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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Kindergarten on LSD: Sanctions, smoke and mirrors in Washington

The Saker
The Saker
Mon, 31 Jul 2017 17:33 UTC
congress asylum
The latest US sanctions and the Russian retaliatory response have resulted in a torrent of speculations in the official media and the blogosphere - everybody is trying to make sense of a situation which appears to make no sense at all. Why in the world would the US Senate adopt new sanctions against Russia when Russia has done absolutely nothing to provoke such a vote? Except for Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders, every single US Senator voted in favor of these sanctions. Why?! This is even more baffling when you consider that the single biggest effect of these sanctions will be to trigger a rift, and possibly even counter-sanctions, between the US and the EU. What is absolutely clear is that these sanctions will have exactly zero effect on Russia and I don't think anybody is seriously expecting the Russians to change anything at all in their policies. And yet, every Senator except Paul and Sanders voted for this. Does that make any sense to you?

Let's try to figure out what is going on here.

First, a simple reminder: like all US politicians, from the county level to the US Congress, Senators have only one consideration when they vote - "what's in it for me?". The very last thing which any US Senator really cares about are the real life consequences of his/her vote. This means that to achieve the kind of quasi unanimity (98%) for a totally stupid vote there was some kind of very influential lobby which used some very forceful "arguments" to achieve such a vote. Keep in mind that the Republicans in the Senate knew that they were voting against the wishes of their President. And yet every single one except for Rand Paul voted for these sanctions, that should tell you something about the power of the lobby which pushed for them. So who would have such power?
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Network

Best of the Web: Journalist Diane Johnstone on the New Cold War, the insanity of the War Party, and Macron's geopolitical maneuvers

Dennis J. Bernstein
Consortium News
Wed, 26 Jul 2017 15:43 UTC
putin macron
French President Emmanuel Macron has positioned himself as a possible go-between in facilitating a reduction of tensions between the U.S. and Russia, a move that makes sense for France but may anger Official Washington's hawks who want to escalate the New Cold War.

I interviewed Paris-based journalist and historian Diana Johnstone about Trump's recent visit to Paris. Johnstone is the author of From Mad to Madness: Inside the Pentagon's Nuclear War Planning Machine, recounting the experiences of her father, Paul Johnstone, as a senior analyst in the Pentagon's Strategic Weapons Evaluation Group and a co-author of the Pentagon Papers. I spoke to her by telephone in France on July 19.

Dennis Bernstein: Diana, please give us your response to the recent Trump visit to Paris to meet with Emmanuel Macron.

Diana Johnstone: Well, first of all, it is clear that Emmanuel Macron has seen an advantage in being the only friend of the friendless Trump. It is clear that this can strengthen Macron's hand in dealing with Germany, the main part of his mandate being to influence Germany in changing EU policy.

Also, Macron is in a position to be an intermediary in this rapprochement between Trump and Putin, which of course the War Party in Washington is doing everything to obstruct. So Macron has situated himself in an interesting position.
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Alarm Clock

Best of the Web: More Transgender Rights? No, It's Only the Death of Meaning, Dear!

Rob Slane
The Blogmire
Tue, 25 Jul 2017 14:44 UTC
Transgender bull
So here we are on the cusp of gaining the "right" to alter our own birth certificates to change the sex that the midwife proclaimed when we exited our mother's womb. Midwives? They know nothing. For millennia they have had the audacity to look between the legs of newborn babes and declare them to be boys or girls, solely on the basis of certain anatomical features.
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USA

Best of the Web: Pepe Escobar: 'US Army report about Post-Primacy World a classic piece of myopic Exceptionalism'

Pepe Escobar
Sputnik News
Mon, 24 Jul 2017 18:39 UTC
Victims Parade
© AFP 2017/ Mark RalstonPeople walk amongst US national flags erected by students and staff from Pepperdine University as they pay their respects to honor the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, at their campus in Malibu, California.
As a new report by the Army War College tracks the loss of "US primacy" around the world, it prescribes more of the same; propaganda, surveillance and war.

It's public knowledge that, from the point of view of the Pentagon, the United States faces five existential threats: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and terrorism, in that order. Way beyond rhetoric, all Pentagon actions should be understood and analyzed under this framework.

Now global public opinion may have access to an even more intriguing document; a new study by the Army War College titled 'At Our Own Peril: DoD Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World'. Readers are actively encouraged to download it and study the fine print.

Researcher Nafeez Ahmed has proposed some helpful decoding of this "post-primacy" predicament that took virtually ten months to be put together.

The intellectual firepower concerned involved all sections of the Pentagon scattered around the world, as well as the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Intelligence Council, and proverbial neocon-heavy think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the RAND Corporation, and the Institute for the Study of War.

Comment: There is something different about this report though: US think-tankland is at least acknowledging the reality that the Empire is on the decline.

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Snakes in Suits

Best of the Web: James Corbett: Our Leaders Are Psychopaths - An Introduction to Political Ponerology (VIDEO)

James Corbett
The Corbett Report
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 00:00 UTC
our leaders are psychopaths
They walk among us. On the outside they're just like you and me, but on the inside they are unfeeling automatons who care only for themselves. They are the psychopaths, and they are in control of our governments, our corporations, our military and all of the positions of power. Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we delve into Political Ponerology, a diagnosis of our politicians and a brief look at the bigger picture.

NOTE: This is a visualization of Episode 090 of The Corbett Report podcast, first released on June 14, 2009.



Comment: Political Ponerology is a seminal book that describes what is quite probably THE great problem of our time.

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Star of David

Best of the Web: The biggest meddler in American democracy is not Russia, it is Israel via foreign agent AIPAC

Grant Smith
AntiWar.com
Wed, 19 Jul 2017 16:36 UTC
aipac
Alleged Russian meddling in the US electoral process will be the subject of a Senate Judiciary Hearing on Wednesday. The hearing is titled "Oversight of the Justice Department's (Non) Enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act: Lessons from the Obama Administration and Current Compliance Practices." In 1938 the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act to mandate disclosure of the activities of non-diplomatic foreign agents in the United States propagandizing for war, swinging public opinion, and obtaining foreign aid and other economic benefits through congressional lobbying without disclosing that their activities were conducted on behalf of foreign principals.

The first panel of witnesses for Wednesday's Senate hearing will include Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division of the Justice Department Adam Hickey, Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI Bill Priestap and Inspector General of the Justice Department Michael Horowitz.

Second panel witnesses include Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, an outfit which circulated the now infamous dossier of allegations made against Donald Trump by a British spy. William Browder, a Russian market investment expert from Hermitage Capital Management, who has now deemed Russia "absolutely uninvestable" will also testify. According to reports, Browder knows Natalia Veslnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. to peddle opposition research on Hillary Clinton.

Panel Chairman Chuck Grassley may ultimately conclude that the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) has failed and that unregistered Russian foreign agents are taking over America. If so, he will be half right, but not the first such senator to express concern. Grassley should consider what happened after a more extensive Senate FARA inquiry was launched 55 years ago.
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Info

Best of the Web: Writing's on the wall: Pentagon study admits U.S. empire collapsing, recommends massive effort to maintain global access to resources

Nafeez Ahmed
Insurge Intelligence
Mon, 17 Jul 2017 01:34 UTC
us soldier
In the first of a series, we report on stunning new evidence that the U.S. Department of Defense is waking up to the collapse of American primacy, and the rapid unraveling of the international order created by U.S. power after the Second World War.

But the Pentagon's emerging vision of what comes next hardly inspires confidence. We breakdown both the insights and cognitive flaws in this vision. In future pieces we will ask the questions: What is really driving the end of the American empire? And based on that more accurate diagnosis of the problem, what is the real solution?

An extraordinary new Pentagon study has concluded that the U.S.-backed international order established after World War 2 is "fraying" and may even be "collapsing", leading the United States to lose its position of "primacy" in world affairs.

The solution proposed to protect U.S. power in this new "post-primacy" environment is, however, more of the same: more surveillance, more propaganda ("strategic manipulation of perceptions") and more military expansionism.

The document concludes that the world has entered a fundamentally new phase of transformation in which U.S. power is in decline, international order is unravelling, and the authority of governments everywhere is crumbling.
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Magnify

Best of the Web: 'Shelves are fully stocked': Venezuela's 'food crisis' myth revealed


teleSUR
Tue, 11 Jul 2017 17:50 UTC
venezuela grocery store
Martin discovers that while there are shortages, these are a product of an "economic war."

In her latest Empire Files episode, acclaimed journalist Abby Martin exposes the media bias behind "distorted" depictions of Venezuela's food and political crisis.

As part of the episode "Abby Martin in Venezuela - Supermarkets to Black Markets," Martin enters local grocery stores, big and small, with hidden cameras to see if they are completely out of stock — as they are commonly depicted by mainstream media.

She notes, "We just went to five different supermarkets and the shelves were fully stocked. And this is all type of neighborhoods, all types of classes. From Nestle chocolates to coco cola products, fish, meat, vegetables and fruits."

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Mr. Potato

Best of the Web: Too Much Exceptionalism Hath Made the US Elites Mad

Rob Slane
TheBlogMire
Mon, 10 Jul 2017 20:31 UTC
US exceptionalism
What kind of person really wants to see relations between the world's biggest nuclear armed countries deteriorate? Who wants to see the situation between the US and Russia, which has become at least as dangerous as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, get even worse? Or to put it another way, who would not welcome a genuine dialogue between the leaders of these two great countries? The answer to these questions is of course those who have completely lost their ability to reason.
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Bullseye

Best of the Web: The Russian 'Hacking Scandal': A CNN and U.S. Deep State 'Nothing Burger'

Craig Murray
craigmurray.co.uk
Mon, 10 Jul 2017 14:26 UTC
CNN Nothing Burger
After six solid months of co-ordinated allegation from the mainstream media allied to the leadership of state security institutions, not one single scrap of solid evidence for Trump/Russia election hacking has emerged.
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