The Evening Blues - 11-13-17
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist and singer Mighty Joe Young. Enjoy!
Mighty Joe Young - Suffering Soul
“When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.”
-- Yevgeny Yevtushenko
News and Opinion
Chris Hedges: RT America Torched in Witch Hunt ’17
In one of the most horrendous blows to press freedom since the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, the U.S. Department of Justice has forced the news broadcaster RT America to file under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The assault on RT America, on which I host the show “On Contact,” has nothing to do with the dissemination of Russian propaganda. It is driven by RT America’s decision to provide a platform to critics of American capitalism and imperialism, critics who lambast a system of government that can no longer be called democratic. And it is accompanied by the installation of algorithms by Google, Facebook and Twitter that divert readers away from left-wing, progressive and anti-war websites, including Truthdig. The World Socialist Web Site has seen its search traffic from Google fall by 74 percent since April. Google, in a further blow, this month removed RT from its list of “preferred” channels on YouTube. Twitter has blocked all advertising by the channel.
Put the censorship campaigns together and the message is clear: Left-wing critics, already marginalized by the state, must be silenced.
It would seem, given how we are locked out of the corporate media and public broadcasting, that the assault is overkill. But the ideology that sustains the corporate state, the “free market” and neoliberalism has lost all credibility. The corporate state has no counterargument to its critics. The nakedness of corporate greed, exploitation and repression is transparent across the political spectrum. The ideological fortress erected by corporate power and sustained by its courtiers in the press and academia has collapsed. All it has left is a crude censorship.
Complicit in this censorship is a bankrupt liberal class. The institutions tasked with defending press freedom—including the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and PEN—along with major news outlets such as The New York Times, have served as the corporate state’s useful idiots. ... The ruling elites are desperately trying to shift the focus away from the cause of the political insurgencies on the left and the right: extreme social inequality. It is for this reason that critics who highlight and explore the roots and causes of social inequality must be discredited or silenced. If social inequality is accepted as the driving force behind the decay of the American state and the mounting rage of much of the population, then the structures that profit from this inequality will come under assault. All the elites have left is to paint their critics as “agents of a foreign power.”
'Way too little, way too late': Facebook's factcheckers say effort is failing
Journalists working for Facebook say the social media site’s fact-checking tools have largely failed and that the company has exploited their labor for a PR campaign.
Several fact checkers who work for independent news organizations and partner with Facebook told the Guardian that they feared their relationships with the technology corporation, some of which are paid, have created a conflict of interest, making it harder for the news outlets to scrutinize and criticize Facebook’s role in spreading misinformation.
The reporters also lamented that Facebook had refused to disclose data on its efforts to stop the dissemination of fake news. The journalists are speaking out one year after the company launched the collaboration in response to outrage over revelations that social media platforms had widely promoted fake news and propaganda during the US presidential election. ...
“I don’t feel like it’s working at all. The fake information is still going viral and spreading rapidly,” said one journalist who does fact-checks for Facebook and, like others interviewed for this piece, was not authorized to speak publicly due to the continuing partnership with the company. “It’s really difficult to hold [Facebook] accountable. They think of us as doing their work for them. They have a big problem, and they are leaning on other organizations to clean up after them.”
Facebook announced to much hype last December that it was partnering with third-party factcheckers – including the Associated Press, Snopes, ABC News, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org – to publicly flag fake news so that a “disputed” tag would warn users about sharing debunked content. A Guardian review this year found that the fact-checks seemed to be mostly ineffective and that “disputed” tags weren’t working as intended.
Paying Off Post-9/11 War Debt Could Cost $8 Trillion
Analysts say a reckoning is coming — even as Republicans seek tax cuts that will add at least $1.5 trillion to the national debt. The post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere have been fought with borrowed money, enough to require up to $8 trillion in interest payments in coming decades, a new report says.
Unlike America’s previous wars, its 21st-century conflicts have been paired not with a tax hike or massive sale of U.S. bonds, but a tax cut. The federal government has been operating at a deficit since 2002, accruing a national debt that now totals $20 trillion and counting.
“We have to recognize that we have been borrowing for 16 years to pay for military operations,” said Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It’s the “first time really in history with any major conflict that we have borrowed rather than ask people to contribute to the national defense directly, and the result is we’ve got this huge fiscal drag…that we’re not really accounting for or factoring into deliberations about fiscal policy as well as military policy.”
Iran-Iraq earthquake death toll climbs to more than 400
A powerful magnitude-7.3 earthquake has rocked the northern border region between Iran and Iraq, killing more than 400 people and injuring thousands more.
Iran’s state-run Irna news agency has raised the death toll to 407 and said 6,700 people were injured after the quake that struck the country’s western provinces at 9.20pm local time on Sunday. Tremors were felt hundreds of miles away in both capitals, in Tehran and Baghdad.
Local officials said the toll was likely to rise as search and rescue teams reached remote areas. More than 70,000 people were in need of emergency shelter, the Iranian Red Crescent said.
The hardest hit province was Kermanshah, where three days of mourning have been announced. More than 236 people died in the town of Sarpol-e Zahab, about 10 miles from the Iraq border. In Kermanshah’s Dalahu county, the local governor was quoted as saying that some villages had been completely destroyed.
How Saudi Arabia turned on Lebanon's Hariri
From the moment Saad al-Hariri’s plane touched down in Saudi Arabia on Friday Nov. 3, he was in for a surprise. There was no line-up of Saudi princes or ministry officials, as would typically greet a prime minister on an official visit to King Salman, senior sources close to Hariri and top Lebanese political and security officials said. His phone was confiscated, and the next day he was forced to resign as prime minister in a statement broadcast by a Saudi-owned TV channel.
The move thrust Lebanon back to the forefront of a struggle that is reshaping the Middle East, between the conservative Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia and Shi‘ite revolutionary Iran. Their rivalry has fueled conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, where they back opposing sides, and now risks destabilizing Lebanon, where Saudi has long tried to weaken the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, Lebanon’s main political power and part of the ruling coalition.
Sources close to Hariri say Saudi Arabia has concluded that the prime minister - a long-time Saudi ally and son of late prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005 - had to go because he was unwilling to confront Hezbollah. Multiple Lebanese sources say Riyadh hopes to replace Saad Hariri with his older brother Bahaa as Lebanon’s top Sunni politician. Bahaa is believed to be in Saudi Arabia and members of the Hariri family have been asked to travel there to pledge allegiance to him, but have refused, the sources say. ...
Hariri was summoned to the Kingdom to meet Saudi King Salman in a phone call on Thursday night, Nov. 2. Before departing, he told his officials they would resume their discussions on Monday. He told his media team he would see them at the weekend in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, where he was due to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the sidelines of the World Youth Forum.
Lebanese president says PM Hariri has been 'kidnapped'
Lebanon’s president has told foreign ambassadors that the country’s prime minister Saad al-Hariri, who resigned suddenly last week in Saudi Arabia, has been “kidnapped” and must have immunity, a senior Lebanese official told Reuters on Saturday.
Saad Hariri: Lebanon return from Saudi Arabia 'within days'
Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri says he will return home "in days" to formally submit his resignation. Mr Hariri spoke to Future TV from Riyadh, his first public remarks since he announced he was stepping down last week.
His cabinet allies say he is being held captive, but Mr Hariri denied this.
He has blamed the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement for his resignation, citing concerns over his and his family's safety.
The US and UK have warned other countries not to use Lebanon for proxy conflicts.
Observers noted the journalist who interviewed Mr Hariri made an effort to demonstrate that the event was live, rather than pre-recorded, though there were several moments which raised suspicions about the conditions under which the interview was held, the Associated Press reported.
Ex-intelligence chiefs: Trump is being played by Putin and US is in 'peril'
Two former US intelligence chiefs have said Donald Trump poses “a peril” to the US because he is vulnerable to being “played” by Russia, after the president said on Saturday he believed Vladimir Putin’s denials of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Former director of national intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director John Brennan issued a stern rebuke to Trump after the president called both men “political hacks” for their support of an intelligence agency consensus that Russia meddled with the US election.
“First of all, he was referring to us as political hacks because he was trying to delegitimize the intelligence assessment that was done,” Brennan told CNN’s State of the Union. He added: “By not confronting the issue directly and not acknowledging to Putin: ‘We know that you’re responsible for this,’ I think he’s giving Putin a pass.
“And I think it demonstrates to Mr Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, recently issued the first indictments in the investigation into possible collusion between Trump aides and Russia. Trump has repeatedly denied collusion. On Saturday, Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a flight to Hanoi that Mueller was leading an “artificial Democratic hit job” which could cost “millions and millions of lives” by interfering with diplomatic efforts with Russia.
Asked if he had raised the issue of Russian interference during sideline conversations with Putin at the Apec summit in Da Nang, Trump said: “Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ And I believe – I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.” The president later tweeted criticism of “haters and fools” and insisted that “having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing” because he wanted “to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!”
'Freedom for the Political Prisoners': Hundreds of Thousands March in Barcelona
An estimated 750,000 people marched in Barcelona on Saturday to demand that the Spanish government release Catalan separatist leaders who are being held in prison for their roles in the region's recent independence referendum.
"Wearing yellow ribbons on their lapels to signify support, they filled the length of the Avenue Marina that runs from the beach to Barcelona's iconic Sagrada Familia church, while the jailed leaders' families made speeches," The Independent reports. "Catalonia's two main grassroots independence groups called the march, under the slogan 'Freedom for the political prisoners,' after their leaders were remanded in custody on charges of sedition last month."
The march on Saturday followed a series of related demonstrations in recent weeks. On October 16, "around 200,000 people (according to calculations by the municipal police) came out to protest the jailing of the heads of the pro-independence ANC and Òmnium associations, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart," the Spanish newspaper El Pais reports. "On October 21, another protest calling for their release saw 450,000 people take to the streets of the Catalan capital." ...
The Spanish High Court has jailed a group of former government officials and leaders of two grassroots groups. On Thursday, the government released five of the those who had been imprisoned, though former Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell reportedly struck a deal that effectively bars her from advocating for independence during December's election. The court has also issued warrants for the region's former president Carles Puigdemont, a supporter of Catalan independence who fled to Brussels with four other former government officials.
Puigdemont, according to El Pais, sent a video message to Saturday's protest to urge citizens to remain "very active" and reassure them that those who have been jailed will hear the "clamor" of the people. "Let's not let ourselves be frightened or constrained by those who want to impose the law of [Article] 155," Puigdemont reportedly said, referencing the clause of the Spanish Constitution that Madrid has used to fire the entire Catalan government and impose direct rule in the region. "The Spanish state cannot carry on like this," he said. "The European community must stop looking the other way."
'The United States wants to intervene militarily in Venezuela'
Immigrant Day Laborers Confront a Perfect Storm of Exploitation in Hurricane Harvey Cleanup
Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain on the Houston area, and inestimable tons of moldy debris have to be mucked out as the city rebuilds. Much of the work is being done by undocumented immigrants, who make up half of the Texas construction workforce, according to some estimates. But even as their labor is in high demand, many are silently enduring abuse as they fear deportation. ...
Wage theft is not new for day laborers, and it can take many forms. But it has been especially hard on undocumented construction workers ineligible for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency who live in apartments and homes that flooded during the hurricane.
Under the Texas Payday Act, victims of wage theft — including undocumented immigrants — can file a claim with the Texas Workforce Commission. Similarly, an ordinance passed in Houston in 2013 allows workers employed by a city contractor to also file wage theft claims with the city’s Inspector General and prohibits retaliation. But nearly four years after the measure went into effect, none of the dozens of complaints filed have been resolved.
Long before Texas ramped up immigration enforcement, it scaled back the power of unions to stand up to such abuse. In 1993, state lawmakers passed a right-to-work law that let employees benefit from a union contract without paying dues. Economists report that wages and benefits have since declined, and workplaces have become more dangerous. By 2010, the fatality rate for construction workers in Texas was higher than in any other state. Fewer than 5 percent of the state’s home construction workers are now unionized.
Roy Moore’s Republican Opponents Chased Rumors About “Women Issues” for Years, But Could Never Nail Them Down
Republican strategists in Alabama have for years heard rumors that Roy Moore had “women issues” — a euphemism for sexual misconduct used in the politics business — according to four sources who ran various campaigns against Moore, but they were never able to get definitive proof.
“There’s been a rumor for a while,” said David Mowery, an independent political consultant who first heard the allegations in his role as campaign manager for Bob Vance, Moore’s opponent in a 2012 race for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. “But I don’t know if anyone knew the extent of it, if you know what I mean,” Mowery added. ...
On Friday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee dropped its support of Moore. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who endorsed Moore after his primary victory in September, has asked the Moore campaign to stop using his picture in a fundraising email the campaign sent out Friday. The Moore campaign, in a lengthy statement, called the reporting in the Washington Post “fake news,” arguing that if the allegations were true, they would have been made earlier.
“Judge Roy Moore is winning with a double-digit lead. So it is no surprise, with just over four weeks remaining, in a race for the U.S. Senate with national implications, that the Democratic Party and the country’s most liberal newspaper would come up with a fabrication of this kind,” the campaign argued. On Friday, Moore tried to walk back some of this tough talk by clarifying he believes most victims of abuse, just not his victims.
From Roy Moore to Trump: Sen. Markey Lauds Women Who Speak Out, Calls for Moore to Pull Out of Race
George HW Bush allegedly touched 16-year-old girl inappropriately
A woman has come forward to claim George HW Bush touched her inappropriately when she was 16.
Roslyn Corrigan told Time that she posed for a photo with the former president in 2003 at a gathering of CIA officers north of Houston. She was 16 at the time and attended the event with her mother and father, who was an intelligence analyst.
Corrigan says as the photo was being taken, Bush dropped his hand to her buttocks and squeezed. ...
A spokesman for the former president, Jim McGrath, said Bush has apologized “to anyone he may have offended during a photo op”. In previous cases, McGrath has mentioned the fact that using a wheelchair, as Bush has for about the past five years, “his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures”. But Bush was not in a wheelchair in 2003, when the new incident allegedly took place.
Trump’s EPA Chemical Safety Nominee May Be Too Toxic Even for Republicans
Massive conflicts of interest no longer stand in the way of confirmation to the Environmental Protection Agency’s highest posts, as Scott Pruitt, the EPA’s sworn enemy, demonstrated when he ascended to the agency’s top job. Last Thursday, the Senate confirmed a second highly conflicted EPA nominee, fossil fuel lobbyist Bill Wehrum, who will now oversee air pollution protections despite his clear record of working to undermine those very same protections. With only one Republican opposing Wehrum, the 49-47 vote was a reminder of how little Senate Republicans expect of those who are meant to protect us from environmental threats.
Yet Michael Dourson, the industry scientist Trump nominated to head EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, may be unable to clear even this low bar. Though the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee voted to advance Wehrum’s and Dourson’s nominations at the same October 25 hearing, only Wehrum’s advanced to the floor of the Senate, an indication that Republicans don’t yet have the votes to confirm Dourson.
Resistance to his nomination is coming from red states that have been directly harmed by chemicals Dourson has defended on behalf of industry. The senators from West Virginia, for example, might have been expected to fall in line behind Dourson. But in a hearing last month, West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito questioned the nominee about his involvement with two chemicals that have affected her state: PFOA and MCHM, both of which, Capito said, had “very much touched the lives of my fellow West Virginians.” Capito, who didn’t respond to inquiries for this story, has yet to announce how she will vote.
Dourson was responsible for setting a state standard for PFOA that was thousands of times higher than the EPA’s current safety level. His consulting company Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment also worked on MCHM, one of the chemicals that spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River in 2014, leaving some 300,000 people without drinking water.
West Virginia’s other senator, Joe Manchin, announced his intention to vote against Dourson last month. Though a Democrat, Manchin often votes with Republicans, but not this time. West Virginia is “unfortunately familiar with the dangers that can arise when we neglect to properly comply with and enforce our chemical regulations,” Manchin said in a statement.
[Holy crap! I thought that in order to get Joe Manchin to vote against a nominee, he'd either have to be a progressive Democrat or have kicked Joe's dog. - js]
Fossil fuel burning set to hit record high in 2017, scientists warn
The burning of fossil fuels around the world is set to hit a record high in 2017, climate scientists have warned, following three years of flat growth that raised hopes that a peak in global emissions had been reached.
The expected jump in the carbon emissions that drive global warming is a “giant leap backwards for humankind”, according to some scientists. However, other experts said they were not alarmed, saying fluctuations in emissions are to be expected and that big polluters such as China are acting to cut emissions.
Global emissions need to reach their peak by 2020 and then start falling quickly in order to have a realistic chance of keeping global warming below the 2C danger limit, according to leading scientists. Whether the anticipated increase in CO2 emissions in 2017 is just a blip that is followed by a falling trend, or is the start of a worrying upward trend, remains to be seen.
Much will depend on the fast implementation of the global climate deal sealed in Paris in 2015 and this is the focus of the UN summit of the world’s countries in Bonn, Germany this week. The nations must make significant progress in turning the aspirations of the Paris deal into reality, as the action pledged to date would see at least 3C of warming and increasing extreme weather impacts around the world.
CA Gov. Jerry Brown Tells Indigenous Activists Protesting Fracking He’ll Put Them “In the Ground”
'You Claim To Be An American, But We See Right Through Your Greed': A Song of Protest and Then a Walkout at US Event at Climate Summit
Protesters interrupted an event sponsored by the U.S. climate delegation at the UN climate summit in Bonn, Germany on Monday with a repackaged version of the song "God Bless the U.S.A." before staging a mass walkout.
Decried for its "absurd" attempt to push fossil fuels as a solution to the climate crisis, the event was one of only a few officially sponsored by the Trump administration's team during the talks.
Protesters have been singing for few minutes, to the tune of “Proud to be an America.” At Trump’s event @COP23 #COP23 pic.twitter.com/QM9PkVhZoT
— Amy Harder (@AmyAHarder) November 13, 2017
Soon after the protest, the room was left nearly empty as many in attendance walked out.
Following lengthy protest, the room is now basically empty other than press and few White House guests in front row pic.twitter.com/aYuUKLk2XL
— Leo Hickman (@LeoHickman) November 13, 2017
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Alfred W. McCoy: Washington's Drug of Choice in the War on Terror
Long Before Halloween Attack, NYPD Spying on Sayfullo Saipov’s Mosque Broke Down Community Bonds
Congress Prepares to Send Major Gift to Amazon, While Trump Battles “Amazon Washington Post”
Security Breach and
Spilled Secrets Have Shaken
the N.S.A. to Its Core
A Little Night Music
Mighty Joe Young - I Want A Love
Mighty Joe Young - Something's Wrong
Mighty Joe Young - Ladies Man
Mighty Joe Young - Guitar Star
Mighty Joe Young - Hey Baby
Mighty Joe Young - I Don't Want To Lose You
Mighty Joe Young - Henpecked
Mighty Joe Young - Easier said than done I & II
Mighty Joe Young - Tell Me Something
Mighty Joe Young - Why, Baby
Mighty Joe Young - Rome Wasn't Built In A Day
Mighty Joe Young - Ain’t Nobody Home
Comments
Some Good Protest News
Colin Kaepernick is GQ's man of the year:
http://theweek.com/speedreads/737040/colin-kaepernick-gqs-citizen-year
And:
COLIN KAEPERNICK IS THIS GENERATION’S CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER, OLYMPIAN JOHN CARLOS SAYS
http://www.newsweek.com/colin-kaepernick-black-lives-matter-john-carlos-...
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
evening mm...
good! he certainly deserves recognition for his career-sacrificing actions. the guy deserves some serious respect for what he's done.
Kaepernick For President?
His willingness to put moral principles above a lucrative career impressed the bejezus out of me. He has more moral fiber than any other candidate and a backbone too.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Good evening, Joe. Gee, looks like things didn't get better
over the weekend. Damn!That stunt with Hariri was pretty brazen, right up to US standards I'd say, but we could redeem ourselves by rendition in Syria or Venezuela. They say that Mueller might be investigating a sontemplated kidnapping, seemingly forgetting that it is legal and even praiseworthy when the government does it.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
how does it happen that every weekend things never get fixed? i mean, it's worse than purchasing lottery tickets - at least sometimes you get a dollar back.
heh, that mbs is certainly enjoying throwing his weight around. i keep wondering when there will be a comeuppance. i'm surprised that it has taken this long.
‘ All’s fair in love and [Endless US ] War’. ?
On debate !!! Check this out:
....
World Beyond War Retweeted
...
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
G. H. W. Bush
What a creepy dude. Wish a young girl would reach over and immediately slap him. That would make a good photo at the photo op!
Creepy H.W. Bush
As I read it, I wondered what her face must've looked like at that moment. Surely there are countless photos that weren't usable due to the looks on so many victims' faces. I'd challenge photographers from years past to search for, and release them.
I wish she (they) had slapped the shit out of him too.
What makes it more disgusting
is that Babs knows what he was doing, but she still let the women stand next to him. She even jokes about by saying "that he might end up in prison"
The others on his detail also know what he does, but again, they not only don't warn women, they tell them to keep their mouths shut after he does it.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
evening olinda...
i have always thought that bush the elder was a creep, and the recent revelations don't surprise me a bit. back when he was first running for president, i'd listen to him on the news and the phrase that came to mind was (start nick danger voice) "that sleazy weasel." (/nick danger voice)
Moore allegations = Marxism and PG-13
I stumbled on this person's comments via Disqus. He comments mostly on Breitbart, but other sites as well. Is calling people Marxist a new thing? He seems awfully afraid that white Europeans will be wiped from the U.S. and feels child molestation and rape are PG-13. Moore is a warrior to him. He frightens me, but I keep his comment page bookmarked.
evening deja...
heh, yeah, i reckon that most people who scream about marxists couldn't cogently express what marxism is or put it into any sort of historical context. they only "know" that it is bad and all of those who claimed to put marx' ideas into practice were/are evil.
personally, i'm not too wild about marxism, but i'm even less wild about most of its fundamentalist detractors.
Hey, Joe
He manages to call the RussiaRussiaRussia press Marxists, so I'm completely confused. Not sure if the link works if you don't have a Disqus account, but he uses the Marxism schpeel (sorry, spell check turned off) A LOT! Not sure if he knows what it means, but it's creepy and reminds me A LOT of the crap the Brock shills spread, online, in 2016. (Armando was the first I noticed, and even brought up at DK.) What side is he on?
https://disqus.com/by/alhope1/
Here's another, disturbing angle on this Roy Moore.
Apparently he's not just a random pervert but, rather, he's part of a "Christian" community that condones this kind of stuff. Reminds me a little of the FLDS in Colorado City.
LA Times
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
evening azazello...
i hope that this sort of thing isn't as widespread as moore's base of support might indicate.
When US & NATO invaded Afghanistan, “bacha bazi” made a comeback
EDIT: Oops, I blew it, this was supposed to be appended to Deja’s comment rather than Azazello’s.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/an-afghan-tragedy-the-pasht...
I can see why someone might think that’s a way bigger problem than the Roy Moore thing.
Also consider the conduct of liberal Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, held up as a progressive paragon to emulate when I was young, with his four wives.
https://www.thenation.com/article/tragedy-william-o-douglas/
If they'll do it with you, they'll do it to you
I opened the link and will read it after posting this.
As for the womanizing judge, LBJ was also a womanizing pos, and so was St. Kennedy. Doesn't make it acceptable. Also, a 14 year old child, even in the South, is beneath the age of consent. A 16 year old child is apparently of the age of consent in Alabama, but even if she had been 60, no consent was given. So, we're talking about assault.
Downplaying it screams volumes about the ones doing the downplaying - including, but not limited to, viewing women and children as expendable objects, not equal in human status to men. Actually, the victims are just gold-digging whores. Ask Wink and those (probably men) who upvoted his comments when he said as much. To be fair, he said we're all gold-digging whores.
@Deja
Sure, any woman who charges is a hooker, especially when the charge is rape.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Remember, hookers can't be raped
Especially when they're children.
/s
Gawd, that makes me sick to even snark about.
Hello js, Bluesters.
Divest!
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
evening do...
thanks for the link.
do you know if codepink or some other antiwar source has a listing of manufacturers, products or associated businesses (e.g. banks or retirement funds that fund the development or production of war materiel) that average americans might divest from or boycott?
Good question.
Wonder if there is a list of pension funds and universities that invest with the war profiteers.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
I should imagine that would quickly be criminalized
,
In the same spirit that BDS will be (Israel boycotts).
It's strange. It's like sanctions imposed by people rather than governments, but it must be more powerful than we know to cause such draconian reactions.
The Russian propaganda has claimed two more
Bill Moyer, the once upon a time best journalist in the country has gone over to the dark side. He's fully on board with the Russian propaganda as is his partner, Michael Winship.
This attack on alternative websites is being applauded by centrist democrats on ToP and other websites.
What happens if RT doesn't register?
Did you read the comments on Hedges' article? There is one person who refuses to admit that both parties serve their masters.
Wow, the PTB don't want people telling us the truth about what's happening to the country, do they? I see nothing here that isn't true.
RT’s reports often characterize the United States as a “surveillance state” and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use.
RT has also focused on criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the US national debt. Some of RT’s hosts have compared the United States to Imperial Rome and have predicted that government corruption and “corporate greed” will lead to US financial collapse.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
evening snoopy...
i found this at rt:
heh, i see nothing in that description of rt's coverage that isn't true, either.
i am really sad to hear that moyers has jumped on the propagandists' bandwagon. i thought that he was smarter than that.
I couldn't believe he was spreading the BS
how does someone of his caliber decide to sell us out? And for what purpose. He has to know that the biggest reason for this is to not allow Trump to do repair relations between our countries.
Thanks for the RT link. It looks like they would rather fold their website than to register as a foreign entity. Tit for tat if Russia kicks CNN out.
Just what type of legislation is congress thinking of passing? Hopefully, whatever it is will apply to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other foreign governments that have been interfering with our elections too.
Has congress done any bipartisan work since the election? It seems that they are only holding hearings on this while republicans are trying to do other things in the background. Seems like a big waste of taxpayer money if congress isn't doing any work.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
heh...
i'm not sure what our esteemed (us) lawmakers have in mind, however, given that the cia and other us government agencies (usaid, ned, etc.) have been interfering in russia for quite some time, i'd imagine that the response from russia will be proportional and unpleasant for the spooks.
Well, of course, Bill Moyers drowned in the first wave
…nearly a year ago. Poor thing. RT has been running this mock funeral ad for mainstream media on the channel for awhile, and I suppose that could be construed as propaganda. RT doesn't run ordinary commercials, so it doesn't compete in that way in the US media market.
I have always wanted to sit down with one of these propaganda paranoids to watch Russia Today and have them point out the propaganda to me. I am a full time watcher of the station and I don't see it. I have only found a few things that could be classified as "propaganda" for innocent Americans, and spotting propaganda is one thing that I am very good at.
It's probably the most truthful and questioning news channel available in the US, from the Left to the Right.
Although I find the foreign-produced shows most interesting, the truth is that most of the shows on US-RT are American shows. Americans provide the content and talent and they insist they are uncensored there, compared to US networks. They do not appear to be programmed by Russia. It's hard to imagine how it improves the news in the US to take down Larry King, Lee Camp, Ed Schultz, Chris Hedges, Max Keiser, and a dozen more American news hosts on RT. The US-RT channel is broadcast also to Europe and Russia, uncensored. The world will simply view this as a police state crackdown in the US. Which, perhaps, the best thing that can come out of it.
My understanding is that RT is more popular on Youtube, for example, than any of the US cable shows. Perhaps that is the problem here.
@Pluto's Republic
They want Total Information Control and Global Domination. What more can I say?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Just heard George Will say, "The peole of Alabama deserve
a modicum (a small quantity of a particular thing, especially something considered desirable or valuable) of trust;" how quaint that statement is.
Evening, Joe, thanks for the news and blues
evening smiley...
heh, i guess the people of alabama will decide the evil of which lesser they prefer.
it's good to see you, have a great evening smiley!
A very telling selection, (as
A very telling selection, (as always) for which I thank you, even if I do have the blues in a bad way
I never thought I'd say this, but Trump's refusal to be gas-lighted into falling in with the 'Nuke Russia While Blaming Putin For Original Sin And All Others Since' propaganda campaign has actually caused me to respect him in this one area, whatever reason he's doing it for.
It takes strength to withstand that sort of psy-ops gaslighting technique, intended to, I believe, make the person not merely falsely confess but question their own sanity and accept brainwashing, as is being inflicted on the American population. I suppose that's one good thing about Trump's being a sociopath with a yuuuuuuge enough ego to stand up to what seems to me to qualify as psychological torture, which is probably one of the ways they get random cabdrivers to 'confess' to terrorism in Gitmo.
And in this instance, Trump actually seems to be doing the right thing, even if I suspect that it's for the wrong (and personally profitable) reasons.
Otherwise, the madness inflicted on the world by the pathological greed and paranoia of various PTB appears to be spreading and accelerating; seems likely that the whole mess everywhere is going to collapse in multiple countries as various powers blatantly play tyrant and Mafia games, if everyone normal isn't killed off first, leaving these PTB with no means of support...
Aaaaand another instant timed-out...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Should it be called brainwashing
if people willingly believe what they are told? People who have bought into this have believed it from day one when Obama and Hillary were accusing Trump of being Putin's puppet.
Lol. Here's Herheinous being asked a question about what she meant when she told a financial institution during one of her paid speeches that she wanted open borders.....
She deflected the question quite well and then she pivots to talking about Putin's puppet and his interference in the election. She is blatantly lying about Russia hacking into voting machines, all 17 intelligence agencies agree with her and that Trump asked them to hack the DNC computers and give them to Wikileaks.
Trump said that she nicely pivoted away from the question and then addressed her accusations.
I'm still wondering why the PTB decided to run the Russian propaganda plot before the election was over.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
I believe they opened
the "Russia!!" story long before the election so they had an excuse, so that they could say, "wait a minute... we were talking about this Months before the election... " when they reopened the story the day or two After the election as an excuse for Hillary's humiliating defeat. Not so much for the public, or media - please, as if - but for Her billionaire donors who we know had to be furious at the smackdown.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
@snoopydawg
Actually, there I was specifically referring to Trump being hammered with propagandistic accusations which are mirrored by the corporate press and, sadly, subverted once-left/indie media, all demanding an invasion/nuking of Russia.
If everyone outside your personal circle (and perhaps some within it, as his daughter was said to be the one who conned him into firing off missiles into Syria over that False Flag incident) is endlessly repeating something you know not to be true, it takes great strength of will - or a big ego and stubbornness - to stick to reality (which may seem an odd reference to make regarding Trump, lol) because we tend to refer to those around us to check our own perceptions, that being how The Big Lie works. However sociopaths/psychopaths don't do that, as they are far more special than anyone else, which may explain Trump's response and certainly explains Hillary's.
And regarding Hillary, something appropriate came up on the mix just now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syx5RE2dtPo&index=467&list=PLXctIVhQimRL...
They always find multiple uses for scapegoats, especially ones they wish to destroy in order to profit themselves.
Also, there have been periodic resurgences of some lunacy which appeared just after the election, about simply having Hillary appointed as a replacement for Trump, rather than Pence, who may be just as rapidly deadly as would Her be.
Going by everything, I'm now leaning right over the possibility that we're being prepared for that ALEC-demanded Constitutional Convention which the Republicans are close to having a majority for, perhaps with some (expendable) corporate Dem help (so the corporate coup can be 'legally' enacted without even needing the off-shoring of law in the TPP and other 'trade deals' now being inflicted other countries, despite the fact that nobody else has the 'right' to agree to the destruction of everyone else's rights, legal protections, system of democratic government, health, lives and country) to answer the outrage by bringing the Mad Bomber in as corporate administrator.
Once they've nailed down and entirely privatized-by-proxy the US military machine, corporate/military global dominance can be rapidly achieved, as The Psychopaths and Parasites That Be have the nukes and believe that they can survive global nuclear war and the planetary-life-destroying radiation, dimming, famine, drought and oxygen deficiency that will follow the death of all sun-dependent plants.
But just in case, they're still looking for some space colony/new planet to destroy for profit, because these mostly old-aged billionaires and schemers are going to be immortal, some apparently still think. And evidently don't mind spending the rest of forever in, at this rate, an unliving self-created hell.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Agree. Say what you want
about the Trumpster, he ain't smoking what they selling. I respect him for refusing the kool aid as well.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Gosh, I can't imagine why?
Reminds me of a scene from a movie called "Moscow on the Hudson", where the Grandfather of Robin Williams character talks back to the television refuting everything the Soviet State TV is reporting.
Apparently not everyone is as stupid as our government is assuming we are.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I love me some Robert Sheer talking tacheles
thanks for the video link and the altogether haunting, but excellent collection of EB's articles. Sheer made it clear to me. Thank God. I feel I am not totally crazy yet.
BTW, Meteor Blades worked with Robert Sheer for a long time at the LA Times and told me he liked the guy a lot (in a TOP comment or message I don't remember anymore). I can't imagine he doesn't today as well. Just saying, because on another thread someone questioned the integrity of Meteor Blades, because he still writes on TOP.
While you were conversing with your readers, I am always asleep and start reading when most of you are on their way to nod over their keyboard. So, I am sorry for coming in late.
Off to read more.
https://www.euronews.com/live