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This is the FRUIT of BAD GOVERNMENT by
1) predatory,
2) conscience free ('liberated' from guilt feelings by the almighty Freud in order to avoid 'neurosis'),
3) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) Social Darwinist,
4) game theory (cooperation is a guise to fool and destroy the competition) world view,
5) situational ethics (an oxymoron!),
6) if it feels good-DO IT
corporate consent manufacturing propagandists in the service of UNETHICAL SHORT TERM PROFITS!
The SOLUTION lies in GOOD GOVERNMENT; the PROBLEM is that CORPORATIONS ARE the present BAD GOVERNMENT! They support imprisoning people that speak truth to power and giving the people the mushroom treatment for the same reason they ignore global warming and pollution: UNETHICAL SHORT TERM PROFITS!
It's time to eliminate the excuse our fossil fuel loving oligarchy uses for "resources" wars for oil that bring nothing but misery to us and profits for them.
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April 15, 2022
Dr. Cornel West is the most important standard bearer for the Black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual and spiritual movement in our history. Rooted in the experience of American racism, capitalist exploitation, and imperialism, this tradition has provided an ongoing critique of our economic, social, and political institutions and beliefs, as well as calling out the country’s spiritual bankruptcy. In this premiere episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Dr. West joins Chris Hedges to discuss the decay of the American empire, the struggle to show international solidarity in the face of escalating militarism, and what it means to examine this historical moment through a moral and spiritual lens.
Chris Hedges interviews writers, intellectuals, and dissidents, many banished from the mainstream, in his half-hour show The Chris Hedges Report. He gives voice to those, from Cornel West and Noam Chomsky to the leaders of groups such as Extinction Rebellion, who are on the front lines of the struggle against militarism, corporate capitalism, white supremacy, the looming ecocide, as well as the battle to wrest back our democracy from the clutches of the ruling global oligarchy.
Watch The Chris Hedges Report live YouTube premiere on The Real News Network every Friday at 12PM ET.
Listen to episode podcasts and find bonus content at The Chris Hedges Report Substack.
The Chris Hedges Report with Dr. Cornel West
https://youtu.be/3cWfRdXjepE
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164555-532108.png)
Transcript (https://therealnews.com/the-chris-hedges-report-with-dr-cornel-west?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The+Real+News+Network&utm_campaign=1b6ee167c0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_04_18_05_04_Hedges_West&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_020676f7fe-1b6ee167c0-420547053&mc_cid=1b6ee167c0&mc_eid=4756ab34de)
AGelbert COMMENT:
Seeing the despicable war profiteering and the hydrocarbon hellspawn profit over people and planet modus operandi that has thoroughly corrupted our government and judiciary, we can reach only one conclusion:
IT'S THE SOCIAL DARWINISM, STUPID!
Social Darwinists believe that ethics based principles are 'limitations pretending to be virtues'. To them, ethics are 'feel good illusions' that humans invented to pretend our species has empathy. To Social Darwinists, empathy is irrefutable evidence of inexcusable weakness. To them, all who are guided by ethics are deluded fools that should be eliminated from the human 'apex predator' gene pool for the "good" of our species.
The ideology of the Social Darwinist is indistinguishable from the despicable ideology of NAZI Germany, clearly exemplified in their brutally enforced morally bankrupt concentration camp law: “Eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbor.”
Social Darwinism is actually based, not on "survival of the fittest", but on fear of tomorrow, a morally bankrupt excuse for rejecting altruism and empathy and embracing a selfish greed dominated hoarding modus vivendi. "One who fears tomorrow does not offer his bread to others. But one who is willing to divide his food with a stranger has already shown himself capable of fellowship and faith, the two things from which hope is born." -- Primo Levi, author of Survival in Auschwitz
Social Darwinism is the morally bankrupt world view that spawned the profit over people and planet neoliberal ideology. Neoliberal intellectuals like Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman were all Social Darwinists long before they renamed laissez-faire liberalism (that had been thoroughly discredited by the Great Depression) with the catchy title of "Neoliberalism".
The celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey explains that neoliberal ideology serves the following principle:
"There shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective: Those possessed of money shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion, not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative capacities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable."
David Harvey, “The Party of Wall Street Meets its Nemesis,” http://www.zcommunications.org/the/party/of/wall/street/meets/its/nemesis. Also, by David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Agelbert OBSERVATION: If the morally bankrupt, socially destructive ideology which backs no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely, while it simultaneously deems the rest of humanity disposable, is not SOCIAL DARWINISM, I don't know what is. 😠
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422194649-878527.png)
(https://planthepromisedland.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/wages-share5-21a.png)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422183939.jpeg)
Why lobby politicians when you can challenge their masters?
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(https://sojo.net/sites/default/files/styles/large_rectangle_crop/public/blog/numb_gun_violence.png)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422141413-627726.png)
OUR NUMBNESS TO GUN VIOLENCE IS A SPIRITUAL FAILURE
BY ADAM RUSSELL TAYLOR 🕊️
JUN 2, 2022
SNIPPET:
We must debunk the spiritual lie that the best way to restrain evil is for more people to be armed to kill. Instead, we should Jesus’ presumption for nonviolence: “those who live by the sword, die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090422150144.png)
Full article: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205132-6472099.gif)
https://sojo.net/articles/our-numbness-gun-violence-spiritual-failure
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Jun 9, 2022
Alex Lawson (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422180554-644315.gif), Social Security Works <info@socialsecurityworks.org>
This morning, my colleague Nancy Altman and I had the chance to testify before the Senate Budget Committee in support of expanding Social Security. I worked hard on my testimony, but unfortunately, I was cut off before I got the chance to finish it. I wanted to share the full thing with you, below.
What I said cut right through the obfuscation that Senators 😈 Lindsey Graham, (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) Rick Scott, and 👿 Mitt Romney use when talking about Social Security. From the questions they asked, it’s clear that I got under their skin.
Thank you, Chairman Sanders, for holding the first ever Senate Budget Committee hearing on expanding Social Security.
In 1935, Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. And for the next 87 years, Social Security has never missed a single payment.
Everybody loves Social Security. Everybody. I have been all over this country talking about Social Security and I can tell you it doesn’t matter if the crowd is filled with camo NRA or the parking lot is filled with electric vehicles. Everyone loves Social Security.
Well, not everybody, there has always been a tiny splinter group, a vanishingly small number of people who hate it with every fiber of their being. These are Wall Street men.
They see the trillions of dollars the system has put in the pockets of the American people and say, “hey! I want that money in my pocket instead.”
And as there are money men who hate Social Security, there will be politicians willing to say how high? At their commands to jump.
The first, was named Alf Landon in 1936 he ran against FDR on an explicitly anti-Social Security platform. He called it a “hoax” and a “fraud,” filled with worthless IOUs that would never get to the people.
And yet 87 years later Social Security is still here making payments every month like clockwork to the 70 million people today who have earned it.
While Alf Landon is forgotten to all except as the guy who lost 48 states when he ran against Social Security.
For the next few decades the majority of Republicans understood Social Security as a birthright and cornerstone of economic security for all Americans, not a partisan football.
My favorite is President Eisenhower in a letter to his brother saying this:
“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security …you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things….. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
But unfortunately that greedy splinter faction never stopped plotting. And that faction today has taken over the entire Republican party.
Ronald Reagan was possibly the last Republican president who was not totally under their sway. And he stated with perfect clarity, “Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit, Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax levied on employer and employee, if you reduce the outgo of Social Security that money would not go into the general fund to reduce the deficit, it would go into the Social Security trust fund, so Social Security has nothing to do with balancing the budget or lowering or erasing the deficit.”
But the splinter group has patience and money, lots of money, and politics loves money. So after the 1983 reforms they began waging a new type of war against Social Security. The main tactic being lying to the faces of the American people about what they are doing.
So now you will never hear from Republicans that they want to destroy Social Security, you will never hear that they want to cut benefits. In fact they always start their assaults on Social Security with protestations of love. “I love Social Security, I am just worried it isn’t going to be there.” The goal is to undermine confidence. To rob people of the security of knowing that Social Security is going to be there for them.
They cloak their attacks under new monikers. George W. Bush called for just handing our Social Security to Wall Street so they could gamble it away, he called it “privatization,” but again it is just destruction. Imagine if George W Bush had given our Social Security to Wall Street in 2006 just 2 years before Wall Street collapsed the world economy, and 401ks became 101ks. But this wasn’t a George W. Bush production, the entire Republican party was complicit.
And Senator Ron Johnson said as recently as 2015 that it was a “shame” the Bush plan to destroy Social Security didn’t succeed.
Senator Lindsey Graham, who supported the privatization effort, has proposed a bill cutting Social Security benefits by 21%. He hides that policy by saying he is “raising the retirement” age.
And he is not an outlier in his caucus, the Republican Party platform from 2016 says with coded language that the plan is to cut benefits and hand over Social Security to Wall Street, “As Republicans, we oppose tax increases and believe in the power of markets to create wealth.”
Senator Romney recently tried to get an up or down voice vote in the dead of night on his so-called TRUST Act, which would create an undemocratic, fast-tracked, closed-door process to cut Social Security. They know it is so toxic to talk about what they want that they tried to legally create a smoky back room where they can figure out the best way to rob people of their earned benefits.
Which brings us to the current Republican agenda as set out by Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee Senator Rick Scott. I will have to give this plan faint praise, because at least it has a hint of honesty about it. Senator Scott’s plan would “sunset” Social Security in 5 years. Rick Scott is the modern day Alf Landon, he hates Social Security and wants to eliminate it. But even he isn’t brave enough to say that and calls it “sunsetting.”
In fact, the Republican who was most honest about Republican plans on Social Security was former president Donald Trump, who as a candidate said from the debate stage, “Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security…And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years.”
He said that over and over again, breaking the Republican pact to not tell the truth to the American people about their plans for Social Security. And he won. Now of course once in office the splinter faction got a hold on him as well and he spent his single term in office attacking Social Security from all angles.
There is only one number that I think should rule the discourse in DC about Social Security, $18,457. That is the average Social Security benefit. I am proposing that we make millionaires and billionaires pay the same rate on all of their income just like the rest of us and then we can expand Social Security’s modest benefits.
If a politician wants to take any of that meager benefit away, I welcome that fight, but be honest about what you are proposing. And be prepared to lose.
Watch the full hearing here, then make a donation to save Social Security from these modern day Alf Landons.
https://youtu.be/5bL_VwQeunQ
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The Class Struggle
Tuesday, July 5, 2022 by DAVE LINDORFF ✨
What Would a Real Opposition Party of the People Do? (https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2022/07/what-would-real-opposition-party-of.html)
AGelbert COMMENT: It is painfully obvious to those with critical thinking skills that a Real Opposition Party, not only does not exist in the US of Oligarchs, but has methodically, with malice aforethought, been prevented by TPTB from organizing into existence. This is the present corrupt Oligarchy governing status quo.
In my 75 years of existence, I seriously doubt this Socially Destructive, Social Darwinism based abusive status quo has changed in any way. The Perception Management Pig lipstick may have been better (SEE: "The Audacity of Hopium", etc. Ad nauseam) from time to time, but the Oligarchy's gate keepers were firmly entrenched a couple of years before I was born.
I think the Oligarchs solidified their power over we-the-people on that fateful night Wallace was robbed of the Candidacy for the VP position. The ruthless Oligarchic greedballs won on July 21, 1944, the last day of the Democratic National Convention, when the LACKEY for the American Oligarchs, Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, was nominated for vice president. 🥺
Despite our (disguised dictatorship with "democracy" Pig Lipstick) corrupt status quo, up until now, my hope has been that Catastrophic Climate Change would spur TPTB to act responsibly out of survival instinct, if nothing else. I hoped they would, because of ACTUAL enlightened self interest (not the greed based Capitalist baloney propaganda they push), take aggressive legal and financial action to, not only stop, but reverse, Catastrophic Climate Change.
But, as the recent Orwellian Decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court evidences (i.e. Children with Hansen Climate Lawsuit will not be heard because, uh, "they don't have Standing" AND The US Environmental Protection Agency "Cannot Legally Protect Americans from Environmental Damage"), the Oligarchs are too committed to their morally bankrupt ideology/Social Darwinist religion (see graphic below) to act with common sense.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422153848-10191017.jpeg)
Yesterday, I tried to reason with a legal sophistry spouting poster attempting to defend the latest abysmally stupid Supreme Court Decision against the EPA. That 🐍 sophist, besides rambling on in long winded this and that about said Decision, finished with a ridiculous claim that the "CORE" issue was about properly applying the regulatory framework (i.e. "Legal" boundaries of EPA enforement actions). Of course I called BS on that sophistry laden baloney. Unfortunately, it appears that my graphics pointing to the REAL CORE ISSUE were like WATER OFF A 😈 Roberts Supreme Court, 🦍 Social Darwinist, 🦖 Hydrocarbon Hellspawn loving DUCK. 🤦♂️
Today (see link after this paragraph), I have more evidence to back my firm view that the Supreme Court is shooting themselves, and we-the-people, in the FACE (not just the foot) by deliberatly ignoring the CORE EVIRONMENTAL ISSUE of human society at this time (i.e. Catastrophic Climate Change). No, I don't expect the reality challenged water carriers for the 🦖 polluters and the 😈 Supremely corrupt Court to get it, but I am certain many people of conscience do, and will pass this on for the good of all humanity.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240622175211.png)
July 4, 2022
Chinese Vessel Snapped In Two By Typhoon Chaba, A Dozen ☠️ Bodies Retrieved (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/catastrophic-climate-change/128681-global-climate-chaos-976065039/msg406/#msg406)
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E&E NEWS
Climate-focused bill 😈🦖 collapses as nation is 😓 gripped by impacts
By Benjamin Storrow | 07/18/2022 07:12 AM EDT
(https://static.politico.com/dims4/default/55a1666/2147483647/resize/1110/quality/100/?url=https://static.politico.com/df/81/669481fc4e53882b1d0831c10be7/cw-0718-storrow-climate-impacts-1160-01.jpg)
Vehicles pass by a golf course and homes across the freeway from undeveloped desert last week in Palm Desert, Calif. The state is now in a third consecutive year of drought amid a climate change-fueled megadrought in the southwestern United States. Mario Tama/Getty Images
Water levels have fallen so low on the Colorado River that they are threatening a dam relied upon by millions of Americans. In Texas, it was so hot last week the state’s grid operator had to twice ask people to conserve electricity. And in western Kansas, it is so dry that barely any wheat sprouted this year, further straining global agricultural markets upended by the war in Ukraine.
Such events are a sign of how climate change is altering life in the United States. Yet they have yet to provoke a serious response in Washington, where 😈 Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia told his Democratic counterparts last week he could not support climate provisions in a wider budget bill (E&E Daily, July 15). In an evenly divided Senate, the pronouncement likely kills the prospects for federal climate legislation.
The result is a collision of political and atmospheric reality.
The atmospheric reality is this: The world already has warmed by about 1 degree Celsius from pre-industrial levels, juicing many of the extreme weather events observed today. As long as people continue to put more carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere than machines and the Earth can absorb, the planet will get hotter. And a hotter planet is a recipe for even more frequent and stronger heat waves, droughts and hurricanes, among other extreme weather events.
But the political reality is that the federal government of the United States, which sets policies for the second largest emitter in the world today, is not taking steps that would lead to a significant reductions in greenhouse gases this decade. That leaves it to states, cities and markets — not to mention other countries — to try and make up for the lack of action in Washington.
Few analysts believe they can deliver the needed reductions.
“There isn’t time for the 🦕🦖🐍 largest carbon emitters in the world to 😈 (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-200419205214.png&hash=4c5b9ca97c84607da003becdf6282716bcdf1800) thumb their nose at emission cuts,” said Rob Jackson, an earth systems scientist at Stanford University.
Jackson is a leader of the Global Carbon Project, a group of international climate researchers who track global emissions. In 2021, they estimated the world had 11 years at current emissions rates before the planet reached 1.5 C of warming, the threshold after which the dangers of a warming world begin to rapidly accelerate. The planet has 32 years before it reaches 2 C of warming, the initial target of the Paris climate accord.
In recent years, Democrats have talked up efforts to curb emissions. And so when the party took control of the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House in 2020, expectations for a federal climate bill soared. Yet the combination of narrow legislative majorities and a slew of historic crises have relegated climate on President Joe Biden and congressional Democrat’s to-do list.
“The political reality is that climate isn’t a top priority for Democrats,” Jackson said. “I think it means we will zoom past 1.5 C in a couple years and hurdle toward 2 C before we know it.”
The situation is reminiscent of 2009, when then-President Barack Obama and Democratic lawmakers passed a federal stimulus bill, health care legislation and financial reforms only to falter on climate, Jackson said. The problem, he said, is that the world’s emissions budget is nearly exhausted and Republicans have shown no serious sign of engaging in climate policy.
“We don’t have the luxury of waiting another 10 years,” Jackson said.
As Washington dithers, Americans are beginning to grapple with the consequences of a warming planet. In the Southwest, federal regulators recently warned states that they needed to drastically cut back water consumption to protect the dams at Lake Mead and Lake Powell in Nevada and Arizona, respectively. The two impoundments are critical for managing the flow of water along the Colorado River, making them a key source of water for some 40 million Americans in the desert Southwest. And as large hydroelectric facilities, they are also keystone’s of the West’s electric grid.
At least, they have been.
Water levels were just 32 feet above the elevation needed to generate electricity at the Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell earlier this year, prompting the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to take unprecedented efforts to bolster the reservoir’s levels (Greenwire, May 3). In an average year, Glen Canyon Dam generates about 5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, according to Reclamation, enough to power about 466,000 homes. But as water levels have dropped, so too has the dam’s output. Initial Energy Department data shows it generated a little more than 3 billion kWh of power last year.
In the middle of the country, Texas is experiencing its hottest summer since 2011 (Climatewire, July 12). Temperatures in Austin reached 105 degrees Fahrenheit on five consecutive days, according to the National Weather Service, the third-longest streak on record. The searing heat sent power demand soaring as Texans sought the relief of their air conditioning. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s primary grid operator, twice asked consumers to cut back on power consumption to avoid rolling black outs.
Further to the north, parts of western Kansas have gone more than 300 days without recording an inch of rain. Wheat cultivation there is suffering as a result, an unwelcome development when the world is scrambling to find grain following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Climatewire, July 8 ).
Climate change alone is not solely responsible for events like low water levels at Lake Powell or the struggles of Texas’ grid. In both those cases, soaring population growth is taxing water and electricity supplies. A changing electricity grid, which is seeing old coal and gas plants replaced by renewables, is also a factor.
But a warming planet has made those challenges harder.
“We’ve been through a degree of warming. In a sense, we at least have a sense for the magnitude of the impacts. Two degrees of warming would be twice as intense,” said John Nielsen-Gammon, a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University and the Texas state climatologist. “But it gets us farther outside of historical conditions, which means the extreme events get more and more likely to be worse than anything previously experienced.”
Scientists were once hesitant to ascribe individual weather events like the heat wave that baked Texas last week to global warming. Yet that thinking has begun to change in recent years amid a growing body of irrefutable evidence the planet is getting warmer.
Events such as the heat dome that enveloped the Pacific Northwest last year are nearly impossible in a cooler world, scientists said. So are storms like Hurricane Harvey, which dropped up to 60 inches of rain on parts of Texas, one of the most significant rainfall events since record-keeping began in earnest in the 1880s.
Finding consensus over policies that can cut emissions is difficult enough, as shown by Congress’s inability to pass significant federal climate legislation. But the challenge is compounded by atmospheric reality. Methane emitted today will stay in the atmosphere for several decades. Carbon dioxide released in the air today can stay there for centuries, according to NASA.
“If we wake up in 5 to 10 years and say, ‘This is unbearable to our economy, to our communities, to a livable future; we must act,’ it will be too late to cut and stem the losses that will be going on,” said Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Brown University. “This is a challenge where the decisions we make this year, the next year and the next year will determine what type of climate we will have at least until mid century and most likely beyond.”
Right now, Washington is making the decision to not to act in a way that would seriously limit emissions this decade. Congress passed an infrastructure law last year that shovels money into research for technologies such as advanced nuclear, hydrogen and carbon capture and sequestration. Yet most experts expect it would take at least a decade before those technologies can begin to be deployed at scale (Climatewire, Aug. 13, 2021).
In an interview with a West Virginia radio station on Friday, 🦖😈 Manchin held open the door to working on a climate bill after Congress’ summer recess. The West Virginia senator said he wanted to see July’s inflation figures before proceeding with a climate bill (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-191017140758.jpeg&hash=8c0a35a928dcda3c1a8714ab03f4924a1a775851). But many Democrats signaled they had little hope of securing Manchin’s vote, which is needed in a 50-50 senate, after seeing him back out of two potential climate packages (Greenwire, July 15).
The Biden administration, meanwhile, is hamstrung by a recent Supreme Court ruling that limits the options available to EPA for regulating emissions from power plants. While the agency has some significant tools remaining for regulating CO2, the high court’s ruling suggests the justices would look skeptically at future agency actions that do not have explicit congressional approval.
For all those difficulties, emission reductions are likely to continue. Continued renewable deployment and increasing electric vehicle adoption means emissions are likely to fall 24 to 32 percent of 2005 levels by the end of the decade without significant changes in policy, the Rhodium Group said in an analysis last week. U.S. emissions were 17 percent below 2005 levels in 2021, Rhodium reported.
The problem is that those reductions fall far short of the 50-52 percent reduction targeted by Biden — and leave the United States well adrift of achieving net zero emissions by midcentury.
The impact of American climate inaction on global emissions ultimately will depend on how far the United States falls from meeting its targets, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University.
“The direct impact on global emissions might be modest, but the indirect impact could be huge,” he wrote in an email. “If the U.S., the world’s largest historical emitter, is unable to meet its commitments to the rest of the world, that provides an excuse for countries like China and India, who are likely to dominate further emissions, to ease off in their own efforts.”
The risks of a warming planet grow as temperatures rise. At 1.5 C, there will be more glacier melt and sea-level rise, causing additional “death and destruction,” Mann said. But the impact becomes even more (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-070814193155.png&hash=144ce9330e49ee84060db8753a8db69c39a14913) damaging and pervasive after temperatures 🌡️ breach, he noted.
“It is a world,” Mann said, “that we want to avoid.”
https://www.eenews.net/articles/climate-focused-bill-collapses-as-nation-is-gripped-by-impacts/
AGelbert NOTE: Due to the polluter bought and paid for thoroughly corrupted state of the US Government AND the Judiciary, there is NO WAY that a 2 C (PLUS 😱) world can now be avoided. May God have mercy on us.
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/4/3-250222141516.jpeg)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-210622210759-14331395.png)
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SOCIAL DARWINISTS displaying their (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) CORE BELIEFS:
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THE PRESENT RESULT OF THEIR RELENTLESS CORRUPTION OF THE US GOVERNMENT:
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-090221180527.png)
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164616-5368.jpeg) A History of 😖 21st Century USA in 😉 Entertaining Graphics
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-060622132630.png)
August 27, 2000 America must 😇 not act as “an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments.”— VP candidate 🐘🦕 Cheney (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-030815183114.gif&hash=2bf1553e87e8605311feb874231953d5fb88ee9c)
AGelbert NOTE: SEE ORWELL, SEE: PNAC
9/11 is not the reason the Bush/PNAC agenda (which included a Fascist Coup in the US that gave us the FASCISTS 'R' US "Patriot" Act, along with all the MIC SWAG for Endless Wars) took 🦍 shape; it is the (😈 amazingly convenient) excuse for its (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) implementation.
AGelbert NOTE: SEE ORWELL, SEE: PNAC SEE: INSIDE JOB
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422162859-103630.png)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422162849-1033113.jpeg)
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Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. -- Proverbs 1:31-32 KJV
Wednesday, August 3, 2022 by Paul Street
On Schedule (for) F(ascism) (https://media.tenor.com/images/926c7a7fd37a2d72b10bc8e1252980b5/tenor.gif): the Dithering Dems and the Radical Republicans (https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2022/08/on-schedule-for-fascism-dithering-dems.html#comment-5937763318)
John Kelly
In which Paul Street attempts to give the DemocRATS the out they so desperately need to remain on the good guys side of the political circus narrative. Calling them "dithering" is an excuse thinly disguised as a critique for cooperating with, and even accelerating the fascist trajectory of death cult #1. They are **** complicit, not incompetent. They are the "more effective evil", not a lesser evil. Anyone who spends paragraph after paragraph on Trump, the Regressives, and the 1/6 mini riot and temper tantrum, is a closeted DemocRAT(ICK) cheerleader... acting like they are merely soft, not the **** monsters they are. They are Tweedle Daddy Feels Your Pain to the Regressive's Tweedle Dumpster Fire. The butt cheeks of the same arse. Stipulated: Regressives are pure ****. See how short and easy that was? Now do the DemocRATS... you know, the left punching, virtue signaling, war mongering, Putin under the bed, Trump in the head court jesters of death cult America. They are far more dangerous, because they and their corporate presstitutes have successfully brainwashed millions into voting for and making excuses for them. They are every **** bit as evil as the Regressives, and far more dangerous.
AGelbert > John Kelly
Agreed. The Democrats and the Republicans are both willing, active, and fully bought and paid for, tools of the US Oligarchy. 🥺
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195041-948314.jpeg)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195050-951435.jpeg)
The folowing is a bit dated, but the people crushing trend, which continues to ACCELERATE, is firmly (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-040718162656-14241872.gif&hash=6c39a3206e2b2a3d652adee626b5eee8ab5b15bf) established:
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422194649-878527.png)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195006-9361393.png)
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Was Hitler right too?.....
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Collectivist Action > fuster
"fortunately, the laws are still standing and the loonies are methodically being tried and sent to prison" (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818180835-16181943.gif&hash=0b93e71ee5e24bbe02555e0d648a1283e0e9651d)
Are they?
AGelbert > Collectivist Action
Exactly. Also, it is a stretch to believe that the Democratic Party is "dithering".
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422154630.png)
Off topic from the daily dirge 💩 of in-our-faces government (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78) corruption, but welcome news to people of good will, here is some good news on the Wind Renewable Energy for Grid ⚡ Demand Predictability and Grid Stabilization front that all my fellow socialists will welcome:
Clean Technica August 3, 2022 By Guest Contributor (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164613-5332481.jpeg)
Can Meteorological Models Correctly Characterize Daily Cycles In Wind Generation? (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/renewables/wind-power/msg433/?topicseen#msg433)
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422165315-10681740.png)
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August 5, 2022 By William Rivers Pitt 🗽, Truthout
The (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195305-9941722.jpeg) Secret Service Text Cover-Up Keeps Getting Bigger
SNIPPET:
On August 1, “Two influential House Democrats called on Monday for two officials at the Department of Homeland Security’s independent watchdog to testify to Congress about the agency’s handling of missing Secret Service text messages from the day of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, accusing their office of engaging in a cover-up,” according to The New York Times. 😈 Joseph Cuffari is one of the two officials so called.
Not shady enough yet? Try this on for size, courtesy of CNN:
The Defense Department wiped the phones of top departing DOD and Army officials at the end of the Trump administration, deleting any texts from key witnesses to events surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, according to court filings.
The acknowledgment that the phones from the Pentagon officials had been wiped was first revealed in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit American Oversight brought against the Defense Department and the Army. The watchdog group is seeking January 6 records from former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, among other prominent Pentagon officials — having filed initial FOIA requests just a few days after the Capitol attack.
At least the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Watergate burglars had the sense to pull their stunt in the dead of night. These (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205132-6451602.gif) clowns are out there in broad daylight trashing crucial evidence pertaining to an attempted coup, and have done so within the walls of the Secret Service, Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.
Not only is this cover-up massive, it is altogether audacious, brazen, almost arrogant… and why not? This is Washington D.C., right? Nobody ever gets into actual trouble here, unless you took a bus from out of town to participate in the Capitol riot. Then, you’re probably busted. The (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) ones who summoned you there and turned you loose? A few deleted texts later and they’re (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78) enjoying a steak at the Capitol Hill Club, irony definitely intended.
Full article: (https://media.tenor.com/images/5423e809b1a22096b6925bf9bc3fd1cb/tenor.gif)
https://truthout.org/articles/the-secret-service-text-cover-up-keeps-getting-bigger/
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Comment Source: https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2022/08/two-diametrically-opposed-views-of.html#comment-5945959853
August 12, 2022
dmorista Mod > AGelbert
BTW, I think that our Constitution, that has been in place for about 230 years is showing its age and needs to be seriously amended. Of course the danger is that the right is powerful and they want to convene a Constitutional Convention that they control. And then make changes that make the Constitution less favorable to enhancing democracy rather than advance the process of democratizing U.S. society.
Some legal scholars have pointed out that the U.S. Constitution is too short and too hard to amend. There has not been a substantive amendment for several decades now. The set up for basic institutions like the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, and the Senate is not acceptable to the way this country is now organized. And the way the U.S. is now operating it would be impossible to get any serious amendment through the process. Societies change over time and the controlling documents need to be amended.
AGelbert > dmorista Mod
I hear ya, but I think you and I are in agreement that the code speech rhetorical masterpiece known as the US Constitution was formulated exclusively for the benefit of (and exclusion of everybody else), uh, see below, but add "land owning men" to the graphic:
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120822162250.png)
Our true "voting legislation" history is very instructive for an objective historian, not into "sanitizing" (only those US resident historians who are retired and don't fear losing their jobs need apply) the US elite's habit, from even before writing of the Constitution, of justifying whatevah to "KEEP theirs", so to speak.
The issue I have pointed to with various hair pulling rants, off and on during the last 15 years or so, is the happy talk claim that the Constitution now applies to "everybody". No it don't! Why not?
Well, was the U.S. founded as a representative Republic, as per the Constitution, or not?
What's that got to do with this?
REPRESENTATION in GOVERNMENT is "what that's got to do with this", and has NOT changed in ANY significant way to lessen the stranglehold on POWER that the elite land owners (now happily including women greedballs too - there's progress fer ya!) CONTINUE to have.
In fact, the average American voter has LESS power to influence government NOW than in 1780. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164519-508103.gif)
I know that is hard to believe, but it is true. Women out there, and perhaps some native americans and blacks too, are probably calling BS on me right now, but read on.
I will list some key dates, but the fact is that the grip of elite INCREASED at expense of the middle class and poor from 1780 all the way to TODAY.
It has been a propaganda tour de force foisted on we-the-people loudly boasting that we lesser American mortals are "properly" represented.
Baloney, the apologists say! Minorities can vote! Women can vote! What is your problemo, pal?
My "problemo" is the voting MATH that you double talking, sophistry spouting, lackey lap dogs of TPTB refuse to acknowledge. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422155724.png)
1780 = one Rep per 30,000 population (minus some fancy 2/3 math for the Plantation poo bahs). I won't bore you with the Senate. The name, alone, should tell you ALL you need to know about that "we are here for the Oligarchs, PERIOD!" institution honoring the Roman Empire. American voters didn't even get to vote for Senators until it didn't matter (around 1900) because, by that time, the gilded age tycoons had firm control of WHO was on the ballot by corrupting BOTH of the two main Political Parties. The optics were a bit better because, before that, the tycoons would just buy the state legislatures and governors (American Democracy, yeah right.).
1870 = Don't make me laugh telling me blacks got to "vote".
1913-15 = Legislative Cork on the number of Reps so that the POWER of the elite that bought and paid for Congress would not be "watered down" by the population increase.
1920 = Women get to "vote" (now that the CORK was put on the number of Reps per population).
1964 = LBJ wanted more cannon fodder for Viet Nam so he pushed a "Voting Rights" Act that has done next to nothing to right racist wrongs in this country.
2022 = Your "vote" has approximately the fractional power of (700,000 divided by 30,000) 1/23 of a landed white man in 1780. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422135315.png)
Sometimes I feel like Wiley Coyote....
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Comment Source: https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2022/08/america-land-of-dying-alarming-study.html#comment-5946750833
August 13, 2022
milo • 6 hours ago
I think we Yanks invented the new demographic "deaths of despair". We are the richest, most powerful nation on Earth. In fact we're killing the planet in a quest to consume it all for our fuel. But in the process we made no room for our fulfillment. And so more and more of us discover that life is not worth living. What does the future hold for us? Overdose and suicide, notably. But also just terminal ennui. More of the same, every day
AGelbert > milo 2 hours ago
I think JFK said a thing or two about what those irrefutably accurate societal woes you just listed will inevitably lead to...
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
https://youtu.be/hRmmfZC6Xhw
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August 15, 2022
(https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-121217195108.png)
After 🦕 Chuckie Koch's Kinder, Gentler Rebrand (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622153114-13822364.jpeg) Attempt, 😈 He Spent Over $1 Billion On 2020 Elections
Hey, remember back in 2018 when Politico Magazine told us Chase Koch, son of Charles Koch, "wants to steer the conservative juggernaut his family created toward a kinder, gentler libertarianism?" Or what about in 2020, when the Wall Street Journal's Doug Belkin helped Charles "call me 'Chuckie'" Koch attempt to rebrand as a "philosopher and, he hopes, unifer?"
Well if you were, like us, more skeptical than the "journalists" who credulously served up this PR as "reporting", then congratulations! You're not stupid enough to be a political access-driven DC journalist.
Because it turns out that even as ol' Chuckie was telling the WSJ how much he laments his past partisanship, he was still steering ungodly amounts of money into the election. Belkin claimed that "Koch Industries’ PAC and employees donated $2.8 million in the 2020 campaign cycle to Republican candidates and $221,000 to Democratic candidates," but that seems to have undersold things by an order of magnitude or two.
It's taken two years for all the paperwork to go through, but Connor Gibson crunched the numbers for the Center for Media and Democracy, and tallied up that "Koch Industries spent only $22.4 million on federal lobbying and campaign contributions in the 2020 election cycle."
But even that is "only" a fraction of the total spend, as across the 28 organizations that Koch controls, plus his family and Koch Industries executives, the total Koch spend on the 2020 election cycle was at least $1.1 billion.
Yes, billion, with a "B"! (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121109.gif)
The supposedly post-partisan 😇 ;) Koch 👿🦖 network spent $1,100,000,000 (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) influencing American politics, in just one election cycle!
And even THAT is a conservative figure, Gibson notes, because "these calculations likely fail to account for the total policy and political spending overseen by Charles Koch since Koch Industries and a fleet of Koch-controlled limited liability companies (LLCs) do not disclose similar finances."
Over a billion dollars, and that's just from what they're forced to disclose!
"Even though Koch told reporters he was so displeased with Trump," Gibson writes, "that he might even support Democrats — a rhetorical trick he pulls every few years — the tens of millions of dollars his organizations invested in U.S. Senate and House races went almost exclusively to Republicans."
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422123649.png)
And it's not just the "good" Republicans who respect norms and traditions like not overthrowing Democracy because you're a loser: "Koch has financed groups involved in extremist activity, including the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In 2022, Koch Industries is still financing many politicians who worked to invalidate (https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/big-oil-has-given-1-million-to-fuel-seditionists/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=222811477&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--lpg2SQzmOQ6WpVYwpThQfH0zEoakOEFmMyKWTdPd_0vhvojO08e0javF5bEPf1uY7nw-cufVDN_A4thijtdoe1bq2bw&utm_content=222811477&utm_source=hs_email) the results of the 2020 presidential election, despite signaling to Politico that it would (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202527-13931485.png) discontinue such support."
He's certainly getting what he paid for, too: "His astroturf organization 🦖 Americans for Prosperity (AFP) spent "seven figures" on efforts to support the confirmations of Trump nominees 👿 Neil Gorsuch, 🐍 Brett Kavanaugh, and 🦖 Amy Coney-Barrett—for a total price tag of between $3 and $10 million."
Regardless, who wants to guess which supposedly DC-savvy, access-driven journalistic mockery will fall for it the next time Chuckie Koch wants some sympathetic press?
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EcoWatch
Updated: August 31, 2022 By: Kristina Zagame Edited By: Karsten Neumeister (graphics by AGelbert)
The Supreme Court’s Environmental Report Card: Which 😈 Justices are (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822134118-17091258.gif)🦖Failing?
SNIPPET:
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922180717.jpeg)
In assigning our “Eco-Grades,” we looked at the top 40 environmentally related cases decided by the Supreme Court since 1992 (when the longest-serving justice, Clarence Thomas, began his term) in order to evaluate the environmental track record of each justice.
With more failures than passing grades, it seems our justices have some studying up to do. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922185321.jpeg)
Supreme Court Justice Starting Year Eco-Grade
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. 2005 F
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas 1991 F
Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito 2006 F
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor 2009 A
Associate Justice Elena Kagan 2010 A
Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch 2017 F
Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh 2018 D
Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett 2020 D
Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson 2022 TBD
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422162854-1034303.png)
Full article: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164555-532108.png)
https://www.ecowatch.com/supreme-court-environmental-report-card.html
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922195111.png)
📢 "With half of the members of the extreme right supermajority on the Supreme Court having been nominated by a president who had lost the popular vote by 2.7 million votes and confirmed by senators who represent well less than half of the voters in the country, the court’s recent decisions move our country perilously close to minority rule."
BY PAUL BLAND 08/23/22 5:30 PM ET
Congress needs to modernize the 🦕 Supreme Court and bring it into the 21st century
SNIPPETS:
In the last four years, my organization, Public Justice, has won three victories at the U.S. Supreme Court. Two of those victories were unanimous, and two of them were written by justices who had been nominated by Republican presidents. So one might think, given the court’s recent tendency to side with us in important cases, that everything is just fine. If so, you’d be wrong.
Instead, our view is that the nation’s highest court has (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) veered off the rails in troubling and extreme ways. Far from acting in a restrained, careful way, the court has recently issued drastic and extreme opinions that are harmful to American society. ... ...
... the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822134118-17091258.gif) 🦖 Court invented a new doctrine (not based in any serious reading of the text of the Constitution) sharply limiting the ability of the federal government to protect the environment, address the climate change crisis or limit pollution.
And this builds upon other decisions in recent years that undermine democracy, such as Citizens United v FEC (which paved the way for billionaires to spend far more of their money on elections, multiplying their power) and Shelby County v. Holder (where the court greatly undermined the Voting Rights Act). And the list goes on. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121435.png)
With half of the members of the extreme right supermajority on the Supreme Court having been nominated by a president who had lost the popular vote by 2.7 million votes and confirmed by senators who represent well less than half of the voters in the country, the court’s recent decisions move our country perilously close to minority rule. Each of the extreme decisions described above is badly out of touch with the views of the majority of the American people, and this fact is reflected in the court’s plummeting public approval rating.
And (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) they’re clearly not done yet. ... ...
The court has taken a case which raises the possibility that a heavily gerrymandered state legislature could overturn a presidential election 😵 in which a candidate the state legislative majority disfavors wins the clear majority of the votes. ... ...
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422133654.gif) It is now clear that the court badly needs reforming and modernizing. That’s why we at Public Justice are calling on Congress to take action. First, the court should be expanded to 13 justices (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145344-560693.png). And second, term limits should be implemented, capping service at a maximum of 18 years (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145344-560693.png). ... ...
Expanding the court should not be the end of Congress’s work to modernize our judicial system, however. ... ...
In the past, justices have seemed to struggle to understand such basic modern concepts as text messaging, social media and other modern-day devices and issues, despite being asked to make weighty and consequential decisions about them. Term limits would also help address the growing problem of justice being held as a political prisoner based on who happens to be president when a sitting justice decides to retire or dies. Absent death, justices increasingly step down when they believe a president who shares their philosophy will nominate their replacement. That hardly helps keep the court above the political fray; indeed, it drops our most important legal body right in the middle of political hurricanes. That was never meant to be the case.
Full TRUTH FILLED 🗽 article:
https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3612817-congress-needs-to-modernize-the-supreme-court-and-bring-it-into-the-21st-century/
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121331.gif)Agelbert NOTE: The level of corruption is MASSIVE. Just look at the the background of the Judge Trump just judge shopped:
Intrepid Report
Posted on September 8, 2022 By Wayne Madsen ✨
Trump successfully 😈 judge-shopped for an unqualified South Florida 🐘 right-winger
SNIPPETS:
Donald Trump, the New York real estate mobster who fled Gotham City for Florida during his twice-impeached presidency to avoid the arm of justice in the Empire State, needed a corrupt and inexperienced federal judge to stymie the Justice Department’s investigation of his theft of thousands of highly-classified and other official documents from the White House. He found one in Judge Aileen Mercedes Cannon, a right-wing Federalist Society Cuban-American.
Being born in Cali, Colombia, should have been enough to set off 🚨 alarm bells when Trump nominated her for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in July 2020. Trump was obviously stacking the federal bench with right-wing toadies because he was in the midst of a presidential campaign that polls indicated he would lose to Democrat Joe Biden. ... ...
One other cause for concern is that Cannon served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida under U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, who was partly responsible for the “sweetheart” plea deal underage sex trafficker and one-time Mar-a-Lago member Jeffrey Epstein received in 2007. Acosta became Secretary of Labor under Trump, a position that placed him in charge of investigating sex trafficking.
It appears that Cannon violated the South Florida District’s own operating procedures when she accepted Trump’s litigation in the Special Master case. The procedures state: “The assignment schedule shall be designed to prevent any litigant from choosing the Judge to whom an action or proceeding is to be assigned, and all attorneys shall conscientiously refrain from attempting to vary this Local Rule.”
There is another reason why Cannon should have recused herself from a case involving Mar-a-Lago. Although it is not known whether her husband’s wedding event planning business involved Trump’s Palm Beach rental facility, it is known that two of Mar-a-Lago’s most prominent members are former presidents of Cannon’s native Colombia — Medellin ☠️ cartel-linked Alvaro Uribe, as well as Andres Pastrana.
Full article: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164718-540294.gif)
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/36455
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How (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gif)billionaires (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) took over democracy
https://youtu.be/Pcf_3N-OsbA
Robert Reich 371K subscribers
The Citizens United disaster, in a nutshell:
In 2008, before the ruling, billionaires contributed $31 million to federal campaigns.
In 2020, billionaires contributed $1.2 billion.
That’s almost a 40-fold increase.
It never had to be like this.
AGelbert NOTE: It's the Social Darwinism, stupid! And, yeah, our government was already thoroughly Fascist corrupted by 2008. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422141413-627726.png)
March of 2008 Howard Zinn: “The election frenzy…seizes the country every four years because we have all been brought up to believe that voting is crucial in determining our destiny, that the most important act a citizen can engage in is to go to the polls and choose one of the two mediocrities who have already been chosen for us [by the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205132-6451602.gif)ruling class – P.S.]. It is a multiple-choice test so narrow, so specious, that no self-respecting teacher would give it to students.”
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195041-948314.jpeg)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195305-9941722.jpeg)
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AGelbert NOTE: Originally posted June 30, 2019
All 💵🎩 Honorable (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)👿 Men
COPYRIGHT 1950, BY JAMES STEWART MARTIN
SNIPPET 1:
In this book I have tried to tell the story of an important problem and some of the things that happened when we tried to deal with it. Though many of the events occurred in Germany, before and during the military occupation, they seemed in an increasing degree to be echoes of something more fundamental that was happening back in the United States. For whatever reason, the larger pattern is a repetition of what followed after World War I; but the pace has been quicker, as though greater powers were moving more rapidly toward a more catastrophic result.
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51OIeFgYo%2BL.jpg)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f269a0531f54fd1c1618278fe0144f1a4c83cc284aa96b523caece2ad390f752.jpg)
SNIPPET 2:
THE day I started to write this we discovered termites in the basement. We were preparing to build a wing on our old house and found a colony of them in the heavy timbers.
Termites are able organizers, and thoroughly attached to their way of life. The area they occupy is small in relation to the house (just the heavy underpinnings). They object vigorously to outside interference from the people who live in the other parts of the house. They object especially to structural changes, which they are bound to consider unwarranted.
They have two good reasons for objecting to changes. In the first place exposure to light and air kills them. In the second place any movement of the underpinnings ruins the whole structure of tunnels and channels which their enterprise has built within the framework of the house.
We hated to disturb them. They looked busy and enterprising. They seemed to want nothing more than a comfortable existence in accordance with their way of life.
We cleared the termites out to save the house, but I think I know how they looked at the whole matter. At the end of the Second World War I spent two and a half years in Germany dealing with some people who must think pretty much the same way.
(https://78.media.tumblr.com/f763599d30eaeb44b0c2eee92a26a8c5/tumblr_palizer1YQ1tsf68ao1_400.gif)
SNIPPET 3:
We were becoming a little ashamed of having farm "surpluses" and industrial "overproduction" in one part of the world while people starved and did without things in other parts.
The tremendous wartime production in our own country^ outstripping all estimates, had itself been an eye opener. Why not have full production and full employment in peacetime, too? We were beginning to have some feeling for the idea that economic restrictions, depression, and war are not unrelated.
Francis Biddle's demand for curbs on the big German financial and industrial combines was not ignored. The Financial Branch of SHAEF, General Eisenhower*s headquarters in Europe, asked for help in planning the necessary steps. They were preparing to investigate the concentration of economic power in Germany. They wanted to discover how the German leaders were smuggling great fortunes abroad to provide a future base of operations after the coming military defeat. ... ... It was going to be our job to uncover records, and to find and talk to the German masterminds who had laid their plans for turning military defeat into economic victory. We had to find out what they had done and how they had done it. ... ... Whatever their story might be, we had to know how such men came to have power and what forces determined the use they made of it.
SNIPPET 4:
During the German occupation of the neighboring countries they had had new opportunities to strengthen their hold. Even before we left the United States it took no powers of divination to realize that German finance and industry would have made the most of these opportunities to set up new vested interests in hands that would appear to be French, or Dutch, or Belgian, or Italian. We could expect to be greeted by these "allied" defenders of the Nazi economic New Order, who would resist our countermeasures by wailing that they had already "suffered" under the Germans.
SNIPPET 5:
How were we going to fare when we ran up against real demonstrations of German economic power and ingenuity, where the opposition to change would be a lot more formidable because it would be carefully engineered? The answer was not long in coming.
We settled down out of the sky over England into a fog-covered beehive called Bushy Park, headquarters for the future military government of Germany, then known as the U.S. Group Control Council. ... ... Our special team was assigned to work in the Finance Division with Captain Norbert A. Bogdan, a charming fellow who had been a vice president of the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation, a firm in whose files the Nazi banking affiliations were still warm when the United States went to war.
Full text of "All Honorable Men.pdf" (https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-ZqtX7a7HbQzP4FtT/All%20Honorable%20Men_djvu.txt)
Agelbert NOTE: I will continue providing snippets in subsequent posts as I read this book. Aleady I have been flabbergasted by the fact that U.S. ship and factory reinsurers, AFTER we were at war with Nazi Germany, through Switzerland and South America on to Germany, were notified of when ANY U.S. was to leave port AND what cargo it had, providing the German submarines off our coast a "to sink" list!
And all those factories making war stuff with lots of guards posted to keep Nazi spies from knowing what was going on there? Well, anyone could, and did, without any security clearance whatsoevah, buy "required reinsurance document copies" for pennies which included detailed descriptions of factories and their contents including, in the case of magnesium processing plants, what valve coulld not be closed because that would "cause an explosion". All this info was required by reinsurers. ANYBODY could access all this stuff, right down to where the fire extinguishers were in the White House! In spite of this OBVIOUS security threat, getting our own government to order American corporations to STOP sending this info to Germany took several MONTHS!
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.tumblr.com%2Fc6492e4b47cfdbd50e74d285fde3c53e%2Ftumblr_inline_mm3g4yCaZc1qz4rgp.gif&hash=4b1cad5ea13f7430a0c01f3065039d21d78da398)
You don't believe me? I just READ IT in this book! Read it yourself!
We proposed to have the Attorney General send a letter to each company warning that transmission of marine and industrial plant information of this type came within the scope of the Espionage Act.
In the end the letter was sent out, nearly a year and a half after the leakage had first been brought to the attention of an agency of the government, and over four months after we in the Economic Warfare Section had taken up the case and pointed out what uses the Germans could be making of the information.
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Agelbert NOTE: Continued from the previous post in this topic thread.
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51OIeFgYo%2BL.jpg)
COPYRIGHT 1950, BY JAMES STEWART MARTIN
SNIPPETS:
(https://www.zum.de/whkmla/sp/0708/yongho/fig21.gif)
The struggle over the Ruhr had brought the first rnajor breakdown of Allied policy in 1923 when Britain and the United States refused to back up the French occupation of the valley; and ten years later the financiers and industrialists of that area had boosted Hitler into the driver's seat. ...
... Most Germans who meant anything in German industry or politics after World War I considered it an act of patriotism to evade the terms of the Versailles Treaty. In fact, in the years after Versailles, the German courts would entertain prosecutions for the crime of high treason against any German citizen who concerned himself with the execution of the Treaty "in such a way that a foreign power was advised of infractions."
Clearly, the Germans themselves would expect to be supervised and watched. It would be a point of 😈 honor, as well as self-interest, to defy detection, and to camouflage or conceal their intentions.
From our discoveries during three years with the Economic Warfare Section, we had already narrowed down the list of Germans who carried the major responsibility for what had happened. The list was impressively small; for somewhere among a group of not more than a hundred men were those who had done the lion's share of the planning and had carried out the world-wide negotiations that made the economic preparations for war a success.
Still, even a list of a hundred important individuals, controlling sixty or seventy of the biggest companies, was too large for pinpoint investigation by our small crew- Were there some five or ten or twelve men among these who stood head and shoulders above the others either in knowledge or in degree of responsibility for the German efforts?
Perhaps the records of the International Steel Cartel at Luxembourg would furnish clues to help us concentrate our attention first on a few individuals and a few companies in Germany. ...
... Quite by accident, our team arrived on a Saturday, and simultaneously with a visit by General Eisenhower. The officials of the steel cartel somehow gained the impression that General Eisenhower's visit had been made especially to lend additional high-level sanction to the visit of the Department of Justice officials attached to SHAEF.
Hector Dieudonne, secretary of the cartel, and the other top cartel officials, who were heading for the country over the week end, told Eric Conrot, the office manager, to "give every assistance" to the gentlemen from SHAEF. M. Conrot unexpectedly took the instructions quite literally. ;D He opened up all the filing cabinets in the office of the cartel and invited the gentlemen from SHAEF to make themselves at home for the entire week end. They did. 🧐
It is not hard to imagine the hair-pulling among the top officials when they returned Monday morning. They found an extremely weary and sleepless investigative crew sitting among a mass of folders from which an index had been compiled of close to four thousand documents. The investigators expressed their gratitude and said they would very much like permission to make photostats of the four thousand documents.
With a great deal of grinding of teeth and scarcely restrained mutterings at M. Conrot's misunderstanding of diplomatic language, they finally gave their consent, but not without making a protest that their hospitality had in some way been abused by what amounted to "police" methods. ...
... M. Aloyse Meyer, managing director of the Arbed steel combine, returned quietly to the city of Luxembourg from Germany. He had left when the Germans left, but came back with the explanation that he had been kidnaped. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718202127.gif&hash=acc63221521ebaf3f238088fd92d1ae3a08b6e48)
The official attitude was that Meyer had become a hero by keeping his firm intact during the war and thereby preventing the removal of Luxembourg workers from the local steel plants to Germany for work in the German plants. Some officials even alleged that the Arbed management had arranged to slow down production and thereby sabotage the German war effort, but the comparative figures for Arbed and the other two Luxembourg firms did not bear this out.
What the Luxembourgers chose to do with Aloyse Meyer did not change what was on the papers in the files of the steel cartel. It was not necessary to wait for photostats of all the thousands of documents to realize that we now had an enlarged picture from which to work.
Here was something that had gone beyond mere German resistance to the occupation measures of the Allied powers after World War 1. It was a concrete example of how leading German manufacturers had gone about the job of recapturing control over industries and markets and making Germany the "industrial hub of Europe."
This was not resistance, but a counterattack that included enlisting the help of industrialists in other countries. Here again the step-by-step history threw some light on what had happened, but at the same time raised questions about why the otherss let the Germans get what they wanted.
The mid-twenties were remarkable for German industrial combination. They marked the formation of the United Steel Works in Germany, as a combination of the four biggest steel producers, Ernst Poensgen, Fritz Thyssen, Otto Wolff, and the others who drew this combine together had managed to get over a hundred million dollars from private investors in the United States. ...
... The loans which the bigger operators got from Britain and the United States to put them on their feet after the inflation also enabled them to pay prices far above the market values to buy out troublesome competing firms. In effect, the foreign loans and German government subsidies allowed the leading companies, such as United Steel Works, Mannesmann, Krupp, Good Hope and Rochling, to substitute private regulation and elimination of competition for the technical efficiency they had lost when their plants in Alsace and Lorraine went back to French control after 1918. ...
... The Nazi Economic Ministry later gave due recognition to Dr. Poensgen for his services to the German iron and steel industry through his organization of the national and international steel cartels. ...
... All members (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) agreed that in foreign markets they would not undersell each other but would undersell any nonmember in order to drive him (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-040718162656-14241872.gif&hash=6c39a3206e2b2a3d652adee626b5eee8ab5b15bf) out of the market.
Full text of "All Honorable Men.pdf" (https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-ZqtX7a7HbQzP4FtT/All%20Honorable%20Men_djvu.txt)
Agelbert NOTE: As this excellent book makes clear, the demonization of some "other", though intrinsic to the fascist MO, is merely a peripheral part of the core 'business model', which is Monopoly Capitalism through Cartelization of absolutely every product that human society requires. The point is to eliminate all 'pesky' competition. That is what sanctions are all about. When sanctions do not accomplish the competition crushing purpose, then war is next. The storm trooper racist crazies are part of the divide and counqer distraction to keep people from realizing they are being screwed 24/7 by a worldwide fascist oligarchy.
As this book explains, fascist efforts to achieve worldwide Monopoly Capitalism through Cartelization, interrupted by WWII, continued after WWII by those who aided the rise of Hitler. Shortly before WWII ended, these fascists moved huge fortunes out of Germany to various places on the planet, including the United States, for the express purpose of resurrecting the fascist 'business model' wherever they could.
These industrialists are true believers in using the local government to do whatever on their behalf, going back generations BEFORE the word "Fascism" ever existed. This book brings you up to 1950. As bad as the fascist infiltration of the United States and Europe was by 1950, it got much worse after that.
However, the continued value of this book is that it exposes the, mostly surreptitious, step by step procedure that fascists methodically engage in to exploit and enslave we-the-people. Their Mens rea modus operandi has not changed in any way from 1950 to the present.
They targeted Europe after WWII and, with the help of the CIA (which controlled the trillion dollar Anderson "Trust" through the treason of Truman), succeeded in crushing Socialism there, and eventually here. Socialsm is an obstacle to Monopoly Capitalism through Cartelization, so fascists will always do whatever to "eliminate" said obstacle.
The point is to eliminate all 'pesky' competition. That is what sanctions are all about. When sanctions do not accomplish the competition crushing purpose, then war is next. The storm trooper racist crazies are part of the divide and counqer distraction to keep people from realizing they are being screwed 24/7 by a worldwide fascist oligarchy.
Unfortunately, because it is is too nuanced/complicated, too few people grasp the brutal reality stated above.
Fascists count on public's lack of introspection.
(https://www.peaceproject.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/product/B759_WhatGoodFortuneForGovernmentsThatThePeopleDontThink.png)
I challenge you to find any difference between Hitler's mindset in the following quotes and that of Trump, ALL Republicans, and TOO MANY DINOs:
“If you win, you need not have to explain...If you lose, you should not be there to explain!”― Adolf Hitler
“Do not compare yourself to others. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.”― Adolf Hitler
“I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.” ― Adolf Hitler
“The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.” ― Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Letters and Notes
“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” ― Adolf Hitler
“The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.” (https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/30691.Adolf_Hitler)― Adolf Hitler
To be continued:
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Agelbert NOTE: Continued from the previous post (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg558/?topicseen#msg558) on this book.
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51OIeFgYo%2BL.jpg)
COPYRIGHT 1950, BY JAMES STEWART MARTIN
Full text of "All Honorable Men.pdf" (https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-ZqtX7a7HbQzP4FtT/All%20Honorable%20Men_djvu.txt)
Agelbert NOTE: As this excellent book makes clear, the demonization of some "other", though intrinsic to the fascist MO, is merely a peripheral part of the core 'business model', which is Monopoly Capitalism through Cartelization of absolutely every product that human society requires. The point is to eliminate all 'pesky' competition. That is what sanctions are all about. When sanctions do not accomplish the competition crushing purpose, then war is next. The storm trooper racist crazies are part of the divide and counqer distraction to keep people from realizing they are being screwed 24/7 by a worldwide fascist oligarchy.
As this book explains, fascist efforts to achieve worldwide Monopoly Capitalism through Cartelization, interrupted by WWII, continued after WWII by those who aided the rise of Hitler. Shortly before WWII ended, these fascists moved huge fortunes out of Germany to various places on the planet, including the United States, for the express purpose of resurrecting the fascist 'business model' wherever they could.
These industrialists are true believers in using the local government to do whatever on their behalf, going back generations BEFORE the word "Fascism" ever existed. This book brings you up to 1950. As bad as the fascist infiltration of the United States and Europe was by 1950, it got much worse after that.
However, the continued value of this book is that it exposes the, mostly surreptitious, step by step procedure that fascists methodically engage in to exploit and enslave we-the-people. Their Mens rea modus operandi has not changed in any way from 1950 to the present.
They targeted Europe after WWII and, with the help of the CIA (which controlled the trillion dollar Anderson "Trust" through the treason of Truman), succeeded in crushing Socialism there, and eventually here. Socialsm is an obstacle to Monopoly Capitalism through Cartelization, so fascists will always do whatever to "eliminate" said obstacle.
The point is to eliminate all 'pesky' competition. That is what sanctions are all about. When sanctions do not accomplish the competition crushing purpose, then war is next. The storm trooper racist crazies are part of the divide and counqer distraction to keep people from realizing they are being screwed 24/7 by a worldwide fascist oligarchy.
Unfortunately, because it is is too nuanced/complicated, too few people grasp the brutal reality stated above.
SNIPPETS:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Aloyse_Meyer%2C_cropped_from_Bezoek_Koninklijk_Paar_aan_Luxemburg_staalfabriek%2C_Bestanddeelnr_904-6369.jpg)
Aloyse Meyer (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F_9HT4xZyDmh4%2FTOHhxzA0wLI%2FAAAAAAAAEUk%2FoeHDS2cfxWQ%2Fs200%2FSmiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg&hash=13281f1944b60773bf12b29387b70be77cc1fe16) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)
For years Aloyse Meyer, as head of Arbed, had been a director of Arbed's subsidiary in Germany, the large Felten & Guilleaume cable works. Working with M. Meyer, and serving as chairman of the board of directors of Felten & Guilleaume, was Baron Kurt von Schroder, Hitler's banker. As far as we were concerned, the line from M. Meyer and Arbed and the International Steel Cartel to von Schroder s private bank at Cologne could have been as thin as a filament of spider's web. We were looking for the spider.
(https://kingdomsoftheworld.com/images/Baron%20Kurt%20Von%20Schroder.jpg)
Baron Kurt von Schroder
The Schroder family of Hamburg, into which Baron Kurt von Schroder was born in November 1889, had been 🎩bankers for generations. In a preceding generation, Baron Johann Heinrich von Schroder had moved to London, adopted the anglicized name, J. Henry Schroder, and developed an extensive business financing overseas trade, especially with Latin America.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/thumb/8/84/SchroederBaronHenry.jpg/220px-SchroederBaronHenry.jpg)
Baron Johann Heinrich von Schroder J. Henry Schroder (German no more but a loyal British Subject (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718202127.gif&hash=acc63221521ebaf3f238088fd92d1ae3a08b6e48))
Another member of the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) family, Baron Bruno von Schroder, Kurt's cousin, born in Hamburg in 1867, moved to London early in life but retained his German citizenship until 1914 when he became a British subject.
(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2019/02/21/TELEMMGLPICT000189202677_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqrnKnv-EZ40EhYX8nU7dr88vwNNiKAgfx5JD3hWMGqHE.jpeg?imwidth=480)
21 FEBRUARY 2019 Bruno Schroder, who has died aged 86, was the billionaire proprietor of the investment bank that bore his family name, but devoted most of his life to the gentle pursuit (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718211017.gif&hash=1b5b289486b9429bdbdcb938b21ef1a2b66d30fc) of other interests (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-251117175700.png&hash=00439d30db6e35817ea0d1fbcba614f1f971448e), including the welfare of his Hebridean sporting estate. Schroder was a great-great-grandson of Johann Heinrich Schröder, who arrived in London from his native Hamburg, aged 17, in 1802.
Baron Bruno headed the banking firms J. Henry Schroder & Company of London, and the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation of New York until his death in 1940, when he was succeeded by his son, Helmuth W. B. Schroder, the present head.
There appeared to be ;) no community of ownership between the Stein Bank of Cologne and the Schroder Banks of London and New York, though the two groups acted as correspondent banks for one another and participated jointly in so many deals that what the Germans call an Interessen Gemeinsckaft, or community of interests (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78), existed between them.
The pattern for this parallel action had been laid in 1914 when the British closed down German banks in London, but allowed the Schroder firm, headed by "British subjects," to operate through the war. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-010519192158-2201430.jpeg&hash=e912e1f5bdc041c35e217478b14ba3f7960e2037) ...
... Among the number of threads that had made us decide to pay a call on Baron Kurt von Schroder and his bank had been an argument back in England, at Bushy Park, when we were planning our itinerary. I have already mentioned that for a time we were assigned to work in the Finance Division of General Wickersham's headquarters with Captain Norbert A. Bogdan, vice president of the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation of New York. Captain Bogdan had argued vigorously against investigation o£ the Stein Bank on the ground that it was "small potatoes.' (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-101118134711.png&hash=95656a8745d64029834962eaf709ab2a1042866a) We should concentrate our efforts on bigger targets, such as the Deutsche Bank and the Commerz Bank. To waste time on small-scale private banks would discredit our investigations.
We had noted, however, that the day after this outburst two of the permanent members of Captain Bogdan's staff requested military travel orders to Cologne to investigate the Stein Bank. This was an unusual application. Since Cologne had not yet fallen, it was tantamount to a request to accompany the Forces immediately behind the combat units. The Intelligence Division blocked that one. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-111018132400-16842321.gif&hash=e2590f92501c5dd6149626bb0ab180ce9e1d5bd3)
Another thread had been the business collaboration of many years standing between Baron Kurt von Schroder and a very good friend of Franz von Papen, Gerhardt A. Westrick. Dr. Westrick was a prominent German lawyer and a member of the law partnership of Albert & Westrick. ...
... Legal work on the Schroder Bank loans was always handled in Germany by the firm of Albert & Westrick, and in the United States by Sullivan & Cromwell, the firm headed by John Foster Dulles.
(https://2001-2009.state.gov/cms_images/dulles.jpg)
John Foster Dulles
But to return to Gerhardt Westrick: in April 1940, this (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718205808.gif&hash=5c451456a306c150d3555c49e31a2f47d6f369a9) fraternity brother had come to the United States ostensibly as a commercial counselor to the German Embassy, but actually on a direct assignment as personal representative of the Nazi Foreign Minister, von Ribbentrop. His mission was to attempt to convince American business leaders that they would gain by a Hitler victory, and to persuade them to help in keeping the United States out of the war. ...
(https://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/m8utVNF0SF24o0T9wid95mQ.jpg)
Gerhardt A. Westrick
... The American press congratulated itself on having made Westrick 's propaganda mission an ignominious failure. But as we looked into the transactions of Baron von Schroder and Dr. Westrick, we wondered. There were many questions we would have liked to ask Baron von Schroder had he been home that April evening in 1945, but it was not until two months later that another of our men, Robert West, formerly of the White House detail of the Secret Service, tracked him down. Von Schroder was found in a detention camp for SS prisoners in France, masquerading in the battle fatigue dress of an SS corporal.
Some of the records began to make sense, even without Baron von Schroder. Several bundles were the detailed ledgers of deposits into the special account labeled "Sonderkonto S". What struck us first was the all-star cast which made up this list of depositors. Of the forty or fifty names which turned up regularly in the pages, running all the way back to 1933, we recognized about twenty immediately as well-known directors of the biggest German industrial firms in the fields of coal, iron and steel, machinery, chemicals, electrical equipment, transport, and electric power. In the galaxy of corporations deahng with the Stein Bank, this list of individuals might not have seemed unusual except for two things: the regularity of the deposits in this joint account, and the close relation between decreases in the account and the Himmlier letters asking for money.
This one account, we learned by putting Uttle pieces of evidence together, covered only the running expenses of Himmler's SS, and perhaps some of the Gestapo; but if one special account had the letter "S" it was a fair guess that somewhere, in the Stein Bank or elsewhere, there could be other special accounts "A" or "B" or "Y" or "Z." The arrangement was simplicity itself. At a wink or a nod from someone — in this case we later found it was Wilhelm Keppler of the Nazis' "Hermann Goring'' steel combine — the contributors would quietly make deposits into the special account at the bank. When the leader of the party formation — in this case Himmler — wanted money, he asked for it; and it was drawn against the same account. No muss, no fuss, no "Nazi" connections for the contributors.
...
... We hoped to find some of the living contributors to "Sonderkonto S" and dig further into the reasons why they considered it (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-311013201314.png&hash=0715eb72631014310634eb56176ff860c6d542f6) 'good business' to make these donations.
In particular, I wanted to interview Baron von Schnitzler again. In his villa near Frankfurt two weeks before von Schnitzler had looked every inch a baron, from his black homburg, velvet collar, and gray spats, to the young and beautiful baroness on his arm. One would never have guessed that von Schnitzler was a criminal, one of the financial mainstays of the Nazi regime, and a mastermind of the I. G. Farben foreign organization. When Frankfurt fell on the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of March, 1945, von Schnitzler was living, comfortable and unperturbed, in his villa not many miles outside the city. His manner was that of the master of the house greeting the fire department. He was affable, urbane, but kept the firemen in their place. He offered brandy, and then withdrew it in deference to the non-fraternization order. His manner managed to imply that the non fraternization idea was an immature gesture typical of a certain kind of American. The war had not touched Baron von Schnitzler and, to hear him tell it, he had not touched the war. It was a case of live and let live. ...
... Now that we had the records of his deposits into "Senderkonto S", I wanted to get him back for a longer talk.
When we had him brought to our field office in the Reichsbank building at Frankfurt for questioning, Baron von Schnitzler (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-080419191019.png&hash=a449294ee6fe2dfdea44c1c501f4439b9ac69c26) denied having had anything to do with Hitler or the Nazi Party. They were beneath him. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718210558.gif&hash=9234ac544277d3924347404eb52489dfe64e3ca4) He was a businessman and his factories had produced things which the Nazis needed; but they had come to him. Certainly he had never contributed in any way to their activities. He had deliberately avoided knowing anything at all about "government" business done by the firm. That was handled by other directors. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718202127.gif&hash=acc63221521ebaf3f238088fd92d1ae3a08b6e48)
Baron von Schnitzler was thoroughly at ease throughout the several hours of our questioning. We warned him repeatedly of the stiff penalties for making false statements. But he talked on persuasively and smoothly, in perfect English. The records of "Sonderkonto S" seemed miles and ages away as the Baron talked.
Perhaps he did not know the records had been found and he was bluffing or lying. But actually in his own mind he need not have seen any inconsistency between his pose as an "unpolitical" businessman who did not want to know about "government" business — poison gas , slave labor, Auschwitz ☠️ and all that — and his record of steady contributions of at least forty thousand dollars a year to "Sonderkonto S." In his own way he was speaking of a world in which one makes the necessary contributions to ''causes" without feeling personally involved at all.
That is not to say that the Baron was unaware of how his behavior might be interpreted by those of us who did not belong to his fraternity. All through our conversations, both at his villa and in the Reichsbank building, the interrogators had been anonymous. The German intelligence service had had most American government officials bracketed in preparation for the occupation; but they needed to know who was coming in order to know what records to hide first.
We never addressed one another by name or gave any hint of the reason for our interest in the Baron's business. To put him at ease I pretended at the first interview that I had never heard of the I.G. Farben firm nor of von Schnitzler.
At the outset I asked him what he did for a living. When he said he was a director of I.G. Farbenindustrie, I asked him what that was. He said it was a company. What did the company do, make shoes, ships, textiles? It was a chemical firm, he stated; a very large chemical firm.
As the questions rolled along, all of a police-blotter variety implying a profound ignorance on our part, von Schnitzler sat back with a bland and contented look, arching his eyebrows and leveling a hawklike gaze along his Roman nose as though it were the barrel of a fowling piece. He lied like a trooper through it all.
Toward the end of the second interview, however, von Schnitzler tried to find out who we were; and one of our men made the mistake of calling me by name. For just one instant the Baron's eyes registered a quick appraisal. He then carefully and deliberately recrossed his legs, shifted his gloves from one hand to the other, and asked if I was satisfied that all his replies had been truthful and complete.
When I told him merely that if we wanted anything further he would hear from us, he persisted for several minutes asking in various ways if we did not want him to "clarify" any of his answers. Later we found in his files copies of published testimony on I.G. Farben that several of us had presented to a Senate committee in 1944, with our names underlined in green ink.
Von Schnitzler did not appear particularly surprised when at the end of the interview he was taken to jail, charged with making false statements to military government officers, and later held for trial as an industrial war criminal. He was among those convicted in 1948 and sentenced to twelve years for profiting from the war and for being responsible for abuse of foreign workers. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818185036-1638694.gif&hash=648d3b7e5567fa4f349a5fbfbfc1df8b27355704) >:(
He and all the other industrialists tried with him were acquitted, however, of complicity in starting the war; because the court held that they had not had advance knowledge of Hitler's specific plans for military aggression. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-120818180835-16181943.gif&hash=0b93e71ee5e24bbe02555e0d648a1283e0e9651d)
These (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) men had started a chain of events whose inevitable outcome was ☠️ war. But in the eyes of the law, as the 🐵🙉🙊American judges 😈 construed it, only those who had forged the last link could be guilty of a crime. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817122018.gif&hash=74d86c1f35e2f61ea38c9bfa392f84a92631b96e)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F3116_Owl%2520Scripture.jpeg&hash=a4074beba46909ad576a7e5f21acc88fcec3f0cd)
The old Frankfurt had been almost leveled to the ground, while the I.G. Farben office building, one of the largest in the world, stood untouched. The handsome cathedral where kings of the Holy Roman Empire had been crowned, the little inns with their carvings and paintings, and the hundreds of other weathered and mellowed reminders of Germany's old life in the times before Bismarck, Hohenzollern, and Hitler, all had suffered the tortures of the damned.
But the Nazi edifice of the New Order, literally a giant filing cabinet loaded with hundreds of tons of papers and records of the Farben empire, remained whole.
To be continued.
If you would like to read the first post on this book, go here (http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/geopolitics/key-historical-events-that-you-may-have-never-heard-of/msg12769/#msg12769).
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The American Republican Party is run by descendents and still surviving home-grown AmeroNazis who put Hitler into power in the first place--and enabled the 3rd Reichsters to escape. Standard Oil Frank A. Howard was a member in good standing of these AmeroNazis.
(https://pslc.ws/macrog/exp/rubber/synth/exxon/fhoward.jpg)
😈 Frank A. Howard of the 🦖 Standard Oil (NJ) Company
Continued from previous posts on this book:
All 💵🎩 Honorable (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78)Men
COPYRIGHT 1950, BY JAMES STEWART MARTIN
SNIPPET:
The papers we picked up indicated that Mr. Frank A. Howard of the Standard Oil group and Dr. Ringer of I.G. Farben had met in the last week of September 1939, at The Hague. They prepared a document that became known as the "Hague Memorandum." This document appeared on its face to be an agreement under which I.G. Farben sold to Standard Oil of New Jersey various patents and shares of stock. Actually the two men also prepared a separate agreement, kept secret, under which I.G. Farben retained the right to cancel the transfer and get its properties back as soon as it was safe to do so. Mr. Howard did not even keep a copy of this agreement. He signed the original and the carbon copy on behalf of Standard Oil and handed both copies to Dr. Ringer, who took them back to Frankfurt.
The (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718205137.gif&hash=7a79df8ecf1b29d8599c26fe550e664c6c5e24bd) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718205808.gif&hash=5c451456a306c150d3555c49e31a2f47d6f369a9) Standard Oil case might very well have had a happy ending for the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) fraternity brothers if the suit had been filed in 1947.
Even by 1946 it was to become very difficult for United States government representatives to get facts from German files. It was not long before we had to show cause why we should be permitted to prowl about among the business papers of reputable German concerns.
By 1947 investigations which the Germans considered troublesome would appear doubly objectionable to (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418203402.gif&hash=b2691028ba683a0039a5811f5775c68d7ccae01c) American businessmen acting as military government officials in Bizonia. Investigations that might disclose embarrassing transactions between American and German companies were called a "waste of taxpayers' money." (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-010519192158-2201430.jpeg&hash=e912e1f5bdc041c35e217478b14ba3f7960e2037)
Also, troubling busy German industrialists with unfriendly questions would tend to "interfere with German recovery" and might arouse ''antagonism." (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-051113192052.png&hash=93c42ef9f18fc5d9da50fd91fc19f70009f95f85)
In the end we were caught between (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-130418193910.gif&hash=633dd399cd6006279afd7efb5ef953673b96bd78) businessmen representing private interests and 😈 others of the same persuasion holding official positions, where they had power to change the orders under which we operated. 👎
But for a brief period in 1945 matters were not so well under control. True, we found a number of members of the 😈 international brotherhood, commissioned as colonels and brigadier generals in the occupation Army, moving about rather freely in the field on matters of their own concern; but by the same token it was also possible for representatives of the government to get around freely as we all did in the Standard Oil case.
The documents needed by the government to establish the falsity of the Standard Oil claim were finally shipped by air back to the United States, along with Dr. von Knieriem as a government witness. Dr. von Knieriem, who had supervised Ringer's work, had annotated his own copy of the secret Hague Memorandum with comments showing its true intent. One of these phrases alone should have been enough. It was a marginal note, "Nach Kriegs Kamouflage" (postwar camouflage).
Not only was this case unusual in that enough trained manpower was available, for once, to track down the evidence, and that conditions permitting full investigation happened to prevail, but because the Federal Courts in dealing with the evidence used unusually strong language to describe what the fraternity brothers had done. 👍
The following examples from the opinion of the Circuit Court of Appeals may illustrate:
The negotiators prepared the so-called Hague Memorandum which was neither an accurate summary of the past dealings of their companies, nor complete and faithful representation of the agreements made at the Hague. ...
The real agreement which was made by Mr. Howard and Dr. Ringer and which was later ratified by their principals can be gleaned only after a scrutiny of many documents and the oral testimony of Mr. Howard. ...
The Court found that these were sham transactions designed to create an appearance of Jersey ownership of property interests which nevertheless continued to be regarded by the parties as I.G. Farben owned. The parties intended that after completion of the war and the resulting disappearance of the danger of United States Government controls the property would be formally returned to I.G. and the pre-war relationship resumed. ...
On the witness stand, (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F1%2F3-250718205808.gif&hash=5c451456a306c150d3555c49e31a2f47d6f369a9) Howard, testifying concerning the Hague Conference, was, in the opinion of the Court, not a credible witness.
In effect the courts held that the Standard Oil Company had tried to put across a misrepresentation in order to protect an outpost for I.G. Farben.
Whereas President Roosevelt had referred to the use made of the I.G. Farben trust by the Nazis, and had insisted on the "eradication of these weapons of economic warfare," (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-250817135149.gif&hash=b4a8748d7cf56a31dd0a6aae5828ed2c1ac2815c) Standard Oil, in the middle of the war against the Nazi state, had invoked the aid of the Federal Courts to defeat the measures of the United States. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-120716190938.png&hash=01feab1c7345a4e98764e0f9d24b2d69171b93c2)
Frank A. Howard was not prosecuted for perjury. The District Court and Circuit Court of Appeals merely declared he was not a "credible witness." (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nofrackingway.us%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F06%2Fslap-on-wrist.jpg&hash=2f50f19b764e1f37821ecab6d191ce42689bed3b) The Supreme Court did no more than sustain the action of the lower courts in upsetting the sham transactions and letting the Alien Property Custodian keep the patents and stock. Mr. Howard retired gracefully in 1945, full of honors 😇, as vice president of 🦖 Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, having retired the previous year from his other position as president of the 🦕 Standard Oil Development Company. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-200419205214.png&hash=4c5b9ca97c84607da003becdf6282716bcdf1800)
This arrangement between Standard and Farben was only one of many conspiracies between German business leaders and their counterparts in the United States and Britain to help in keeping alive bridgeheads for future ''economic warfare."
At the time we discovered them it would have been hard to forget the other side of the coin: that these same German organizations — I.G. Farben, Krupp, Flick, Mannesmann, Siemens & Halske, and a few dozen more — had shown their less gentlemanly and more brutal side in the slave camps and murder factories, and in the looting of occupied Europe, all by "legal" means under Nazi laws.
Before the press carried pictures of the murder camps at Belsen and Auschwitz and the records of I.G. Farben's poison gas experiments on slave laborers, It might have been possible to concede that some American businessmen connived at preserving these organizations for the postwar period without knowing the awful truth. We hoped that the record after 1945 would not reveal any conniving in the revival of similar types of "industrial" organizations, or any reliance on the same men to guide Germany's economic recovery.
To be continued:
If you missed the other posts on this excellent book, you can click on the links below to read them at your liesure.
First Post (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg555/#msg555)
Second Post (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg558/#msg558)
Previous Post (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg559/#msg559)
Now you know why the Republican Party has ALWAYS championed "subsidies" for the Rockefeller 🦕🦖 Hydrocarbon Hellspawn; they are 👹 FASCIST Birds of a feather.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F3-100718164155-14511755.jpeg&hash=1c62dd0525852ffbbcbc7f2459189db15d6435c6)(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f269a0531f54fd1c1618278fe0144f1a4c83cc284aa96b523caece2ad390f752.jpg)
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In Between Times 10-13-2022
OCT 7, 2022 • 11M
A MOMENT OF BS ;)
Bill Shireman Disrupts the 🎩😈 Dividers - The 🔊 Podcast (https://inbetweentimes.substack.com/p/the-in-between-times-podcast-disrupting) for the Silenced Majority 🗽
October 14, 2022
AGelbert COMMENT:
It's the SOCIAL DARWINISM, stupid!
Social Darwinists believe that the dictum “survival of the fittest” (a term coined not by Charles Darwin but by sociologist Herbert Spencer) means that only the fittest should survive. Darwin's book published later ("Descent of Man") made it clear that Darwin completely supported the morally bankrupt views of Spencer.
Enthusiastic converts to Social Darwinism have, to this day, used the language of evolution to frame an understanding of the growing gulf between the rich and the poor, as well as the many differences between cultures all over the world. The explanation they arrived at, and continue to use to justify biosphere trashing profit over people and planet, regardless of any alligator tear filled mendacious claims to the contrary, is that businessmen and others who are economically and socially successful are so because they are biologically and socially “naturally” the fittest. 🙄🤔
Conversely, they reason that the poor are “naturally” weak and unfit and it would be an error to allow the weak of the species to continue to breed. 😨
The 😈 money lenders have played a key role in funding this deceit propagated in high schools and universities, where it is passed off as "the Capitalist fiduciary duty of corporations to make a profit above ANY OTHER CONSIDERATION, be it the health and wellbeing of employees or the environment". It is, and always was, legerdemain formulated by the monied elite to dress up selfish, abusive, exploitative and cruel behavior towards "less important" humans and/or animals experimented upon in research labs, as "scientifically justified".
The wealthy, privileged whites served by the dominant political class are a small minority of the population. That’s the ongoing legacy of conquest, colonialism and proletarianization. Seen in this light, the unnecessary human suffering and death during the current environmental and social catastrophe — whose full effects are only now beginning to be felt — connect every community in the USA where short-term economic and political expediency have combined with racist, classist and ableist dehumanization to render mass populations disposable before, during, and after natural and human-induced disasters.
As Americans are subject to the brutal impacts of inevitable climate change, we face a clear choice: strong government intervention to save our lives, or a “survival of the fittest” dystopia that contemporary conservatism promises.
IT'S THE SOCIAL DARWINISM, STUPID!
The Social Darwinist Oligarchs hate you. They want you to be slaves on their plantation. They want you to have no rights, no freedom, and no future. The Social Darwinist DUOPOLY is there to turn your energy state into fear and anger and sorrow.
Whether he realized it or not at the time, when Sinclair Lewis wrote this in 1935, he was describing the Social Darwinist worldview: “Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.” -- Sinclair Lewis
The celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey explains that neoliberal ideology serves the following principle:
"There shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective: Those possessed of money shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion, not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative capacities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable."
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422133654.gif) If that isn't Social Darwinsm, I don't know what is. 🤷♂️😡
"Look at our world, our country, our interactions with each other……… this is not the mark of a healthy society, and if these are the self-appointed leaders of this flaming meteor…..it’s time to move on to new ideas and new people. Let’s relegate these fools to history. They perpetuate a narrative that it is right to behave in a strictly selfish, exploitative manner towards all. We simply can’t survive it any longer. Things will change because they have to." -- Kathleen Wallace
Kathleen Wallace is right about how criminally insane those assaullting our society, and the environment, are, but until the overwhelming majority of we-the-people collectively decide to BE ETHICALLY RESPONSIBLE (see below), instead of egocentric, we have no hope of successfully convincing the Social Darwinsist greedballs, who continuously divide and conquer us for profit over people and planet, to reject their socially destructve Social Darwinist Ideology and, instead, embrace sine qua non ETHICAL VALUES.
What it Means to be Responsible - Reflections on Our Responsibility for the Future by Theresa Morris, State University of New York at New Paltz (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/catastrophic-climate-change/future-earth/msg27/#msg27)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-141022142341.png)
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COUNTERPUNCH
OCTOBER 28, 2022 BY MATTHEW STEVENSON
Michael Cohen’s Revenge
SNIPPET:
Cohen continues:
Finally, as for the Russia stuff—as we now know by others who were in Trump’s orbit, including Stephanie Grisham—Trump was indeed Putin’s puppet. But I wasn’t. Never had been and wouldn’t be. And I never dreamed prosecutors would go after me for some of the things I was accused of doing. Sure, I paid off Stormy Daniels. But that doesn’t make me Sammy the Bull Gravano to Trump’s John Gotti. Trump isn’t that smart and I’m not Sammy. I dealt with campaign issues. We stiffed contractors. I fixed an CNBC poll to assuage Trump’s fragile ego. I paid off Stormy Daniels—for Donald Trump. So, yes, I paid off a p o r n star so my employer and Republican presidential candidate could avoid embarrassment and destroy the little hope everyone had in the general election. Those are the shitty things I did. Trump may have sold out his country, because Trump has no loyalty to anyone but himself. He doesn’t care what happens to any of us. I was stupid for hitching myself to that wagon—but it’s a far cry from messing over a bunch of contractors to being a traitor to your country.
Cohen also quotes a legal scholar on the obvious flaw in his prosecution:
Most will say, as did Mark Zaid, a nationally known attorney who deals with free speech constitutional claims and government accountability: “It is inconceivable to me that you would prosecute Michael Cohen for committing a crime and not prosecute the man who instructed him to do so.”
So far, however, (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) Donald Trump has proved that it pays to suborn witnesses, obstruct justice, tamper with federal elections, sexually abuse women, defraud banks, cook corporate books, lie to Congress, shortchange the IRS, steal classified documents, and plot sedition. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121109.gif)
Read more: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164555-532108.png)
Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics by Michael Cohen (https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/10/28/michael-cohens-revenge/)
"This is not a new world. It is simply an extension of what is the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) old one. It has refinements, technological advances and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom, but like every one of super states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: Logic is an Enemy and Truth is a Menace.
Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete." -- Rod Serling
Rod Serling Twilight Zone predicts Trump:
https://youtu.be/oADlQPJ_Zfc
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-141222170321.jpeg)
December 14, 2022
The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Dennis Kucinich on the folly of the proxy war in Ukraine and how the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110822203938-17581013.png) military-industrial-complex has become the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) enemy from within.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-podcast-with-e0f
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Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. -- Proverbs 16:18 The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil. -- Proverbs 16:4
Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished. -- Proverbs 16:5
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-170422173138-788458.jpeg)
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Courts too often shield information about products and toxic conditions that put our lives at risk.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-231222123533.png)
The Public Right to Know Act (SB 1149) brings transparency to the courts.
Authored by Senator Connie M. Leyva 🗽 and co-sponsored by Public Justice 🗽 and Consumer Reports 🕯️, this bill will ensure Californians are able to learn the facts about ☠️ dangerous public hazards that are discovered during litigation, ensuring that this vital information cannot be secretly concealed or routinely restricted by over-broad court orders or settlements.
Learn all about it and (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202545-13961729.png) pass this on to friends and family: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164555-532108.png)
https://www.publicjustice.net/when-secrecy-kills/
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The Progenitor of Inequalities – Corporate Personhood vs. Human Beings
February 3, 2023 By Ralph Nader
SNIPPETS:
Ever since 1886 when a U.S. Supreme Court reporter, in a headnote for the Court’s opinion, wrote that corporations possessed equal rights under the Constitution, judges and corporatist legislators have equipped corporations with an arsenal of inequitable rights. (The Constitution makes no mention whatsoever of “corporation” or “company”). ... ...
The modern history of corporate law is now aimed at maximizing the limited liability of the corporation itself.
The following twelve examples of inequality are shocking:
1. The corporate entity protects owners and shareholders from business debts and other liabilities. Yet, individual business owners are not personally shielded from business related debts or liabilities.
2. Bankruptcy laws favor corporations mightily over individuals. Bankrupt corporations can cancel their labor union contracts, are free from lawsuit liabilities against them, and can even get judges to grant retention bonuses for the culpable executives so they can provide parties with their alleged historical memory. Then under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company, having shed its liabilities, can reorganize and be back in business. If it is a giant bankrupt company like General Motors was in 2009, its recreation can get many billions of taxpayer dollars because it is considered “too big to fail.” Compare all these privileges with an individual going bankrupt no matter how wealthy he or she may have been. No contest.
3. Under criminal laws, corporations have huge advantages. Unlike most individuals who commit serious crimes, corporations have lawyers who shield them with “no-prosecution” or “deferred prosecution” agreements instead of criminal penalties. Unlike individual criminals, corporations cannot be jailed, and are almost never executed (that is having their charter pulled and put out of business, unless they are small business crooks). Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the big banks may even be too big to be prosecuted. While the big corporations, having cost the lives of many people and sickened more, continue on their merry profiteering ways. In this category are the large drug, chemical, auto, oil, coal and hospital chains.
4. Wrongfully injured people suing corporations under tort law find corporations can endlessly delay, with their insured or deductible legal expenses. Victims who are desperate for money to pay medical and other bills, cannot deduct their legal expenses and may not have insurance. Corporations can force low settlements because of their inequality of status and power.
5. Unequal taxation is a Niagara of inequality. The top federal tax rate for individuals is 37% and only 21% for corporations, before a plethora of loopholes. Why should an individual businessperson or any individual have to pay 37% and face an economic disadvantage vis-a-vis a competitor that only pays 21%? The baseless response is that there is a rational classification for this unfairness – nonsense.
6. Unlike individuals, corporations can create their own parents – (holding companies) for evasive purposes. They can also create hundreds of children (subsidiaries) to evade all kinds of law enforcement. The tax and non-regulatory haven of the Grand Cayman Islands has thousands of corporations “domiciled” there. One large building – Ugland House – “houses” 12,000 corporations. Real humans would be insufferably cramped if they attempted to quarter themselves with such inorganic efficiencies.
Until the decision last month by the Third Circuit of Appeals, saying no to profitable Johnson & Johnson’s corporate lawyers, corporations could create a subsidiary and put in it all the pending lawsuits by injured consumers, declare the subsidiary bankrupt and then leave the harmed plaintiffs with little recourse. This is called the “Texas two-step” a creation of corporate lawyers.
7. Corporations’ one-sided contracts requiring you to sign or click on, turn you into contract peons. Freedom of contract is gone. Your status is reduced to obeying the harsh impositions by banks, auto dealers, insurance companies, credit card companies, utilities, etc. Try to escape and go to a competitor. No dice. They all have the same restrictions, with minor variations. These long, inscrutable fine-print handcuffs require you to waive your right to go to court for a trial by a jury of your peers. ... ...
All these drives for maximum power and control are maturing the corporate state – as Wall Street and Washington merge. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in a formal message to Congress in 1938, called the control of government by private power “fascism.” In 1933 Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote an opinion warning about big corporations becoming a “Frankenstein monster” in our midst.
Full article: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422141413-627726.png)
https://nader.org/2023/02/03/the-progenitor-of-inequalities-corporate-personhood-vs-human-beings/
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. -- Proverbs 16:18 The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil. -- Proverbs 16:4
Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished. -- Proverbs 16:5
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-141222170321.jpeg)
February 5, 2023
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-060223182433.jpeg)
Woke Imperialism
Woke culture, devoid of class consciousness and a commitment to stand with the oppressed, is another tool in the arsenal of the imperial state.
SNIPPETS:
Diversity is important. But diversity, when devoid of a political agenda that fights the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed, is window dressing. It is about incorporating a tiny segment of those marginalized by society into unjust structures to perpetuate them. ... ...
Diversity when it serves the oppressed is an asset, but a con when it serves the oppressors.
Read or 🔊 listen to full article: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090422150144.png)
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/listen-to-this-article-woke-imperialism
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February 2023 Justice Briefs
Even though February is the shortest month, 2023 feels well underway as we near its end.
With the chaotic, disorganized start of the 118th Congress behind us, we believe that the House GOP leadership will once again take up legislation aimed at wiping away most class action lawsuits — just as they did when they gained control of the House in 2017. Though there is not yet a specific bill pending in Congress, Public Justice isn't waiting: This month, we launched the first in an anticipated series of stories aimed at educating the public about what's at stake when class actions are attacked (linked below).
The GOP Assault on the Courts is Coming Again. Here Are Lies They’ll Tell & Truths They Won't (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/15/2153101/-The-GOP-Assault-on-the-Courts-is-Coming-Again-Here-Are-Lies-They-ll-Tell-Truths-They-Won-t?_=2023-02-15T06:33:56.000-08:00)
(https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/Pk_UrG1wlJJf4ppLyRmnDo7AbBksiRaOxzihvCmT23M9yslJZyGggxEA0ml6LBtQN7RuUCH0rmCCI5sxSs5ZdVVl5CFHBoem97b4GrOiSkfDo81nPEKEPmPULyr08E_wb6C_EQ1TMmp5=s0-d-e1-ft#https://files.constantcontact.com/47d59cb2401/6f8dc4f7-eee4-47b9-85d8-f784c2855e72.png)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205132-6451602.gif) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121611.png)
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Texas 😈 Two-Step (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422155724.png) Stumbles in 🗽 Third Circuit (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422144605.png) (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/15/2153101/-The-GOP-Assault-on-the-Courts-is-Coming-Again-Here-Are-Lies-They-ll-Tell-Truths-They-Won-t?_=2023-02-15T06:33:56.000-08:00)
Click HERE to Read the Decision (https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/222003p.pdf) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164615-5351419.gif)
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March 2, 2023
By Nancy Altman, Social Security Works
A 40 year 🐘 (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) campaign to destroy Social Security
Social Security is the most popular and effective program in America. That’s why Wall Street has spent 40 years on an insidious campaign to undermine the people’s faith in the system.
Think we’re exaggerating? The right wing called for a “Leninist Strategy on Social Security” back in 1983. And reading it today, much of that strategy looks just like reality.
Social Security Works is pushing back against the Wall Street lies. But they have a head start. Chip in $7 to fight back! (https://secure.actblue.com/donate/leniniststrategy-2023?link_id=1&can_id=f6a3d966836d5b36db494f1237d9b97d&source=email-a-40-year-campaign-to-destroy-social-security-3&email_referrer=email_1834107)
In 1983, Social Security was in a real crisis, but the system’s popularity protected it from destruction, much to Wall Street’s disappointment. Wall Street sees our Social Security system as a cash cow that they can’t access. They would give anything to get their hands on Social Security’s $2.9 trillion trust fund, which is instead invested in US Treasury bonds.
So Wall Street-funded conservative think tanks got to work, outlining a long-term strategy to chip away at the public’s confidence in Social Security. And it was extraordinarily (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422182057.gif) successful.
The right-wing Cato Institute published a plan in 1983 called a Leninist Strategy (https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1983/11/cj3n2-11.pdf), designed to 😈 “neutralize” elderly voters while continuing to 🐍 undermine confidence for Social Security among the young. Their model was the Leninist movement's "success in isolating and weakening its opponents." (Yes, they really were taking cues from V.I. Lenin, even in the depths of the Cold War. :o)
This strategy of undermining Social Security is exactly what Rick Scott and Mike Pence are doing to this day! Chip in $7 to fight back against opponents of Social Security. Together, we will expand and defend Social Security! (https://secure.actblue.com/donate/leniniststrategy-2023?link_id=1&can_id=f6a3d966836d5b36db494f1237d9b97d&source=email-a-40-year-campaign-to-destroy-social-security-3&email_referrer=email_1834107)
The strategy had two main prongs: Make younger Americans lose faith that Social Security will keep its promise to them, and create an alternative in the form of private accounts that could be gambled on the stock market, similar to 401ks.
The strategy took a decade to be mainstreamed by the Republicans.
In 1988, a presidential candidate sharing their views about Social Security appeared on the scene. Former Delaware governor Pierre S. “Pete” du Pont IV, an heir to those who had thrown money at any FDR-hater they could find, sought the Republican nomination for president and ran on a platform of privatizing Social Security.
But George H. W. Bush won the Republican nomination and the election that year. As president, he showed his understanding of the program, when he said, “In my budget plan, I say we’ve got to control the growth of . . . mandatory programs, but set Social Security aside. It’s not a welfare program. It’s sacrosanct.”
In 1994, the House of Representatives returned to Republican control for the first time in over 40 years, the first time since Eisenhower was president. The Republicans had run in support of the “Contract with America,” drafted and promoted by Congressman Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Unfortunately for those opposing Social Security, the Contract with America expressed implicit support for the program by proposing only minor modifications.
However, in 1994, as the law had required since 1956, the Secretary of Health and Human Services appointed 14 members to serve on Social Security’s quadrennial advisory council. The trustees had begun to project a long-term deficit in Social Security’s financing occurring somewhere more than 35 years in the future. Included in the report was an appendix, entitled “Developments Since 1983,” which addressed the causes of the projected shortfall. The appendix began by debunking the myth that the inexorable tide of aging baby boomers had anything to do with the projected deficit.
The report clarified: “the fundamental ratio of beneficiaries to workers was fully taken into account in the 1983 financing provisions and, as a matter of fact, was known and taken into account well before that.”
The report then explained that the shortfall resulted from a variety of factors. By the time the advisory council reported, almost 31 million workers participated in 401(k) plans, which contained assets of over $1 trillion. As the stock market went up and up in the 1990s, these arrangements became more and more popular.
This was the opportunity the Leninist Strategy envisioned. More and more Americans were becoming used to private accounts for retirement income.
The Cato Institute, who had first called for this 😈 Strategy (https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1983/11/cj3n2-11.pdf), formed the Project on Social Security Privatization on August 14, 1995. A co-chairman of the project was José Pinero, the Pinochet minister of labor who had designed the Chilean system of private accounts. Just as supporters of private accounts had been doing since almost the moment Chile had privatized its Social Security program, Cato touted the Chilean system as a model for the United States, despite its decidedly mixed results.
The new 🐘 right-wing project fueled privatization talk with publications and conferences. In less than a decade, the project could proudly boast that it had “published more than forty books, articles, and reports” criticizing Social Security and advocating private accounts.
Conservative think tanks have spent decades working to undermine Social Security. Stand with Social Security Works today to protect and expand Social Security and invest in our future!
During these years, Social Security produced large surpluses, as it had been projected to do when the 1977 and 1983 amendments had been enacted—but the federal deficit produced record deficits.
On March 7, 1999, the wealthy governor of Texas had announced that he was forming a committee to explore a run for the presidency. Despite his limited political experience and his weaknesses as a speaker, he had one huge asset. He happened to be the son of a former president, and the two men shared the same first and last names, George Bush.
Well before Bush formed his exploratory committee, he had been thinking about the presidency and had been thinking about Social Security, as well. He had a long history of hostility to the program. As a student at the Harvard Business School in the early 1970s, he had railed against Social Security and other New Deal programs. In his losing bid for a congressional seat in 1978, he had ventured that “people [should] be given the chance to invest [Social Security] the way they feel.”
The patience of the anti-Social Security forces seemed to have paid off. They finally had a president who seemed to see the world their way.
Just as in the Bush years, Wall Street continues to try and get their hands on our hard-earned Social Security benefits. Donate to Social Security Works today to fight back against attempts to privatize this critical program.
Despite Social Security’s absence from the campaign, President (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Bush established a presidential commission on May 2, 2001, to study and make recommendations about Social Security.
Naturally, the members consisted only of people who were dedicated to destroying Social Security’s universal promise, and it resulted in Bush’s privatization scheme.
Unlike most presidential commissions, which are given broad guidelines within which to work, this commission was to be tightly constrained. Among the stipulations dictated by Bush was that the commission’s recommendations “must include individually controlled voluntary personal accounts.” It was not a commission to consider what should be done; rather, it was a commission to advise the president how to do what he had already made up his mind to do.
At the same time, (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Bush used the administration of government to sow distrust in Social Security. Though Trustees Reports between 2001 and 2004 grew slightly more optimistic, with the projected year of exhaustion of the trust funds slightly further into the future, Social Security Administration publications became more alarmist. No longer confirming that Social Security faced “no immediate crisis,” the publications now warned that the program was “unsustainable,” and “underfinanced.”
Most disturbing was the change in the annual statement sent to all of the 125 million workers age 25 and over who pay into the trust funds. This statement, completely unsolicited, simply arrives in each worker’s mailbox. The 2001 statement proclaimed, “Will Social Security be there when you retire? Of course it will.”
This reassurance was gone by 2002, and in 2005, the unsettling remark “Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time” was now in the mailing, just in case workers were feeling too secure.
The same tactics are being used today: Republicans in Congress are systematically underfunding the Social Security Administration, forcing office closings and longer wait times to receive the world class service Americans are promised.
Social Security Works is dedicated to fighting back against these 💵🎩🐘🐍🦍🐉 schemes that fly 😈 under the radar. Donate $7 to support our work! (https://secure.actblue.com/donate/leniniststrategy-2023?link_id=1&can_id=f6a3d966836d5b36db494f1237d9b97d&source=email-a-40-year-campaign-to-destroy-social-security-3&email_referrer=email_1834107&email_subject=a-40-year-campaign-to-destroy-social-security&refcodeEmailReferrer=email_1834107)
George W. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Bush set the agenda for 🐘 today’s Republicans: Pass a massive tax cut, and then try to cut Social Security in the name of (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202527-13931485.png) fiscal discipline.
This isn’t a new fight―it is the same thing we have been fighting for nearly a century. With our voices together, we beat Bush’s privatization scheme, we beat President Obama’s fiscal commissions, we beat Paul Ryan’s supercommittees, and we beat Donald Trump’s defunding attempt
Now, Republicans are holding the global economy hostage in exchange for unspecified budget cuts. While many of them claim not to have Social Security and Medicare in their sights at the moment, they are also quick to feed the same false narratives that the Leninist Strategy demands.
The way we win is to go on (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202540-1395150.gif) offense: We need to EXPAND Social Security, never (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110822203905-1755931.png)🔨 cut it.
We’re rallying members of Congress behind a bill to expand our Social Security system, which will protect and expand benefits for millions of Americans and keep Social Security strong through the 21st century and beyond!
We need to stand together to fight back against efforts to undermine confidence in Social Security. Donate to Social Security Works to ensure Social Security thrives for future generations!
Thanks,
Nancy Altman
Social Security Works
P.S. Can’t donate right now, but still want to help? Cast a vote for Social Security Works in CREDO’s donation pool for this month! (https://www.credodonations.com/organizations/social-security-works/?utm_source=org&utm_medium=social-security-works/&utm_campaign=202303_/_promo&link_id=6&can_id=f6a3d966836d5b36db494f1237d9b97d&email_referrer=email_1834107&email_subject=a-40-year-campaign-to-destroy-social-security) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-200123150257.gif)
Social Security Works leads the fight every day to expand and protect our Social Security system. Become a member today. (https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ssw2023?link_id=8&can_id=f6a3d966836d5b36db494f1237d9b97d&source=email-a-40-year-campaign-to-destroy-social-security-3&email_referrer=email_1834107&email_subject=a-40-year-campaign-to-destroy-social-security&refcodeEmailReferrer=email_1834107)
Social Security Works for Everyone! (https://www.amazon.com/Social-Security-Works-Everyone-Protecting/dp/1620976226?keywords=social+security+works+for+everyone&qid=1651002170&sprefix=social+security+works+for+,aps,73&sr=8-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=socsecworks-20&linkId=d42dddde544575c891f001f01cd0d012&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)
From SSW's co-founders, Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson, this book builds on the success of 2013's Social Security Works: The Book, updating and expanding its argument that Social Security is the best way to protect and expand the insurance Americans love and count on. Order your copy today! (https://www.amazon.com/Social-Security-Works-Everyone-Protecting/dp/1620976226?keywords=social+security+works+for+everyone&qid=1651002170&sprefix=social+security+works+for+,aps,73&sr=8-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=socsecworks-20&linkId=d42dddde544575c891f001f01cd0d012&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)
Contact info@socialsecurityworks.org
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Graphics are by yours truly.
MARCH 7, 2023 By HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
SNIPPETS:
CPAC started in 1974, and since then it has been a telltale for the direction the 🐘 Republican Party is 🦍 going. This year was no exception. ... ...
The headliner was former president Trump, twice impeached, deeply involved in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and embroiled in a range of criminal investigations. In his speech, Trump embraced his leadership of those hardening around a violent mentality based in grievance that echoes that of fascist movements.
“In 2016, I declared: I am your voice,” he said. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422162847-10321563.png)
He claimed that he and his followers are “engaged in an epic struggle to rescue our country from the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it…. We are going to finish what we started. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-310322170737.jpeg)... ...
Republicans are planning to take this (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) disinformation campaign across the nation. Despite their insistence that (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202527-13931485.png) they want to slash government spending, Republican leaders are in fact urging their colleagues to engage in “field hearings” that will take their “message” straight to voters at a time when they are not managing to accomplish much of anything at all in Washington. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Jordan’s Judiciary Committee has requested a travel budget of $262,000 (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121611.png), more than 30 times what it spent on travel last year and 3 times what it spent before the pandemic, and it is not just the Judiciary Committee that is hitting the road.
As Annie Karni and Catie Edmondson of the New York Times noted today, this also means that they speak at the plants of 🐘🦕🦖 Republican (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gif)donors, thus giving them free advertising. Congressional Democrats say they received almost no notice of these trips.
News broke today that an Israeli tech firm has uncovered a vast network of as many as hundreds of thousands of fake Twitter accounts designed to promote Trump and his vision, creating the illusion that he is more popular than he is. The analysts at the firm, Cyabra, believe the system was created within the U.S. “One account will say, ‘Biden is trying to take our guns; Trump was the best,’ and another will say, ‘Jan. 6 was a lie and Trump was innocent,’” said the engineer who discovered the network, Jules Gross. “Those voices are not people. For the sake of democracy I want people to know this is happening.”
Full article: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121331.gif)
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/march-6-2023
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The Class Struggle
Friday, March 3, 2023
“Florida is officially a laboratory for (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6781750.png) fascism in the U.S.:
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-230622140628.jpeg)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-021022180016.gif)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422142505.gif)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) Ron DeSantis is just fine with this. Cruelty is his trademark (https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2023/03/american-fascists.html)
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(https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/K9uIiVVu2V4cGIaAjDp1YqqG2DfK2YODTYv9I8YpDdZrcwzMAE63EwDeXUGzJGfCzKJ6tQMUo0ZDo2UyDYSaLfoOLzmiz-2ACS5OeKGJerWfEby1VJmW2RlPQvk3fO6j8mJLMQyzLUQAQKr8WF_Hw2h9M0pWmEwg474=s0-d-e1-ft#https://gallery.mailchimp.com/33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e/images/ea17bad5-7f24-4879-b85e-aa99f8ea3207.jpg)
March 21, 2023 by Greg Palast
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Reagan’s Treason, (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Two Bushes and the $23 Million 😈💰 Payoff
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This week, a Texas pol, 🐍 Ben Barnes, confessed that he was personally involved—and therefore an eyewitness to–high treason: The Ronald Reagan campaign’s successful (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6781750.png) secret deal with the Iranian government to hold 52 Americans hostages so that Reagan could defeat Jimmy Carter.
Reagan’s skanky deal worked. In 1980, Carter’s failure to bring home the hostages destroyed his chance of reelection. Reagan ultimately would repay the favor from Iran’s murder-crats with weapons and even, for the Ayatollah Khomeini, a birthday cake from Reagan advisor Oliver North.
The question is, why now? Why did Barnes suddenly blow the whistle on this crime—and a crime it is—four decades late? His cute excuse, reported without question by the New York Times, is that, “History needs to know that this happened.”
Wrong. “History” doesn’t need to know—American voters needed to know about Reagan’s treason before the 1980 election.
So, then, why did Barnes squirrel away the truth for decades? Follow the money.
It’s a money trail that leads to two Bushes who would not have become president if not for Barnes’ silence about Iran—and Barnes’ omertà about another creepy Bush scheme.
In 1999, for The Guardian, I discovered that Barnes, in his previous role as Lt. Governor of Texas, used his political juice to get Congressman George Bush Sr.’s son, “Dubya” into the Texas Air Guard—over literally thousands of far-more-qualified applicants. (Little Bush scored 25 out of 100 on the test, just one point above “too dumb to fly.”)
And so, 😈 Dubya dodged the draft and Vietnam.
Barnes hid the truth despite pleas from Texas Gov. 🗽 Ann Richards, who, in 1994, lost a squeaker of an election too.
In Austin, Texas, I received unshakeable evidence that Barnes was the fixer who got Congressman Bush’s son out of the Vietnam draft. (This, while Bush Sr. was voting to send other men’s sons to Vietnam.)
What did Barnes get for his burial of Reagan’s deal with Iran and Bush Jr.’s draft dodging? Did $23 million do it?
In 1999, I was investigating a company, GTech, which ran both the British and Texas lotteries. Texas had disqualified GTech from operating the state lottery based on strong evidence of corruption. But oddly, the new Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, fired the lottery director who banned GTEch. Then Bush’s new lottery commissioner gave GTech back its multi-billion-dollar contract, no bidding.
Notably, Bush’s firing of the state’s lottery director came two days after a meeting with GTech’s lobbyist—Ben Barnes.
Barnes’ fees from GTech? $23 million. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210509-141844.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205132-6451602.gif) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121611.png)
I wasn’t in the Bush-Barnes little tête-à-tête: the info came from a confidential memo from the lottery director that was well buried inside Justice Department files.
In a civil suit, Barnes supposedly denied any quid pro quo with Gov. Bush. Maybe. A nice payment from GTech to the wronged lottery director sealed Barnes’ testimony from the public.
Maybe Bush met with Barnes just to reminisce (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-280622170247.jpeg). But if Barnes had the Bush family’s entire political fortune in his pocket, did he really need to remind Dubya of the consequences if the Governor did not take care of Barnes’ client?
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Secretly conspiring with a foreign power to keep Americans imprisoned, secretly negotiating with and providing weapons to a foreign enemy is the definition of treason—and so would a cover-up for cash.
This was another example, I wrote in The Guardian, how the Bushes turned America into “the best democracy money can buy.”
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I then wrote a book of that title and made a film, Bush Family Fortunes, detailing the Bush Family crime-wave, for BBC Television.
Today, you can download that documentary, Bush Family Fortunes, free of charge (https://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=4c003588c2&e=0b7857deba). (If you want to throw in a tax-deductible donation, hey, we won’t say ‘no.’ Our investigations continue: The cast of (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) characters has changed, but not the crimes.)
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And a word about the 🐍 creeps, 🐒 cowards and 🦀 conmen who call themselves “journalists.” Let’s start with a trivia question: Who is 🐉 Dan Rather? He’s a former TV star and one-time reporter who took my story of Bush’s draft dodging, stuck it on 60 Minutes and, in violation of any sense of ethics and decency, exposed a whistleblower, Texas Air Guard Col. 🗽 Bill Burkett 🦅, a man of inestimable courage and integrity.
Rather’s exposure ruined Burkett. No Texan would sell him feed. His cattle were dying, so he lost his ranch. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145533-5671050.gif)
Dan Rather was fired by CBS for getting the network in hot water with the Bush White House. Then, by his own admission, Rather agreed to backtrack on the story of Bush the draft dodger in return for a promise of a return to the CBS airwaves. CBS screwed Rather—but that often happens to feckless recreants.
Neither I nor the BBC nor The Guardian retracted a single word of our story of Dubya the Draft Dodger nor the tale of the $23 million questionable payment.
There are zeroes—and there are 🗽heroes. The story of Reagan and his “October Surprise” was first busted open by 🦅 Robert Parry – who also uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal. Instead of getting a Pulitzer, Parry’s career was destroyed. For uncovering too many uncomfortable truths, he was bounced from the Associated Press, Newsweek, Bloomberg, and The Nation.
Parry died in 2018, in journalistic exile. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422141413-627726.png) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-100323192454-23192252.gif)
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MARCH 27, 2023 By Chris Hedges
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The Donald Trump Problem
Donald Trump is not being targeted for the misdemeanors and serious felonies he appears to have committed but for discrediting and undermining the entrenched power of the ruling duopoly.
Donald Trump — facing four government-run investigations, three criminal and one civil, targeting himself and his business — is not being targeted because of his crimes. Nearly every serious crime he is accused of carrying out has been committed by his political rivals. He is being targeted because he is deemed dangerous for his willingness, at least rhetorically, to reject the Washington Consensus regarding neoliberal free-market and free-trade policies, as well as the idea that the U.S. should oversee a global empire. He has not only belittled the ruling ideology, but urged his supporters to attack the apparatus that maintains the duopoly by declaring the 2020 election illegitimate.
The Donald Trump problem is the same as the Richard Nixon problem. When Nixon was forced to resign under the threat of impeachment, it wasn’t for his involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity, nor was it for his illegal use of the CIA and other federal agencies to spy upon, intimidate, harass and destroy radicals, dissidents and activists. Nixon was brought down because he targeted other members of the ruling political and economic establishment. Once Nixon, like Trump, attacked the centers of power, the media was unleashed to expose abuses and illegalities it had previously minimized or ignored.
Members of Nixon’s re-election campaign illegally bugged the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office building. They were caught after they broke back into the offices to fix the listening devices. Nixon was implicated in both the pre-election illegality, including spying on political opponents, as well as attempting to use federal agencies to cover up the crime. His administration maintained an “enemies list” that included well known academics, actors, union leaders, journalists, businessmen and politicians.
One 1971 internal White House memo entitled, “Dealing with our Political Enemies” — drafted by White House Counsel John Dean, whose job it was to advise the president on the law — described a project designed to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”
Nixon’s conduct, and that of his closest aides, was clearly illegal and deserving of prosecution. There were 36 guilty verdicts or guilty pleas associated with the Watergate scandal two years after the break-in. But it was not the crimes Nixon committed abroad or against dissidents that secured his political execution but the crimes he carried out against the Democratic Party and its allies, including in the establishment press.
“The political center was subjected to an attack with 🦍 techniques that are usually reserved for those who depart from the norms of 😈 acceptable political belief,” Noam Chomsky wrote in The New York Review of Books in 1973, a year before Nixon’s resignation.
As Edward Herman and Chomsky point out in their book, “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media:”
The answer is clear and concise: powerful groups are capable of defending themselves, not surprisingly; and by media standards, it is a scandal when their position and rights are threatened. By contrast, as long as illegalities and violations of democratic substance are confined to marginal groups or dissident victims of U.S. military attack, or result in a diffused cost imposed on the general population, media opposition is muted and absent altogether. This is why Nixon could go so (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) far, lulled into a false sense of security precisely because the watchdog only barked when he began to threaten the privileged.”
What led to the unraveling of Nixon’s government, and what lies at the core of the attacks against Trump, is the fact that, like Nixon, Trump’s targets included “the 🎩 rich and(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gif)respectable, spokesmen for official ideology, men who are expected to share power, to 😈 design social policy, and to 😈 mold popular opinion,” as Chomsky noted about Nixon at the time. “Such (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) people are not fair game for persecution at the hands of the state.”
This is not to minimize Trump’s crimes. Trump — nearly even in the polls with President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential race — appears to have committed several misdemeanors and serious felonies.
In November 2022, the Department of Justice appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and any potential criminal liability resulting from that act, as well as any unlawful interference with the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election.
Separately, a district attorney in Georgia is working with a special purpose grand jury in relation to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election result. A key piece of evidence is the notorious phone call between Trump and Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, in which the president kept insisting he needed more votes to be found. Charges in this case could include conspiracy to commit election fraud, racketeering and pressuring and/or threatening public officials.
The Manhattan district attorney has been investigating the $130,000 Trump used to pay off the p o r n star Stormy Daniels, with whom Trump allegedly had a sexual relationship. This payment was misreported in the Trump Organization’s records as a legal retainer in violatation of campaign finance laws.
Finally, New York Attorney General Letitia James is bringing a civil lawsuit alleging the Trump Organization lied about its assets in order to secure bank loans. If the attorney general’s lawsuit is successful, Trump and other members of his family may be barred from doing business in New York, including buying property there for five years.
Trump’s alleged offenses should be investigated. Though, the cases involving Daniels and the retention of classified documents seem relatively minor and similar to those committed by Trump’s political opponents.
Last year, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the DNC agreed to pay a fine of $8,000 and $105,000 respectively, for mislabelling a $175,000 expenditure on opposition research, namely the long-discredited “Steele Dossier,” as “legal expenses.” The improper retention of classified documents has typically resulted in a slap on the wrist when other powerful politicians have been investigated. Clinton, for example, used private email servers instead of a government email account when she was secretary of state. The FBI concluded that she sent and received materials classified as top secret on her private server. Ultimately, FBI director James Comey declined to prosecute her. Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence and Biden also had classified documents at their homes, though we are told this may have been “inadvertent.” The discovery of these classified documents, rather than triggering outrage in most of the media, initiated a conversation about “overclassification.” Former CIA director David Petraeus was given two years probation and a $100,000 fine after he admitted to providing highly classified “black books” that contained handwritten classified notes about official meetings, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and the names of covert officers to his lover, Paula Broadwell, who was also writing a fawning biography of Petraeus.
As was the case with Nixon, the most serious charges Trump may face involve his attack on the foundations of the two-party duopoly, especially undermining the peaceable transfer of power from one branch of the duopoly to the other. In Georgia, Trump could face very serious criminal charges with potentially lengthy sentences if convicted, likewise if the federal special prosecutor indicts Trump for unlawful interference in the 2020 election. We won’t know until any indictments are made public.
Yet, the most egregious of Trump’s actions while in office either received minimal media coverage, were downplayed or lauded as acts carried out in defense of democracy and the U.S.-led international order.
Why hasn’t Trump been criminally investigated for the act of war he committed against Iran and Iraq when he assassinated Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani and nine other people with a drone strike in Baghdad airport? Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi condemned the strike and told his parliament that Trump lied in order to get Soleimani exposed in Iraq as part of peace talks between Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iraq’s parliament passed a resolution demanding that all foreign troops leave the country, which the U.S. government proceeded to reject.
Why not prosecute or impeach Trump for pressuring his secretary of state to lie and say that Iran wasn’t complying with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran nuclear deal? Trump ultimately fired him and resumed unilateral, devastating and illegal sanctions against Iran, in violation of international law and quite possibly domestic U.S. law.
Why wasn’t Trump impeached for his role in the ongoing attempts to engineer a coup and overthrow the democratically elected president of Venezuela? Trump declared a previously unknown right-wing politician — and would-be coup leader — Juan Guaido to be the true Venezuelan president and then illegally handed him control of the Latin American country’s U.S. bank accounts. The illegal U.S. sanctions that have facilitated this coup attempt have blocked food, medicine and other goods from entering the country and prevented the government from exploiting and exporting its own oil, devastating the economy. Over 40,000 people died between 2017 and 2019 due to the sanctions, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. That figure is certainly higher now.
Nixon, like Trump, was not impeached for his most egregious ☠️ crimes. He was never charged for directing the CIA to destroy the Chilean economy and back a far-right military coup that overthrew the democratically elected left-wing government of Salvador Allende. Nixon wasn’t brought to justice for his illegal, secret mass bombing campaigns in Cambodia and Laos that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, and his government’s role in the slaughter of Vietnamese people, resulting in at least 3.8 million killed according to a joint report from Harvard University and the University of Washington and even higher casualties according to investigative journalist Nick Turse. Nixon wasn’t held accountable for what then-President Lyndon Johnson privately blasted as “treason” when he discovered that the yet-to-be-elected Republican candidate for president, and his future National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, were deliberately and illegally sabotaging his peace negotiations in Vietnam, ultimately prolonging the war for another four years.
Articles of impeachment against Nixon were passed by the House Judiciary Committee. Articles I and III focused on allegations related to Watergate and Nixon’s failure to deal properly with congressional investigations. Article II related to allegations of violations of citizens’ civil liberties and abuse of government power. But they became moot once Nixon resigned, and in the end the disgraced former president didn’t face charges related to Watergate. A month after Nixon left office, President Gerald Ford pardoned him for “all offenses against the United States” that he “committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.”
This pardon cemented into place the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) imperial presidency. It entrenched the modern notion of “elite immunity,” as the constitutional lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald notes. Neither Republicans nor Democrats want to set a precedent that might hamstring the unchecked and unaccountable power of a future president.
The most serious ☠️ crimes are those that are (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622153114-13822364.jpeg) normalized by the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) power elite, regardless of who initiated them. George W. Bush may have started the wars in the Middle East, but Barack Obama maintained and expanded them. Obama’s crowning achievement may have been the Iran nuclear deal, but Biden, his former vice president, hasn’t reversed Trump’s trashing of it, nor has he reversed the decision by Trump to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in violation of international law.
Trump, like most of his opponents in the Republican and Democrat parties, serves the interests of the billionaire class. He, too, is hostile to the rights of workers. He, too, is an enemy of the press. He, too, backs the diversion of hundreds of billions of federal dollars to the war industry to maintain the empire. He, too, does not respect the rule of law. He, too, is personally and politically corrupt. But he is also impulsive, bigoted, inept and ignorant. His baseless conspiracy theories, vulgarity and absurd antics are an embarrassment to the established power elite in the two ruling parties. He is difficult, unlike Biden, to control. He has to go, not because he is a criminal, but because he is not trusted by the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) ruling crime syndicate to 😈 manage the firm.
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrishedges/p/the-donald-trump-problem
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Letters from an American
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
MAY 5, 2023
SNIPPET:
And this is the profound national crisis at the heart of the stories emerging about Thomas (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822134118-17091258.gif)💵🎩😈. His votes were decisive not only in Shelby County v. Holder, but also in the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, also decided by a vote of 5–4, which opened the floodgates for 💵🎩😈 dark money in political campaigns. Those decisions dramatically undermined our democracy. It now seems 🗽 imperative (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090422150144.png) to (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202540-1395150.gif) grapple with the fact it appears a key vote on the court that decided those cases was compromised.
Read more: 🤦♂️ (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622153112-137482.gif)
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/may-4-2023
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Letters from an American
June 13, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JUN 14, 2023
“🦀 DONALD TRUMP UNDER ARREST, IN FEDERAL CUSTODY.”
It was quite a chyron from CNN, marking the first time in the history of the United States that a former president has been charged with federal crimes. And in this case, what crimes they are: the willful retention, sharing, and hiding of classified documents that compromise our national security. Trump’s own national security advisor John Bolton said, “This is material that in the hands of America’s adversaries would do incalculable damage to the United States. This is a very serious case and it’s not financial fraud, it’s not hush money to p o r n stars, this is the national security of the United States at stake. I think we’ve got to take the politics out of this business when national security is at stake.”
Cameras were barred in the courtroom as Trump pleaded not guilty to the 37 charges in Miami today. Presiding magistrate judge Jonathan Goodman ordered Trump not to communicate with witnesses about the case, including co-defendant Waltine Nauta, then released him on his own recognizance, that is, without needing to post bail. Special prosecutor Jack Smith was in the courtroom; ABC’s senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott reported that Trump did not look at Smith.
Then Trump went back to his residence in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he gave a speech that New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who is close to the Trump camp, described as low energy, focusing on his insistence that he had a right to keep the classified documents (which experts agree is nonsense and amounts to a confession) and that the indictment was “the most evil and heinous abuse of power.” Right-wing Newsmax and the Fox News Channel (FNC) carried the speech; CNN and MSNBC did not.
FNC has been hemorrhaging viewers since it fired Tucker Carlson, a threat to its bottom line that might have been behind its chyron tonight attacking Biden by claiming “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.” (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202551-13971996.gif)
In statements similar to the one from FNC, 👿 right-wing pundits spent the day flooding Twitter and other social media with furious insistence that Trump is being (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090822164512.png) unfairly prosecuted (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090822140006.gif), followed by ::) attacks on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and with allegations that there are tapes of President Biden accepting bribes—allegations that Biden openly laughed at this evening. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202556-13982337.gif)
But that performative outrage among leaders did not translate into support on the ground in Miami. Law enforcement had been prepared for as many as 50,000 protesters, but only a few hundred to a thousand turned out (one wearing a shirt made of an American flag and carrying the head of a pig on a pole).
The lack of supporters on the ground was significant. Since the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, much of Trump’s power has rested on his ability to call out his base to silence opponents by threatening violence. That power was in full force on January 6, 2021, when his loyalists set out to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Democrat Joe Biden president, believing they were operating under the orders of then-president Trump.
Since then, though, more than 1,000 people who participated in the events of January 6 have been charged with crimes, and many have been sentenced to prison, while Trump, who many defendants say called them to arms, has skated. That discrepancy is likely dampening the enthusiasm of Trump’s supporters for protest.
Today Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out that the audacity of Nevada’s militia-related Bundy family simply grew as family members launched successive stands against the federal government without significant legal repercussions. Republican politicians cheered on their attacks on federal officials for political gain, while Democratic politicians didn’t push to go after them out of concern that a show of federal power would alienate Nevada voters.
Trump’s threats and determination to stir up his base seem to reflect a similar consideration: if he can just rally enough support, he might imagine, the federal government will back off.
Federal officials permitting politics to trump the rule of law in our past have brought us to this moment. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090422150144.png)
After the Civil War, officials charged Confederate president Jefferson Davis and 38 other leading secessionists with treason but decided not to prosecute when the cases finally came to trial in 1869. They wanted to avoid the anger a trial would provoke because they hoped to reconcile the North and South. They also worried they would not get convictions in the southern states where the trials were assigned.
In the end, between President Andrew Johnson’s pardons and Congress’s granting of amnesty to Confederates, no one was convicted for their participation in the attempt to destroy the country. This generosity did not create the good feeling men like General Ulysses S. Grant hoped it would. Instead, as Civil War scholar Elizabeth Varon established in her book on the surrender at Appomattox, it helped to create the myth that the southern cause had been so noble that even the conquering northern armies had been forced to recognize it. The ideology of the 👿 Confederacy never became odious, and it has lived on. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122316-6601865.bmp)
The same quest for reconciliation drove 🐘 President Gerald R. Ford to grant a pardon to former president Richard M. Nixon for possible “offenses against the United States” in his quest to win the 1972 election by bugging the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Washington, D.C., Watergate Hotel.
🐒 Ford explained that the “tranquility” the nation had found after Nixon’s resignation “could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States.” The threat of a trial would “cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.” (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110822211037-18321080.jpeg)
In an echo of 100 years before, Ford’s generosity did not bring 🐘 Nixon or his supporters back into the fold. Instead, they (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422193742-835209.jpeg)doubled down on the idea that Nixon had done nothing wrong and had been hounded from office by his “liberal” enemies. Nixon himself never admitted wrongdoing, telling the American people he was resigning because he no longer had enough support in Congress to advance the national interest. Although his support had collapsed because even members of his own party believed he was guilty of obstructing justice, violated constitutional rights of citizens, and abused his power, 🐍 Nixon (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202527-13931485.png) blamed the press, whose members had destroyed him with “leaks and accusations and innuendo.”
The willingness of (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) government officials to ignore the rule of law in order to buy peace gave us enduring reverence for the principles of the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Confederacy, along with countless dead Unionists, mostly Black people, killed as former (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) Confederates reclaimed supremacy in the South.
It also gave us the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-190419232147.png&hash=b9d818543137cfd7ac4b712c1c25fe3b94b6d174) idea that (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) presidents cannot be held accountable for crimes, a belief that likely made 😈 some of the presidents who followed Nixon less careful (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090822151052-17321038.png) about following the law than they might have been if they had seen Nixon indicted.
Holding a former president accountable for an alleged profound attack on the United States is indeed unprecedented, as his supporters insist. But far from being a bad thing to stand firm on the rule of law at the upper levels of government, it seems to fall into the category of “high time.” (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422144605.png) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422180949.png)
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/june-13-2023
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Notes:
https://twitter.com/Fritschner/status/1668684149845028864
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/13/politics/trump-court-hearing-takeaways/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/13/us/trump-indictment-arraignment-court
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/13/us/politics/trump-arraignment-miami-court.html
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1668781392694591488
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/donald-trump-indictment-court-appearance-06-13-23/index.html
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/25/1165022885/1000-defendants-january-6-capitol-riot
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/former-fbi-general-counsel-says-trump-admitted-to-a-crime-during-tuesday-night-speech-that-is-an-admission-to-that-charge/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-end-of-bundy-clan-rules
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169189
https://www.nps.gov/rich/learn/historyculture/the-trial-of-jefferson-davis-cancelled-february-15-1869.htm
Elizabeth R. Varon, Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Richard M. Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), pp. 1044-1045.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/13/trump-supporters-begin-descending-on-miami-courthouse-amid-circus-like-atmosphere-00101721
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-and-tucker-carlson-both-lose-after-his-firing
https://watergate.info/impeachment/articles-of-impeachment
Twitter links:
ChrisDJackson/status/1668792486553088002
JuddLegum/status/1668603907184947201
MarkHertling/status/1668686293448925201
AmbJohnBolton/status/1668736977439531008
MollyJongFast/status/1668817291494998017
VABVOX/status/1668711564608778246
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Letters from an American
June 14, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON JUN 15
SNIPPET:
..., in 1938, as part of the New Deal effort to level the playing field between workers and employers, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). It established a federal minimum wage, a 44-hour work week, and an end to work for those under 16. During his quest for the legislation, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told Congress, “A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling worker's wages or stretching workers’ hours.”
By the time the FLSA passed, laws requiring children to attend school had joined with the high unemployment of the Depression years to shift the idea that children should work to the idea that they should stay in school, and worker protections and Social Security, passed in the same era, meant that parents no longer needed their children’s wages to survive.
In the years after World War II, when people in the United States were determined to stand strong against both fascism and communism, the nation embraced the idea that children should be in school rather than in factories. An education would permit them to be upwardly mobile economically, thus lessening the likelihood that they would be tempted by authoritarian leaders who promised to improve their standard of living, and it would guarantee that they would be informed citizens who would work to advance democracy.
Until 🤦♂️ recently, that idea seemed permanent.
Full article (Be sure and check out the EXCELLENT (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122257-657398.png) Comments):
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/june-14-2023
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090422150144.png) The trouble with the U.S. being ruled by Social Darwinists is that they don’t care about other people. They are actually incapable of imagining the lives of others, especially the fact that these others care about each other, and what happens to them.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-011022141610.png)
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422133654.gif) Seeing the despicable ☠️ war (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205132-6451602.gif)🎩 (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gif)profiteering and the 🦖 hydrocarbon 😈 hellspawn profit over people and planet (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) modus operandi that has thoroughly corrupted our government and judiciary, we can reach only one conclusion:
IT'S THE (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) SOCIAL 🦍 DARWINISM, STUPID!
Social Darwinists believe that ethics based principles are 'limitations pretending to be virtues'. To them, ethics are 'feel good illusions' that humans invented to pretend our species has empathy. To Social Darwinists, empathy is irrefutable evidence of inexcusable weakness. To them, all who are guided by ethics are deluded fools that should be eliminated from the human 'apex predator' gene pool for the "good" of our species.
Social Darwinists believe that the dictum, “survival of the fittest” (a term coined not by Charles Darwin but by sociologist Herbert Spencer), means that only the "fittest" should survive. Darwin's book published later ("Descent of Man") made it clear that Darwin completely supported the morally bankrupt views of Spencer.
The ideology of the Social Darwinist is indistinguishable from the despicable ideology of NAZI Germany, clearly exemplified in their brutally enforced morally bankrupt concentration camp law: “Eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbor.”
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250124004058.png)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-151023223446.png)
Enthusiastic converts to Social Darwinism have, to this day, used the language of evolution to frame an understanding of the growing gulf between the rich and the poor, as well as the many differences between cultures all over the world. The explanation they arrived at, and continue to use to justify biosphere trashing profit over people and planet, regardless of any alligator tear filled mendacious claims to the contrary, is that businessmen and others who are economically and socially successful are so because they are biologically and socially “naturally” the fittest. 🙄🤔
Conversely, they reason that the poor are “naturally” weak and unfit and it would be an error to allow the weak of the species to continue to breed. 😡 Anyone paying attention can SEE that Netanyahu's Government, AND ANYONE or ANY GOVERNMENT (i.e. 😈 US) supporting it, IS a 🦖 SOCIAL DARWINIST, whether they consciously carry that label or not.
EXCELLENT Painting by Caitlin Johnstone:
BLOOD on our Hands
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-211123142300.jpeg)
The "Apex Predators have a DARWINIAN RESPONSIBILITY to BE as PREDATORILY EVOLVED (SEE: Steal everything that is not nailed down.) as possible" WORLDVIEW is the socially destructive tsunami now engulfing human society.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-261123171835.png)
What all the entrenched insiders among the parasitic, predatory (i.e. Social Darwinist) elites and institutions don't dare admit publicly, though they celebrate that privately, is that to protect themselves from consequence, making the rest of us sacrifice everything else is what they-the-Apex-Predators have a DARWINIAN DUTY to DO. After all, Homo sapiens is "just the result of random undirected processes", the more you can "enlightened self interest" DO to get MORE POWER by causing, directly or indirectly, the death of human competitors for the species gene pool high ground, "the better".
Social Darwinists champion Kafkaesque survival olympics.
Social Darwinism is actually based, not on "survival of the fittest", but on fear of tomorrow, a morally bankrupt excuse for rejecting altruism and empathy and embracing a selfish greed dominated hoarding 🦍 modus vivendi. "One who fears tomorrow does not offer his bread to others. But one who is willing to divide his food with a stranger has already shown himself capable of fellowship and faith, the two things from which hope is born." -- Primo Levi, author of Survival in Auschwitz
Social Darwinism is the morally bankrupt world view that spawned the profit over people and planet neoliberal ideology. Neoliberal intellectuals like Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman were all Social Darwinists long before they renamed laissez-faire liberalism (that had been thoroughly discredited by the Great Depression) with the catchy title of "Neoliberalism".
The celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey explains that neoliberal ideology serves the following principle:
"There shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective: Those possessed of money shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion, not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative capacities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable."
David Harvey, “The Party of Wall Street Meets its Nemesis,” http://www.zcommunications.org/the/party/of/wall/street/meets/its/nemesis. Also, by David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Agelbert OBSERVATION: If the morally bankrupt, socially destructive ideology which backs no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely, while it simultaneously deems the rest of humanity disposable, is not SOCIAL DARWINISM, I don't know what is.
Frugality and prudence, once accepted by all human cultures as sine qua non, has given way to massive 🐷 excess by TPTB (and too many of the, brainwashed by the "education system", non-rich populace) and a level of craziness in culture ethical humans never imagined they would experience.
Our species is on a track to extinction BECAUSE of TPTB's TOTAL embrace of the morally bankrupt SOCIAL DARWINIST IDEOLOGY. TPTB, blatantly self-serving, corrupt, unaccountable and devoid of any sense of good and evil, will be our doom if they are not stopped.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-261123175756.jpeg)
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June 16, 2023 My Federal Retirement
House 🐘(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) Republicans Propose Cuts to Federal Employee Pay and Benefits (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121157.gif) (https://www.myfederalretirement.com/rsc-proposal/)
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010723122324.gif)
06/08/20233
Latest Natural Health News By ANH-USA
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822134118-1710799.gif) What Do Fishermen and Dietary Supplements Have in Common?
A 40-year old Supreme Court case has given federal agencies a blank check to abuse their power, but all of that could be coming to an end. Here’s what that means for natural health.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to reconsider a decades-old decision that, if reversed, will curb the power of federal agencies. In 🦖 Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court ruled that, when a law passed by Congress is (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-100323192446-23162278.png) unclear or ambiguous (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090822140006.gif) on a topic, courts should defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of the statute. This makes it extremely difficult for anyone to challenge federal agencies’ interpretation of the law and has had a direct negative consequence for supplements and the natural products industry. Among the many possible results if the so-called “Chevron doctrine” is overturned, many potential avenues open up to challenge FDA and FTC interpretations that have limited access to and information about supplements.
The case that will be heard by the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) Supreme Court challenging the Chevron doctrine has been brought by a group of commercial fishing companies challenging a rule issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service requiring the fishermen to pay for the costs of observers that ensure regulatory compliance with federal fishing rules. While the law states that the government can require fishing boats to carry monitors, it does not specify who pays for them. But with the precedent in Chevron, lower courts hearing the fishermen’s case deferred to the interpretation of the federal agency, which said the fishermen should pay for the observers. Now the case will be heard by the Supreme Court, which will specifically (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) reconsider its ruling on Chevron.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422162854-1034303.png)
It’s hard to overstate how game-changing this decision could be. Look back through the archives of ANH’s Pulse of Natural Health newsletter, and notice how many times we are writing about how the FDA or FTC are working to limit access to natural medicines. In many cases this is done through an overreach because the agency is 😈 taking liberties with the law. Here are a few examples:
► Implied disease claims. Federal law allows supplement companies to make claims related to how a nutrient effects the structure or function of the body, as long as they aren’t claiming to treat or prevent a disease. But the FDA has denied many truthful claims because it interprets them as “implied” disease claims. So, the truthful claim that chromium lowers blood sugar, for example, is banned because, according to the FDA, this is an “implied” disease claim that chromium treats diabetes. This and other claims have been denied on the basis of an FDA interpretation of the law, so if Chevron were overturned, stakeholders could more easily challenge the FDA to allow these claims so consumers are better informed about products that can improve health.
► Health claim substantiation. We recently covered the FTC’s shot across the bow to the natural products industry, putting them on notice that clinical trials will be needed to substantiate health-related advertising claims. This comes down to the FTC’s interpretation of what constitutes “competent and reliable” scientific evidence, with the agency setting the bar at clinical trials because supplement companies can’t afford to do them. The result will be fewer health claims about vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. The FDA has done something similar in its interpretation of what constitutes “significant scientific agreement", which is required for the approval of certain supplement health claims. Again, due to agency interpretations of the law, consumers are denied access to crucial health information.
► “New” supplements. The law considers ingredients “marketed in or as” supplements in the US after 1994 as “new” and those “marketed in or as” supplements before 1994 as “old.” “New” supplements must comply with so-called “new dietary ingredient” (NDI) regulations. But ambiguities exist about what it means to be “marketed” for the purpose of determining if a supplement is considered “old” or “new.” The FDA successfully argued in court that “marketed as” is not the same as “sold as.” This is crucial, as it means that the mere presence of an ingredient in food is not sufficient evidence to prove prior marketing of the ingredient. Resveratrol has been present in the food supply in grapes forever, but this doesn’t mean it was “marketed as” a supplement for the purposes of determining if resveratrol is “old” or “new.” This interpretation means many ingredients would need to comply with NDI regulations, which are costly and burdensome—and if they don’t, drug companies can snatch them up and turn them into drugs via the back-channel that exists at the FDA. A plain reading of the law is that a dietary ingredient sold in the food supply before October 1994, whether as an ingredient in food or dietary supplements, is grandfathered and excluded from the NDI provisions.
If your eyes (https://media.tenor.com/images/5423e809b1a22096b6925bf9bc3fd1cb/tenor.gif) glazed over reading some of that 😈 legal jargon, the simple takeaway is that agencies like the FDA and FTC have had, because of Chevron, greater leeway to restrict access to and censor information about supplements you care about. If SCOTUS reverses Chevron, the floodgates could be open to legal challenges against the FDA and the FTC for the arbitrary and restrictive interpretations of the law they’ve been engaging in for decades.
We will monitor the results of this case closely and keep you informed of any developments.
https://anh-usa.org/what-do-fishermen-and-dietary-supplements-have-in-common/
AGelbert COMMENT: I expect nothing good for the health and welfare of most Americans from this Supremely fascist Court handmaiden of profit over people and planet corporations. They will certainly "reinterpret" the law so fishing companies NO LONGER HAVE TO PAY pay government observers on board. That is BAD for we-the-people because the government will then be forced to pay them, which the 👿 Republicans in Congress will NOT allow. Consequently, the government will be forced to exclude observers from most, or all, of the fishing boats, opening the door to them violating government regulations on what type of fish, and how much of it they can catch without harming fish populations. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121331.gif)
And THAT (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) attack on nature for short term 💰😈 profit is just the initial skullduggery the corrupt Supreme Court will enable with their "reinterpretation". The hope that ANH has, as stated in the above article, is sadly a very forlorn hope. If ANH thinks we-the-people will get improved access to supplements of our choice because the government agencies' interpretation of the law on supplements is no longer binding on companies that sell supplements, they will be very disappointed. Fascists only restrict government action when it benefits some greedball corporation, NOT when we-the-people are the main beneficiaries. Expect a torrent of supplements coming to market that have unchallenged bogus "health Benefit" claims. Fraudulent "Health Supplement" (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) Companies will spring up like weeds in an untended garden. The courts will severely limit Government Oversight and we will be back to the 19th century snake oil salesmen days. THAT is what you can expect from this supremely fascist Supreme Court. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121109.gif)
Be not thou envious against evil men, neither desire to be with them. For their heart studieth destruction, and their lips talk of mischief. ~ Proverbs 24:1-2
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Selected Coments from:
Monday, June 26, 2023
Why the Supreme Court Really Killed Roe v. Wade (https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2023/06/why-supreme-court-really-killed-roe-v.html#comment-6221724342)
pinkprince500 5 days ago
Biden is not standing up to the Republicans, McCarthy & the Ultra Right Wing Conservative Con People Nutjobs have taken over the country. When Ehud Barack Obama was POTUS, Republicans blocked his attempt to appoint people to the Supreme Court, when Trump was POTUS, he appointed RWNJ's such as Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett & Brett Kavvanaugh.
Brett Kaanaugh & Clarence Thomas are sexual predators. Republicans approve of that when it is the Republicans that are the sexual predators.
AGelbert > pinkprince500 a day ago
👍 📢 Well said!
Cat's Paw > pinkprince500 5 days ago
Biden is doing a good job standing up to The GOP.
He is accomplishing things.
and ignoring GOP. ... I agree. They have enough rope to hang themselves.
and tha'ts what they seem to be doing.
AGelbert > Cat's Paw
"Biden is doing a good job standing up to The GOP."
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422122803.png)
Cat's Paw > AGelbert a day ago
Biden is doing a good job.
AGelbert > Cat's Paw
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422122951.png)
Cat's Paw > AGelbert 15 hours ago
Why do you dislike Joe?
AGelbert > Cat's Paw
I like a lot of the things President Biden has done during his Administration. He is head and shoulders a far better choice than the 👿 Trump Fascist Horror. Trump is the poster boy for the Kafkaesque survival olympics championed by the Social 😈 Darwinist oligarchs in the US.
That said, that ain't sayin' much. The moral compass "bar" Biden needed to exceed is right there with the 🐟 fish at the 💩 bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench.
Perhaps this is a quixotic discussion, because I am convinced that neither you nor I matter in who becomes POTUS, but let us pretend our opinion and our vote matters for the sake of non-argument.
I wanted Senator Bernie Sanders to be President. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, etc. et al. did NOT. You know why. And no, it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Biden was running for POTUS too. Really, you might ask?
These political discussions are kind of like a layered cake type subject. Unless you start with the ROOT layer, you don't see where, and why, all the upper, more visible, layers appear the way they do. That is why I can unequivocally state that Sanders was fraudulently railroaded out of the Presidency BECAUSE they wanted a status quo preserving handmaiden of the oligarchs who REALLY mattered in ruining running this country. I used to post at Daily Kos. They couldn't stomach my evidence based comments about the serial attacks on Health Care, Social Security, the Federal Minimum Wage, Food Stamps, Welfare Legislation, Bankruptcy laws favoring we-the-people over Corporation legerdemain based accounting, etc. (you get the idea if you haven't lived under a rock for the past 30 years or so) CHAMPIONED by the Democratic Party in general, AND Nancy Pelosi and Senator Joe (Delaware bastion of corporate tax dodging enabling PLUS government corporate welfare queen fostering legislation) Biden in PARTICULAR.
I wish it wasn't so. I wrote this (see below) before the 2020 election, which got a friend of mine, who is a Democrat, and a Left Leaning 👍Progressive one at that, rather perturbed. He said, "Me, I would vote for Dread Cthuhlu if he were on the ticket.", which misses the whole point I was trying to make (see: "layer cake" political issues cause and effect).
He stopped talking to me, to this day, because he actually believed 🤦♂️ Biden would NOT play dead while the 🐘 Republicans continued their march back to the 19th Century murderous Gilded 💰 Age of happy "unrestrained" Social Darwinism based (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) Capitalism.
But Biden HAS MOSTLY PLAYED DEAD on ALL those issues 🥵 I listed above, that got me kicked out of Daily Kos.
There is an even MORE important issue, amazing as that seems, than every issue I listed. That NUMBER ONE in IMPORTANCE ISSUE is PENTAGON BLOAT 😖. Biden has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to reduce that, but has, insane as that is, supported MORE MONEY FOR WAR and a BIGGER PENTAGON BUDGET❗😵
As if that wasn't enough, policy intellimorons in his Administration (e.g. 🦍 Blinken, 🦍 Fascist Enabler Victoria Nuland, etc. 🦍☠️ et al.) support "tactical" NUCLEAR WEAPONS for Ukraine❗ 😱
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145533-5671050.gif) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205203-6511164.gif) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422141413-627726.png)
📢 Here is what I wrote way back in the Spring of 2020:
April 10, 2020
Readers, save this list of the craven corrupt similarities of Trump with Biden to repeat them over and over to people that do not know the score with Biden: 👀
📢 😈 Biden and 🦀 Trump are BIRDS OF THE EXACT SAME NEOLIBERAL FASCIST FEATHER:
Corporate COVID-19 welfare and PEANUTS for we-the-people ✔
Subsidies for Fossil Fuel Industry POLLUTERS ✔
FRACKING support ✔
SNAP funds REDUCTION ✔
New "chained" CPI (i.e gamed formula to UNDERCOUNT INFLATION) to ROB workers and retired on pensions through COLA reductions ✔ 🤬
PROTECTION of Credit Card Corporation USURY LEVEL HIGH INTEREST RATES ✔
DEFUNDING SOCIAL SECURITY ✔
People KILLING SANCTIONS on IRAN ✔
Gigantic PENTAGON BUDGET SWAG ✔
Endless foreign wars for MIC SWAG ✔
PROTECTING Big Pharma Drug Price Gouging ✔
PROTECTING PREDATORY Payday Lender usury level rates ✔
RELAXING Government BANKSTER Controlling Regulations ✔
DEFANGING the SEC so 😈 Wall Street can run wild with insider trading, front running, etc. with IMPUNITY 👉CHECK
NO return to 1933-2000 Glass-Steagall to stop the Bank irresponsible insovency causing derivatives speculation we-the-people had to BAILOUT in 2008 👉CHECK
NO return to 1933-1982 when Corporate Stock BUYBACKS to game the stock price up WERE ILLEGAL 👉CHECK
NO INCREASE IN MINIMUM WAGE 👉CHECK 😠
DEFENSE of Corporate Health Insurance people bankrupting premiums and ZERO support for Medicare-4-ALL 👉CHECK
ZERO support for a GREEN NEW DEAL 👉CHECK 🥵
I can go ON, and ON and ON. Biden is a 🐘 DINO, like most 🐘 "Democrats". Trump is a FAKE "populist". It's the same God Damned THING!
Please do your own research into Biden's despicable oligarchy ass kissing record in the Senate. It is ALL THERE. Trump has simply been less subtle about his in-our-faces worship of the 1% profit over people and planet parasites, that is all. In actual policies, they are nearly identical.
For the "Democrats" (i.e. DINOs) who are already busy, busy, busy demonizing truth telling former Bernie supporters (calling us "Extremists" 🙄 who want to "see the planet burn rather than voting for Saint Joe Biden" 🥱) who are moving to the GREEN PARTY in order to herd us into voting for 🏴☠️ Biden: 🔊 Go ahead and pretend the Green Party "is irrelevant". Your Fascist Republican/"Democratic" profit over people and planet Duopoly worship is killing we-the-people. Have a nice day, you Planet Killing Extremists. 😡
The DINOS are the ones who want to see the world BURN, rather than saying goodbye to Corporate profit over people and planet CROOKS and moving to the GREEN PARTY.
😟 I wish I had been wrong about predicting that President Joe Biden would CONTINUE to be what he had always been, as Senator from Delaware and Vice-President under of Wall Street greedballs handmaiden President Obama, nothing but a Republican in Democratic Party 😇 "feel your pain" 🐍 legerdemain.
Now that you know how I feel about our present political predicament, perhaps you can understand why I enjoy hearing audiobooks like this one (see below). It ain't all bad, but the trend is definitely not our friend.
The Librivox Free Audiobook 'Tilda Jane is fiction, but the hardhips and hard hearts portrayed are all too real in human society. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/general-discussion/books-and-audio-books-that-may-interest-you-129488/msg1150/#msg1150)
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. ~ Jeremiah 17:9-10 (KJV)
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Cat's Paw > AGelbert 11 hours ago
Boil it away.
all that remains is left v right.
Do you want to diversify, or concentrate power?
governance by the governed, is very messy as you point out.
Maybe you are right.. We need a decisive leader, a King to follow.?
AGelbert > Cat's Paw
Well, I don't view this politics thing as "Right versus Left"; I vew it as Caring people versus Uncaring people, regardless of political affiliation.
Caring people are sober minded, responsible reality based humans who take the long view of the consequences of their actions on society, not just for the benefit of the present generation, but on future generations as well.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922153942.jpeg)
Uncaring people are, like Milton Friedman et al., egotists dedicated to the worship of self. They can be great actors that convince many through legerdemain that they are "😇 wise counselors working for the welfare of humanity". Eventually their 😈 track record always exposes the fact that they are tyrannical egocentric scam artists.
Milton Friedman was a water carrier for the neoliberal parasites. Everything he said was legerdemain distortion of historical reality. It was Milton Friedman who convinced the Federal government after WWII to WITHHOLD a portion of wages for taxes, while he waas quiet as DEATH about "unearned income' DIVIDENDS. So, the dividends for the RICH are UNTOUCHED by the government and the POOR and middle class MOSTLY shoulder the tax burden.
Had I been able to talk to him in the 1980's, I would have yelled, YOU HYPOCRITE!
The only thing I RECOGNIZE is that Milton Friedman had the ethics of a Boa constrictor.
Cat's Paw, if you do not right now know the following info about the "how it works" of Neoliberalism from the getgo, it is time you learned:
Social Darwinism is the morally bankrupt world view that spawned the profit over people and planet neoliberal ideology. Neoliberal intellectuals like Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman were all Social Darwinists long before they renamed laissez-faire liberalism (that had been thoroughly discredited by the Great Depression) with the catchy title of "Neoliberalism".
🤔 Based on what David Harvey himself has written, I'm surprised that he has not reached the "It's the Social Darwinism, stupid" conclusion yet (see below):
The celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey explains that neoliberal ideology serves the following principle:
"There shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective: Those possessed of money shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion, not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative capacities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable."
David Harvey, “The Party of Wall Street Meets its Nemesis,” http://www.zcommunications.org/the/party/of/wall/street/meets/its/nemesis. Also, by David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Agelbert OBSERVATION: If the morally bankrupt, socially destructive ideology which champions the absolute power of money to rule absolutely, while it simultaneously deems the rest of humanity disposable, is not SOCIAL DARWINISM, I don't know what is. 😠
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The status quo evidences that virtually all governments in the world are corrupted, either directly or indirectly, by those intellimorons who think it is a "weakness" to be ethical. That moral bankruptcy is at the the ROOT of the Social Darwinist ideology destroying everything good about human civilization.
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Politicians in the US who are ETHICS based, when not unjustly branded as "Anti-American Socialists" and railroaded into losing elections, are allowed token government positions for "optics", but without any power to improve the lot of the many exploited and abused among us.
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Unless unethical behavior is overcome by ethical behavior, this WILL end badly. The trend is not the friend of ethics based people of good will.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195014-939847.png)
All the options you asked about as to how I think power should be wielded are moot. Why? Because. whether diversified or concentrated governance, whether by a dictator or a king, in ALL those scenarios, if the power is ETHICALLY wielded, human civilization benefits. Otherwise, human civilization continues to self-destruct.
As long as people argue endlessly about economic systems and/or political systems that "need" to wield power in order to reduce inequality, abuse, and so on, WTHOUT EMPHASIS ON ETHICS as the BASIS of a healthy society and people that LACK OF ETHICS as a DANGER, to be searched out and removed from ANY decision making ability in Government AND Business, things WILL GET WORSE.
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Letters from an American
August 15, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
SNIPPET:
And finally, third: tonight, just before midnight, the state of Georgia indicted former president Donald J. Trump and 18 others for multiple crimes committed in that state as they tried to steal the 2020 presidential election. A special-purpose grand jury made up of citizens in Fulton County, Georgia, examined evidence and heard from 75 witnesses in the case, and issued a report in January that recommended indictments. A regular grand jury took the final report of the special grand jury into consideration and brought an indictment.
“Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost” the 2020 presidential election, the indictment reads, ”and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states.”
The indictment alleges that those involved in the “criminal enterprise” “constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury.”
That is, while claiming to investigate voter fraud, they allegedly committed election fraud.
And that effort has run them afoul of a number of laws, including the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which is broader than federal anti-racketeering laws and carries a mandatory five-year prison term.
Those charged fall into several categories. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) Trump allies who (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) operated out of the White House include lawyers (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Rudy Giuliani (who recently conceded in a lawsuit that he lied about (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202527-13931485.png) Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss having stuffed ballot boxes), 🦀 John Eastman, 🐘 Kenneth Chesebro, 🦕 Jeffrey Clark, 🐍 Jenna Ellis, and Trump’s White House chief of staff 😈 Mark Meadows.
Those operating in Georgia to push the scheme to manufacture a false slate of Trump electors to challenge the real Biden electors include lawyer 🦍 Ray Stallings Smith III, who tried to sell the idea to legislators; Philadelphia political operative 👿 Michael Roman; former Georgia Republican chair 🐘 David James Shafer, who led the fake elector meeting; and 👹 Shawn Micah Tresher Still, currently a state senator, who was the secretary of the fake elector meeting.
Those trying to intimidate election worker and witness Ruby Freeman include Stephen Cliffgard Lee, a police chaplain from Illinois; 🦍 Harrison William Prescott Floyd, executive director of Black Voices for Trump; and 🦍 Trevian C. Kutti, a publicist for the rapper formerly known as 🐵 Kanye West.
Those allegedly stealing data from the voting systems in Coffee County, Georgia, and spreading it across the country in an attempt to find weaknesses in the systems that might have opened the way to fraud include Trump lawyer 🐘😈 Sidney Powell; former Coffee County Republican Committee chair 🐍 Cathleen Alston Latham; businessman 😈 Scott Graham Hall; and Coffee County election director 🐍 Misty Hampton, also known as 🐍 Emily Misty Hayes.
The document also referred to 30 unindicted (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) co-conspirators.
Trump has called the case against him in Georgia partisan and launched a series of attacks on Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Today, Willis told a reporter who asked about Trump’s accusations of partisanship: “I make decisions in this office based on the facts and the law. The law is completely nonpartisan. That's how decisions are made in every case. To date, this office has indicted, since I’ve been sitting as the district attorney, over 12,000 cases. This is the eleventh RICO indictment. We follow the same process. We look at the facts. We look at the law. And we bring charges."
The defendants have until noon on August 25 to surrender themselves to authorities.
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*EDIT at 10:45 am August 15: I incorrectly identified Seeley as a federal judge last night. She is a state judge.
Full article (Be sure and check out the EXCELLENT (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122257-657398.png) Comments):
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-14-2023
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August 15, 2023 Michael Moore (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122257-657398.png)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422133654.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202605-13991014.png)EMERGENCY PODCAST SYSTEM: INDICTED! RACKETEERING!! (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422144605.png) It Turns Out Trump Really Is a (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822141004-17211668.gif) Mobster. (https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/emergency-podcast-system-indicted) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422155724.png)
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AGelbert NOTE: Graphics by (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-280622170247.jpeg) me.
COUNTERPUNCH
AGUGUST 16, 2023 BY RICHARD C. GROSS
Richard C. Gross, who covered war and peace in the Middle East and was foreign editor of United Press International, served as the opinion page editor of The Baltimore Sun.
The Trump Comeuppance (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422155724.png)
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“For trust not him that hath once broken faith.” – William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, “Henry VI,” Act IV, Scene 3.
Not only did Trump get indicted for the fourth time in five months, but the state of Georgia accused the former president of being a mob boss.
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A mobster, the indictment says, though more politely: allegedly being involved in a “criminal racketeering enterprise.” And this was an occupant of the White House for four long, chaotic, troubling and troublesome years. And he’s running for it again.
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A godfather, which he most certainly is for the weak shell of the once-noble Republican Party. Its members repeatedly pay him homage and defend his fantasy about a stolen election despite two House impeachments and the three criminal federal and state indictments before the Peach State joined the fray.
Trump now faces 91 felony counts against him, including those in Georgia’s Act IV, Scene 1. Even if the four indictments are not counted together, nothing like this has happened to any current or former president.
Not ever, since George Washington took the first oath of office as president on 😒(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-160823164759.png) Wall Street April 30, 1789.
That last 98-page indictment Monday night may be most serious of all because, if convicted, he cannot be pardoned by a national president, even by himself should he be elected to a second term. That’s only possible if convicted of breaking federal, not state, laws.
Further, the latest grand jury indictment charges Trump and 18 others, some his closest White House advisers like Rudy Giuliani and his final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with violating Georgia’s very tough Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The federal government and more than 30 states adopted it to use against the Mafia, gangs and Ponzi schemes.
Meadows wants his case switched to a federal court. Trump may demand the same thing, which could lead to all of the defendants seeking an exodus from the Georgia court. So, I don’t think a mass escape would be possible.
Someone convicted under Georgia’s RICO act faces between five and 20 years in prison or a fine of up to $250,000. If convicted, Trump shouldn’t be sentenced to paying the fine; it’s no more than petty cash to him, the cost of doing business.
If convicted, prison would be more appropriate for all of the crimes he’s accused of committing. He’s going to deny, deny, deny and delay, delay, delay. That’s his M.O.
“The indictment alleges that rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis 🗽 (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422180554-644315.gif) told a news conference Monday night. She led the two-year investigation.
The charge includes (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) Trump’s infamous phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger appealing to him to “find 11,780 votes” that would flip the election from Joe Biden to him. Bad move.
If he was trying to find more votes, didn’t he then know that he lost the election?
Typically, Trump lashed out at Willis on his Truth Social website even before the indictment was released.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195218-9801625.jpeg) “Phony Fani Willis . . . wants desperately to indict me on the ridiculous grounds of tampering with the 2020 presidential election,” he typed. “No, I didn’t tamper with the election! Those who rigged & stole the election were the ones doing the tampering & they are the slime that should be prosecuted.”
If past is prologue, I believe he means President Biden. His MAGAites believe him.
In a federal indictment earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan warned Trump against criticizing her Washington, D.C., court, its personnel, potential witnesses and eventual jurors. She knows very well the nature of what he’s been and what he is.
We all (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422182057.gif) lived it for nearly eight years.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422194638-872909.jpeg)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422163102-1049535.png)
The deranged narcissist, disgraced by virtue of the four indictments against him, finally met his comeuppance after many years of beating court cases. They began when he was a real estate developer in New York City, where he occasionally refused to pay subcontractors.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195220-9832237.jpeg)
He also stiffed Giuliani, who was his personal lawyer when he still was in the White House. He wouldn’t pay the former New York mayor’s bills for his unsuccessful post-election court challenges. Giuliani demanded $20,000 a day for two months of work.
Trump never could man up and admit that he lost the 2020 election. He wasted years since then whipping up fantasy tales of his having won, charging without evidence that it was stolen from him, that it was part of a “witch hunt” by the “deep state.” What deep state? Where? Who?
He tried and failed many times through the courts to reclaim a lost election, through continual lying, allegedly through creating false electors who signed on to represent him and through state officials to change the vote in his favor.
We are fortunate that we really are a nation of laws, as has been said many times, with people of integrity and in positions to enforce them to ensure our democracy lives, despite the few whose lust for power would destroy one of mankind’s better experiments.
Trump always has ached for the spotlight, with him at stage center. He needn’t worry. His name will live on long after he’s dead. In infamy. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110822211615-18511577.gif)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/08/16/the-trump-comeuppance/
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I just found a person that does Orwell better than Orwell!. 😲 This doubletalking SNAKE must have given Karl Rove 🐍 classes (SEE: Rove's "😈 maxim" of accusing the enemy of your 'weaknesses').
😒 "This is going to be a horrendous period. And we just need to understand: The people who want to control America and want to dictate to America break any law, lie about any topic, and manipulate the system any way they can, and that includes a lot of the elite news media." former Speaker of the House 🐘🐍 Newt Gingrich
📢 THAT WAS EXACTLY WHAT Newt Gingrich's MO WAS when he was busy destroying democracy in the USA durning the 1990's!
For those who don't remember Newt Gingrich's "Contract for America" (which was really a Republican HIT MAN CONTRACT ON AMERICA), perhaps you should. Reagan and Bush daddy got the fascist ball rolling, but without Gingrich, sell out Clinton would not have caved to destroying welfare and SNAP, among other important government programs that were ravaged because of the Contract ON Amercia championed by Gingrich.
If you have a strong stomach, read the article (Pro-Trump 🐷 Gingrich 😇 Puff piece) that includes the above quote. If you have an even stronger stomach, read the 🦀🐘🦕🦖🐍🦍🐉 comments. I found only a few comments that were reality based before I left in dismay and disgust.
ReturnOfDaMac 👍
Horseshyt. A LOT not all yet, but a LOT of MAGA in my family have finally figured out he ain't running for them, he's running from the big-house. They saw the grift, the "DONATE NOW TO MY LEGAL FUND", the $Millions he grifted with his daughter from China and the $Billions he grifted from the Saudi's with his son-inlaw, and are awakening from their faux slumber. My thinking is that when a critical mass of MAGA realizes they been had by a two-bit con man and a cult leader, they are gonna wanna take some orange scalp!
The commenter was viciously attacked by Wall Street MAGA Maggots. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-160823164759.png) So it goes. 🤦♂️
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Bold Faced Mendacity filled Gingrich Puff Piece (https://www.zerohedge.com/political/going-be-horrendous-period-newt-gingrich-rages-over-trump-indictment)
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AGelbert NOTE: Graphics by me. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145533-5682069.png)
Letters from an American
August 24, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fgallery%2Frenewablerevolution%2F2%2F3-010519192317-22062169.gif&hash=52e1133977dd6f5341e48160250310523b5fb71e) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122257-6561489.gif)
[Note: There is a discussion of **** ((https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/styles/renewablerevolution/files/5482_label%20for%20the%20word%20rape.png)) in paragraph 8.]
Today a (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422193742-835209.jpeg) former U.S. president and the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination turned himself in to be arrested in Georgia.
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He (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422155724.png)had to because a (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164718-5381960.png) grand jury of ordinary Americans indicted (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) him, along with 18 other (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) defendants, for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
For the first time in U.S. history, there is a mugshot of a former president.
And, for that matter, mugshots of his chief of staff and key advisors. With noon tomorrow, August 25, the deadline for the defendants to surrender, they have been showing up since Tuesday, when Scott Hall, accused of breaching election equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, became the first of the defendants to surrender.
Since then, several of the lawyers behind the election scheme, including John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and Rudy Giuliani have surrendered.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250823151845.png)
So have Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, and David Shafer, the former chair of the Georgia Republican Party.
All but one—Harrison Floyd, the former executive director of Black Voices for Trump, who is charged with harassing election worker Ruby Freeman and who had previously assaulted an FBI agent—have been released on bail.
Trump is the first president to be charged with crimes, and he is facing an astonishing 91 counts in four different cases, two at the state level in New York and Georgia, and two at the federal level.
In addition, Trump, his two elder sons, and the Trump Organization are also facing an October trial in a civil fraud case in New York City, after which he has a January trial in a defamation suit from writer E. Jean Carroll for denying that he (https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/styles/renewablerevolution/files/5482_label%20for%20the%20word%20rape.png)d her (a judge recently agreed that his sexual assault of her was **** ((https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/styles/renewablerevolution/files/5482_label%20for%20the%20word%20rape.png)) by common understanding, although the narrow definition of **** ((https://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/styles/renewablerevolution/files/5482_label%20for%20the%20word%20rape.png)) in the New York penal code meant that a New York jury in May did not find him liable for it).
And then there are the criminal charges. In New York he is charged with 34 counts surrounding an alleged hush-money scheme before the 2016 election.
He has been charged with 40 counts in the federal case concerning his theft and concealment of national security documents at his organization’s Mar-a-Lago property. In a separate federal case, he is charged with 4 counts of conspiring to defraud the government, obstruct an official proceeding, and take away voters’ right to have their vote counted.
In the Georgia case for which he was arrested today, he has been charged with 13 crimes under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute of Georgia, a law that permits a group working together for a criminal purpose to be charged as a criminal organization.
True to form, Trump appears to have timed his surrender to make the evening news. And then, after he surrendered, he posted his mugshot himself on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, telling his supporters “NEVER SURRENDER!”
In our system, Trump, like any defendant, is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
But here’s the thing: At last night’s Republican primary debate, all the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110822203905-1755931.png) candidates except former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (polling at 3.3%) and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson (polling at 0.7%) pledged they would support (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-680240.png)Trump as the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195208-9782346.png) 2024 (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422193742-835209.jpeg) Republican nominee even if he’s convicted. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164519-508103.gif)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.tumblr.com%2Fc6492e4b47cfdbd50e74d285fde3c53e%2Ftumblr_inline_mm3g4yCaZc1qz4rgp.gif&hash=4b1cad5ea13f7430a0c01f3065039d21d78da398) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422134013.gif) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145533-5671050.gif) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-020623122925-24112135.jpeg) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-020623123611-243652.jpeg) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205203-6511164.gif)
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In the 1960s, Republicans made a (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) devil’s bargain, courting the racists and social traditionalists who began to turn from the Democratic Party when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to make inroads on racial discrimination. Those same reactionaries jumped from the Democrats to create their own party when Democratic president Harry S. Truman strengthened his party’s turn toward civil rights by creating a presidential commission on civil rights in 1946 and then ordering the military to desegregate in 1948. Reactionaries rushed to abandon the Democrats permanently after Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, joining the Republicans at least temporarily to vote for Arizona senator 👿🐘 Barry Goldwater, who promised to roll back civil rights laws and court decisions.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was the final straw for many of those reactionaries, and they began to move to the Republicans as a group when (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Richard Nixon promised not to use the federal government to enforce civil rights in the states. This so-called southern strategy pulled the Republican Party rightward.
In 1980, Republican presidential candidate (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6781750.png) Ronald Reagan appeared at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, a few miles from where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964 for their work registering Black Mississippians to vote, and said, “I believe in states’ rights.” Reagan tied government defense of civil rights to socialism, insisting that the government was using tax dollars from hardworking Americans to give handouts to lazy people, often using code words to mean “Black.”
Since then, as their economic policies have become more and more unpopular, the Republicans have kept voters behind them by insisting that anyone calling for federal action is advocating socialism and by drawing deep divisions between those who vote Republican, whom they define as true Americans, and anyone who does not vote Republican and thus, in their ideology, is anti-American.
From there it has been a short step to arguing that those who do not support Republican candidates should not vote or are voting illegally (although voter fraud is vanishingly rare). And from there, it appears to have been a short step to trying to overturn the results of an election where 7 million more Americans voted for Joe Biden, a Democrat, than voted for Trump and where the Electoral College vote for Biden was 306 to 232, the same margin Trump called a landslide in 2016 when it was in his favor.
The Republicans on stage last night have abandoned democracy, and in that they accurately represent their (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080223161213-218927.png) party.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-310322170737.jpeg)
It is no accident that in addition to the Georgia party chair indicted for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Wisconsin Republican Party chair Brian Schimming was also mentioned in the Georgia indictment as part of the conspiracy for his role in the scheme to use false electors to steal the election for Trump, though he was not charged; former Arizona Republican chair Kelli Ward is in the crosshairs for her own participation in the scheme in Arizona; and in a different case, former Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddoch has pleaded not guilty to eight felony charges for her part in the attempt to steal the White House.
State leaders have taken their cue from the top: Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel also apparently participated in Trump’s fake elector scheme to steal the presidency.
It is quite a thing to see leading Republicans—including a former president—in mugshots for their assault on our democracy and to know that party leadership supports their actions. Indeed, it is unprecedented, and for those who remember what a grand party the Republicans have been at times in their history—Lincoln, after all, was a Republican, and so were Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower—it is a sad end.
But an end it is. The authoritarians who have taken over the party have abandoned their history and are now building something altogether different.
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/august-24-2023
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Notes:
https://www.axios.com/2023/08/15/indictment-trump-prison-rico
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-fulton-county-georgia-08-14-23/h_3e279320f2ba518105782f61371e030f
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/nyregion/trump-letitia-james-deposition.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-attorney-general-letitia-james-trump-lawsuit-ready-for-trial/
https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-declares-donald-trumps-appeal-e-jean-carroll-case-frivolous-2023-08-18/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/07/donald-trump-****-language-e-jean-carroll
https://www.axios.com/2023/08/22/trump-codefendant-surrender-georgia-jail
https://www.mlive.com/politics/2023/07/former-michigan-gop-co-chair-pleads-not-guilty-in-trump-electors-case.html
https://www.cbs58.com/news/state-gop-chair-named-in-latest-trump-inditement-heres-what-we-know
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/arizona-attorney-general-probing-alternate-electors-2020-presidential-rcna94113
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/will-arizona-be-the-next-state-to-indicted -former-president-donald-trump
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-jan-6-investigation-fake-electors-608932d4771f6e2e3c5efb3fdcd8fcce
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/23/willie-floyd-fulton-maryland-fbi-arrest/
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010723181622.png) AGelbert WARNING:
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422162847-10321563.png)
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-141222170321.jpeg)
SEP 3, 2023 by CHRIS HEDGES
Our Collective Trauma is the Road to Tyranny
American society spawns (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422182057.gif) trauma and this trauma expresses itself in a variety of self-destructive pathologies, including the erosion of democracy and rise of neo-fascism.
(https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9b455401-0487-4269-a4a1-858d211c8209_4709x3707.jpeg)
Welcome In - By Mr. Fish
SNIPPET:
The core traits of psychopaths — superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and the inability to feel remorse or guilt — are celebrated. The virtues of empathy, compassion and self-sacrifice, are belittled, neglected and crushed. The professions that sustain community, such as teaching, manual labor, the arts, journalism and nursing, are underpaid and overworked. The professions that exploit, such as those in high finance, Big Pharma, Big Oil and information technology, are lavished with prestige, money and power.
Full article: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205203-6511164.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422141413-627726.png) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-100323192454-23192252.gif)
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/our-collective-trauma-is-the-road
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-141222170321.jpeg)
SEP 6, 2023 by CHRIS HEDGES
The Chris Hedges Report 🔊 Podcast with attorney Theresa Amato 🗽, the former campaign manager for Ralph Nader 🗽, on how the two (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010123182425.jpeg) ruling parties rig the system to 🔨 block third party presidential candidates. (https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-podcast-with-ee7?utm_source=podcast)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090422150144.png) The most accurate description of the US (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) DUOPOLY that I have ever read:
Ilkka Tahvanainen (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122257-657398.png)
Is it really so pure: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) Donor depended (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) dominated "demokcrazy" D4 and foreign policy (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-680240.png) Demoncratic hegemonic imperialistic authoritarianism to vasals and enemies.
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COUNTERPUNCH
SEPTEMBER 11, 2023 BY ROB URIE
Will It Be 🕊️ Socialism or 🦍 Barbarism for the Twenty-First Century?
SNIPPET:
The nature of the American political system is often hidden behind theories of how democracy works. In these we, the people, choose politicians to represent ‘our’ interests within the realms of government, foreign affairs, and commerce. In contrast, at least according to the annual polls conducted by the Alliance of Democracies, fewer than half of Americans believe that the US is democratic; is a democracy. The reasons given against the US being a democracy are 1) corruption (73%), followed by 2) corporate control of the political system (72%). In other words, the reasons for this missing democracy are economic.
(https://inequality.comm.ccsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/wealthdistribution-1024x675.jpg)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-060622132630.png)
From the advent of neoliberalism in the mid-1970s to today, the US has been systematically deindustrialized. Capitalist industry has been the motivation for much modern political theory, fostering explanations of capitalist production such as ‘economics,’ as well as competing systems of political economy such as socialism, communism, and fascism that constitute the fault lines claimed to motivate geopolitics and wars. The deindustrialization of the US undertaken from the 1970s forward punished workers in the ‘old economy’ while directing Federal largesse toward favored industries such as finance and technology.
The ideological explanation for this shift was ‘markets.’ The US is subject to the immutable laws of nature, went the claim. Economic relations are subject to these immutable laws (continues the logic). There was therefore little that the American political and economic leadership could do in the face of ‘nature.’ That deindustrialization was undertaken at the behest of connected industrialists to break the back of organized labor was left out of this explanation. Likewise, Federal largesse toward (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) Wall Street and Big Tech represented the evolution of markets which Wall Street existed to support, and which Big Tech sold into. In other words, (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) markets uber alles. ... ...
The irony that the political class was selling the magical qualities of markets both going into the Wall Street bailouts of 2008 and coming back out of them illustrates the political use-value of economic misdirection. ‘Markets’ would have meant the demise of Wall Street and the American auto industry around 2008 had the Feds not intervened. Then consider the politics. Half of the US workforce had been cut loose and left to its own devices through deindustrialization while the other half was subsidized through Federal largesse for favored industries. How plausible was it then that ‘markets’ explained the mercantilist policies of neoliberal governance? ... ...
The motive for deindustrialization was to crush labor unions, eviscerate environmental standards, and establish a center – periphery relationship (imperialism) with the rest of the world. Before 2007 or thereabouts, this program remained vaguely plausible to powerful constituencies. ... ...
Joe Biden calls himself a ‘labor President’ while he has perpetuated the urban, bourgeois, war against displaced industrial workers. For instance, Mr. Biden promised to raise the minimum wage and then reneged. He promised to support labor activism and then crushed the railway workers’ strike. More recently, he reneged on the ‘just transition’ previously embedded in his environmental proposals in favor of the direct transfer of 💰 tax credits to (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) corporate (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gif) coffers. While the lip service suggests ‘liberal,’ Mr. Biden’s actual policies are (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) neo-fascist.
Full article: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205132-6482188.gif)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/09/11/will-it-be-socialism-or-barbarism-for-the-twenty-first-century/
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-170422140708-7062310.jpeg)
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-141222170321.jpeg)
SEP 20, 2023 by CHRIS HEDGES
The Chris Hedges Report 🔊 Podcast with former Financial Times reporter Matt Kennard about his book "Silent Coup How Corporations Overthrew Democracy": (https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-podcast-with-3e0?utm_source=podcast)
The United States, like many industrialized countries, has undergone a corporate coup d’état in slow motion, cementing into place a system of control the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls inverted totalitarianism. Inverted totalitarianism retains the institutions, symbols, iconography, and language of the old capitalist democracy, but internally corporations have seized all the levers of power to accrue ever greater profits and political control. Claire Provost and Matt Kennard in their book “Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy,” chart the way the corporate coup d’état was orchestrated. It examines the use of an international legal system to control and plunder the resources in the developing world, including the overthrow of governments that challenge corporate dominance. The authors expose the nefarious alliance between Non-Profit organizations and corporations, one that prioritizes profit rather than justice. The document leading the weakening of labor laws and evisceration of worker’s protections and rights. To enforce this predatory behavior corporations have not only created, in essence, a global supreme court but raised and funded private mercenary militias to crush labor movements and intimidate and even murder activists. The subversion of democracy abroad is accompanied, the authors argue, by the subversion of democracy at home. The mechanisms of control pioneers to plunder the developing world are being used in the industrial world. Joining me to discuss Silent Coup is Matt Kennard, a former staff reporter for the Financial Times and co-founder and chief investigator at Declassified UK, a news outlet that investigates British foreign policy.
The Chris Hedges Report 🔊 Podcast with former Financial Times reporter Matt Kennard about his book "Silent Coup How Corporations Overthrew Democracy": (https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-podcast-with-3e0?utm_source=podcast)
https://youtu.be/A9pHuVX-ZxE
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422134816-7032101.jpeg) AGelbert NOTE: I fervently pray that Biden's American Climate Corps is not more 😈 "perception managment" Duoploy polluter defending FRAUD, which Biden has a 30 year track record of (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010123182425.jpeg) embracing, but a program that will blossom into a genuine (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622153516-1391446.gif) fight to heal our degraded biosphere and bring 🦖 polluters to (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822141004-17211668.gif) justice. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-070422155202.jpeg)
Letters from an American
September 20, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
The (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202540-1395150.gif) fight over how we conceive of our federal government was on full (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210457-1416247.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422155724.png) display today. The Biden administration announced the creation of the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-280223180402.gif) American Climate Corps (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422144605.png)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422180949.png). This will be a group of more than 20,000 young Americans who will learn to work in clean energy, conservation, and climate resiliencewhile also earning good wages and addressing climate change.
Full article with MANY EXCELLENT comments (Don't miss the responses to the Troll named "🐍 James A."):
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-20-2023/comments
Selected COMMENTS:
J L Graham
"Reaganomics" was about replacing democracy with plutocracy from the get go, which has been on quote a roll for the four decades since.
Said yesterday's Guardian:
" Humanity has 'opened the gates to hell' by allowing the climate crisis to worsen, the secretary general of the United Nations has warned at a climate summit of leaders that saw angry denunciations of the fossil fuel industry but was undercut by the absence of many of the biggest carbon-emitting countries."
That's just one of modern existential threats greatly exacerbated by the deliberate sabotage by big money to block any concerted, rational response. For what? For whom?
BC
I wonder if these people with all that money they like to throw around to get what they want realize that climate change doesn't care, at all, about their money. These fools will suffer the effects of climate change along with us poor people. Money won't help.
T L Mills
Well, their money will help insulate them from the weather extremes--for a while and only to a point.
But those who depend on this money to save them are classic "focus-on-the-short-term" thinkers who think only in terms of quarterly reports. Not in terms of the survival of the current ecosystems and of humanity itself.
Ally House (Oregon) Writes View From the Back Row
Humanity does not exist in their world view. Only wealth and privilege.
BC
I find that abhorrent. They shall get what they give in the end.
Jim Duffey Writes Jim’s Substack
Yes, but they will be “right” for the time being, and that is what matters most to them. Like the slaves they perceive us to be, they will so own us. Money buys insanity for some.
BC
Yes, I suppose it does buy crazy. Sad. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145352-5611428.gif)
MLRGRMI
Their money buys a lot of insulating from climate repercussions/ justice repercussions/ social repercussions. They are betting that they can continue that trajectory for them and their friends. And so far they have been able to do that. Multi millionaires and billionaires live in a different, insulated world from “us”. They really see no use for us. The sooner we die and get out of the way and off their “conscience”, the better. They view regular people - the 99%- as cogs, serfs, playthings, or useless, depending on who we are. They believe they are “The Chosen”. And that they deserve dominion over the world. I always ask: Can we have a sane world AND billionaires? I guess not.
Virginia Witmer
A group of billionaires is having a lunch of greenbacks. One asks:”Where’s the catsup?” I’ll repeat that until doomsday or a new tax code.
k.paschal
they believe that their wealth will protect them
BC
For a while. Money can do a lot, but can't buy the weather. Their money is what will destroy them and everyone else. Greedy people.
mark cramer Writes mark’s Substack
DITTO ! , BC ! " MAMMONITES !!"
BC
I learned a new word! Thanks! 💐
J L Graham
The former "Party of Lincoln" has become a cult of (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) malignant narcissism, powered by the obsessive love of money.
Georgia Fisanick Writes Georgia’s Substack
The narcissistic sociopath in Florida is not the force driving the Republican Party. He is a very useful front man for the billionaire autocrats that fund the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society. They are the ones who since Regan have engineered policies that have driven the increase in wealth disparity in this country and are behind trickle down economics and the drive for less government regulation of business.
When Mitt Romney said that the Republican Senators laughed after Trump left the room they could do that only because they saw him as a front man and were secure in their campaign funding from their big money donors.
It's time to lift the curtain and point to the real puppeteers of the disfunction.
Nancy Fleming
Exactly, Georgia. Trump is too ignorant to have engineered this chaos without explicit direction from people who knew exactly how to orchestrate it. Between our oligarchs and puppeteers and foreign agents, we are currently in an apocalyptical battle.
Sharon Stearley
I believe Senator Whitehouse (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422180554-644315.gif) is doing his job to make this known to the public....if only the public would listen or be interested.
Richard Sutherland
Georgia, you are correct IMO - the wealthy keep engineering the process for their own financial benefit, and it has paid huge dividends. That $32 trillion that is now the national debt went principally into the coffers of the ultra wealthy, the funders and backers of the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society and other such groups, such as Mason University. Thomas Frank writes about this in "What's the Matter with Kansas?" For a time these manipulators used wedge issues such as abortion, gay marriage and school prayer to persuade average Americans (social conservatives) to vote against their own best economic interests. After the elections, nothing happened for them. But, but then the "Old South" and the "Old Ku Klux Klan" raised their ugly heads, the catalyst in part being the election of a Black President. So, the billionaire autocrats were handed a gift - Donald John Trump ,who gave the racists just what they wanted, a vicious leader who would punish the "line-cutters," those getting what they don't deserve, hatred of foreigners, Blacks, Muslims and immigrants. It is all in the study, "The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?" Google it. The billionaires are slapping their thighs in glee.
Rickey Woody Writes Rickey’s Newsletter -Woodchuck'…
On target. Jane Mayer wrote Dark Money. Kochland takes us through the dark world of the Koch brothers and the stealth infiltration of the libertarian ideas into the republican party. Thom Hartmann documents a lot of this in his hidden history series
Marycat2021
https://soapboxie.com/us-politics/21reasonsReaganwasaterriblepresident
Yeah, what a 😒 😈 guy.
Richard Sutherland
I hesitate to say this, but it is what comes to my mind: the Trumpsters, i.e., KKK, are useful idiots. If only they could be put to this test:
Think of something that you believe is true . . . .
1. How SURE are you that it's true? (0-100%)
2. What is the SOURCE of the belief?
3. What are your REASONS for believing it's true?
4. How could you FIGURE OUT if it's true?
5. How would you FEEL if you were WRONG?
6. What facts would CHANGE YOUR MIND?
Harvey Kravetz Writes Harvey’s Newsletter
Good questions. How about; what is the end results of our/your beliefs and who would benefit the most? Who would suffer more or gain more if what you wanted came to fruition? Just asking.
Richard Sutherland
Those are questions that have never occurred to the (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gif)wealthy elite who manipulate the gullible, nor the gullible to want to crush the "undesirables." The one thing that no one ever has enough of is money. The idea that MAGA/KKK Republicans are Christians (Matthew 25:34-46) is an exercise in make believe. and then: Matthew 7: 15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them."
MaryPat Sercu - MI
The cartoon: At a table, a very rich Republican man has a plate stacked with cookies. To his right is a Democrat with a plate of 3 cookies. Across from him is a poor rural man with an empty plate. The Rich man says to the poor man, "The reason you have no cookies is because the Democrats ate them." So, the Republicans "represent" the middle class and poor by conning them. The Democrats lost the middle class and poor by demeaning them. I was a lobbyist when our then Democratic Governor, Jennifer Granholm, announced the party's new plan to have every worker go to college to learn computer science and service our new techy economy. In one fell swoop she denigrated our entire excellent skilled workforce, and they have never forgotten it, nor should they. It's the Democratic party that needs to change its condescending (and, yes, elitist) attitudes and value EVERYONE's gifts and talents and industry. Michigan's current Democratic Governor, Gretchen Whitmer 🗽 is (literally) paving the way for that recovery.
Julie Dahlman Writes Julie’s Newsletter
The democrats that I know are just like myself, just getting by and feel lucky that I have a roof over my head and food to eat and some savings.
Insanity is keep repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. We've been doing that since Reagan.
James A. Writes (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822134118-17091258.gif)🦖💵🎩 James’s Newsletter (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-100823181638.png)
What is your point?
Its not the government's job to make you rich. Nothing is stopping you from
starting a business, getting more educated, dreaming bigger.
On the other hand government should weigh you down with high taxes,
a spiraling national debt, and social programs that on their way bankruptcy
Julie Dahlman Writes Julie’s Newsletter
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164519-508103.gif) WTF? I did not say I thought the government owed me anything? I am almost 77 years old and collecting the SS I earned since I was 77. During the last decades since Reagan the tax code has given everything to the millionaire/billionaire class and hedge fund managers have bought neighborhoods around this good ole USA that Regan created. My little two bedroom 1 bath home is now world $518,000 and taxed at $4600+ a year and who knows what it will be this year.
Yes those outrageous taxes have been draining my savings along with the corporate gougers for food and medicine and gas et al. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422133908.gif) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121435.png)
James A. Writes (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822134118-17091258.gif)🦖💵🎩 James’s Newsletter (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-100823181638.png)
You are correct the tax code helps hedge funds and that's supported by both parties.
Property are state and local issue NOT a federal tax problem. That money pays for schools and local services fire/police.
My guess is you AREN'T PAYING any federal income tax - if your
annual income is 25K or less?
WHAT DO YOU WANT the federal government to do?
Julie Dahlman Writes Julie’s Newsletter
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110822211833-1859945.png) I have a BA in Business and Accounting and quite aware of where my tax dollars go. The Federal taxes code is full of loopholes for riches among us which has trickled down to the states.. Giving everything away to the already rich and then us tax payer bail them out when times get tough but not us. UAW strike - we the tax payer bailed out Auto industry/Banks, Insurance who owes who else and the UAW people agreed to a 19% wage tax to further help the industry but there wages have not increased since. And the industry (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) CEO's are making millions. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422135315.png)
Read more: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164615-5351419.gif)
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-20-2023/comments
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Posted on October 3, 2023 by Ellen Brown 👍
“The Great Taking”: How 🎩👹 They Can Own It All 😱 (https://ellenbrown.com/2023/10/03/the-great-taking-how-they-plan-to-own-it-all/)
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-141222170321.jpeg)
October 8, 2023 by CHRIS HEDGES
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-021022180016.gif)
Fascism comes to America
SNIPPET:
We were warned. The seeds of fascism, like the climate emergency, were apparent decades ago. The leading scholars of fascism told us that unless American society halted its slide to ever greater levels of social inequality and returned democratic power to a betrayed populace, fascism would metastasize and consume the state. The ruling class, blinded by greed, a lust for power and willful ignorance, was as deaf to these warnings as they were to those of climate scientists.
Full article with comments: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164520-5301778.gif) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164555-532108.png)
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/fascism-comes-to-america/
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090422150144.png) Reality Based COMMENT agreeing with the Evil of US Fascism BUT totally disagreeing with Chris's allegation that "Christian" (my quotes, not Chris's) Fascists are a large part of the problem. Facsists ARE the problem, but Fascism is ANTI-Christian, not "Christian". The ruling class's Social Darwinist PRO-FASCIST ideology is 100% ANTI-Matthew 7:12.:
Elizabeth Heilman 🕊️
Most people in the plains sates and in rural communities live in what Edward Hall calls "high context" cultures, valuing relationships, hard work, nature and spirituality. Many rural folk are aware of the dangerous the uniparty and fascism and are nobody's fool. The rhetoric of "exclusion, cruelty and intolerance" is from the powerful who manipulate the press and politicians and a small number of emotionally vulnerable people. It is NOT AT ALL how most red state Christian Americans think or feel. It is time for solidarity, Chris, not hysterical demonizations of whole groups Americans.
🐘 Christian 👿 nationalism is not 🕊️☝🏻 Christianity (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corporate-fascist-corruption-of-christianity/msg1309/#msg1309)
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😕 The more things change, the more they remain the same...
Listen to this 13 minute insightful narrative from the 19th century by G. K. Chesterton. It could have been published, including the snarky reference to US Newspapers, yesterday. 👀
(https://archive.org/download/gkincentury_2106_librivox/chestertoncenturyillustrated_2106.jpg)
🔊 The Setback to English Socialism (https://ia804509.us.archive.org/22/items/gkincentury_2106_librivox/gkcentury_01_chesterton_128kb.mp3) (in G. K. Chesterton in The Century Illustrated Magazine (https://librivox.org/gk-chesterton-in-the-century-illustrated-magazine-by-g-k-chesterton/)) by G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
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Therefore to him that knoweth how to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin. -- James 4:17
AGelbert (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422133654.gif) COMMENT: Mike 🦖 Johnson is a 🐍 😈 "😇 Christian" Trumper Kochroach!
(https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/cropped-WallStreetOnParade97-03onJan31VII.jpg)
October 26, 2023 By Pam Martens 👍 and Russ Martens 👍
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164555-532108.png)
Mike (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frenewablerevolution.createaforum.com%2Fstyles%2Frenewablerevolution%2Ffiles%2F780_9adc777a0e08428257b76ece69d18ee52006bb5e39d60d966bb2440d29d17641.jpeg&hash=4d8f2f9ea7b952c63ad0441a4619e9b370ddcb0a) Johnson, “Champion of the 🦖 Fossil Fuel Industry” and Climate Change 🐍 Denier Elected as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives 🤦♂️ (https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/10/mike-johnson-champion-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-and-climate-change-denier-elected-as-speaker-of-the-united-states-house-of-representatives/)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422194907-9161401.png)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-310322170737.jpeg)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-5RW5fqOUW-A%2FUgBvfpbfOcI%2FAAAAAAAAAG0%2FX8s1iRySYsQ%2Fs1600%2Fcartoons-text-the-end-porky-pig-looney-tunes-warner-bros.-HD-Wallpapers%255B1%255D.jpg&hash=9be34e4ad4b0a8db9a004b75663a06cf07a7783b)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110822205805-18031634.png)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202545-13961729.png) 🐘 Christian 👿 nationalism is not 🕊️☝🏻 Christianity (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corporate-fascist-corruption-of-christianity/msg1309/#msg1309)
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The Class Struggle
b
Saturday, October 28, 2023 by STEVEN BESCHLOSS
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What Do You Hear When the New House Speaker Says He’s Been (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622153114-13822364.jpeg) Ordained By God❓ (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121435.png) (https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2023/10/what-do-you-hear-when-new-house-speaker.html)
AGelbert COMMENT: What Do I Hear When the New House Speaker Says He’s Been Ordained By God?
I hear Mike 🦖 Johnson, a 🐍 😈 "😇 Christian" Trumper Kochroach, spewing BLASPHEMY!
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622153109-13672051.gif) Belt Buckle for our Military that (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Mike Johnson (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) et al will soon recommend:
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-281023132535.png)
🐘 Christian 👿 nationalism is not 🕊️☝🏻 Christianity (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corporate-fascist-corruption-of-christianity/msg1309/#msg1309)
(https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/cropped-WallStreetOnParade97-03onJan31VII.jpg)
October 26, 2023 By Pam Martens 👍 and Russ Martens 👍
Mike Johnson, “Champion of the 🦖 Fossil Fuel Industry” and Climate Change 🐍 Denier Elected as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives 🤦♂️ (https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/10/mike-johnson-champion-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-and-climate-change-denier-elected-as-speaker-of-the-united-states-house-of-representatives/)
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-300322170024-4342024.png)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202720-1408267.gif) I am convinced by empirical evidence and objective observation that the American Experiment with democracy has FAILED. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-201222142942.png)
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422141413-626465.png) I am convinced by empirical evidence and objective observation that the 🐍 worm in that Constitutional 🌟 Apple promising a Golden Age of ✨ Egalitarian Democracy that caused the failure was the NATIONAL EMBRACE of (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) Social Darwinism. 100's of millions of Americans, most who cannot define Social Darwinism without looking it up on their cell phone, have, for all practical purposes, embraced this socially destructive ideology spawned by Darwin's Capitalist followers.
Thomas Jefferson is not my hero, but I agree 100% with this quote of his, which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what Social Darwinian 🦍 Ideology Pushes:
"I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality... Nature [has] implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses... The Creator would indeed have been a bungling artist had he intended man for a social animal without planting in him social dispositions. It is true they are not planted in every man, because there is no rule without exceptions; but it is false reasoning which converts exceptions into the general rule." --Thomas Jefferson to T. Law, 1814.
FAST FORWARD TO 1945:
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195409-10071046.png)
BETTER TO 🦍 REIGN IN HELL THAN TO (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422155559.png)SERVE IN HEAVEN
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195053-952287.gif)
DOWNHILL ALL THE WAY TO 2001:
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(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-260823153410.png)
https://youtu.be/ttWgbcmnVAA
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by Randy Dotinga, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today November 22, 2023
(https://assets.medpagetoday.net/media/images/107xxx/107504.jpg)
A photo of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s limousine parked at the emergency entrance to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas
A Medical Student, a Dying JFK, and ‘Destiny’: What a Young Doctor Saw 60 Years Ago (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-070822230414-163943.png)
A look back at a conversation with one of the last surviving witnesses 👀 from Trauma Room One
SNIPPETS:
Sixty years ago, at the age of just 25, a fourth-year medical student named Joe Goldstrich (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122257-657398.png) helped colleagues treat the stricken president of the U.S. in a Dallas emergency department. Then he :-X kept quiet for 3 decades. :o
"I was afraid," Goldstrich recalled. He finally spoke up in a 1993 book and opened up even more in a 2020 interviewopens in a new tab or window with (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040623141651.png).
Goldstrich shed light on what he saw, including the president's neck wound and the expression on the first lady's face. He also explored his evolving perspective on where the bullets came from, expressed regret about what he didn't do in the moment, and revealed an amazing coincidence. ... ...
In our interview, Goldstrich told meopens in a new tab or window about Nov. 22, 1963, when he was on a neurosurgery rotation and responded to the emergency department in the early afternoon. There, he helped to move the president to the treatment table and undress him.
The president had a massive head wound and a bullet wound in the front of his neck. Goldstrich helped physicians to expand the bullet hole in Kennedy's front neck so a tracheotomy tube could be inserted. He didn't think it was necessary to expand the hole, an act that would mar a crucial bit of forensic evidence, but he also knew he was "the most junior person in the room."
"I didn't say anything," he said. "I regret that."
Why? Because the neck injury would become crucial to conspiracy theories about the assassination: If it was an entrance wound, not an exit wound, there had to have been a second shooter at Kennedy's front – perhaps in the notorious "grassy knoll" -- not just Lee Harvey Oswald to his rear. ... ...
There are, of course, a shrinking number of surviving witnesses from Trauma Room One. In 2013, 7 physicians who treated Kennedy – including Goldstrich – met for a roundtable discussion. The recording of their conversation has finally surfaced in a new Paramount Plus documentary titled "JFK: What the Doctors Saw" (https://www.paramountplus.com/movies/video/doxrtMleUunO9_I87rGW_oDERuAcb6xU/) Four of those interviewed have since died. Delaney, the surgeon who told me in 2020 about treating Oswald, has also died. ... ...
He added that his thinking about the assassination has evolved again. When we talked in 2020, he said he'd long thought Kennedy's neck wound was an entrance wound. But he changed his mind after examining the Zapruder film and realizing "it would be impossible for someone from the front to shoot Kennedy simultaneously with Oswald shooting from behind the president."
But the Zapruder footage in the new documentary has convinced him otherwise, moving him back to his original theory about a second shooter in front of Kennedy. "I am now almost certain that it is an entrance wound. This should have been obvious to me sooner because the wound at the back of the head was too large to ever be considered an entrance wound. But I was not a ballistics expert in any way, shape, or form."
Read more: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164718-540294.gif)
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/107504
AGelbert COMMENT:
Another GIANT smoking gun was the fact that the limo was sent to a car crushing facility BEFORE any "investigation" took place. It would have been a bit embarrassing for the "SINGLE bouncing bullet" malicious government sponsored LIARS to have pictures of several bullet holes in that limo (at least one bullet hole was an entrance hole in the FRONT WINDSHIELD) reach we-the-public...
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By the time of the ((https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) PNAC planned since 1998) 9/11 U.S. State Sponsored Terrorism INSIDE JOB by (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) Cheney et al (i.e. Military drone versions of commercial jumbo jets to hit the two lallest WTC towers, a missile to destroy the Pentagon accounting office, you know, that one that had just exposed that 4 trillion or so "missing money" (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6781750.png) Rumsfield mentioned on 9/10, AND (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Netanyahu's Zionazi team of explosive demolition experts rigging WTC 1, 2 and 7 for 💥 implosion weeks before), they figured they could BS us into doubting our own eyes. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121157.gif)
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The USA is an (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) oligarchy: This scholar explained how in 1956 (with historian Aaron Good)
https://youtu.be/1PGah9yfulw
Geopolitical Economy Report 167K subscribers 22,982 views Sep 12, 2022
In his 1956 book "The Power Elite," New Left sociologist C. Wright Mills detailed how decision-making in the United States is not democratic; it is determined by
(1) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-160823164759.png) Wall Street capitalists and large corporations,
(2) the 🦍 Pentagon and 🦕🦖🐍 military-industrial complex, and
(3) 😈 the corrupt political class.
This is PART 8 of the Empire and the Deep State series Multipolarista editor Ben Norton is co-hosting with historian Aaron Good and producer Seamus McGuinness of the American Exception podcast.
Check out past episodes in the series here:
• US Empire & the Deep State series (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDAi0NdlN8hNArLl765PXe8tsTKmOciGL)
You can support American Exception at / americanexception
Subscribe to the American Exception channel: / @americanexception9407
|| Multipolarista || Please support Multipolarista at https://multipolarista.com/support
Patreon: / multipolarista
Podcast: / multipolarista
Telegram: https://t.me/multipolarista
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Time to Talk: Lawrence Wilkerson, Ret. US Colonel
https://youtu.be/jBOr9BhdaD8
Time to Talk: Lawrence Wilkerson, Ret. US Colonel
The Hague Peace Projects 4.72K subscribers 47,130 views Dec 23, 2023
Peace in Gaza and Ukraine: Time to Talk!
Jakob de Jonge interviews Lawrence Wilkerson, Ret. US Colonel
Support Peace through Dialogue: thehaguepeace.org
Follow more discussions on: StopTheWar.nu
An initiative by The Hague Peace Projects
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AGelbert NOTE: Graphics 🕯️ and emojies by me.
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December 27, 2023 By Salvatore R. Mercogliano 👍, Ph.D. (Opinion)
Operation Prosperity Guardian: Whose (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-281223163648.png) Prosperity is Being Guarded?
Maersk Gibraltar is not a remarkable containership for 2023. She pales at 10,100 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) compared to the ultra-large container vessels (ULCVs) of nearly 24,000 TEUs. Built in 2016 at Jiangsu Yangzi Xinfu Shipbuilding, the ship is Hong Kong-flagged, owned by Greater China Intermodal Investments, and operated by Maersk Lines of Denmark. On December 15, 2023, the ship was sailing northbound in the Bab el-Mandeb and entering the Red Sea on a voyage from Salalah, Oman to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia when she was the target of attack by the Houthi in Yemen.
Following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, Israel initiated a campaign of reprisal against Hamas in Gaza, which has triggered a worldwide reaction to the actions perpetrated by both sides in the conflict. The Houthi, backed by Iran, opposed the pro-Saudi Arabia-supported Yemen government leading to a bifurcated state, with the Houthi in control of the western half, boarding the Red Sea. On 14 November, the Houthi announced their intention to target an Israeli-affiliated ship and five days later staged a dramatic helicopter assault and capture of MV Galaxy Leader, capturing the ship and crew and sailing them into the territorial waters of Houthi Yemen.
HOUTHI DECLARE WAR (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202540-1395150.gif) ON SHIPPING
On December 3, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Carney (DDG-64) on patrol in the southern Red Sea, responded to the distress calls of three vessels. Back in October, after transiting southbound through the Suez Canal, Carney was in a position in the northern Red Sea to intercept drones and missiles launched by the Houthi toward Yemen. Much as it did in October, Carney responded to attacks on three ships – Bahamas-flagged bulk carrier Unity Explorer, Panama-flagged containership Number 9, and Panama-flagged bulk carrier AOM Sophie II. All three of the ships were struck and sent out distress signals. Carney assisted and shot down several drones.
The Houthi subsequently declared that 📢 all ships sailing to Israel were deemed to be legitimate targets in a further escalation. Between December 12 and 14, two further ships were attacked, along with Maersk Gibraltar, even though Maersk Gibraltar was not Israel-owned or traveling to or from Israel. It was the attack on the latter that prompted A. P. Moller, the parent company of Maersk to announce, “We are deeply concerned about the highly escalated security situation in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The recent attacks on commercial vessels in the area are alarming and pose a significant threat to the safety and security of seafarers.” This led to Maersk diverting all its ships, including those of its U.S. affiliate – Maersk Line, Limited – to avoid the Bab el-Mandeb and the southern Red Sea. This was followed by nearly all other container lines – ZIM, an Israeli-affiliated container line, had already initiated such a detour – and several of the major tanker firms.
Container lines were more exposed to the danger posed by the Houthi than 🦖 tanker or bulk firms. A Suezmax tanker could carry approximately 1 million barrels of oil. At $80 barrel, that is a total cargo value of (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-100323192446-23171225.gif) $80 million. A 💰 10,000 TEU ship, like Maersk Gibraltar, could carry cargo in the range of 💰 hundreds of millions of dollars. The scale of the Houthi attacks ratcheted up War Risk Insurance from 0.02% of the value of the cargo to 0.7%. On a ship worth half a billion dollars, that is a cost of $3.5 million, and the exposure to such danger from drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles warranted (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205132-6482188.gif) caution on the part of the container lines.
As ships of the major container and tanker lines reversed their course and began the long 3,500 nautical mile voyage around Africa, four US-flagged ships 🦍 held their position outside the Bab el-Mandeb. In the Red Sea, MV Maersk Kensington (6,200 TEUs) drifted in a position between Port Sudan and Jedda, while Maersk Sentosa (6,478 TEU) continued its transit of the Suez Canal southbound as it passed its foreign-flagged sisterships. In the Gulf of Aden, Maersk Seletar (6,478 TEU) and the Waterman Steamship roll-on/roll-off ship MV Green Bay also stood by before they could sail for the Suez.
OPERATION (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110822203938-17581013.png) PROSPERITY (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-211123142300.jpeg)(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-151023223446.png) GUARDIAN
On December 18, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III announced the initiation of Operation Prosperity Guardian. He called upon, “Countries that seek to uphold the foundational principle of freedom of navigation must come together to tackle the challenge posed by this non-state actor launching ballistic missiles and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) at merchant vessels from many nations lawfully transiting international waters.” As part of the US 5th Fleet’s Combined Maritime Forces and led by Combined Task Force 153 established in 2022, Prosperity Guardian initially had a total of ten nations committed to the endeavor. As the US moved forces to the area, including swinging the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) and its strike group out of the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden, several nations initially wavered in their support.
Some only provided personnel, while others decided to initiate operations independently while awaiting the US-led project to start. The major shipping companies reported the lack of information and action, along with no visible American effort as their US-flagged ships remained in a holding pattern, they continued their diversions.
However, this proved not to be as problematic for the container lines as they were saying publicly. They faced the twin issues of overcapacity in terms of ships and carrying capacity because of a large building spree funded by the record profits made as a result of the recent supply-chain crisis. Second, they were faced with falling freight rates meaning their revenue was endangered. Xeneta – a freight analytical firm – predicted a stormy 2024 for container companies. With low water issues in the Panama Canal limiting the number and capacity of ships transiting, and now with the Houthi causing a diversion of traffic from the Suez Canal because of a series of strikes against a handful of ships, the container lines, along with the tanker firms, were now looking at much longer, and more profitable operating levels.
To get containers partially flowing, France utilized the frigate Languedoc to escort ships of the French-owned CMA CGM Group. On the evening of 20 December, the small 1,740 TEU CMA CGM Aqaba sailed southbound from its namesake port, stopped in Jeddah, and when abeam of the northern coast of Yemen, turned off its AIS (automated identification system). It reappeared the following morning in the Gulf of Aden. It is believed that this was one of the first ships escorted through by France. With this test, the French prepared to escort two larger ships – 10,800 TEU APL Salalah and 14,360 TEU CMA CGM G. Washington – northbound on December 22. At this point, France, Italy, and Spain had initiated independent operations but announced their intent to support security in the region.
As Languedoc prepared to escort the two French-owned containerships, the US orchestrated the movement of their four US-flagged ships, with some having been drifting in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden for over a week. The delay proved so long, that MV Liberty of American Roll-on/Roll-off carriers had reversed its course and headed back through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean while Maersk Chicago sailed out of the Gulf of Aden for South Africa.
With USS Dwight Eisenhower stationed in the southern Gulf of Aden off the coast of Djibouti and Somalia, and with the venerable cruiser USS Philippine Sea (CG-58) patrolling between her and the coast of Yemen, Combined Maritime Forces and CTF 153 dispatched aircraft from Carrier Air Wing 3 to provide top cover and the destroyers USS Laboon (DDG-58), Gravely (DDG-107), Stetham (DDG-63), Mason (DDG-87), and Carney served as escorts on December 23. In a scene reminiscent of Tom Hanks in Greyhound, the twin US convoys were able, through an overwhelming display of force, to sail unharmed against the Houthi. However, the Houthi did make their presence known with strikes against the Norwegian-flagged tanker MT Blaamanen and the Indian-flagged tanker MT Saibaba, with the latter hit by a drone. USS Laboon reported downing four drones that were inbound to the ship, possibly the first evidence of a US warship being targeted by the Houthi.
The attacks also widened in scope. The Bulgarian-owned and Maltese-flagged bulk carrier MV Ruen was seized in the Gulf of Aden and sailed into Somali waters. This followed a similar attempt on the Liberian-flagged and Israeli-owned tanker MT Central Park but was thwarted by the crew disabled the ship, seeking shelter in a secure compartment and the rapid response of the US destroyer Mason. While some have attributed this to the restart of Somali piracy, which has been non-existent since 2017. More than likely these are Somali privateers, acting in conjunction with the Houthi to disrupt global shipping. Concurrently, Iran has attacked ships in the Arabian Sea – the Malta-flagged CMA CGM Symi and Liberian-flagged tanker Chem Pluto. The latter provoked both the Indian and Pakistani navies to establish patrols in the Arabian Sea against further Iranian attacks.
MAERSK 🎩 MOVES THE NEEDLE
The passage of the three US-flagged Maersk Line, Limited ships led A. P. Moller-Maersk to announce on December 24 that, “Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG) has now been set up and deployed to allow maritime commerce to pass through the Red Sea / Gulf of Aden and once again return to using the Suez Canal as a gateway between Asia and Europe…we are preparing to allow for vessels to resume transit through the Red Sea both eastbound and westbound. We are currently working on plans for the first vessels to make the transit and for this to happen as soon as operationally possible.” It cannot go unnoticed that Maersk made this announcement on the completion of a major effort by the US Navy to ensure the safe passage of three US-flagged subsidiary vessels.
The announcement was followed by the movement of at least a dozen Maersk Line ships in the Mediterranean and around Europe toward Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal, while three ships in the Indian Ocean deviated from their transit to South Africa. Except for CMA CGM and MSC moving some ships in the area of the Bab el-Mandeb, no other line reversed course as quickly as Maersk.
WHOSE (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-010922192452.gif)PROSPERITY? (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080822134118-1710799.gif)
This decision highlights four potential questions regarding the restoration of normal container liner service between Asia and Europe;
The (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422123949.jpeg) effort exerted by the U.S. was for American-flagged ships, all of which were part of the Maritime Security Program and carrying cargo for the Department of Defense. Should Operation Prosperity Guardian, largely supported by the U.S. Navy, provide the escort service for foreign-flag ships of A.P. Moller-Maersk, based in Denmark and with many of their ships registered in that country, but Denmark’s contribution to the operation is a single staff officer?
Will the defensive convoying (countering the Houthi attacks without striking back) be sufficient to see the resumption of normal traffic through the Red Sea and most importantly mitigate the high War Risk insurance rates caused by the Houthi?
Currently, an entire Carrier Strike Group and the majority of an Amphibious Ready Group are in the area. But should an incident occur elsewhere, they could be withdrawn and expose any shipping that continued to sail through the region or returned. How long will, and can, the US Navy maintain this level of escort?
Since the root of this issue is the Israel-Hamas conflict, it does not appear that a purely defensive strategy as practiced so far in Operation Prosperity Guardian will deter Houthi attacks or others that have ranged to the seizure of a ship off the coast of Somali or attacks on vessels by Iran in the Arabian Sea. Will the conflict expand to other regions threatening trade out of the Persian Gulf?
Operation Prosperity Guardian aimed to ensure that the main ocean artery between Europe and Asia, which carried 15% of the world’s trade, was safe for the major shipping lines. It was Maersk, along with Hapag-Lloyd that led the charge to abandon the route. But now, after the successful convoying of Maersk Line, Limited vessels by the US Navy, it appears that Maersk may be resuming their trade, but Hapag-Lloyd is not.
The large number of ships sailing from Europe and only a handful from Asia may indicate that Maersk sees an opportunity to take advantage of Operation Prosperity Guardian. The ships from Europe will be returning empty containers to Asia. With most of the Maersk fleet taking the longer voyage around Africa, this means that the normal return of empty containers, needed for restuffing in Asia could jeopardize cargo bound for Europe and other destinations in the first quarter of the new year.
The ships sailing from Asia and now heading to Europe on the traditional route could mark the beginning of premium service as we are seeing the ocean carriers laying surcharges on longer routes. During the supply chain crisis, express service and the ability to move to the front of the line necessitated a substantial payment.
In the weeks to come, we will see the situation between the Houthi, international shipping, and the world’s navies further develop. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-100323192446-23162278.png) The goal of Operation Prosperity Guardian is to ensure the prosperity of the world (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090822140006.gif) by ensuring the free flow of goods and ships through the international waterways off the coast of Yemen. If the main beneficiary of the operation is one of the largest shipping corporations in the world, then there is a question of whose (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195344-10001203.jpeg) prosperity is Operation Prosperity Guardian truly guarding? 👉 (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-281223163648.png)
https://gcaptain.com/operation-prosperity-guardian-opinion/
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MESSAGE to those MORALLY BANKRUPT ZIONISTS ATTACKING MY COMPUTER:
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-100223120927-22351050.jpeg)
As ☝🏻 GOD, through His Prophet Isaiah, makes clear above, you will not escape PERDITION if you do not REPENT of your EVIL. STOP BEING STUPID!
I will continue to 🕊️🕯️ do what I do, AND, I will be making (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622153114-13801246.png) SURE, EACH AND EVERY DAY, that any malicious attempt by you is thwarted, but thanks for letting me know you considered my posts a problem for your Social Darwinists' R' US Zionist toady pusilanimous modus vivendi (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg1119/#msg1119).
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Israeli General's Son: Why I Rejected Zionism - 🕊️ Miko Peled on Genocide, Palestine, And How This (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164718-5381960.png) Ends
https://youtu.be/jI2K5ZnOHUg
🕊️ Owen Jones 431K subscribers 5.3K 59,642 views Jan 12, 2024
Miko Peled is absolutely extraordinary to listen to. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-201123153058.jpeg) An Israeli-American activist and author, his family were Israeli national heroes: his grandfather signed Israel's 1948 Declaration of Independence, and his father served as a general in the Six-Day War of 1967.
Hear Peled tell me about his journey away from Zionism, about how Palestinians are dehumanised, opposing the revising of history, the prospects of a genuine peaceful answer - and much more.
Please like, subscribe - and help us take on the pro-war media here:
/ owenjones84
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Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law? They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood. -- Psalm 94:20-21
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Washington Dominated by Fantasists - Zelensky's Madness - 🕊️🗽 Aaron Bushnell |🕯️ Capt. Matthew Hoh 👍
https://youtu.be/mcQgePJVEh4
Dialogue works 89K subscribers 1.4K 17,085 views Mar 1, 2024 Interviews
Capt. Matthew Hoh had nearly twelve years experience with the US military and the wars overseas with the United States Marine Corps, Department of Defense and State Department.
He has been a Senior Fellow with the Center for International Policy since 2010. In 2009, Matthew Hoh resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan with the State Department over the American escalation of the war. Prior to his assignment in Afghanistan, Matthew took part in the American occupation of Iraq; first in 2004-2005 in Salah ad Din Province with a State Department reconstruction and governance team and then in 2006-2007 in Anbar Province as a Marine Corps company commander. When not deployed, Matthew worked on Afghanistan and Iraq war policy and operations issues at the Pentagon and State Department from 2002-2008.
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Thread Source: (https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-supreme-courts-huge-favor-to-trump.html#comment-6406438126) (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110822002740-17411392.gif)
AGelbert > dmorista
I know that I am being rather negative, to put it mind bogglingly mildly, but I agree with Scott Ritter, who does not see how we get out of this existential Box Canyon Human Hubris has doomed humanity with.
SNIPPETS:
For an all-too-brief moment, the insanity of the course we had set became apparent, and we undertook to return the genie to the bottle, to reverse course, to save ourselves and our fellow human beings.
But hubris intervened, and when the source of our nuclear angst—the Soviet Union—faded into the pages of history, we sought to leverage our new-found status as uncontested nuclear-armed global hegemon by proclaiming an end to history, promoting ourselves and our political system, through an intellectual exercise that would have made Darwin proud, into the highest expression of human development. ... ...
We have embarked on a collective journey whose only destination is death and destruction.
We have ignored, at our own peril, the efforts of those, at home and abroad, who have tried to get us to take an off-ramp. ... ...
Alas, I, like all of you who are reading this, am doomed to die in a war that could have been avoided if we just tried a little bit harder to avoid it.
The shame is that, at that moment when the inevitability of our passing hits home, in the millisecond that will follow the flash of light and the comprehension of what it signifies, all of us will think “If I had just…”
But it will be too late because we did not.
We allowed the military industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about to become ☠️ manifest.
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Full REALITY BASED article: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/geopolitics/war-provocations-and-peace-actions/msg1841/#msg1841)
March 5, 2024
dmorista > AGelbert
Thank you for this reply, and for the links to your extensive articles with their innumerable links to other material. I am sure you are aware that I do not believe the 9-11 "Official Story" but rather see those events as the culminating and most elaborate psy-op in American (and world) history. Endless assassinations and fishy events that always made it possible for the War Party to attack yet another target (whose leader is always the modern day Hitler and the situation is always supposedly akin to Munich in 1938). I didn't fall for that B.S., and I know you didn't either.
March 12, 2024
AGelbert > dmorista
Well said. TPTB are 💵🎩🍌 bound and determined to continue replacing any concept of decency and good will within government with the 👿 mens rea modus operandi integral to their 🦍 morally bankrupt (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) Social Darwinist (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/who-can-you-trust/corruption-in-government/msg1119/#msg1119) Ideology.
Related, and IMHO quite insidious, is something that happened to me for the first time.
Your reply was 7 days ago. I just happened to find it today because I was checking my spam folder to see if the 🐍 intellimorons shadowbanning me on you-tube comments were also trying to keep me from seeing e-mails that would normally go to my inbox.
I was 😵 aghast that your disqus reply was there! I have NEVER had a disqus reply be put in spam.
That is MORE evidence that ANYONE who says the truth about 9/11, as you did, get's the, uh, 😈 National Endowment for Democracy "treatment". 😠
I also found some from 🗽 Dennis Kucinich, even though I am subscribed to his substack. They want him to go away because he is another voice for truth and justice, though he is not as bold as 🕯️ 🗽 Cornel West (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/geopolitics/us-politics/msg1859/#msg1859).
There were also some from ANH-USA anh-usa.org on (no surprise then why THIS ONE was 😈 googly-placed in "spam") Shadowbans.
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164718-5381960.png) I am including the entire body of the ANH-USA message below just ot give disqus a 😁 hard time:
Dear Anthony,
Imagine you’re looking to improve your health, for any number of reasons: maybe you’re diabetic or pre-diabetic, maybe you’re looking to shed a few unwanted pounds, or improve heart health. Wouldn’t you want access to a wide range of views and information so you can make your own informed choices?
It turns out that those choices are being made for you. Help us stand up to the censorship that is undermining your healthcare and invest in ANH-USA, which is fighting censorship on your behalf!
Big Tech companies are censoring content that doesn’t align with what public health bureaucrats say is “the science.” This extends to topics as seemingly benign as intermittent fasting and ketogenic diets. These are strategies that could improve the health of millions of people, yet they run afoul of medical “misinformation” policies created by the likes of YouTube.
Even worse are the tactics used to ban this information. It isn’t just wiped from the internet; experts that discuss it aren’t kicked off the platforms.
What’s being done is more secretive and insidious. It’s called shadowbanning, and it involves little tweaks to algorithms that have profound effects on what is found on video and social media channels. These tweaks make sure the real experts are de-prioritized in searches and suggestions, while pseudo-experts, warning of the dangers of keto diets and intermittent fasting, are put in their place. Put simply, voices that aren’t aligned with the views of the FDA, CDC, and WHO are de-amplified, and those aligned with them are amplified.
While keto diets and intermittent fasting may be the testing ground for post-pandemic censorship, we know Big Tech’s shadowbanning formula is going to be directed at almost every area of natural health. Unless we raise our voices.
We’re working to expose shadowbanning and other forms of censorship, but we need your help. Invest in us and help fight for free speech!
I will have to check my spam folder more often. I recommend readers here do the same. 👿🎩 (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110822203938-17581013.png) TPTB do not want reality based information to see the light of day. Do what you can to twhart their 🦍 fascist tyranny.
Hang in there 🕊️ Brother 🗽 Dmorista, it is gonna get a lot worse, before, or IF, it gets better.
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🕯️🕊️ Tolstoy was right.
https://youtu.be/psHi7IVt7sY
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🕯️🗽 Jerome Corsi Ph.D. : Did (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif) CIA Kill JFK? | "The Final Analysis"
https://youtu.be/uk0ihHyq2U0
🕯️🗽 Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom 341K subscribers 21,433 views Streamed live 8 hours ago #assassination #coverup #crime
THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY: THE FINAL ANALYSIS
About:
Having received his Ph.D. from Harvard University's Department of Government in 1972, 🕯️🗽 Jerome R. Corsi has published over thirty books on economics, history, and politics, including six New York Times bestsellers, two at number one. From 2004 to 2016, Dr. Corsi was a senior editor at WorldNetDaily.com, where he authored hundreds of articles.
Final Analysis from Post Hill Press
Available now on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3xAuXED
#assassination #autopsy #coverup #crime #evidencetampering #fbi #forensic #forensicevidence #goverhment #history #jfk #jfkassassination #murder #politics #us
(https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622153114-13801246.png) Previously posted here:
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by Randy Dotinga, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today November 22, 2023
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A photo of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s limousine parked at the emergency entrance to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas
A Medical Student, a Dying JFK, and ‘Destiny’: What a Young Doctor Saw 60 Years Ago (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-070822230414-163943.png)
A look back at a conversation with one of the last surviving witnesses 👀 from Trauma Room One
SNIPPETS:
Sixty years ago, at the age of just 25, a fourth-year medical student named Joe Goldstrich (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122257-657398.png) helped colleagues treat the stricken president of the U.S. in a Dallas emergency department. Then he :-X kept quiet for 3 decades. :o
"I was afraid," Goldstrich recalled. He finally spoke up in a 1993 book and opened up even more in a 2020 interviewopens in a new tab or window with (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040623141651.png).
Goldstrich shed light on what he saw, including the president's neck wound and the expression on the first lady's face. He also explored his evolving perspective on where the bullets came from, expressed regret about what he didn't do in the moment, and revealed an amazing coincidence. ... ...
In our interview, Goldstrich told meopens in a new tab or window about Nov. 22, 1963, when he was on a neurosurgery rotation and responded to the emergency department in the early afternoon. There, he helped to move the president to the treatment table and undress him.
The president had a massive head wound and a bullet wound in the front of his neck. Goldstrich helped physicians to expand the bullet hole in Kennedy's front neck so a tracheotomy tube could be inserted. He didn't think it was necessary to expand the hole, an act that would mar a crucial bit of forensic evidence, but he also knew he was "the most junior person in the room."
"I didn't say anything," he said. "I regret that."
Why? Because the neck injury would become crucial to conspiracy theories about the assassination: If it was an entrance wound, not an exit wound, there had to have been a second shooter at Kennedy's front – perhaps in the notorious "grassy knoll" -- not just Lee Harvey Oswald to his rear. ... ...
There are, of course, a shrinking number of surviving witnesses from Trauma Room One. In 2013, 7 physicians who treated Kennedy – including Goldstrich – met for a roundtable discussion. The recording of their conversation has finally surfaced in a new Paramount Plus documentary titled "JFK: What the Doctors Saw" (https://www.paramountplus.com/movies/video/doxrtMleUunO9_I87rGW_oDERuAcb6xU/) Four of those interviewed have since died. Delaney, the surgeon who told me in 2020 about treating Oswald, has also died. ... ...
He added that his thinking about the assassination has evolved again. When we talked in 2020, he said he'd long thought Kennedy's neck wound was an entrance wound. But he changed his mind after examining the Zapruder film and realizing "it would be impossible for someone from the front to shoot Kennedy simultaneously with Oswald shooting from behind the president."
But the Zapruder footage in the new documentary has convinced him otherwise, moving him back to his original theory about a second shooter in front of Kennedy. "I am now almost certain that it is an entrance wound. This should have been obvious to me sooner because the wound at the back of the head was too large to ever be considered an entrance wound. But I was not a ballistics expert in any way, shape, or form."
Read more: (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164718-540294.gif)
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/107504
AGelbert COMMENT:
Another GIANT smoking gun was the fact that the limo was sent to a car crushing facility BEFORE any "investigation" took place. It would have been a bit embarrassing for the "SINGLE bouncing bullet" malicious government sponsored LIARS to have pictures of several bullet holes in that limo (at least one bullet hole was an entrance hole in the FRONT WINDSHIELD) reach we-the-public...
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By the time of the ((https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif) PNAC planned since 1998) 9/11 U.S. State Sponsored Terrorism INSIDE JOB by (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-1406786.gif) Cheney et al (i.e. Military drone versions of commercial jumbo jets to hit the two lallest WTC towers, a missile to destroy the Pentagon accounting office, you know, that one that had just exposed that 4 trillion or so "missing money" (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6781750.png) Rumsfield mentioned on 9/10, AND (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622202719-14071062.gif) Netanyahu's Zionazi team of explosive demolition experts rigging WTC 1, 2 and 7 for 💥 implosion weeks before), they figured they could BS us into doubting our own eyes. (https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080422121157.gif)
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