is that much of the professional class is indoctrinated throughout their college years, many of them molded to support the status quo. Any experts that go against the grain are ostracized by their peers.

2) Control The Data: By controlling the source data of any investigation, be it legal or scientific, the government has the ability to engineer any truth they wish, that is, as long as the people do not care enough to ask for the source data. Two major examples of controlled and hidden source data include; the NIST investigation of the suspicious 9/11 WTC collapses, in which NIST engineers, hired by the government, have kept all source data from their computer models secret, while claiming that the computer models prove the collapses were “natural”. Also, the recent exposure of the CRU Climate Labs and their manipulation of source data in order to fool the public into believing that Global Warming is real, and accepting a world-wide carbon tax. The CRU has refused to release the source data from its experiments for years, and now we know why.

3) Skew The Statistics: This tactic is extremely evident in the Labor Department’s evaluations on unemployment, using such tricks as incorporating ambiguous birth / death ratios into their calculation in order to make it appear as though there are less unemployed people than there really are, or leaving out certain subsections of the population, like those who are unemployed and no longer seeking benefits.

3) Guilt By False Association: Governments faced with an effective opponent will always attempt to demonize that person or group in the eyes of the public. This is often done by associating them with a group or idea that the public already hates. Example: During the last election, they tried to associate Ron Paul supporters with racist groups (and more recently, certain Fox News anchors) in order to deter moderate Democrats from taking an honest look at Congressman Paul’s policies.

4) Manufacture Good News: This falls in with the skewing of statistics, and it also relies heavily on Media cooperation. The economic “Green Shoots” concept is a good example of the combination of government and corporate media interests in order to create an atmosphere of false optimism based on dubious foundations.

5) Controlled Opposition: Men in positions of power have known for centuries the importance of controlled opposition. If a movement rises in opposition to one’s authority, one must usurp that movement’s leadership. If no such movement exists to infiltrate, the establishment will often create a toothless one, in order to fill that social need, and neutralize individuals who might have otherwise taken action themselves.

During the 1960’s and 70’s, the FBI began a secretive program called COINTELPRO. Along with illegal spying on American citizens who were against the Vietnam conflict or in support of the civil rights movement, they also used agents and media sources to pose as supporters of the movement, then purposely created conflict and division, or took control of the direction of the movement altogether. This same tactic has been attempted with the modern Liberty Movement on several levels, but has so far been ineffective in stopping our growth.

The NRA is another good example of controlled opposition, as many gun owners are satisfied that paying their annual NRA dues is tantamount to actively resisting anti-gun legislation; when in fact, the NRA is directly responsible for many of the compromises which result in lost ground on 2nd amendment issues. In this way, gun owners are not only rendered inactive, but actually manipulated into funding the demise of their own cause.

6) False Paradigms: Human beings have a tendency to categorize and label other people and ideas. It is, for better or worse, a fundamental part of how we understand the complexities of the world. This component of human nature, like most any other, can be abused as a powerful tool for social manipulation. By framing a polarized debate according to artificial boundaries, and establishing the two poles of that debate, social engineers can eliminate the perceived possibility of a third alternative. The mainstream media apparatus is the key weapon to this end. The endless creation of dichotomies, and the neat arrangement of ideologies along left/right lines, offers average people a very simple (though hopelessly inaccurate) way of thinking about politics. It forces them to choose a side, usually based solely on emotional or cultural reasons, and often lures them into supporting positions they would otherwise disagree with. It fosters an environment in which beating the other team is more important than ensuring the integrity of your own. Perhaps most importantly, it allows the social engineer to determine what is “fair game” for debate, and what is not.

Alinsky himself wrote: “One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.”

One merely needs to observe a heated debate between a Democrat and a Republican to see how deeply this belief has been ingrained on both sides, and how destructive it is to true intellectual discourse.

Stopping Disinformation

The best way to disarm disinformation agents is to know their methods inside and out. This gives us the ability to point out exactly what they are doing in detail the moment they try to do it. Immediately exposing a disinformation tactic as it is being used is highly destructive to the person utilizing it. It makes them look foolish, dishonest, and weak for even making the attempt. Internet trolls most especially do not know how to handle their methods being deconstructed right in front of their eyes, and usually fold and run from debate when it occurs.

The truth, is precious. It is sad that there are so many in our society that have lost respect for it; people who have traded in their conscience and their soul for temporary financial comfort while sacrificing the stability and balance of the rest of the country in the process. The human psyche breathes on the air of truth, without it, humanity cannot survive. Without it, the species will collapse in on itself, starving from lack of intellectual and emotional sustenance. Disinformation does not only threaten our insight into the workings of our world; it makes us vulnerable to fear, misunderstanding, and doubt, all things that lead to destruction. It can lead good people to commit terrible atrocities against others, or even against themselves. Without a concerted and organized effort to diffuse mass-produced lies, the future will look bleak indeed.

A classic example of disinformation:

News that Mohamed Atta had been on the payroll of the elite international program surfaced in a curious way just a month after the 9/11 attack: a brief seven-line report by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Oct. 18, 2001, under the headline “ATTA WAS TUTOR FOR SCHOLARSHIP HOLDERS.”

The story quoted spokesmen for “Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft,” described as a “German international further education organisation,” as having admitted paying Hamburg cadre principal Atta as a “scholarship holder” and “tutor,” between 1995 and 1997.

But what makes the story curious is that the German paper concealed the  shocking implications of their story, that Mohamed Atta had been on the payroll of a joint U.S.—German government program, through the simple expedient of neglecting to mention that the “Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft” was merely a private entity set up to administer the “exchange” initiative of the two  governments.

The U.S. end of the program is run out of an address at United Nations Plaza in New York by CDS International. The letters stand for Carl Duisberg Society, also the name of its German counterpart in Cologne, the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft. Both are named for Carl Duisberg, a German chemist and industrialist who headed the Bayer Corporation during the 1920’s.?

The list of elite power brokers backing CDS International ranges from the aforementioned Kissinger and Rockefeller to former President Bill Clinton and other Democratic heavyweights like former First Lady Hillary Clinton and Clinton White House adviser Ira Magaziner.”

Sore loser Clinton continues to sully her legacy

May 4, 2017

by John Lee

RT

Richard Nixon may have been the most reviled President of the United States, but at least he could accept defeat. The same cannot be said of Hillary Clinton.

Nixon ran a good campaign in 1960, against John F Kennedy, a candidate who, primarily because of his good looks and young family, became a darling of the media and celebrity class.

The 1960 race was one of the tightest. Kennedy won 34,226,731 votes and Nixon 34,108,157. Kennedy won 303 electoral college votes to Nixon’s 219. There was evidence of voting fraud in Illinois where Kennedy money and connections to Mayor Richard Daley are alleged to have swung that important state.

Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson had orchestrated rampant black arts in his home state of Texas. Yet for all this Nixon kept quiet, conceded gracefully and came back to win again in 1968.

Perhaps it is the fact that she will never get to run again but Hillary Clinton simply cannot accept defeat to Donald Trump. It is one of the most unappealing characteristics that can be found in a politician, the inability to accept defeat. She would be best advised to keep quiet from here on in. But one of the many reasons that she lost the US Presidential election of 2016 is that she will not, cannot listen to advise.

Another reason she lost was that she was a very bad candidate. And she had many other unappealing characteristics that contributed. But now, in blaming everybody and everything else for her defeat she is displaying the primary reason the American people decided she should not be president – she will not accept responsibility for her actions. In short, she does not display leadership.

Mrs. Clinton gave her first major interview since her November defeat at an event for the global charity Women for Women International on Tuesday. When asked by interviewer Christiane Amanpour of CNN whether she accepted responsibility for the defeat she said, unconvincingly, “absolutely.” She then went on to blame the FBI, Russia, sexism and even the date of the election for her defeat.

‘‘I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter of October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off,” she said.

FBI Director Comey announced in October that he would reopen an investigation into her email server. There were disclosures on WikiLeaks about her conduct as Barack Obama’s Secretary of State. The media have linked Russia to those disclosures but not provided any proof. Comey must be doing something right as Trump is equally critical of him.

The sense of entitlement and delusion dripped from Mrs. Clinton. She said if the election had been held on October 27, ‘‘I would be the president.”

She said of sexism; ‘‘I do think it played a role.”

But what shone through is her enduring hatred for President Donald Trump.

The 69-year-old said: ‘‘I’m now back to being an activist citizen and part of the resistance [to Trump].”

Trump, who is now of course in the Big Job, can easily dismiss such nonsense.

During the campaign Hillary allowed her disdain and disregard for Trump to cloud her ability to view him as a formidable foe. She also allowed her arrogance, entitlement and hot favoritism to divert her from focusing from the knowledge gained in 35 years of politics.

Those who work in politics will tell you that the longer you’re in it the more you understand that it is a purely a numbers game. You must discover where your votes are and get as many of those votes as you can.

The people who run elections don’t just send their candidates blindly out into the vastness of the United States. Hillary’s bitterness appears to be fueled by focusing on the wrong figures. Her supporters repeatedly refer to the fact that President Trump gained 62,984,825 votes. Mrs. Clinton won 65,853,516, nearly three million more than Trump.

But like her Trump had professionals running his campaign. As Trump has pointed out, presidential candidates focus on the states where they can win. Two of the most populous states are New York and California. And they usually vote Democratic.

Take New York; it has not voted Republican since Ronald Reagan in the 1984 election (53% – 45%). It has only voted for six Republican presidential candidates since the Great Depression. No Republican candidate had made an effort there since George HW Bush in 1988. There are 5,792,497 registered Democratic voters in New York, and there are 2,731,688 Republicans.

And Hillary is a former US Senator for New York. Even though there were 29 electoral college votes at play, native New Yorker Donald Trump didn’t bother campaigning there. Similarly, he stayed out of California.

Trump scientifically targeted electoral college votes. A number of electoral college’s votes are apportioned to each state relative to their population. New York, with a population of nearly 20 million has 29 electoral colleges. Wyoming, with a population of less than 600,000 has 3.

Trump concentrated on the states where he believed he could win. He took Texas, 38 electoral colleges, and Florida with 29. But the rust belt states were in play. He knew it and she didn’t.

Trump won 304 electoral colleges she won 227. That’s the system and he beat it.

It was reported in the final days of the election that the old warhorse, former President Bill Clinton saw a huge gap in Hillary’s campaign. She was taking the blue collar working Democrats for granted, and Trump was playing on their insecurities.

She and her professional team believed they had Wisconsin and Michigan in the bag. Traditional Democratic voters would take them over the line in these Democratic states. In an extraordinary error, Hillary did not return to campaign in Wisconsin after the Democratic convention in July.

On Wednesday, reacting to Hillary’s criticisms of James Comey, Obama’s former advisor said: “Jim Comey didn’t tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin after the convention.”

He continued: “Jim Comey didn’t say ‘don’t put any resources into Michigan until the final week of the campaign.”

Bill Clinton told Hillary and her team to get on the ground in Michigan and they didn’t.

A new book that chronicles Clinton’s campaign from beginning to end will be published in Europe later this month, “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton‘s Doomed Campaign”. It says “no explanation of defeat can begin with anything other than the core problem of Hillary’s campaign — Hillary herself.”

She is described as a sore loser, who points the finger at everybody else and will not accept mistakes.

This impression was palpable during her campaign – that she felt she knew better than everybody else about most everything.

A fatal blindspot in her vision was her predecessor Obama. Barack Obama had won two elections, rising from relative obscurity. He was a mold breaker, a pioneer, he was the first black President of the United States. The joy he brought to the oppressed by this achievement was not matched by endeavor and achievement.

He could not work with Congress. His Obamacare plan was watered down and hasn’t brought many of lower income families under the health insurance umbrella. He spent eight years trying to get gun control and got nowhere near achieving it. But he did not connect with ordinary Democrat blue collar workers. He was seen as austere and elitist.

Hillary was up against a candidate who had captured the zeitgeist. Trump would stand up to an elitist “do nothing” Washington establishment. He would bring back economic growth and bring jobs.

America stagnated under Obama. GDP growth was 2.1 percent – the fourth-lowest growth rate of any president and below the postwar average of 2.9 percent. The job growth rate during his administration came to only one percent.

There are of course many arguments against these claims and economic underperformance by Obama’s supporters. But Hillary didn’t articulate them. Trump created the impression that she was standing for the status quo, and the failed status quo that Obama had propagated. And she did not dismiss it.

I met Hillary Clinton on a number of occasions. Her husband, Bill’s pivotal role in the Irish peace process, meant he traveled to my home country often, as did she. And as a Democrat, she had a special affinity with Ireland (the Irish American vote used to be firmly Democrat). As a journalist, those meetings were usually fleeting. But ten years ago I was in Washington on St Patrick’s Day I, and a small group bumped into her in the corridor on Capitol Hill.

When she discovered we were Irish, she took us into an anteroom for a long, informal chat. She was warm and extremely likable. She also had a mischievous sense of humor.

But she didn’t get any of this personality across in her run for the Democratic ticket in 2008 (when she lost out to Obama) or the 2016 Presidential bid.

She came across as strident and hectoring. She espoused the status quo, the maintenance of a broken system.

Yet it is the Democratic Party that ultimately allowed her to become a candidate, even after she had lost out to Obama in 2008.

The party appears to have made no attempts at reform. During that visit in 2007 I also met Leader of the House Nancy Pelosi. She’s still there.

Ms Pelosi, 77, is now the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, and nominal leader of the national Democratic Party. The appointment of a 77-year-old from uber Liberal California hardly indicates a revolution in the Democrat party. This does not look like the party has analyzed its failings either.

Hillary Clinton could depart gracefully, paint her legacy as a hugely successful pioneering woman who made it to the US Senate and the high office of Secretary of State. She could rightfully claim that large sections of conservative America just weren’t prepared to accept a woman president yet.

Even Richard Nixon restored his reputation somewhat.

Instead, she is becoming known as a sore loser, and that is just sullying her legacy further.

John Lee is the political editor and columnist at the Mail on Sunday Ireland edition.

 Memory Loss in the Garden of Violence

How Americans Remember (and Forget) Their Wars

May 4, 2017

by John Dower

TomDispatch

Some years ago, a newspaper article credited a European visitor with the wry observation that Americans are charming because they have such short memories. When it comes to the nation’s wars, however, he was not entirely on target. Americans embrace military histories of the heroic “band of [American] brothers” sort, especially involving World War II. They possess a seemingly boundless appetite for retellings of the Civil War, far and away the country’s most devastating conflict where American war deaths are concerned.

Certain traumatic historical moments such as “the Alamo” and “Pearl Harbor” have become code words — almost mnemonic devices — for reinforcing the remembrance of American victimization at the hands of nefarious antagonists. Thomas Jefferson and his peers actually established the baseline for this in the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which enshrines recollection of “the merciless Indian Savages” — a self-righteous demonization that turned out to be boilerplate for a succession of later perceived enemies. “September 11th” has taken its place in this deep-seated invocation of violated innocence, with an intensity bordering on hysteria.

Such “victim consciousness” is not, of course, peculiar to Americans. In Japan after World War II, this phrase — higaisha ishiki in Japanese — became central to leftwing criticism of conservatives who fixated on their country’s war dead and seemed incapable of acknowledging how grievously Imperial Japan had victimized others, millions of Chinese and hundreds of thousands of Koreans foremost among them. When present-day Japanese cabinet members visit Yasukuni Shrine, where the emperor’s deceased soldiers and sailors are venerated, they are stoking victim consciousness and roundly criticized for doing so by the outside world, including the U.S. media.

Worldwide, war memorials and memorial days ensure preservation of such selective remembrance. My home state of Massachusetts also does this to this day by flying the black-and-white “POW-MIA” flag of the Vietnam War at various public places, including Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox — still grieving over those fighting men who were captured or went missing in action and never returned home.

In one form or another, populist nationalisms today are manifestations of acute victim consciousness. Still, the American way of remembering and forgetting its wars is distinctive for several reasons. Geographically, the nation is much more secure than other countries. Alone among major powers, it escaped devastation in World War II, and has been unmatched in wealth and power ever since. Despite panic about Communist threats in the past and Islamist and North Korean threats in the present, the United States has never been seriously imperiled by outside forces. Apart from the Civil War, its war-related fatalities have been tragic but markedly lower than the military and civilian death tolls of other nations, invariably including America’s adversaries.

Asymmetry in the human costs of conflicts involving U.S. forces has been the pattern ever since the decimation of Amerindians and the American conquest of the Philippines between 1899 and 1902. The State Department’s Office of the Historian puts the death toll in the latter war at “over 4,200 American and over 20,000 Filipino combatants,” and proceeds to add that “as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, famine, and disease.” (Among other precipitating causes for those noncombatant deaths, U.S. troops shot most of the water buffalo farmers relied on to produce their crops.) Many scholarly accounts now offer higher estimates for Filipino civilian fatalities.

Much the same morbid asymmetry characterizes war-related deaths in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War of 1991, and the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq following September 11, 2001.

Terror Bombing from World War II to Korea and Vietnam to 9/11

While it is natural for people and nations to focus on their own sacrifice and suffering rather than the death and destruction they themselves inflict, in the case of the United States such cognitive astigmatism is backlighted by the country’s abiding sense of being exceptional, not just in power but also in virtue. In paeans to “American exceptionalism,” it is an article of faith that the highest values of Western and Judeo-Christian civilization guide the nation’s conduct — to which Americans add their country’s purportedly unique embrace of democracy, respect for each and every individual, and stalwart defense of a “rules-based” international order.

Such self-congratulation requires and reinforces selective memory. “Terror,” for instance, has become a word applied to others, never to oneself. And yet during World War II, U.S. and British strategic-bombing planners explicitly regarded their firebombing of enemy cities as terror bombing, and identified destroying the morale of noncombatants in enemy territory as necessary and morally acceptable. Shortly after the Allied devastation of the German city of Dresden in February 1945, Winston Churchill, whose bust circulates in and out of the presidential Oval Office in Washington (it is currently in), referred to the “bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts.”

In the war against Japan, U.S. air forces embraced this practice with an almost gleeful vengeance, pulverizing 64 cities prior to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. When al-Qaeda’s 19 hijackers crash-bombed the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, however, “terror bombing” aimed at destroying morale was detached from this Anglo-American precedent and relegated to “non-state terrorists.” Simultaneously, targeting innocent civilians was declared to be an atrocity utterly contrary to civilized “Western” values, and prima facie evidence of Islam’s inherent savagery.

The sanctification of the site of the destroyed World Trade Center as “Ground Zero” — a term previously associated with nuclear explosions in general and Hiroshima in particular — reinforced this deft legerdemain in the manipulation of memory. Few if any American public figures recognized or cared that this graphic nomenclature was appropriated from Hiroshima, whose city government puts the number of fatalities from the atomic bombing “by the end of December 1945, when the acute effects of radiation poisoning had largely subsided,” at around 140,000. (The estimated death toll for Nagasaki is 60,000 to 70,000.) The context of those two attacks — and all the firebombings of German and Japanese cities before them — obviously differs greatly from the non-state terrorism and suicide bombings inflicted by today’s terrorists. Nonetheless, “Hiroshima” remains the most telling and troubling symbol of terror bombing in modern times — despite the effectiveness with which, for present and future generations, the post-9/11 “Ground Zero” rhetoric altered the landscape of memory and now connotes American victimization.

Short memory also has erased almost all American recollection of the U.S. extension of terror bombing to Korea and Indochina. Shortly after World War II, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey calculated that Anglo-American air forces in the European theater had dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs, of which 1.36 million tons targeted Germany. In the Pacific theater, total tonnage dropped by Allied planes was 656,400, of which 24% (160,800 tons) was dropped on the home islands of Japan. Of the latter, 104,000 tons “were directed at 66 urban areas.” Shocking at the time, in retrospect these Japanese numbers in particular have come to seem modest when compared to the tonnage of explosives U.S. forces unloaded on Korea and later Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

The official history of the air war in Korea (The United States Air Force in Korea 1950-1953) records that U.S.-led United Nations air forces flew more than one million sorties and, all told, delivered a total of 698,000 tons of ordnance against the enemy. In his 1965 memoir Mission with LeMay, General Curtis LeMay, who directed the strategic bombing of both Japan and Korea, offered this observation: “We burned down just about every city in North and South Korea both… We killed off over a million civilian Koreans and drove several million more from their homes, with the inevitable additional tragedies bound to ensue.”

Other sources place the estimated number of civilian Korean War dead as high as three million, or possibly even more. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war who later served as secretary of state, recalled that the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” In the midst of this “limited war,” U.S. officials also took care to make it clear on several occasions that they had not ruled out using nuclear weapons. This even involved simulated nuclear strikes on North Korea by B-29s operating out of Okinawa in a 1951 operation codenamed Hudson Harbor.

In Indochina, as in the Korean War, targeting “everything that moved” was virtually a mantra among U.S. fighting forces, a kind of password that legitimized indiscriminate slaughter. Nick Turse’s extensively researched recent history of the Vietnam War, for instance, takes its title from a military order to “kill anything that moves.” Documents released by the National Archives in 2004 include a transcript of a 1970 telephone conversation in which Henry Kissinger relayed President Richard Nixon’s orders to launch “a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”

In Laos between 1964 and 1973, the CIA helped direct the heaviest air bombardment per capita in history, unleashing over two million tons of ordnance in the course of 580,000 bombing runs — equivalent to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for roughly a full decade. This included around 270 million bomblets from cluster bombs. Roughly 10% of the total Laotian population was killed. Despite the devastating effects of this assault, some 80 million of the cluster bomblets dropped failed to detonate, leaving the ravaged country littered with deadly unexploded ordnance to the present day.

The payload of bombs unloaded on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos between the mid-1960s and 1973 is commonly reckoned to have been between seven and eight million tons — well over 40 times the tonnage dropped on the Japanese home islands in World War II. Estimates of total deaths vary, but are all exceedingly high. In a Washington Post article in 2012, John Tirman noted that “by several scholarly estimates, Vietnamese military and civilian deaths ranged from 1.5 million to 3.8 million, with the U.S.-led campaign in Cambodia resulting in 600,000 to 800,000 deaths, and Laotian war mortality estimated at about 1 million.”

On the American side, the Department of Veterans Affairs places battle deaths in the Korean War at 33,739. As of Memorial Day 2015, the long wall of the deeply moving Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington was inscribed with the names of 58,307 American military personnel killed between 1957 and 1975, the great majority of them from 1965 on. This includes approximately 1,200 men listed as missing (MIA, POW, etc.), the lost fighting men whose flag of remembrance still flies over Fenway Park.

North Korea and the Cracked Mirror of Nuclear War

Today, Americans generally remember Vietnam vaguely, and Cambodia and Laos not at all. (The inaccurate label “Vietnam War” expedited this latter erasure.) The Korean War, too, has been called “the forgotten war,” although a veterans memorial in Washington, D.C., was finally dedicated to it in 1995, 42 years after the armistice that suspended the conflict. By contrast, Koreans have not forgotten. This is especially true in North Korea, where the enormous death and destruction suffered between 1950 and 1953 is kept alive through endless official iterations of remembrance — and this, in turn, is coupled with a relentless propaganda campaign calling attention to Cold War and post-Cold War U.S. nuclear intimidation. This intense exercise in remembering rather than forgetting goes far to explain the current nuclear saber-rattling of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.

With only a slight stretch of the imagination, it is possible to see cracked mirror images in the nuclear behavior and brinksmanship of American presidents and North Korea’s dictatorial dynastic leadership. What this unnerving looking glass reflects is possible madness, or feigned madness, coupled with possible nuclear conflict, accidental or otherwise.

To Americans and much of the rest of the world, Kim Jong-un seems irrational, even seriously deranged. (Just pair his name with “insane” or “crazy” in a Google search.) Yet in rattling his miniscule nuclear quiver, he is really joining the long-established game of “nuclear deterrence,” and practicing what is known among American strategists as the “madman theory.” The latter term is most famously associated with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger during the Vietnam War, but in fact it is more or less imbedded in U.S. nuclear game plans. As rearticulated in “Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence,” a secret policy document drafted by a subcommittee in the U.S. Strategic Command in 1995 (four years after the demise of the Soviet Union), the madman theory posits that the essence of effective nuclear deterrence is to induce “fear” and “terror” in the mind of an adversary, to which end “it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed.”

When Kim Jong-un plays this game, he is simultaneously ridiculed and feared to be truly demented. When practiced by their own leaders and nuclear priesthood, Americans have been conditioned to see rational actors at their cunning best.

Terror, it seems, in the twenty-first century, as in the twentieth, is in the eye of the beholder.

The Triumph of James Comey

He’s the most powerful man in America

May 5, 2017

by Justin Raimondo,

AntiWar

Since FBI Director James Comey has become a kind of arbiter of the political discourse – to say his pronouncements have been decisive would not, I think, be an overstatement – his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee was much anticipated. As Hillary Clinton and her supporters continue to re-litigate the presidential election, blaming him for her defeat, how he would defend his decision to reveal that the FBI was investigating her private email server, and the possible unauthorized release of classified information, was the focus of much interest. And yet the really interesting aspects of his testimony had to do with two questions that, in a free society, would not normally be the domain of law enforcement: 1) What should be the nature of our relations with a foreign country, i.e. Russia? And 2) what is a legitimate journalistic enterprise?

The first question belongs in the realm of the State Department, the White House, and Congress: that is, unless having any sort of non-hostile relations with Russia have now become illegal. Given the current political atmosphere, one might well conclude that this is now the case, and that was certainly the tone of the questioning – and Comey’s answers – at the hearing. Leave it to Lindsey Graham to gin up a veritable orgy of Russia-bashing: after a series of questions about the investigation into alleged Russian “interference” in the election, he asked:

“GRAHAM: So what kind of threat do you believe Russia presents to our democratic process, given what you know about Russia’s behavior of late?

“COMEY: Well, certainly in my view, the greatest threat of any nation on earth, given their intention and their capability.

“GRAHAM: Do you agree that they did not change the actual vote tally, but one day they might?

On this last, Comey seemed to demur, but that such a question could even be asked unaccompanied by a chorus of laughter highlights the utter absurdity of the discourse in Washington. The very idea that any nation, anywhere on earth, represents a dire threat to our democratic process is itself absurd. After all, are Russian armies poised at the Canadian border, ready to take New York? To listen to our solons, assembled in solemn conclave, one would think it was the KGB, and not al-Qaeda, that blew up the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon on 9/11.

This nonsensical Russophobia – like the Red Scare before it – is meant to distract us from the real threat to our democratic process – which comes, not from any foreign enemy, but originates right here at home, with Washington at its epicenter.

This was brought home later in the hearing, when Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska), brought up the question of WikiLeaks. Taking up where Sen. Graham left off, Sasse asked if we might expect the alleged Russian invasion of our politics to intensify, and Comey obliged him by answering in the affirmative – “especially” in 2020. The questioning continued along these same lines:

“SASSE: Do you believe any of WikiLeaks disclosures have endangered American lives and or put at risk American interests?

“COMEY: I believe both have been the result of some of their releases.”

It’s a lie that WikiLeaks releases have led to the death or endangerment of a single American anywhere: if it has, then why didn’t Comey name the victims and the circumstances? As for endangering “American interests,” the question of whether these are advanced by maintaining a worldwide regime of surveillance and repression is not something either Sen. Saase or Comey are prepared to address, and with good reason. The Senator from Nebraska, who seems to represent the interests of a certain fortress in Langley, Virginia, more than he does the people of his own state, was eager to know what we were doing about prosecuting the founder of WikiLeaks:

“SASSE: Can you help me understand why Julian Assange has not been charged with a crime?

“COMEY: Well I don’t want to comment on the particular case, because I don’t want to confirm whether or not there are charges pending. He hasn’t been apprehended because he’s inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.”

The FBI Director, in answer to Sasse’s worry that Assange is not being pursued with sufficient vigor, rushed to reassure him:

“COMEY: I don’t know where you got that impression, but WikiLeaks is a important focus of our attention.

“SASSE: I intentionally left the almost half of my time for you to sort of wax broadly for a minute. There is room for reasonable people to disagree about at what point an allegedly journalistic organization crosses a line to become some sort of a tool of foreign intelligence. There are Americans, well-meaning, thoughtful people who think that WikiLeaks might just be a journalistic outfit. Can you explain why that is not your view?

“COMEY: Yes and again, I want to be careful that I don’t prejudice any future proceeding. It’s an important question, because all of us care deeply about the First Amendment and the ability of a free press, to get information about our work and – and publish it.

“To my mind, it crosses a line when it moves from being about trying to educate a public and instead just becomes about intelligence porn, frankly. Just pushing out information about sources and methods without regard to interest, without regard to the First Amendment values that normally underlie press reporting. And simply becomes a conduit for the Russian intelligence services or some other adversary of the United States just to push out information to damage the United States. And I realize, reasonable people as you said, struggle to draw a line.

“But surely, there’s conduct that so far, to the side of that line that we can all agree there’s nothing that even smells journalist about some of this conduct.”

That our interpretation of the First Amendment is now dependent on the olfactory sensibilities of the FBI Director highlights the fact that the real danger to our republic isn’t in Moscow, but right here in the good old United States of America. If the WikiLeaks revelations – that our government is systematically engaged in spying on us, and is involved in any number of foreign operations that violate our alleged values and even cross the line into illegality – is “intelligence porn,” then so were the Pentagon Papers. According to Comey’s logic, Daniel Ellsberg should’ve been prosecuted and convicted for revealing the truth about the Vietnam war to the American people.

Sasse didn’t bring up the Ellsberg case, however he did try to get Comey to distinguish between what we consider legitimate journalism and, in effect, what the FBI Director considers to be espionage:

“SASSE: So I want to hear this part one more time and I know that the chairman has indulged me, I’m – I’m at and past time. But the American journalist who’s seeking this information differs from Assange and WikiLeaks how?

“COMEY: In that, there’s at least a portion and people can argue that maybe this conduct WikiLeaks has engaged in, in the past that’s closer to regular newsgathering. But in my view, a huge portion of WikiLeaks’s activities has nothing to do with legitimate newsgathering, informing the public, commenting on important public controversies, but is simply about releasing classified information to damage the United States of America. And – and – and people sometimes get cynical about journalists.

“American journalists do not do that. They will almost always call us before they publish classified information and say, is there anything about this that’s going to put lives in danger, that’s going to jeopardize government people, military people or – or innocent civilians anywhere in the world.

“And then work with us to try and accomplish their important First Amendment goals while safeguarding those interests. This activity I’m talking about, WikiLeaks, involves no such considerations whatsoever. It’s what I said to intelligence porn, just push it out in order to damage.”

So let’s parse this. According to Comey, the distinction between WikiLeaks, and, say, the Washington Post – which has been publishing leaked information from its friends in the intelligence agencies in order to smear the President as a tool of the Kremlin – is that the latter “will almost always call us before they publish.” What this means is that Comey and company can leak whatever they want – but anything not approved by them in advance amounts to espionage. The leaking of the fact that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was in contact with the Russian ambassador prior to the election, and the releasing of the contents of a transcript of those calls to the media – that’s just fine and dandy. But Julian Assange publishing a video of a US military helicopter mowing down a van full of journalists, or revealing the fact that the Democratic National Committee actively sabotaged the Bernie Sanders campaign, is a “crime.”

In all fairness, Comey did say that the leakers are the criminals, and the publishers are not to be prosecuted – unless, of course, they’re WikiLeaks. Yet I don’t see that there’s any effort to go after, let alone prosecute, those who leaked the Flynn transcripts – Comey won’t confirm that there’s even an investigation underway – probably because some of them are within his own office.

This episode ought to scare the daylights out of anyone who is genuinely concerned about the survival of democracy in America. Comey’s prominence, his growing visibility in the conduct of our politics, is in itself a symptom of the danger: for now we have the chief law enforcement officer acting as the arbiter of who is and who is not a journalist. That he is now taking center stage in our political drama is indicative of the fact that we are living in a police state.

This is the logical consequence of our all-pervasive all-seeing all-knowing “intelligence-gathering” apparatus, which peers into our computers, our phones, and every aspect of our lives.

If knowledge is power, then Comey and the heads of our various intelligence agencies, are all-powerful. Forget the alleged Russian “meddling” in the last election – Comey had far more of an effect than did Julian Assange, as even Mrs. Clinton implicitly avers.

This is where we are in the year 2017:  the accouterments of democracy are falling away, like the remnants of a chrysalis. What is emerging is a creature that bears no resemblance to anything the Founders intended, although they did warn against its appearance. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, foresaw the incubus that would possess us if we failed to guard against it:

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people…. [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and … degeneracy of manners and of morals…. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

We have been in a state of continual warfare since September 11, 2001, and Madison’s warning against the dangers of militarism is surely more relevant today than ever before in our history. For the apparatus of universal surveillance that has invested people like Comey with such inordinate power was born in and is sustained by this state of perpetual warfare.

The framers of the Constitution, fearful of the specter of militarism, added to that document a Third Amendment, which says that “no Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” And yet, thanks to the machinations of the War Party, we are at war, and will no doubt be in that condition for the foreseeable future. So the Third Amendment is no protection against the Comeys of this world, who have stationed their soldiers in our homes – in our computers, our phones, even in our television sets!

None of this will change until and unless our foreign policy of perpetual war is abandoned: that is, until and unless the Empire is finally overthrown. Only then can our old Republic be restored.

I fight for that day, and I live for it.

SECRECY NEWS

From the FAS Project on Government Secrecy

Volume 2017, Issue No. 33

May 4, 2017

THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE ACT, & MORE FROM CRS

Given its length, complexity and limited availability, it is unlikely that most members of Congress actually read the full text of the American Health Care Act that passed the House of Representatives today.

But the Congressional Research Service prepared a report, updated today, that includes an overview of all of the provisions of the Act. See H.R. 1628: The American Health Care Act (AHCA), May 4, 2017.

Other new and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following.

  • Frequently Asked Questions About Prescription Drug Pricing and Policy, May 2, 2017
  • Revitalizing Coastal Shipping for Domestic Commerce, May 2, 2017
  • Trade Implications of the President’s Buy American Executive Order, CRS Insight, May 2, 2017
  • Presidential Appointee Positions Requiring Senate Confirmation and Committees Handling Nominations, updated May 3, 2017
  • The United States Withdraws from the TPP, CRS Insight, updated May 4, 2017
  • Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF): Program Overview and Issues, updated May 3, 2017
  • The Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Federal Funding and Issues, updated May 3, 2017
  • How to Develop and Write a Grant Proposal, updated May 2, 2017

Germany rules out Turkish death penalty referendum

The German government says it won’t allow Turks living in Germany to vote in a possible referendum on reviving the death penalty in Turkey. President Erdogan is contemplating reviving capital punishment.

May 5, 2017

DW

Government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin on Friday that letting such a referendum go ahead in Germany was “politically inconceivable” because it “so clearly contradicts our basic law and European values.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan floated plans to bring back the death penalty following his narrow victory in last month’s referendum to expand his powers.

Under Turkish law, Turkish nationals living abroad are eligible to vote in referendums and elections in Turkey. But Germany’s Foreign Ministry has pointed out that all sovereign actions by other countries on its territory, such as referendums, first need to be approved by the federal government.

Germany allowed polling stations for Turkish nationals to vote in the April referendum on the presidential executive. No application for a referendum on the death penalty has yet been made by Ankara. If such a request were to be made, Seibert said the government would likely use its legal resources to prohibit a vote.

His comments echoed earlier remarks from the leading Social Democrat candidate in this year’s federal elections, Martin Schulz. He told news magazine “Der Spiegel” that “we cannot allow voting in Germany on an instrument that contradicts our values and our constitution.”

No death penalty in the EU

The possibility of a Turkish death penalty vote in Germany has been criticized by several German politicians in recent days, including Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel who said he “couldn’t imagine” such a scenario.

Turkey abolished capital punishment in 2004 as part of its decades-long bid to join the European Union. The EU does not permit capital punishment, and EU officials have repeatedly warned Ankara that restoring the measure would spell the end of its accession ambitions.

Relations between Ankara and the bloc have deteriorated significantly in recent months. Relations hit rock bottom in the leadup to Turkey’s April referendum when several European countries, including Germany, blocked Turkish ministers from campaigning on their soil. Erdogan compared their bans to “Nazi tactics.”

‘We don’t want you here’ – Muslims fearful as France prepares to vote

Marine Le Pen’s presence in the final round has pushed Islam and national identity to the top of the election agenda

May 5, 2017

by Angelique Chrisafis

The Guardian

Aulnay-sous-Bois-In her apartment in a northern suburb of Paris, Hanane Charrihi looked at a photograph of her mother Fatima. “Her death shows that we need tolerance more than ever,” she said. “Tolerance does exist in France, but sometimes it seems those who are against tolerance shout the loudest and get the most airtime.”

Fatima Charrihi, 59, a Muslim grandmother, was the first of 86 people to be killed in a terrorist attack in Nice last summer when a lorry driver ploughed into crowds watching Bastille Day fireworks. She had left her apartment and gone down to the seafront to have an ice-cream with her grandchildren. Wearing a hijab, she was the first person the driver hit in the gruesome attack claimed by Islamic State. A third of those killed in the Nice attack were Muslims. But Fatima Charrihi’s family, some wearing headscarves, were insulted by passersby who called them “terrorists” even as they crouched next to their mother’s body under a sheet at the site of the attack. “We don’t want people like you here any more,” a man outside a cafe told her family soon after the attack.

Hanane Charrihi, 27, a pharmacist, was so irked to find that, even after her mother’s death, the so-called “problem” of Islam in France was such a focus of political debate that she wrote a book, Ma mère patrie, a plea for living together harmoniously in diversity. The far-right Front National gained a slew of new members in Nice after the attack and now Marine Le Pen’s presence in the final presidential runoff this weekend – after taking a record 7.6 million votes in the first round – has pushed the issue of Islam and national identity to the top of the agenda.

“I’m French, I love my country, and it seemed like people were saying to me: ‘No, you can’t possibly love France,’” Hanane Charrihi said. “All this focus on debating national identity by politicians seems like wasting time that could be focused instead on unemployment, work or housing.”

The runoff between the far-right, anti-immigration Le Pen and the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron has seen heated exchanges over Islam and national identity. In 2015, Le Pen was tried and cleared of inciting religious hatred after comparing Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation. Macron has insisted that Le Pen still represents “the party of hatred”. He told a Paris rally this week: “I won’t accept people being insulted just because they believe in Islam.” After more than 230 people were killed in terrorist attacks in France in just over two years, Le Pen has called Islamic fundamentalism a “mortal danger” for France and accused Macron of having an “indulgent attitude” towards it. He accused her of dividing France and stoking “civil war”.

Le Pen’s policy proposals include banning religious symbols, such as the Muslim headscarf, from all public places. She would outlaw ritual animal slaughter, namely Islamic halal slaughter, although Jewish kosher practices would also be affected.

When Le Pen’s father and her party’s co-founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, reached the final round of the presidential election in 2002, the political class spontaneously united with anti-racism campaigners to block his vote, marching on the streets. This time anti-Le Pen demonstrations have been fewer, smaller and more fragmented. Comparatively few people have lined up behind anti-racism banners, and the Front National is now accepted as a part of the political landscape. The issue of diversity and France’s divisions – between city and countryside, rich and poor, so-called “native” French and immigrants – have haunted the campaign.

In Aubervilliers market – part of Seine-Saint-Denis, the leftwing and ethnically diverse area north-east of Paris, where young people on estates complain of discrimination that has underlined youth unemployment – Ezzedine Fahem, 62, worried there was a growing divide. “In some places Le Pen’s vote is increasing, yet here the very idea of Le Pen sparks fear,” said the former restaurant worker. “To me, it feels like she targets Muslims, religion, foreigners. All this talk of integration. Look around here – everyone from abroad was pushed here into a ghetto. Now even if you’re French and born here, you will always be brought back to your roots. You’re French but you’re always an Arab, you’re still black, you’re still Jewish.”

At the market, Alexandre Aidara is handing out election leaflets for Macron. He is one of the few parliamentary candidates already selected to run for parliament in June for Macron’s “neither left nor right” movement, En Marche! (On the Move). Aidara, 49, an engineer who was born in Senegal and studied in France, including at the elite civil service school, École Nationale d’Administration, has worked at a senior level in top government ministries. He said Macron’s choice of more parliamentary candidates from ethnic minorities was a bid to renew the political class. Although Seine-Saint-Denis is one of the most ethnically diverse areas in France, only one of its 13 MPs is not white. Of France’s 577 members of parliament, four come from ethnic minorities.

Le Pen’s stance on the high-rise banlieues surrounding French cities is that security must come first. Macron’s take is that discrimination is a growing problem and business opportunities hold the key. He has said that he wants “social mobility” and would give a €15,000 bonus over three years to companies who hired people from 200 designated poor neighbourhoods.

“On diversity issues, Emmanuel Macron wants to show there are role models,” Aidara said. “The role models here are rappers and footballers. That’s good – art and culture is great. But you can also succeed through school, like me, through being an engineer. Discrimination represents a big economic loss to the economy and the state.”

Macron has argued that his line on fighting terrorism is to look at the “roots” of why French-born children are growing up to take arms against their own country – a view that has sparked scorn not just from Le Pen but from Socialists. “When people are born in France and attack France, it means integration has failed – you have to look at that, have to work on jobs, education, integration and schools. That’s why we want to cut class sizes in priority zones,” Aidara said.

Macron also tried to take on the unresolved chapter in French history that is the colonial period and war in Algeria. On a visit to Algiers in February, he called France’s colonial past a “crime against humanity”. He later tempered his comments, but insisted: “We must face this common, complex past if we want to move on and get along.” Le Pen this week accused him of slandering France’s “glorious history”.

Sara, 22, took a leaflet for Macron. A first-time voter and technology student who wears a Muslim headscarf, she voted in the first round for the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, “because he was about everyone in France living together and getting on”. She felt anti-Islam feeling was becoming “almost commonplace” in France. “I’m not sure Emmanuel Macron has really understood that,” she added, but she would vote for him to keep Le Pen out. She liked the fact that Macron did not want to ban the Muslim headscarf from universities – an idea proposed by some on the mainstream right and even backed by the former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls.

For years the French principle of secularism, or laïcité, has been caught up in a row over whether it has been twisted for political gain. The French republic is built on a strict separation of church and state, intended to foster equality for all private beliefs. But controversies – such as mayors banning the burkini full-body Muslim swimsuit from French beaches last summer – have seen commentators, and even the courts, warn of the “violation of fundamental freedoms” in singling out Muslims. Macron has said his approach to French secularism would be “tolerant”, sparking accusations from Le Pen that he is “lax”.

“Racism, racism, racism – that’s what I’m afraid of in France,” said a 49-year-old French town hall worker who was born in Tunisia. “I didn’t vote in the first round but on Sunday I’m going to drag everyone I know out of their beds and drag them to vote Macron. I wouldn’t normally vote for Macron, but what choice do we have? This election isn’t over yet. The result is open. I worry Le Pen could win, and if she does, I think I might just leave France until her time in power is over.”

US-led coalition warplanes banned from Syria safe zones – Russian envoy

May 5, 2017

RT

The four safe zones to be established in Syria will be closed for flights by US-led coalition warplanes, said the Russian envoy to the Astana peace talks, where the zones were agreed upon.

“As for [the coalition] actions in the de-escalation zones, starting from now those zones are closed for their flights,” Aleksandr Levrentyev told journalists in the Kazakh capital.

He added that the flight ban was not part of the memorandum establishing the safe zones, but assured the coalition would not fly over them.

“As guarantors we will be tracking all actions in that direction,” he remarked. “Absolutely no flights, especially by the international coalition, are allowed. With or without prior notification. The issue is closed.”

He added that the US-led coalition would continue airstrikes near Raqqa, the Syrian stronghold of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), near some towns near the Euphrates River and close to the city of Deir ez-Zor.

The Russian Foreign Ministry was less definitive on the alleged ban of US warplanes, stating that “these issues are being discussed at the military level.”

On Thursday, a memorandum was signed in Astana establishing four “safe zones” in Syria, where so-called “moderate opposition” fighters are expected to stay safe from airstrikes and keep jihadist groups out. The zones are set in provinces of Idlib, Latakia and Homs, as well as parts of Aleppo.

Russia, Iran and Turkey serve as guarantors of the arrangement, which carries hopes of deescalating violence in the war-torn country.

The move was cheered by the United Nations and welcomed with reservations by Washington.

Amnesty International warns of rising violence in Rio de Janeiro

May 4, 2017

Reuters

Amnesty International warned on Thursday of growing violence across Brazil, particularly killings by police as law enforcement and criminals battle over turf in Rio de Janeiro, the country’s second-biggest city.

In a report to the United Nations, which periodically monitors violence in conflict zones and other troubled areas worldwide, the human rights group highlighted the recent spike in killings by Rio police – 182 in the first two months of the year, or 78 percent more than a year earlier.

“Brazil has not taken enough steps to tackle the shocking levels of human rights violations across the country, including soaring police homicide rates,” Jurema Werneck, Amnesty’s director in Brazil, said in a statement.

The criticism comes as public security forces, grappling with budget cuts after two years of recession in Latin America’s biggest country, also contend with rebounding crime.

In Rio, where officials on Thursday asked the federal government for about $2.5 million per month to shore up the security budget, criminal gangs are battling for lucrative access to drug routes and sales points.

Gangs are also fighting to take back turf police had occupied in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, both of which Rio hosted.

Federal officials on Thursday said they would consider Rio’s request.

Clashes between police and criminals in the city have led to prolonged firefights and multiple deaths — in slums and rich neighborhoods alike. Earlier this week, criminals torched buses and a truck, crippling traffic after a police raid.

Authorities have long recognized abuses among law enforcement but had in recent years successfully cut down on police violence.

“Respect for human rights is enshrined in Brazilian law,” General Carlos Alberto Santos Cruz, national secretary for public security, told reporters on Thursday. “When you train someone in public security the principal of respect for human rights is fundamental.”

Security and human rights experts, however, say Brazil falls far short.

After police apprehended dozens of large-calibre guns following the raid this week, law enforcement hailed the seizure as a great success. But many are troubled that the guns, and the violent backdrop to the seizures, exist to begin with.

“Maybe that sort of seizure is a good thing in a war zone or a country of great instability,” said Paulo Storani, a former police commander who now is a security consultant. “But here it reflects a failure of government and policy.”

(Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier and Edson Ribeiro in Rio de Janeiro; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

 

 

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