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Propaganda

Best of the Web: The latest false news on the Trump impeachment circus

Paul Craig Roberts
paulcraigroberts.org
Wed, 13 Nov 2019 00:00 UTC
fake false news
© WSJ
As the media are all out to get Trump, there is no way to get any valid information about the so-called impeachment. But you don't have to pay too much attention to notice that the Democrats and the presstitutes are constantly changing the focus. The alleged whistleblower, who only had hearsay information, if that, has dropped out of the picture, being too compromised by his afflilations and prior meetings with Adam Schiff during which the "whistleblowing" was planned as an attack on Trump.

The Democrats and presstitutes then shifted focus to state department types who also heard second hand from "staff" about the alleged conversation containing a quid pro quo, a claim unsupported by the transcript of the telephone call or by the President of Ukraine. So now a new alleged phone call has emerged, or been invented. The acting ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, a sleazy State Department type, today (Nov. 13) testified that a member of his staff heard Trump in another telephone call asking Sondland about the Ukraine investigation of the Bidens. This second-hand information is described by the presstitute media as a "bombshell." God help us. It is nothing of the sort. But the presstitutes will repeat it until it is.

A person has to wonder how many members of staffs are permitted to listen to telephone conversations between heads of state. In my day it was zero.

Comment: We are witnessing political warfare and a battle of narratives of the first order - where the fate of many lie in the balance. When a fact-based history of this time in the US is finally put together, do not expect it to look kindly on the efforts of Schiff and the pathological political class who have done so much to divide the country in a sick effort to accrue money and power.

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Battery

Best of the Web: Bolivia: What happens to the lithium industry without Morales?

Vijay Prashad
Counterpunch
Wed, 13 Nov 2019 00:00 UTC
EvoMoralesQuote
Bolivia's President Evo Morales was overthrown in a military coup on November 10. He is now in Mexico. Before he left office, Morales had been involved in a long project to bring economic and social democracy to his long-exploited country. It is important to recall that Bolivia has suffered a series of coups, often conducted by the military and the oligarchy on behalf of transnational mining companies. Initially, these were tin firms, but tin is no longer the main target in Bolivia. The main target is its massive deposits of lithium, crucial for the electric car.

Over the past 13 years, Morales has tried to build a different relationship between his country and its resources. He has not wanted the resources to benefit the transnational mining firms, but rather to benefit his own population. Part of that promise was met as Bolivia's poverty rate has declined, and as Bolivia's population was able to improve its social indicators. Nationalization of resources combined with the use of its income to fund social development has played a role. The attitude of the Morales government toward the transnational firms produced a harsh response from them, many of them taking Bolivia to court.

Over the course of the past few years, Bolivia has struggled to raise investment to develop the lithium reserves in a way that brings the wealth back into the country for its people. Morales' Vice President Álvaro García Linera had said that lithium is the "fuel that will feed the world." Bolivia was unable to make deals with Western transnational firms; it decided to partner with Chinese firms. This made the Morales government vulnerable. It had walked into the new Cold War between the West and China. The coup against Morales cannot be understood without a glance at this clash.

Comment: See also:

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Bulb

Best of the Web: Ukrainian oligarch Kolomoysky blasts US in NYT interview, calls for 'new Warsaw Pact' with Russia - "They're stronger anyway"


RT
Wed, 13 Nov 2019 19:38 UTC

Comment: Some variant of this was always going to come about. That it took them over 5 years of dancing with the devil, and over 10,000 lives, sums up the utter fecklessness and lack of foresight of the Ukrainian political elite.

Putin has been proven correct in his strategy since the Americans' coup in 2014 to just keep Ukraine on a leash but otherwise stay out of it; Kiev would eventually see the light and come crawling back.


A tycoon who spent millions of dollars arming anti-Russian fighters in Ukraine has emerged from the shadows to blast the Europe he once idolized. The oligarch now sees alliance with Russia as the only option for his country.
Igor Kolomoysky
© Reuters / Valentyn OgirenkoIgor Kolomoysky is one of Ukraine's most powerful tycoons.
Igor Kolomoysky, the oligarch seen by many as the shadow power behind Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has changed his tune sharply from the days of the 2014 Maidan rebellion.

Back then he was an ally of pro-European President Petro Poroshenko, who even appointed him governor of the Dnepropetrovsk region. Once installed there, Kolomoysky placed a bounty on captured fighters from the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics, who fought against the new authorities in Kiev, and spent a reported $10 million per month fielding his own private militia, also funding ultranationalist volunteer units, like the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.

"We'll just have to kill them," he said of the rebels at the time.

Comment: This "chancer" who "only wants money" couldn't "see objectively" in 2014 that Ukrainians want "people want peace, a good life, and not to be at war."

But now he does?

We shall see.

In the meantime, what can the Americans do about this? Sanction Kolomoysky? Sanction Zelensky and the Ukrainian govt itself?!

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Fire

Best of the Web: Democrazis run rampage in Hong Kong - Police chief warns 'society on brink of total breakdown'


RT
Tue, 12 Nov 2019 20:23 UTC

Comment: The situation's reaching boiling point in Hong Kong. Stand by for mystery snipers shooting protesters and/or police...


hong kong map riots
Just some of the flash-points across Hong Kong today, 12 Nov 2019
Protests in Hong Kong have reached new heights of violence, with bomb-throwing rioters seizing control of university campuses and pushing out police while authorities admit that the riot-ravaged city hangs by a thread.

Demonstrators armed to the teeth with molotov cocktails, javelins, and (in one case, at least) a chainsaw have seized control of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), pushing riot police off the campus on Tuesday night and leaving a shocking amount of destruction in their wake.

Videos and photos posted to social media show the rioters fortifying their position with barricades and setting "huge" fires on the campus. Classes were unsurprisingly canceled at CUHK and other universities around the city, some of which also played host to clashes between the demonstrators - still dubbed 'pro-democracy activists' in the media despite the increasing levels of violence on display - and police. On at least one campus, rioters stole sporting equipment including javelins and shot puts and weaponized them.

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NPC

Best of the Web: I was a liberal NY prof, but when I said the Left was going too far, colleagues called me a NAZI & treated me like a RUSSIAN SPY

Michael Rectenwald
RT
Tue, 12 Nov 2019 18:20 UTC
nyu graduates
© (L) AFP / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Drew Angerer; (R) Wikimedia / Jonathan71
What's wrong with the American left? Suffering from Trump anxiety disorder, acting like cult members, and engaging in a new McCarthyism, the left has lost its collective mind. I saw it coming and left the left in the nick of time.

My break with the left began in the fall of 2016. I was a professor at New York University, a left-liberal, and an active social media participant. My skepticism and resentment at my political tribe's insistence that I affirm its increasingly crazy claims had been growing steadily to this point.

Much like Jordan Peterson, my tipping point involved the pronoun wars, although, as you'll see, I enjoyed a more satirical approach. When the University of Michigan instituted a policy that offered students a carte blanche pronoun preference opportunity, a clever student offered "His Majesty" as his chosen pronoun, and his blasphemous pronoun choice made the news. The satirical trope hilariously underscored the absurdity of gender and pronoun proliferation, and the institutional lunacy that has attempted to keep pace with it. I posted a link to an article about the spoof on Facebook, without comment. I then proceeded to teach for the rest of the afternoon.
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Che Guevara

Best of the Web: Why Extinction Rebellion seems so nuts

Brendan O'Neill
Spiked
Thu, 07 Nov 2019 00:01 UTC
extinction rebellion
© Getty
This is an edited version of a short speech Brendan O'Neill gave at the Battle of Ideas festival in London on 3 November 2019.

One of my favourite political events this year was the Battle of Canning Town. This was the moment when Extinction Rebellion decided to send its painfully middle-class agitators to a working-class part of East London early in the morning to lecture and inconvenience people who just wanted to get to work. What could go wrong?

Quite a lot, it turned out. There were many wonderful moments. The two posh greens who climbed on top of a Tube train at Canning Town were mocked and eventually dragged down. A commuter can be heard branding one of the protesters a 'ponytail weirdo'. Elsewhere on the Tube system that day, commuters pointed out that the London Underground is run on electricity and is therefore pretty eco-friendly. 'Are you that fucking stupid?', one asked a smug-looking couple of XR agitators. 'No wonder you can't get jobs...'

Comment: See also:

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Chess

Best of the Web: MSM Adamantly Avoids the Word 'Coup' in Bolivia Reporting

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Sun, 10 Nov 2019 17:22 UTC
morales resign
There has been a military coup in Bolivia backed by violent right-wing rioters and the US government, but you'd hardly know this from any of the mainstream media headlines.
"Bolivian President Evo Morales steps down following accusations of election fraud" proclaims CNN.

"Bolivia's Morales resigns amid scathing election report, rising protests" reports The Washington Post.

"Bolivian Leader Evo Morales Steps Down" says The New York Times.

"Bolivian President Evo Morales resigns amid fraud poll protests" declares the BBC.

"President of Bolivia steps down amid allegations of election rigging" we are informed by Telegraph.

"Bolivia's President Morales resigns after backlash to disputed election" says the Sydney Morning Herald.
So there you have it. The indigenous leader of a socialist South American government which has successfully lifted masses of people out of crushing poverty, which happens to control the world's largest reserves of lithium (which may one day replace oil as a crucial energy resource due to its use in powering smartphones, laptops, hybrid and electric cars), which has an extensive and well-documented history of being targeted for regime change by the US government, simply stepped down due to some sort of scandal involving a "disputed election". Nothing to do with the fact that right-wing mobs had been terrorizing this leader's family, or the fact that the nation's military literally commanded him to step down and are now currently searching for him to arrest him, leading to ousted government officials being rounded up and held captive by soldiers wearing masks.

All perfectly normal and not suspicious at all.
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Family

Flashback Best of the Web: Bone-chilling national scandal: Thousands of babies are stolen from innocent parents by the UK state

Frances Hardy
Daily Mail
Wed, 27 May 2015 08:22 UTC
Nicky and Mark Webster, forced adoptions UK, UK state kidnapping
Nicky and Mark Webster with son Brandon. After doctors became suspicious of the parents, believing they were abusing their kids three of their children were forcibly removed and taken in social services
The woman's face was pale and tear-stained; her eyes raw from crying. 'Please may I speak to Denise?' she begged my husband. Fired by desperation, she'd found my home and rung my doorbell one evening six years ago. I was her last hope, she said.

As a magazine and TV agony aunt with a regular slot on ITV's This Morning, my job is to give constructive and compassionate advice to those who seek it. I take my role — and the responsibility it involves — very seriously.

So although I usually make it a rule not to see people in my home, this time the woman's distress was so acute that I invited her in.

Her story spilled out. She was a grandmother in her late 40s, whose daughter, single and unable to cope with the responsibilities of parenthood, had nonetheless given birth to four children.

Each had been raised with love, kindness and singular devotion by the woman standing in front of me: their grandmother. They were all under nine and the youngest was 18 months old. The woman was distraught because she had been told that her youngest grandchild, a cherubic, blue-eyed blonde, was to be taken from her.

Comment: Related articles: For more information on this horrendous practice, see Ian Josephs' website, forced-adoption.com, where he lays out what has been happening in the UK for years, and what parents can do about it.

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Battery

Flashback Best of the Web: Evo Morales plans to transform Bolivia into major global hub of lithium-based technologies


DW.com
Mon, 17 Jul 2017 17:22 UTC
lithium mine bolivia
The Bolivian government aims to pump massive investments to expand the country's production of lithium, a metal needed for the batteries that power everything from smartphones and laptops to hybrid and electric cars.

In a future battery-powered world, lithium may replace oil and emerge as one of the most important commodities on earth. That prospect is driving Bolivia, which is considered to have the largest reserves of the metal, to keep lithium under strict state control.

Bolivian President Evo Morales sees a prosperous future for his currently impoverished South American nation, pinning his hopes on the rapid rise in the global price of this valuable resource. "We will develop a huge lithium industry, over $800 million have already been made available," Morales told the German DPA news agency.

Lithium, the lightest of all metals, is the key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries, which are currently the best available technology for powering a range of products, including mobile phones and e-cars.

Lithium-ion battery production is forecast to double to eight billion cells by 2025. And the world price for lithium carbonate has almost doubled in a short span of time to about $13,000 per ton. This has pushed a number of firms across the world to try to get hold of lithium supplies.

Comment: That's the end of that plan then.

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Che Guevara

Best of the Web: US 'coup d'état': Bolivian President Evo Morales announces his resignation, UPDATES


RT
Sun, 10 Nov 2019 20:57 UTC
Evo Morales
© Reuters/Carlos Garcia RawlinsBolivia's President Evo Morales addresses the media at the presidential hangar in the Bolivian Air Force terminal in El Alto, Bolivia, November 10, 2019.
Bolivia's President Evo Morales has resigned, shortly after the country's military urged him to do so. Two officials next in line to take over the government also left as the country is in turmoil after weeks of protests.

"I resign from my position as president so that (Carlos) Mesa and (Luis Fernando) Camacho do not continue to persecute socialist leaders," Morales said during a televised address naming the leaders of the opposition.

Morales said that he decided to leave the post in hopes that his departure would stop the spate of violent attacks against officials and indigenous people, "so that they [protesters] do not continue burning the houses [of public officials]" and "kidnapping and mistreating" families of indigenous leaders.

"It is my obligation , as the first indigenous president and president of all Bolivians, to seek this pacification," he said, adding that he hopes opposition would "understand the message."

Shortly after the announcement his Vice-President Alvaro Marcelo García Linera also submitted his resignation. The next person in line to take over the government, the president of the Senate Adriana Salvatierra, resigned soon after.

Comment: UPDATE: RT, 10/11/2019: 'Morales' resignation undermines claim he is a dictator, US may be behind push to oust him
Washington has played a hand in the resignation of Bolivia's president Evo Morales, human and labour rights lawyer Dan Kovalik told RT. The US has been stirring unrest for years with millions of dollars in democratic aid, he said.
Luis Fernando Camacho
© Reuters/Carlos Garcia RawlinsPolice officers escort Luis Fernando Camacho, a Santa Cruz civic leader and major opposition figure, as he waves a national flag during a protest against Bolivia's President Evo Morales in La Paz, Bolivia November 10, 2019.
"I think this is a bad thing that's happened and I see the hands of the US behind it," Kovalik said, adding that there has been "evidence released of conversation between the White House and opposition leaders," indicating that anti-Morales protests might have been a "coordinated" campaign.

"And we know that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been spending millions of dollars in Bolivia for years trying to undermine Evo Morales"

A CIA offshoot of sorts, the NED channeled nearly $1 million into the South American country in 'democracy promoting' aid in 2018 alone. A huge chunk of the funds was used by International Republican Institute (IRI), in charge of promoting right-wing agenda.


Morales' decision to resign rather than cling to power while risking lives of his supporters, who turn out for mass rallies in his name, "undermines the claims that he is some sort of a dictator," Kovalik said. "That shows a lot about who he is. That shows that Morales cares about his own country... he's shown himself to have the well-being of his own people at heart."

Morales, once a very popular leader, was faced with a wave of unrest and mutiny from the military. Kovalik believes that outside interference might have played a role in such a change of heart.


"Of course, people change their minds about things, but I also think there've been some manipulation of the public in Bolivia."
UPDATE: RT, 11/11/2019: Morales denounces 'coup d'état', as opposition says warrant issued for his arrest
Police and military have been on the lookout for Evo Morales, who has just resigned as Bolivia's president, opposition has claimed. Morales dubbed the arrest warrant "illegal," while police chief denied its existence altogether.

"I denounce in front of the world and the Bolivian people that a police official publicly announced that he was instructed to execute an illegal arrest warrant against me; in addition, violent groups assaulted my home. The coup destroys the rule of law."

Earlier, Bolivian protest leader Luis Fernando Camacho has said that an outstanding warrant exists for the socialist leader's arrest.

"Confirmed!! Arrest warrant for Evo Morales !! The police and the military are looking for him in Chapare [rural province in the northern region of Cochabamba], a place where he hid," Camacho wrote, adding that the military seized the presidential plane Morales used to get to his political stronghold of Chimoré in the Department of Cochabamba, 300 kilometers (186 miles) east of La Paz, from where he announced his resignation.

However, Commander of Bolivia's National Police Yuri Calderón has dismissed reports that an order for Morales' arrest is currently being served. In the comments broadcast on national TV, Calderón said that police have received no such document from the prosecutor's office.
UPDATE: RT, 11/11/2019: Former President and VP of electoral commission arrested
The commander of Bolivia's National Police, Yuri Calderón, has dismissed reports that an order for Morales' arrest is currently being served.

"There is no arrest warrant for Morales nor for any other ministers of his cabinet. A request has been put in with the Attorney General... for the issuance of an arrest warrant for the perpetrators and accomplices of those who violated the electoral process. This is an absolute lie." He confirmed, however, that the former president and vice president of the electoral commission were arrested on Sunday. A video of the arrest has been circulating online.



See also:

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