New York Times Propagandizes Shamelessly For Obama

And so too does, shamefully, Democracy Now!, if a bit unintentionally.

Take as our starting point this headline from the "liberal" New York Times:

Obama’s 78 Pardons and 153 Commutations Extend Record of Mercy. [1]

Let's take a look at this "mercy."

On December 19, Obama "pardoned" 78 individuals, meaning their convictions were erased, and commuted (shortened) the sentences of 153 prisoners, meaning they won't have to wait as long to get out of prison.

In some cases, it means they won't die in prison. As in this case cited by the Times:

Anthony DeWayne Gillis of Supply, Va., was convicted in 2005 of possessing cocaine, making false statements and possessing a firearm in “furtherance of drug trafficking.” He was sentenced to 145 years in prison. Mr. Obama’s grant of commutation reduces the sentence to 20 years.

Meaning he'll be out in 2025. See? Obama's all heart!

One might reasonably ask, What sort of cruel country imposes such draconian sentences in the first place? But the Times doesn't ask that question. Instead we are meant to be touched by the compassion of the Merciful Obama.

The Times article points out that commutations do nothing to restore rights lost for the rest of their lives to people with felony convictions. Oh, and those pardons all go to people who have already finished serving their sentences. And the Times doesn't tell you how many of Obama's commutations merely lopped a few months of time off prisoners soon to be release anyway. (It was a large percentage in his previous commutation media blitzes.)

So there is much less than meets the eye in the Times celebratory headline.

Of course, by buffing the image of the chief executive of the nation-state, they reinforce the perceived legitimacy and humaneness [!] of the system the Times is an integral part of. That is their motive, not some imaginary "liberal bias."

Every time Obama has deigned to show a bit of "mercy" towards Federal prisoners, he gets a blitz of positive propaganda from the press. He went through most of his presidency being extremely parsimonious in his issuances of clemency and pardons, for which criticism began to build up, belatedly.

The Times puts his "acts of clemency" total to date at 1,324, pardons and commutations combined. Of these, over 1,000 were commutations, "more than 50 times the number of people whose sentences were commuted by President George W. Bush and more than the past 11 presidents combined." Gee, sounds impressive. This is out of a total of over 200,000 convicted Federal prisoners, and tens of thousands more immigrant prisoners not convicted of anything. But he looks good compared to the remorseless cruelty of his predecessors. (On the other hand, Horrible Russia has freed 20,000 prisoners by official pardon in the last few years, including the 3 members of Pussy Riot, whose case was of such interest to the Western media. If only they paid 1/1,000 the amount of attention to U.S. political prisoners.) [2]

During past tranches of Obama Mercy, U.S. Government propaganda network NPR has put on groveling prisoners, in tears of gratitude for The Master's Mercy, so psychologically beaten down are they. Obviously the prisoners sought are those in deep self-abnegation who will show the proper ring-kissing gratitude towards the emperor.

What's unmentioned in all the fawning gratitude is the fact that Obama deliberately kept 6,000 drug war prisoners locked up for longer. That is six times the number whose sentences he has reduced, many reduced by only a few months, and over four times his total "acts of clemency." (Commutations plus pardons, but he's given pardons to people only after they've completed their sentences. That way, no one can criticize him for letting "criminals" off "easy." He cares much more about avoiding criticism than about freeing prisoners.)

Here's how he kept those 6,000 prisoners locked up. Congress, also being "merciful," reduced the "disparity" in sentencing for crack vs. powder cocaine from 100 to 1 to "just" 18 to 1. That means, under the previous law, 1/100 the weight of crack cocaine gave casualties of the drug war the same sentence as an amount of powdered cocaine. In other words, it took 100 times the same amount of powder cocaine to receive the same sentence as for a given amount of crack. That's soo unfair! They should get the same prison time, right? (How about no prison, because the government has no right to outlaw cocaine if people want to use it- and they obviously do.) So Congress "reformed" the law by reducing the "disparity" to a mere 18 to 1 ratio.

With that change in the law, lawyers for victims serving sentences under the prior law filed suit in Federal court to apply the new law retroactively to current cocaine prisoners in Federal prisons- the aforementioned 6,000 prisoners. Which, if they had won, would have shortened the sentences of those prisoners.

In comes Obama. He sicced his then-Attorney General, the millionaire corporate lawyer Eric "Friend of High Finance" Holder, Jr., on them, to fight them all the way to the Supreme Court. Where the government, as virtually always happens when it's the government versus "criminals," prevailed.

Now, if the U.S. government had simply not opposed the suit, the prisoners might have won.
Furthermore, if the government had come in on the prisoners side, and said "We agree, they should be resentenced under the new law," almost certainly the Supreme Court would have said Okay.

If Obama had simply nothing, then someone else would have taken responsibility for freeing those prisoners- Congress and the courts. Instead he exerted himself to keep them in prison, away from their families and friends.

Why Obama thought it was so important to keep these 6,000 mostly black and Hispanic prisoners locked up longer, you'd have to ask him.

But this story is never mentioned in all the puff-pieces about Obama The Merciful. [3]

And oddly, it goes unmentioned by most progressives when they report on Obama's Mercy. I mentioned Democracy Now!  a program that should know better, because they just did it again. It should be told, to put Obama's Mercy in proper perspective, alongside his numerically far greater cruelty, and also to make people aware that Obama did this, as it is only through repetition that people remember.

Let the likes of the NY Times and its establishment ilk burnish Obama's "legacy." Progressives should NOT be doing that. Or have they learned nothing in eight years about Obama?

While we're on the topic, Obama won't be commuting the 35 year sentence of political prisoner Chelsea Manning, who he first tortured for two years in the Marine brig at Quantico. (Manning is in he U.S. Army, so they had no business sticking him in the Marine brig in the first place. And it was the UN Rapporteur on Torture that found the conditions constituted torture.) Then he staged a "trial" at which no official transcript was kept, and army spies peered over the shoulders of journalists who managed to force the Army to let them into the "courtroom."

Nor will he commute the sentences of other political prisoners, innocent men like Leonard Peltier. And he sure won't be pardoning any of them.

And Obama the Merciful won't be apologizing for breaking the arm of Medea Benjamin, or murdering 16-year-old American Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, his cousin, and five other people while eating in a restaurant. Or any of the other family members of putative jihadists the U.S. singles out. (If they really want to defeat jihadism, they need to go after Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani military "intelligence," the ISI- Inter Services Intelligence.)  [4]

Nor will Obama be expressing regret for his cheerleading the last time Israel "mowed the lawn" in Gaza, killing 550 Palestinian children in the process, many more adults. (One Israeli child was killed by Hamas' return fire. That prompted Obama to express sympathy and understanding- for the Israeli "need" to bombard Gaza for the third time in a decade. It's to protect "the children," you see.)

But one could write thousands of pages about Obama's cruelties and repression, which he hides behind a cynical mask of benignness and thoughtful concern. I don't think any more is necessary to make the case. Not that he is atypical for U.S. presidents in this regard. Empires are about imposing domination, so emperors must be ruthless and cruel. It's a requirement for the job.

1] "Obama’s 78 Pardons and 153 Commutations Extend Record of Mercy," New York Times, December 19, 2016.

2] See for example "NY Times Obsessed With Plight Of Dissidents- But Only In Certain Countries," August 8, 2012; "Pussy Riot Get Exact Same Sentence As Tim deChristopher," August 25, 2012; "One Member of Pussy Riot Freed; Tim deChristopher Still In Prison," October 10, 2012.

3] Glenn Ford of Black Agenda Report discussed this on The Real News Network. That's how I learned of it. See "A Critical Look at VICE's Story on Mass Imprisonment with Obama and Holder," October 1, 2015.

It's worth noting that the U.S. has the highest rate of imprisonment as a percentage of the adult population of any country on earth. That includes places like North Korea, China, Iran, and Russia. The U.S. has more people imprisoned than any other nation, including China, even though China has over four times the population.

The number of people locked up in Federal and state prisons and local and county jails is about 2,500,000. That is almost one of every 100 adults.  The U.S. has 25% of the world's total prisoners. It currently has 4.38% of global population, derived from UN population estimates.

For good measure, U.S. police killed over 1,200 people last year, the most ever recorded.

U.S. Census current population estimate.

4] For Medea Benjamin's mauling, arranged by Obama, see "Obama Has Egyptian Military Regime Break American Peace Activist's Arm," March 8, 2014. For the murder of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki et al, see "Obama Ordered the Murder of a 16-Year-Old American," November 19, 2014.

U.S. Media Looking Down the Barrel of the Most Media-Hostile Presidential Regime in History

The U.S. media better prepare itself for a rough ride for the next 4 years- those elements that aren't willing to grovel and become Trump sycophants, that is. (I exclude from consideration fascist agitprop and overtly racist pseudo-media. They are thrilled by Trump's election, which should tell you how ominous Trump's attainment of presidential power is.)

Trump is a thin-skinned narcissist who reacts explosively to any perceived slight. He believes any criticism of himself at all is grossly "unfair," even "nasty." And he has already demonstrated repeatedly that he will have no tolerance for media reportage of him and his regime that displeases him.

During his campaign, Trump frequently directed vitriol at the media from the stage, and pointed out media people in the arena. He would egg the crowd on to menace and intimidate the press people.

Even before getting "elected" by a minority of the citizens voting (and fewer than Clinton received), Trump blacklisted  over a dozen media organizations, barring them from his events, including major media organs, because their coverage failed to be sycophantic towards him.

Post victory, he doesn't allow media to fly on his plane, a break with established practice.

Trump's first reaction to the protests against him when he was deemed president-elect was to tweet that the media was to blame for creating the protests.

Nixon is going to look like a media-lover compared to Trump.

Well, the media created Trump in many ways, from NBC making him a TV star with his awful show, "The Apprentice," based on abuse of people, to the billions of dollars worth of free air time. CBS boss Leslie Moonves giddily bragged, infamously, about how much money CBS was making by its grotesquely over-saturated "coverage" of Trump, saying Trump may be bad for America, but he was great for CBS. [1]

On the other side of the ledger, the media almost totally blacked out Bernard Sanders, to the extent of airing an empty Trump podium instead of a live Sanders speech. The media gave billions of dollars of free TV time to every Trump tweet, while virtually ignoring Sanders. Then,  after Trump won the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) nomination, the media elites panicked and skewed their coverage to favor Clinton and try to undermine Trump.

But it didn't work. With the FBI's help, Trump closed the gap and came close enough to win a majority of Electoral College votes. [2]

The media made its bed. Now it has to lie in it. Unfortunately so does everyone else on earth.


Two of the jackasses who brought us Donald Trump: Media czars Leslie Roy Moonves (CBS) and Jeffrey Adam Zucker (formerly of NBC, now CNN Worldwide).

Jeffrey Adam Zucker

                                                                  

 Zucker yuks it up with his Creation, the Creature from the Mar-a-Lago Lagoon.

 Leslie Roy Moonves
"Hey, I'm making so much money! My shareholders will be pleased! Who cares if America goes to hell in a handbasket?"

 Moonves doesn't want any doubt about who runs CBS so he himself holds all three top positions: Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer of CBS Corporation. "Big Ego? Who, Me?"

The Man Who Knifed the Democrats By Dredging Up Clinton's Emails Again: FBI secret police chief and registered Republican James Brien Comey Jr. (Thank Obama for appointing this Bush regime apparatchik to his post! What is it about Democrats? They long for Republican love. Bill Clinton also had a bad habit of appointing Republicans. Do Republicans ever appoint Democrats to top power posts? I can't think of any.) [See footnote 2.]

1] "Jeff Zucker’s singular role in promoting Donald Trump’s rise," Washington Post, October 2, 2016.

Moonves in February, 2016, at a Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, said, "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." "Donald's place in this election is a good thing." "What can I say, the money is rolling in." "I've never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going."

Audio on youtube.com

Link to articles in establishment media on Moonves comments here.

2]  After the release in October of videotape of Trump bragging about sexually molesting women, it seemed that he was destined to lose. He trailed Hillary Clinton by 14% in national polls, a huge deficit so close to the election November 8. Then on October 28, eleven days before the election, FBI chief James Comey lobbed a bomb into the campaign. He sent a letter to 8 Congressional chairs saying the FBI found more Clinton emails in an unnamed, unrelated investigation. It transpired that in persecuting the hapless, sexually compulsive Anthony Weiner, the FBI found some Clinton emails as they seized devices used by his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a top Hillary Clinton confidant and operative. Irrationally, this caused the polling gap to evaporate immediately. Trump ultimately won enough states to win in the Electoral College, even though he actually lost the "popular" vote (what is called the "vote" in every other country on earth). See my previous essay for a discussion of that, below.

["In the Self-Proclaimed "World's Greatest Democracy," the Candidate With the Most Votes Just Lost."]

For my earlier analysis of the tempest-in-a-teapot email "scandal" redux, see " Much Ado About Emails: FBI Stirs the Pot Again Over Clinton Private Computer Server."

Architect of Israel's Nuclear Arsenal, Who Tried to Sell an A-Bomb to White Racist Apartheid Regime, Hailed As Man Of Peace

Shimon Peres, a lifelong member of that small clique that constitutes the top echelon of the Israeli political power elite, has died at 92, following a stroke. His death comes not long after that of Ariel Sharon, a lifelong killer of Palestinians who didn't long outlive a hated foe whose assassination  he ordered, Yasser Arafat.

The death of Peres has been marked in Western media by a thoroughly dishonest sendoff, hailing Peres as a "Man of Peace." His roles as the father of Israel's nuclear weapons program, a man who pushed for the "Judaification" and absorption of conquered West Bank territory, who offered to sell an atomic weapon to the apartheid South African regime, have been blotted out in the mendacious eulogizing by the English language propaganda systems of the U.S. and UK in particular.

In painting Peres as a tireless seeker of "peace," the misleadingly-titled "Oslo Peace Process" was placed front and center as evidence. Unmentioned was the key fact that exposes that process like a flash of lightning, illuminating its true nature. Namely that during the years of dilatory "negotiations," the Israelis doubled the "settler" population in the West Bank, while supposedly intending to hand it over for a Palestinian state.

A few years ago Israeli propagandists created a music-video featuring Peres asking others to join him for "peace." This was part of a strategy to present Israel as longing for "peace." So obviously if the Israelis found it necessary to continually mete out violence to the Palestinians (and occasionally the Lebanese) and every few years "mow the lawn" in their cynical phrase, in Gaza, meaning destroying the infrastructure (power plants, water and sewage facilities, industries and businesses and hospitals and schools and even such things as a chicken farm, while killing and wounding and maiming a few thousand more Palestinians of all ages),why, their victims must be forcing them to do it, since the Israelis only want peace.

Obviously this is errant nonsense, as Israel has been a mini-imperialist state beginning in 1948. One purpose of propaganda is to obscure the obvious and replace it with illusion. Previous Israeli propaganda themes, such as "A land without people for a people without land," and "they made the desert bloom" (so all those Palestinian farms and orchards never existed, nor did the Palestinians themselves, for as Golda Meir said, "there is no such thing as the Palestinian people") all have been assiduously repeated by Western media. That goes for the "Peres Man of Peace" propaganda trope also. So Western media is behaving true to form.

This isn't being "anti-Israel," certainly not "anti-Semitic," the go-to slur for people who speak inconvenient truths out loud. It is factual accuracy, something Western "news" media and "journalists" are mostly indifferent to.

Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama and other "world leaders" (country bosses) rushed to Israel to deliver encomiums at Peres' funeral. Mahmoud Abbas, the fake puppet stooge "president" of All The Palestinians, running a Bantustan-style substatelet of Israel called the "Palestinian Authority," also showed up at Peres funeral to pay his respects to a lifelong dispossessor and oppressor of Palestinians. (Well, why not? He helps Israel assassinate Palestinian activists, after all. This became evident when the New York Times, in typically smarmy fashion, obliquely pointed to such a case when they buried a short paragraph two-thirds down deep in a lengthy article. The paragraph mentioned a Palestinian prisoner released from a "Palestinian Authority" prison. The very next day an Israeli death squad murdered him at his West Bank home. Wow, that's some great intel! Wonder where they got it from! Fact is, the PA connives with Israeli death squads. Keep in mind that the CIA trained those Palestinian "security forces." The PA is a U.S.-Israeli satrapy created as a subcontractor for the oppression of the Palestinian people. But even Abbas can't continue the 20-year charade of "negotiations" with Israel. That con job string is played out, except in dishonest Western "commentary.")

Peres got to live for over 9 decades. During those decades, several thousand Palestinian children had no such good fortune.

Shimon Peres, dead after only 92 years. Such a shame.

Clinton-Friendly Media Forced Ouster of Paul Manafort from Trump Presidential Campaign In A Very Cynical Way

Hillary Clinton's media allies used a blatant double standard to force Donald Trump to jettison Paul Manafort.

Manafort is one of those types referred to variously as a "lobbyist" or a "political strategist" or a "consultant." Whatever you call them, this class of creatures are parasitic leeches embedded in the corrupt U.S. political system of corporate oligarchic rule, a system manifested domestically in repression and exploitation, and abroad in imperialism, war, and various crimes against humanity, and recognizes no rights anywhere, just excessive privileges for those in the elite in-crowd. They basically function as fixers, shills, and influence-peddlers for clients, whether corporate or governmental, seeking advantages within the U.S. power structure. Sometimes they give political advice to foreign rulers about handling their affairs in their home country. This is what Manafort apparently did for the former president of Ukraine.

Manafort was attacked by much of the U.S. establishment media for selling his services in years past to the U.S.-ousted former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yauokovych, whom he helped elect. The fact that Yanukovych was the legal and democratically-elected president was irrelevant. The crime is he was "Russian-backed." (Not quite. The Russians had to pressure him to opt out of a trade pact with the EU that deliberately excluded Russia. And they didn't intervene to save him from having to flee for his life from the violent fascist rabble that the U.S. egged on to overthrow him, similarly to what they did in Iran in 1953.) [1]

Those of Manafort's ilk typically sell their services to various foreign governments, including despotic and tyrannical ones. No one raises an eyebrow over American shills promoting Saudi Arabia here, one of the most repressive and medieval regimes on earth. And Manafort couldn't gaze into the future to see that the U.S. would decide to overthrow his client and retroactively label that client an official Bad Guy. (We don't know if the U.S. was even then covertly moving against Yanukovych. Maybe someday WikiLeaks can tell us. The U.S. government certainly will never voluntarily tell. That's called "transparency" in the Orwellian language of U.S. political elites.)

But the successful assault on Manafort was more than just a case of singling out someone who is typically treated with discretion and respect by the establishment propaganda system. In fact it's the height of chutzpah. Because this was done on behalf of Hillary Clinton, and it just so happens that another member of Manafort's class of hustler, Lanny Davis, is a moral leper, propagandist for tyrants, P.R. man for the Honduran coup supported by Clinton and Obama, and a close associate of the Clintons, former special counsel to the last president Clinton. So where do the media allies of Clinton and those merely desperate to Stop Trump At All Costs get off with such a blatant double standard?

Davis charged a cool $100,000 a month to defend Ivory Coast dictator Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to leave office at the end of his term and murdered people to cling to power. (Unlike Yanukovych who offered to step down early to try and mollify the fascist mob that was setting cars, buildings, and policemen on fire in the streets. (Go watch the youtube videos- they literally lit policemen ablaze.) He also sold his services to the dictator of Equatorial Guinea. And there was his assiduous shilling for the Honduran coup. For pay, of course .[2]

One useful conclusion we can draw about Trump from his willingness to throw Manafort overboard is this: contrary to the image he tries to project as a fearless tough guy who never backs down, we see that he is indeed susceptible to pressure, and willing to reverse course. More evidence of that are his verbal about-faces and two-steps when he gets a certain amount of heat for his statements. I predict that if he becomes president, the very powerful "national security" state- that is, the military-secret police combine- will be able to twist him like to pretzel to serve their goals.

After all, Trump has no real interest in foreign policy, no principles, and no goals except his own increased self-aggrandizement. So no impediments will be placed in the way of the Pentagon or the massive, multi-tentacled secret police apparatus (euphemistically called "the intelligence community").

But then, there are barely any limits placed on them now. And with all the rich blackmail material the secret police must have on Hillary, there won't be limits under a restoration of the Clinton reign either.

Paul Manafort gets tripped up.

 Lanny Davis. "Money is my God. You got a problem with that?"

1] Not that Manafort has democratic scruples. He also worked for U.S.-backed Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and CIA-supported Angolan terrorist leader Jonas Savimbi. But maybe his worst crime was working for Reagan. For background on Manafort from an establishment media viewpoint, see. "Paul Manafort has guided dictators and strongmen, but can he manage Donald Trump?," Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2016. Notice how precipitately was Manafort's fall, coming soon after this piece.

For Manafort defrauding a Russian businessman out of $19 million, plus more on Trump and links to articles, see Swindler Trump's Presidential Campaign Run By a Swindler- U.S. Media Acts As Accomplices
July 27, 2016.

2] You can watch Davis speciously justifying his propaganda work for Honduran anti-democrats on Democracy Now! For the charge sheet against Davis see" Loathsome Lanny Davis Has More Blood On His Hands," December 28, 2010.

Clinton-Friendly Media Forced Ouster of Paul Manafort from Trump Presidential Campaign In A Very Cynical Way

Hillary Clinton's media allies used a blatant double standard to force Donald Trump to jettison Paul Manafort.

Manafort is one of those types referred to variously as a "lobbyist" or a "political strategist" or a "consultant." Whatever you call them, this class of creatures are parasitic leeches embedded in the corrupt U.S. political system of corporate oligarchic rule, a system manifested domestically in repression and exploitation, and abroad in imperialism, war, and various crimes against humanity, and recognizes no rights anywhere, just excessive privileges for those in the elite in-crowd. They basically function as fixers, shills, and influence-peddlers for clients, whether corporate or governmental, seeking advantages within the U.S. power structure. Sometimes they give political advice to foreign rulers about handling their affairs in their home country. This is what Manafort apparently did for the former president of Ukraine.

Manafort was attacked by much of the U.S. establishment media for selling his services in years past to the U.S.-ousted former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yauokovych, whom he helped elect. The fact that Yanukovych was the legal and democratically-elected president was irrelevant. The crime is he was "Russian-backed." (Not quite. The Russians had to pressure him to opt out of a trade pact with the EU that deliberately excluded Russia. And they didn't intervene to save him from having to flee for his life from the violent fascist rabble that the U.S. egged on to overthrow him, similarly to what they did in Iran in 1953.) [1]

Those of Manafort's ilk typically sell their services to various foreign governments, including despotic and tyrannical ones. No one raises an eyebrow over American shills promoting Saudi Arabia here, one of the most repressive and medieval regimes on earth. And Manafort couldn't gaze into the future to see that the U.S. would decide to overthrow his client and retroactively label that client an official Bad Guy. (We don't know if the U.S. was even then covertly moving against Yanukovych. Maybe someday WikiLeaks can tell us. The U.S. government certainly will never voluntarily tell. That's called "transparency" in the Orwellian language of U.S. political elites.)

But the successful assault on Manafort was more than just a case of singling out someone who is typically treated with discretion and respect by the establishment propaganda system. In fact it's the height of chutzpah. Because this was done on behalf of Hillary Clinton, and it just so happens that another member of Manafort's class of hustler, Lanny Davis, is a moral leper, propagandist for tyrants, P.R. man for the Honduran coup supported by Clinton and Obama, and a close associate of the Clintons, former special counsel to the last president Clinton. So where do the media allies of Clinton and those merely desperate to Stop Trump At All Costs get off with such a blatant double standard?

Davis charged a cool $100,000 a month to defend Ivory Coast dictator Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to leave office at the end of his term and murdered people to cling to power. (Unlike Yanukovych who offered to step down early to try and mollify the fascist mob that was setting cars, buildings, and policemen on fire in the streets. (Go watch the youtube videos- they literally lit policemen ablaze.) He also sold his services to the dictator of Equatorial Guinea. And there was his assiduous shilling for the Honduran coup. For pay, of course .[2]

One useful conclusion we can draw about Trump from his willingness to throw Manafort overboard is this: contrary to the image he tries to project as a fearless tough guy who never backs down, we see that he is indeed susceptible to pressure, and willing to reverse course. More evidence of that are his verbal about-faces and two-steps when he gets a certain amount of heat for his statements. I predict that if he becomes president, the very powerful "national security" state- that is, the military-secret police combine- will be able to twist him like to pretzel to serve their goals.

After all, Trump has no real interest in foreign policy, no principles, and no goals except his own increased self-aggrandizement. So no impediments will be placed in the way of the Pentagon or the massive, multi-tentacled secret police apparatus (euphemistically called "the intelligence community").

But then, there are barely any limits placed on them now. And with all the rich blackmail material the secret police must have on Hillary, there won't be limits under a restoration of the Clinton reign either.

Paul Manafort gets tripped up.

 Lanny Davis. "Money is my God. You got a problem with that?"

1] Not that Manafort has democratic scruples. He also worked for U.S.-backed Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and CIA-supported Angolan terrorist leader Jonas Savimbi. But maybe his worst crime was working for Reagan. For background on Manafort from an establishment media viewpoint, see. "Paul Manafort has guided dictators and strongmen, but can he manage Donald Trump?," Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2016. Notice how precipitately was Manafort's fall, coming soon after this piece.

For Manafort defrauding a Russian businessman out of $19 million, plus more on Trump and links to articles, see Swindler Trump's Presidential Campaign Run By a Swindler- U.S. Media Acts As Accomplices
July 27, 2016.

2] You can watch Davis speciously justifying his propaganda work for Honduran anti-democrats on Democracy Now! For the charge sheet against Davis see" Loathsome Lanny Davis Has More Blood On His Hands," December 28, 2010.

Clinton-Friendly Media Forced Ouster of Paul Manafort from Trump Presidential Campaign In A Very Cynical Way

Hillary Clinton's media allies used a blatant double standard to force Donald Trump to jettison Paul Manafort.

Manafort is one of those types referred to variously as a "lobbyist" or a "political strategist" or a "consultant." Whatever you call them, this class of creatures are parasitic leeches embedded in the corrupt U.S. political system of corporate oligarchic rule, a system manifested domestically in repression and exploitation, and abroad in imperialism, war, and various crimes against humanity, and recognizes no rights anywhere, just excessive privileges for those in the elite in-crowd. They basically function as fixers, shills, and influence-peddlers for clients, whether corporate or governmental, seeking advantages within the U.S. power structure. Sometimes they give political advice to foreign rulers about handling their affairs in their home country. This is what Manafort apparently did for the former president of Ukraine.

Manafort was attacked by much of the U.S. establishment media for selling his services in years past to the U.S.-ousted former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yauokovych, whom he helped elect. The fact that Yanukovych was the legal and democratically-elected president was irrelevant. The crime is he was "Russian-backed." (Not quite. The Russians had to pressure him to opt out of a trade pact with the EU that deliberately excluded Russia. And they didn't intervene to save him from having to flee for his life from the violent fascist rabble that the U.S. egged on to overthrow him, similarly to what they did in Iran in 1953.) [1]

Those of Manafort's ilk typically sell their services to various foreign governments, including despotic and tyrannical ones. No one raises an eyebrow over American shills promoting Saudi Arabia here, one of the most repressive and medieval regimes on earth. And Manafort couldn't gaze into the future to see that the U.S. would decide to overthrow his client and retroactively label that client an official Bad Guy. (We don't know if the U.S. was even then covertly moving against Yanukovych. Maybe someday WikiLeaks can tell us. The U.S. government certainly will never voluntarily tell. That's called "transparency" in the Orwellian language of U.S. political elites.)

But the successful assault on Manafort was more than just a case of singling out someone who is typically treated with discretion and respect by the establishment propaganda system. In fact it's the height of chutzpah. Because this was done on behalf of Hillary Clinton, and it just so happens that another member of Manafort's class of hustler, Lanny Davis, is a moral leper, propagandist for tyrants, P.R. man for the Honduran coup supported by Clinton and Obama, and a close associate of the Clintons, former special counsel to the last president Clinton. So where do the media allies of Clinton and those merely desperate to Stop Trump At All Costs get off with such a blatant double standard?

Davis charged a cool $100,000 a month to defend Ivory Coast dictator Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to leave office at the end of his term and murdered people to cling to power. (Unlike Yanukovych who offered to step down early to try and mollify the fascist mob that was setting cars, buildings, and policemen on fire in the streets. (Go watch the youtube videos- they literally lit policemen ablaze.) He also sold his services to the dictator of Equatorial Guinea. And there was his assiduous shilling for the Honduran coup. For pay, of course .[2]

One useful conclusion we can draw about Trump from his willingness to throw Manafort overboard is this: contrary to the image he tries to project as a fearless tough guy who never backs down, we see that he is indeed susceptible to pressure, and willing to reverse course. More evidence of that are his verbal about-faces and two-steps when he gets a certain amount of heat for his statements. I predict that if he becomes president, the very powerful "national security" state- that is, the military-secret police combine- will be able to twist him like to pretzel to serve their goals.

After all, Trump has no real interest in foreign policy, no principles, and no goals except his own increased self-aggrandizement. So no impediments will be placed in the way of the Pentagon or the massive, multi-tentacled secret police apparatus (euphemistically called "the intelligence community").

But then, there are barely any limits placed on them now. And with all the rich blackmail material the secret police must have on Hillary, there won't be limits under a restoration of the Clinton reign either.

Paul Manafort gets tripped up.

 Lanny Davis. "Money is my God. You got a problem with that?"

1] Not that Manafort has democratic scruples. He also worked for U.S.-backed Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and CIA-supported Angolan terrorist leader Jonas Savimbi. But maybe his worst crime was working for Reagan. For background on Manafort from an establishment media viewpoint, see. "Paul Manafort has guided dictators and strongmen, but can he manage Donald Trump?," Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2016. Notice how precipitately was Manafort's fall, coming soon after this piece.

For Manafort defrauding a Russian businessman out of $19 million, plus more on Trump and links to articles, see Swindler Trump's Presidential Campaign Run By a Swindler- U.S. Media Acts As Accomplices
July 27, 2016.

2] You can watch Davis speciously justifying his propaganda work for Honduran anti-democrats on Democracy Now! For the charge sheet against Davis see" Loathsome Lanny Davis Has More Blood On His Hands," December 28, 2010.

Clinton-Friendly Media Forced Ouster of Paul Manafort from Trump Presidential Campaign In A Very Cynical Way

Hillary Clinton's media allies used a blatant double standard to force Donald Trump to jettison Paul Manafort.

Manafort is one of those types referred to variously as a "lobbyist" or a "political strategist" or a "consultant." Whatever you call them, this class of creatures are parasitic leeches embedded in the corrupt U.S. political system of corporate oligarchic rule, a system manifested domestically in repression and exploitation, and abroad in imperialism, war, and various crimes against humanity, and recognizes no rights anywhere, just excessive privileges for those in the elite in-crowd. They basically function as fixers, shills, and influence-peddlers for clients, whether corporate or governmental, seeking advantages within the U.S. power structure. Sometimes they give political advice to foreign rulers about handling their affairs in their home country. This is what Manafort apparently did for the former president of Ukraine.

Manafort was attacked by much of the U.S. establishment media for selling his services in years past to the U.S.-ousted former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yauokovych, whom he helped elect. The fact that Yanukovych was the legal and democratically-elected president was irrelevant. The crime is he was "Russian-backed." (Not quite. The Russians had to pressure him to opt out of a trade pact with the EU that deliberately excluded Russia. And they didn't intervene to save him from having to flee for his life from the violent fascist rabble that the U.S. egged on to overthrow him, similarly to what they did in Iran in 1953.) [1]

Those of Manafort's ilk typically sell their services to various foreign governments, including despotic and tyrannical ones. No one raises an eyebrow over American shills promoting Saudi Arabia here, one of the most repressive and medieval regimes on earth. And Manafort couldn't gaze into the future to see that the U.S. would decide to overthrow his client and retroactively label that client an official Bad Guy. (We don't know if the U.S. was even then covertly moving against Yanukovych. Maybe someday WikiLeaks can tell us. The U.S. government certainly will never voluntarily tell. That's called "transparency" in the Orwellian language of U.S. political elites.)

But the successful assault on Manafort was more than just a case of singling out someone who is typically treated with discretion and respect by the establishment propaganda system. In fact it's the height of chutzpah. Because this was done on behalf of Hillary Clinton, and it just so happens that another member of Manafort's class of hustler, Lanny Davis, is a moral leper, propagandist for tyrants, P.R. man for the Honduran coup supported by Clinton and Obama, and a close associate of the Clintons, former special counsel to the last president Clinton. So where do the media allies of Clinton and those merely desperate to Stop Trump At All Costs get off with such a blatant double standard?

Davis charged a cool $100,000 a month to defend Ivory Coast dictator Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to leave office at the end of his term and murdered people to cling to power. (Unlike Yanukovych who offered to step down early to try and mollify the fascist mob that was setting cars, buildings, and policemen on fire in the streets. (Go watch the youtube videos- they literally lit policemen ablaze.) He also sold his services to the dictator of Equatorial Guinea. And there was his assiduous shilling for the Honduran coup. For pay, of course .[2]

One useful conclusion we can draw about Trump from his willingness to throw Manafort overboard is this: contrary to the image he tries to project as a fearless tough guy who never backs down, we see that he is indeed susceptible to pressure, and willing to reverse course. More evidence of that are his verbal about-faces and two-steps when he gets a certain amount of heat for his statements. I predict that if he becomes president, the very powerful "national security" state- that is, the military-secret police combine- will be able to twist him like to pretzel to serve their goals.

After all, Trump has no real interest in foreign policy, no principles, and no goals except his own increased self-aggrandizement. So no impediments will be placed in the way of the Pentagon or the massive, multi-tentacled secret police apparatus (euphemistically called "the intelligence community").

But then, there are barely any limits placed on them now. And with all the rich blackmail material the secret police must have on Hillary, there won't be limits under a restoration of the Clinton reign either.

  Paul Manafort gets tripped up.

 Lanny Davis. "Money is my God. You got a problem with that?"

1] Not that Manafort has democratic scruples. He also worked for U.S.-backed Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and CIA-supported Angolan terrorist leader Jonas Savimbi. But maybe his worst crime was working for Reagan. For background on Manafort from an establishment media viewpoint, see. "Paul Manafort has guided dictators and strongmen, but can he manage Donald Trump?," Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2016. Notice how precipitately was Manafort's fall, coming soon after this piece.

For Manafort defrauding a Russian businessman out of $19 million, plus more on Trump and links to articles, see Swindler Trump's Presidential Campaign Run By a Swindler- U.S. Media Acts As Accomplices
July 27, 2016.

2] You can watch Davis speciously justifying his propaganda work for Honduran anti-democrats on Democracy Now! For the charge sheet against Davis see" Loathsome Lanny Davis Has More Blood On His Hands," December 28, 2010.

Media Lays Groundwork for Another Colombian Extermination Campaign by Blacking Out History

The last time the FARC disarmed, thousands of its members were slaughtered. Is that about to happen again?

Sometimes history doesn't repeat as farce, but as yet another tragedy. Of course, one person's tragedy can be another's cause for celebration. (The Nazis and the Jews- and hopefully now most of the rest of humanity- had very different feelings about the Holocaust, for example.)

You wouldn't know it from establishment media "reporting," but the just-announced ceasefire between the Colombian rulers ("government") and the rebel force FARC, under which FARC will disarm and become a political party and presumably participate in elections, is the second time we've been here.

The same agreement was made back in 1984, the so-called La Uribe Agreement, FARC disarmed and came out into the open. The following year, FARC got together with various leftist and communist groups to create a  new political party, the Union Patriótica (Patriotic Union, UP). The UP sought terribly evil political reforms, such as a revised constitution, democratic local elections, political decentralization, and most unforgivably, an end to the hegemony over Colombian politics by the Liberal and Conservative parties. They called for desperately needed health and education spending, favored nationalization of foreign businesses, Colombian banks, and transportation, and public access to the oligarchy's media. They even had the effrontery to pursue land redistribution! (Hundreds of thousands of rural families were rendered landless by people like Alvaro Uribe, father of the fascist death squads and the previous president of Colombia before the current one.)

Needless to say, all this was unacceptable, so the rulers unleashed their death squads, which dutifully murdered not just one, but two UP presidential candidates, numerous UP public office-holders and officials, and as many as 6,000 people all told between 1986 and 1990. In 1989 a single landholder had over 400 UP members murdered. (Notice that rich Colombians all have an individual license to kill.) And in 1990, every single presidential candidate from all the center-left parties were assassinated. Apparently merely stealing an election is too humdrum for the Colombian "elite." (Most of the UP ranks were not from FARC, but from socialist and labor groups.)

Will this time be any different? Given the bloodthirsty history of the Colombian ruling class and its military and auxiliary fascist death squads (euphemistically referred to in Western media as "right-wing paramilitaries," when they're mentioned at all), there is reason for grave concern. This new Colombian ceasefire may well  be a prelude to yet another ruling class extermination campaign against its class enemies.

You would think this very germane antecedent would bear at least a mention, but no. This part of history conflicts with the propaganda narrative of Western media, so it is simply ignored completely, as if it never happened. [1]

Instead, we are now being fed false and grossly misleading propaganda like this from the U.S. Government's NPR, and the British Government's BBC (every half hour around the clock from the BBC): "historic ceasefire," as if it's a first; the ceasefire is "to put an end to five decades of war..." (if you don't count the years 1984-1990- although I guess in a sense most of those years was a war, if a one-sided one, like the "war on drugs," or the Nazi "war against the Jews) "...and turn them [FARC] into a legal political movement;" FARC will become a party and "will try to gain political power in Colombia through democratic means," as if they never tried that before. As if the problem is violent leftists who don't believe in democracy, not a ruling class that doesn't allow the vast majority of people to participate except to rubber-stamp two ruling class parties!

And the same aforementioned propaganda outfits keep telling us that 220,000 or 260,000 people were "killed in the conflict." That neatly sidesteps the fact that the vast majority of those killed were unarmed civilians slaughtered by the government's military and the rulers' death squads. It also avoids mentioning the mass grave found outside at least one army base, of local civilians murdered for bounties. The government had the brilliant idea of paying bonuses for dead "guerrillas." So grab a poor peasant and murder him- easy money!

The BBC put on an American polemicist and unreconstructed imperialist named Steven Pinker, a hustler originally from Canada who now bills himself as a "cognitive scientist" and wrangled a perch for himself in the psychology department of Harvard University, a school that is sort of a Ground Zero for U.S. imperialist ideology. Pinker instructed that the Colombian civil war (bourgeois media never call it a civil war) "is the last remnant of the Cold War," which can only mean that FARC was a cat's paw of the Soviet Union, part of the "International Communist Conspiracy," the alibi U.S. imperialists long used to justify their coups, invasions, and imposition of fascistic military dictatorships and various repressive regimes designed to quash democracy and social progress in its sphere of influence- a sphere which they believe ultimately should rightly include the entire planet, the dream of every imperialist who ever lived.

Ask yourself this: in the quarter century since the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, has U.S. behavior changed one bit? To the contrary, NATO, which was created, it was claimed, to defend against a Soviet invasion of western Europe, has since been expanded right up to Russia's borders, and assigned new missions helping fight the U.S.'s wars in far-flung lands. The U.S. is still aiding and abetting coups against democratically-elected governments, as in Honduras, Egypt, Venezuela, and Brazil. It is committed to a relentless expansion of its power. Through the NSA, it attempts to spy on all communications everywhere. It has put in train a trillion dollar buildup of nuclear weapons.

And what about the period before the Soviet Union came into existence in 1917? Over a century earlier, the U.S. invaded British Canada to try and annex those lands for itself. In 1846 it attacked Mexico, ultimately forcing Mexico to cede over half (55%) of its entire national territory to the U.S. (including Texas), with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In 1998 it started a war with the decrepit Spanish empire to seize Spain's colonies, even the Philippines, on theother side of the globe. (The Filipinos had the crazy notion that they were entitled to self-determination and independence, so the U.S. had to beat that notion out of them with the usual methods of torture and mass killing.) The U.S. invaded various Caribbean and Central American nations numerous times in the first decades of the twentieth century. And so on.

Cold War my eye.

Steven Pinker. Even a clown can spout imperialist propaganda.

Let's briefly review how FARC came into existence in the first place. It's not some inexplicable derangement of innately evil people.

In 1948, the ruling classes inaugurated a decade of mass murder with the assassination of popular politician  Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. Over the next ten years, a period called La Violencia, (The Violence,), over 300,000 people were murdered, overwhelmingly peasants and poor laborers. Then in 1958, the bourgeois elites of the "Liberal" and "Conservative" Parties, in cahoots with the ever-reactionary Catholic Church and big businessmen, set up a two-party dictatorship they christened the National Front. The two parties would take turns ruling, irrespective of actual election results. "Radical" were frozen out of political life. This oligarchic arrangement, a political monopoly of the upper classes enforced by state repression and violence, lasted until 1990.

In 1959, the U.S. sent a crew of its state terrorists ("counterinsurgency experts") down to Colombia to assess the situation and craft a state terror campaign to crush any reaction to the slaughter of the preceding decade.. The U.S. Army "Special Forces" (aka Green Berets) recommended that  "in order to shield the interests of both Colombian and US authorities against 'interventionist' charges any special aid given for internal security was to be sterile and covert in nature," which beneath the jargon is quite sinister. Then in 1962 another "Special Warfare" [i.e. state terrorism] team from Fort Bragg  paid a return visit, led by the Special Warfare Center commander himself, one General William P. Yarborough. He recommended to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (notice the high level this conspiracy is operating on) the formation of a "paramilitary" force to carry out sabotage and terrorism against "communists." This plan was duly implemented. The criminal conspiracy was dubbed Plan Lazo.

Under this plot, the U.S. goaded the Colombian government to attack villages that tried to arm themselves for self-defense. In one such operation, 16,000 Colombian troops, backed by U.S. might, attacked the village of Marquetalia, a community of 1,000 souls, 48 of whom were armed. These armed men managed to escape, and led by Manuel Marulanda Vélez, one of their number, founded FARC, which grew from that beginning.

If Colombia had ever been a democracy, if the rulers of Colombia weren't murderous thugs, if they didn't systematically assassinate popular leaders and slaughter hundreds of thousands of people, would the FARC even exist in the first place? No.

The propaganda systems of "Western" nations like to paint FARC as evil and the source of all violence in Colombia. This is a grotesque distortion of the actual history of Colombia, which makes clear that FARC was formed in response to the hyper-violence of the "upper" classes in Colombia against the "lower" classes. Members of the victim classes in fact were forced to take up arms.

Western propagandists also enjoy portraying FARC as a gang of degenerate kidnappers and drug lords. What's rarely mentioned is that they aren't the only ones using drugs as a source of funds. The corrupt Colombian government has plenty of officials involved in protecting the drug trade. The "paramilitaries" partake of cocaine money. And the CIA has profited from drug trafficking almost from its inception. So the high moral dudgeon of Western media rings a tad hollow to an objective person's ear.

The FARC was basically forced into accepting the current dangerous deal, even though it may well be walking into the same deadly trap as it was lured into in 1984, again, thanks to the U.S. Because of massive U.S. military and "intelligence" aid to the Colombian regime, FARC has been crippled and diminished. Under two Democratic Party presidents, Bill "Golden Tongue" Clinton and Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama, sinister U.S. operatives from the CIA and military, and large amounts of weapons, were sent in to fight on the side of the regime against the rebellious sectors of its populace. Under Obama, FARC leaders were located and then assassinated. FARC was strategically trapped in a downward spiral of the U.S.' design. So now tell me again, all you "progressive" fellow-travelers, why we should vote for the Democrats!

So under Obama, U.S. "policy" in Latin America has consisted of: a coup attempt in Venezuela, then the probable murder of Hugo Chavez by the CIA; a coup in Honduras; imprisoning women and children fleeing U.S.-created violent hellholes in Central America; approval of a coup by corrupt legislators in Brazil; and a vicious "counterinsurgency" campaign in Colombia that has killed thousands. Oh, but he reestablished relations with Cuba, the better to subvert the established order there. (Cuba does need changes, by the way. Say, that "naval base" in Guantanamo Bay, you ever gonna get the hell out of there, U.S.?)

None dare call them imperialists!

The very respectable Alvaro Uribe, Godfather of Death Squads, President of Colombia 2002-2010

1]  I've only ever come across one mention of the 1985-90 extermination campaign in the establishment's media that I can remember. It was buried about two-thirds of the way down in a lengthy New York Times article, consisting of a short paragraph or two, very matter-of-fact, and then the article returned to FARC-demonization, as all NY Times articles dealing with FARC do. So is it not correct to call the NY Times imperialist propaganda? That's not a polemical statement, it's a factual one.

"History of FARC," Wikipedia, August 29, 2016.

Swindler Trump's Presidential Campaign Run By a Swindler- U.S. Media Acts As Accomplices

Donald Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is a known swindler who stole $19 million from a Russian businessman. The businessman has been trying to get his money back for eight years now. He had to hire a private investigator just to try and find out where Manafort was hiding.

This is not some crazy "Internet rumor" or "conspiracy theory" from "a blogger sitting in his parents' basement in his underwear," as establishment propagandists like to sneer when they want to discredit (as distinct from disproving) some inconvenient information. This is from the Washington Post, an organ that sits at the apex of the U.S. bourgeois propaganda system. [1]

According to an article in the Post, Manafort and an accomplice, Richard Gates, swindled the Russian businessman, Oleg Deripaska, by tricking him into "investing" with them. Manafort's mark has been futilely trying to get is money back. In fact, the victim can't even get an explanation of where his money is from the thief Manafort. [2]

Manafort has long been involved with state criminals such as Reagan, Bush the Elder, U.S.-backed Philippine tyrant Ferdinand Marcos, and the recently-ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. You would have thought that this last bit of unsavory business would have occasioned loud denunciations in U.S. media, but naaah. What coverage there is is quizzical and faintly admiring. (Tells you something abut the moral and ethical sewer the U.S. elites inhabit.) Manafort was also a helpmate to Jonas Savimbi's terrorist UNITA, a U.S.- favored Angolan group trying to overthrow the government there until Savimbi finally met his maker. [3]

The curious- and damning- thing is, that despite the prominence and "respectability" of the Washington Post, the rest of the propaganda system has virtually ignored the story. This despite all the hand-wringing about what a disaster a Trump presidency would be. (One must wonder, given how the corporate propaganda system, which likes to call itself "the media," has been doing a bit of hand-wringing over the prospect of a Trump presidency, mainly over his unpredictability, and his failure to get on board the Hate Russia bandwagon. To the contrary, he apparently is quite favorably inclined towards Putin, and is suspected of having prospective business dealings in Russia. The leaking of Democratic National Committee emails to WikiLeaks, proving that Hillary Clinton's handpicked hit-woman, DNC chair and Florida Congresswoman Deborah Wasserman-Schultz, deliberately orchestrated a campaign of sabotage against Senator Bernard Sanders' campaign for the party's presidential nomination, has been blamed, so far without any evidence presented- unless you consider the opinions of unnamed "experts" to be evidence, the few identified ones hedging their identification of Russia as the "culprit,"- this outing of information we are all entitled to, as it affects our lives, by being blamed on Russia, is adduced as more proof that Trump is somehow in Putin's pocket. [4]

It's quite natural that Manafort should wind up at Trump's side. Manafort is a scoundrel with a history of service to corrupt reactionaries, and Trump, even with his idiosyncracies, certainly qualifies as one of those. And both Manafort and Trump are rip-off artists, although from what we currently know, Trump is much more accomplished as one.

There's Trump "University," There's using Polish immigrant construction workers at a fraction of the normal pay, without even providing them hard hats. There's cheating his casino workers out of overtime pay. He didn't pay contractors who built his casinos, causing some of them to go out of business. (Great job creator you are, Trump!) There's fleecing banks by taking out loans and not repaying them.

Trump brags about his numerous bankruptcies. He presents this as a savvy business practice, gaming the system. In other words, he plotted in advance to go heavily into debt and declare bankruptcy,

That means he planned to rip people off by "legally" stiffing them for what they were owed. Contractors, workers, banks, and business "partners."

Trump almost never uses his own money. He started out using his father's money, then went on to using the money of saps who "invest" with him, and of dumb bankers. Conniving, corrupt politicians grant him favorable tax "abatements" (exemptions from what by law he would otherwise pay) and various regulatory preferences.

Trump doesn't even make his own charitable contributions. Others fund his "foundation," and his own "donations" over the years have consisted of letting people use his golf courses gratis for charity events, which he then takes a tax write-off on! He had the chutzpah a few months ago to loudly bray about a million dollar donation to veterans' organizations which he then didn't make, until the Washington Post forced his hand by exposing him. (Naturally he excoriated the Post for this terrible terrible deed they did!)

What I always found most stunning over the decades was how the New York City media relentlessly promoted this obvious egomaniacal hustler. The only exception was the weekly paper the Village Voice, which consistently practiced actual journalism and reported on his scams. [5]

There have long been creeps, immoral con men (Clinton, Obama), and reactionaries feigning a human face (Reagan, Nixon, the Bushes) in U.S. politics, but Trump is new in that he doesn't even wear a mask. The fact that millions of people are drinking his obviously rancid, poisonous Kool-Aid forces one to the conclusion that there are far too many imbeciles in America for comfort.


And America is a nation that threatens the whole world.

Slipping in and out of the shadows: Election manipulator 

and swindler Paul Manafort.

Paul is the PERFECT guy for me! 

1]  I am writing this from my very own home, and I'm not wearing underwear, I'm BUCK NAKED! Take THAT, bourgie propagandists!

The Washington Post has long been in a permanent rivalry with the New York Times to be at the very top of the media pecking order in terms of status and influence. As it is based in the capital city of the U.S. empire, Washington, D.C. (District of Columbia), it is also a sort of hometown paper for the the imperialist nomenklatura and national political elite.

Its editorial stance is consistently quite reactionary, unlike the New York Times, which is "liberal" mostly and reactionary partly. Its reporting is frequently quite ideological. The people who write it would probably be too self-conscious to do so naked, especially if they knew there were hidden cameras observing them.

2]  "Inside Trump adviser Manafort’s world of politics and global financial dealmaking," Washington Post, April 26, 2016.

3]  "Mystery man: Ukraine's U.S. fixer," Politico, March 5, 2014. The article bemusedly describes Manafort's disappearance, apparently to avoid Deripaska's lawyers, process servers, and investigator.

4]  An ideologue/apparatchik by the name of Anne Applebaum pushed this line very hard yesterday on "The Takeaway," a "public" radio show on government network NPR, hosted by John Hockenberry. Applebaum was miffed that people were paying any attention at all to the content of the emails instead of piling on Putin and leaving the Clinton machine out of it. How unfair that Wasserman-Schultz should be targeted. To Applebaum, the only story here is Russian subversion of a U.S. election.

Applebaum is an unreconstructed, career Cold Warrior, as her official bio on the Washington Post website makes clear. The way people like her have dealt with the disappearance of the organizing principle of their lives, the Evil Soviet Union, is by substituting Russia for the SU. Problem solved!

For an example of Hockenberry's journalistic ethics, see "John Hockenberry Illustrates Lying By Omission." To be fair, Hockenberry isn't all bad. He's more of a mixed bag. He "balances" normal, even humane journalism with reactionary crap and power-sycophancy.

5]  There are hundreds of articles on the Village Voice website exposing Donald Trump. And Wayne Barrett, who reported for the Voice for many years, wrote an important book about Trump, as have a few other authors. David Cay Johnston has also been on Trump's tail.

Same People Who Lecture Us That "Change Is Good" Suddenly Don't Like Change With Brexit

I notice an irony that those creating it are sure to be unconscious of. The same ruling elites that patronizingly purr at the masses under their feet that "change is good," to pacify those masses and disarm them psychologically when the majority, who increasingly have to struggle to keep their heads above water economically, are under attack economically, those elites suddenly don't like change at all when it's a change they don't want. If "change is good," why isn't a change in the European Union good? Why isn't political change in Britain good?

"Change is good" is the narcotic propaganda fed to Americans when "free trade" treaties directly assaulted their economic interests. Told they had to compete against dirt cheap third world labor, "change is good" was one of the propaganda lines spewed by establishment media. Whenever the government of the rich launch a new salvo in the unending class warfare against the rest of us, we are instructed to take it lying down because "change is good."

Well okay then! If "change is good," then stop your WHINING about BREXIT, bourgeoisie! Shut up and suck it up!

British People Vote To Leave EU: Elites In Shock: Financial Speculators Freak Out

Looks like the financial and political elites of Britain declared victory a tad too soon. After (over) confidently predicting a vote to reject "Brexit" (British exit) in the referendum to leave the European Union by 54% to 46%, the Leave side won instead, 52-48. Turnout was about 72%, quite high. (The latest wrong prediction was based on exit polling by those mega-parasites, hedge funds, leading to giddy rallies in global stock markets and the British currency, the pound sterling. Speculators placed bets presuming their desired outcome in the referendum. Oops!)

Apparently the sky has fallen on the establishment. On the United Kingdom Government's propaganda arm, the BBC, its "World Service" "presenters," as their on-air personnel are called, sounded like attendees as at a funeral, all doleful tones and sad head shakes. There was even talk of the UK breaking up, due to the fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU.

"An astonishing victory," declared a BBC anchor. "A political earthquake" declared a co-anchor.

"This is a crushing, crushing day for Britain, and a terrible day for Europe," opined a British politician, saying "it's all over" for the EU and trade. Followed by shocked comments from various European pols. The "consensus," as the BBC presented it, was that the referendum result was a disaster.

Almost all the guests brought on were "Remain" supporters, consisting of politicians and media commentators. So the attendees at the funeral did most of the talking. I monitored the broadcast for about two hours. Almost no supporters of "Leave" were put on-air in that time. In other words, no attempt at balance. This "journalism" consisted of an establishment arm, the British Broadcasting Corporation, crying in its beer over what for that establishment is a "loss."

Some illustrative comments from the BBC "presenters" themselves:

"Whether the United Kingdom exists, five years from now is going to be the big question," (his emphasis).

"All this mayhem you're seeing in the market," exclaimed a female BBC-er.

"It's an absolutely extraordinary act of defiance" by the voters against the political and economic establishment, which all exhorted people on the "right" way to vote, and the disaster that would befall the country if they voted "wrong." That one by the BBC's Rob Watson.

Watson also claimed that the "Leave" side lacked a "plan." "A lot of people are going to say, "Krikey, have you got a plan?'"

Actually, they do. Within the two-year time frame where nothing with the EU changes, negotiate new trade arrangements. You know, trade has gone on for thousands of years.It wasn't necessary for countries to all belong to a superstate to trade. Nor do China and the U.S. belong to the EU, yet they do a lot of trade with it. Funny thing, these facts escape the professional Chicken Littles who are squawking that the sky is falling.

Another Chicken Little on BBC fretted, "This is a recipe for chaos."

Dry your tears, fellows. Even the powerful can't always get their way.

One revealing comment by a BBC co-anchor about the referendum underlined for me the undemocratic nature of the United Kingdom.

"Everyone's vote is equally weighted, and that's unusual in Britain."

Well, it is a KINGDOM, a monarchy, of course no longer an absolute one. Notice that for bourgeois types to truly "arrive" in Britain, one must be granted an aristocratic (feudal) title.

There was talk of "disintegration" of the EU by one Jackie Davis, "commentator on European affairs." "A domino effect," "great consternation" among the political bosses. "How do you show you are listening" to your disgruntled masses while making clear "but leaving is not an option," she says.

How indeed. How to herd the ignorant mass to follow behind their "leaders"? Where are Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays now that you need them? (Lippmann was a theorist of manipulating the masses to obey their masters and keep their ignorant noses out of "decision-making." Among propagandist Bernays' crimes were getting women to smoke, and participating in the 1954 CIA coup in Guatemala, that established fascist death squad rule there.)

The BBC gang hauled on a German former EU commissioner, who promoted EU enlargement, and pestered him to say that the EU was going to fall apart, which he declined to do.

Various politicians and opinionators were all aflutter, calling the outcome "a political earthquake, a seismic event" and making similarly overwrought comments.

"A sad day for Europe" was the verdict of a Maltese politician, a member of the European Parliament, or MEP, invoking "our forefathers." (??? Yeah, I know, baffling.)

Hour after hour of worried hand-wringing and moaning.

If they keep this up, they're going to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And a Labour MP (Member of Parliament) (the Labour Party strongly backed staying in the EU, whereas the working classes, that Labour supposedly represents, voted to leave, as expected.) said "we have to listen carefully" (maybe you should have done that before!) because the vote was "a roar of defiance against Westminster elites" (like you!) symptomatic of "anger and fears that are out there." (Hey! She noticed!)  [1]  

As for the speculators who bet on winning the referendum by driving up stock prices and the pound, they immediately went into a tizzy. That global mob of parasitic speculators, aka "the markets," meaning stocks, bonds, currencies, futures, options, all that rot, were caught wrong-footed by the vote outcome. The Japanese futures market at one point tripped a "circuit breaker," meaning trading was halted when a limit to the size of allowable movements was reached.

The British currency, the pound sterling, immediately fell 10%, from a six-month high to a thirty year low. Which is a fine example of the fickleness, and fragility, of the financial markets, which holds the world in their thrall. An obvious, but taboo, thought on that is: the world economy, and the well-being of all of us, shouldn't be captive to the whims of a capricious, arbitrary, and very vulnerable financial superstructure of parasites sitting on top of the real economy. By "real," I mean the actual production of useful goods and services created by work.

It's a bit ironic that one of the leaders of the "Leave" camp, Nigel Farage, got rich as a financial speculator. He's the head of the United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP. A fast and smooth talker, on the day of the referendum he predicted defeat for his side- not helpful while voting was going on! Now he's celebrating.

But let's put this in perspective. Financial markets are chronically subject to wild gyrations. They swing far in one direction, then back the other way when the stampeding herd of speculators reverses direction on a dime, and on a whim. It's classic manic-depressive behavior.

The pound, having risen to a 6-month high around $1.50 U.S. on premature euphoria by the speculator class, fell about 10% in an instant, to around $1.32. That may be a 30 year low, but it is well above the $1.04 it hit in 1986. And guess where it was in 1991? $2.00, practically double in value against the U.S. dollar. Since then it's zoomed up and down between around $1.38 and $2.10. (You can see a chart, here.) As for the Euro, the currency of the Eurozone, there was moaning on the BBC of it going near parity to the dollar, i.e. worth $1.00. To which I say, get some prspective. The Euro was launched n January 1999 at $1.20, and it promptly went into decline, bottoming out finally at 79 U.S. cents. ($0.79.) Then it began ascending, eventually topping out at $1.60. From there it went into a long decline, until seeming to find a floor just above one buck.

All of which is to say, when you let currency speculators determine exchange rates, there is no way to tell what the actual value of a currency is by its market price. [2]

Well, all those bets on stocks and the pound that went the wrong way are now being reversed in a panic. How far they go down, having gone up on a presumptuous false assumption of another bourgeois victory, will partly depend on the degree of "uncertainty." For as those who make excuses for the behavior of the financial markets whenever the speculators are having a tantrum are fond of saying, "Markets hate uncertainty."

But just who is exaggerating the degree of uncertainty here? The elites themselves. Getting themselves all frazzled. Will Scotland leave the UK now, since Scots voted to remain in the EU? Maybe. What if they do? They came close to voting to become independent (as they used to be) a few years back. You'll deal with it.

And by the way, that referendum isn't legally binding on the British government. So there may be some dirty double-cross in the future. (See Guardian, UK, "Is the EU referendum legally binding?," 23 June.)

A letter carrying the signatures of 84 Tory MPs (Members of Parliament of Cameron's own Conservative Party) who supported Brexit, or leaving the EU, stated that Cameron should stay on as PM regardless of the outcome of the referendum. This letter was made public just before the vote. Apparently it wasn't worth the paper it was written on, as Cameron has announced his resignation.

Let me offer a bit of farm wisdom for the elites: next time, don't count your chickens before they hatch.

There's the sky. See? It isn't falling.

1]  The BBC wasn't alone in wallowing in gloom over its dashed hopes. Take the organ of the "respectable" leftish edge of the British establishment, the Guardian newspaper. On the day of the vote it "helpfully" explained that only pathetic people who cling to the past would vote to leave the EU. Then when defeat dawned later the same day, one of its columnists informed that "Brexit earthquake has happened, and the rubble will take years to clear."

Sounds like a great business opportunity for entrepreneurs with bulldozers to rent!

"Last-minute EU referendum polls put remain support ahead," Guardian, 23 June 2016.

The propaganda line was the same on this side of the Atlantic. U.S. government radio propaganda network NPR started the morning with a gloomy take on the referendum outcome. Their Moscow correspondent reported how great it was for Russia, as Britain was the most vociferous voice for economic sanctions against Russia within the EU. (The UK acting as guard dog for U.S. "interests." An example of what Obama meant when he said the UK was more valuable to the U.S. within the EU than outside.) And NPR put on David Rennie, from the reactionary, overtly ideological British rag The Economist, to proclaim a "disaster" for the U.S., and attack the dishonesty of the Leave camp, asserting that they invented facts completely. (There were more than a few invented facts on Rennie's side.) The rest of the commanding peaks of U.S. corporate media see things the same way.

2]  Interesting short article on how George Soros made a billion dollars attacking the British pound back in 1992, at the expense of the public treasury,  "No Mr. Soros, Brexit Will Not be a Black Friday for the British Pound," 22 June 2016.