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      "body": "@@ -3355,16 +3355,17 @@\n e his ha\n+n\n d on the\n@@ -4300,17 +4300,17 @@\n . The ca\n-j\n+s\n uistry b\n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"syria\"],\"links\":[\"http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/trump-asks-russia-to-roll-over-it-wont.html\",\"http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/09/a-short-history-of-the-war-on-syria-2006-2014.html\",\"https://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815#undefined.gbpl\",\"https://www.patreon.com/posts/preview-radio-us-16885102\",\"http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/\",\"https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-11/u-s-policy-on-syria-is-distorted-by-iraq-war-legacy\",\"https://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-trumps-syria-quandary/\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}"
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    {
      "parent_author": "caitlinjohnstone",
      "parent_permlink": "bbc-reporter-discourages-syria-questions-due-to-information-war-with-russia",
      "author": "rhetoric",
      "permlink": "re-caitlinjohnstone-bbc-reporter-discourages-syria-questions-due-to-information-war-with-russia-20180419t055018288z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "What stood out to me about that interview with Lord Admiral West was not his skepticism about the veracity of the claim that the Syrian government was associated with the currently alleged gas attack, but his confidence that the [Syrian government was involved in previous gas attacks](http://www.newsweek.com/now-mattis-admits-there-was-no-evidence-assad-using-poison-gas-his-people-801542\n). Lord West repeatedly slandered Russia, and said the government ministers of that country never tell the truth; additionally, the Lord Admiral defamed the President of Syria to the point of vilianization. Of course, it is welcome to have the Lord Admiral raise his voice in opposition to the current chemical kerfuffle, throw some shade on the White Helmets, and otherwise advance the cause of peace in our time.\n\nPresident al-Assad, when you listen to him speak on the videos posted on Youtube, sounds like a thoughtful and responsible leader. His biography makes him sound not like a dishonourable man, but an honorable one; spiritual, conscientious, and fair-minded. Those who disparage him, including a broad swath of the Left, seem to have only name calling in their arsenal; no convincing evidence or even colorfully persuasive anecdotes. Now, I hasten to add, I don’t know the man personally; and have no vested interest (other than common decency) to see him assessed favorably.\n\nIn case you’re curious, here is a biography of the current President of Syria so effusive it borders on the hagiographic; and Wikipedia, too, has nothing definitely bad to say about him. His government has been firm in defending itself against attack, and he’s the leader of that government; but, since the U.S., Israel, and various NATO and neighboring countries have been involved with ostensibly clandestine efforts to subvert his governance, such repressive measures would most certainly have been either necessary or sufficiently proportionate to the threat posed by foreign funded and supplied insurgents (Assaulted in a manner similar to the way Afghanistan and Libya were besieged, one would criticize the scope of his nation’s self-defense efforts only if one wished for Syria the same fate that befell Iraq, Libya, and now Yemen — and has been going on for more than a generation in Afghanistan, if you start counting with [our support of the Mujaheddin](https://www.counterpunch.org/1998/01/15/how-jimmy-carter-and-i-started-the-mujahideen/\n) during the Carter administration). There has been broad support in the U.S. Congress for deposing President Assad, a threat which would necessitate and justify extreme counter-measures.\n\nAs with Russia, the reason for the demonization appears to be based on the inconvenience of having a strong, enlightened secular ruler standing against [progress for Israel](https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/01/unreality/\n)’s right to exist. [This two-part interview on Petro-Imperalism with historian Timothy Mitchell](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/daniel-denvir-2/the-dig-2/e/54053791) on the Jacobin podcast provides more than ample evidence for deceit on a scale this massive, and a pattern of similar deceptions going back over a century. It is worth a listen for those who want to know more about the role oil has played in the drama (spoiler alert: crucial, but not as reductively causal as some project).\n\nWhen Lord West puts forward hypotheticals with pre-loaded conditionals it should also raise a red flag (The, “If he’d used chemical weapons, we’re justified in bombing him (Assad)” argument.). West says during the interview, “. . . if they’ve got really good intelligence . . . then O.K., fine, and I have no difficulty with what was done, none at all. I think if he has used chemical weapons, then it’s absolutely right to do a rap across his knuckles to show him that the international community are not going to put up with this.” Syria had a chemical weapons arsenal to protect itself against nuclear armed Israel — not for domestic use. Syria took a gamble that Israel would not attack when it turned its chemical weapons storehouses over to Russia. Israel has attacked directly, and through proxies, but the kind of attacks have not been strong enough to destroy the government, thanks in part to assistance from Hezbollah, Iran and Russia.\n\nWith regard to the threat of a nuclear exchange sparked by the Syrian conflict, although the threat of a nuclear exchange with Russia, Israel, the U.S., France or the U.K. should have raised a red flag to journalists and others, who push false narratives for reasons of sensationalism, ideology, or political expediency; even without the threat of a nuclear exchange, these attempts at deception are contemptible. On a conventional level, we should exhibit great care to show respect and judicious sagacity with regard to Russia and Syria, their cultures and forms of governance — all the more so because they have been the injured parties in these disputes (the “information war” McVeigh name-checks).\n\nWhen hearing assertions of al-Assad’s perfidy, clear-eyed rebels may wish to express skepticism and refrain from echoing slanderous statements about him. As a form of protest against those seeking to destabilize and then destroy Syria, woke progressives may wish to follow him on Social Media and otherwise virtually engage Syrian political society. Let’s not let this temporary lapse in physical hostilities deter us from pursuing information peace in lieu of making information war.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"media\"],\"links\":[\"http://www.newsweek.com/now-mattis-admits-there-was-no-evidence-assad-using-poison-gas-his-people-801542\",\"https://www.counterpunch.org/1998/01/15/how-jimmy-carter-and-i-started-the-mujahideen/\",\"https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/01/unreality/\",\"https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/daniel-denvir-2/the-dig-2/e/54053791\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}"
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      "parent_permlink": "re-caitlinjohnstone-the-us-empire-has-been-trying-to-regime-change-syria-since-long-before-2011-20180413t052451634z",
      "author": "saltycat",
      "permlink": "re-rhetoric-re-caitlinjohnstone-the-us-empire-has-been-trying-to-regime-change-syria-since-long-before-2011-20180414t092727901z",
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      "body": "Good comment. I've discussed this with people about Israel. I think they are the client state, however I think they are also a player in their own right.",
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    {
      "parent_author": "caitlinjohnstone",
      "parent_permlink": "the-us-empire-has-been-trying-to-regime-change-syria-since-long-before-2011",
      "author": "rhetoric",
      "permlink": "re-caitlinjohnstone-the-us-empire-has-been-trying-to-regime-change-syria-since-long-before-2011-20180413t052451634z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "“[It is Israel which is behind the war on Syria and which is pressing for further conflict.](http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/trump-asks-russia-to-roll-over-it-wont.html)” The history of the conflict in Syria detailed in the following link [goes back further, and up to 2013,](http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/09/a-short-history-of-the-war-on-syria-2006-2014.html) and shows it to be but [a step in a larger campaign for control of the Middle East](https://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815#undefined.gbpl), a [Greater Middle East strategy](https://www.patreon.com/posts/preview-radio-us-16885102). This is the strategy that is dangerous. Whether it is the strategy of the U.S. or not should weigh in our assessment of the potential causes of this potential conflict.\n\nWhile claiming to be non-ideological, Caitlin solves the problem of who is causing the conflict by positing a, “US-centralized power establishment” or a “US-centralized empire” which she also refers to as, “the Western empire.” The problem with this construct is that it is abstract. There is no address or headquarters for such an empire per se. At best it is allegorical , that NATO and the US act like an empire or are a de facto empire. While that rubric may be helpful in some kind of analyses, it can also be problematic and impractical.\n\nAs is discussed in the articles linked above, the problem can also be identified as an Israeli one, and which is the tail and which is the dog is a legitimate question. Is Israel doing America’s bidding when it fires missiles into Syria and arms dissident factions to overthrow sovereign governments? Or is it more helpful to think of the U.S. as a client state of Israel’s? With all the money and influence AIPAC showers on congress, and the outsized influence of donors like Sheldon Adelson, there is an argument to be made that Israel is the patron in the patron-client relationship. Or, is there a third party controlling the governments of both Israel and the U.S.? I think it is both helpful to keep asking these questions — even though we don’t have unqualified answers for them (yet); and, important not to invent an adversary to fuel a polemic.\n\nI find the Israel-centric argument persuasive in many of the particulars. U.S. involvement seems muddled, but [a good case for U.S. centered involvement in the case for Syria is made by the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies](http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/):\n\n    The US has failed in its effort to produce a US-friendly and democratic Northern Middle East, where Sunnis and Shiites power-share and emulate US forms of governance. Turkey has turned to Russia and authoritarianism. Iraq is a Shiite dominated state that needs decades to build reliable institutions that will allow it to turn away from dependence on Iran. Assad’s authority has survived in most of Syria, and Hizbullah is more powerful than ever in Lebanon. For the US to believe that it can turn around this history of political failure and misspent millions by launching a comeback in North Syria is nothing short of goofy.\n\nAnd a U.S.-centric motivation doesn’t add up there, either; any more than if you see Israel as the central figure driving the conflict, regarding Syrians as potential Palestinians. Whatever the reason, Trump now claims to have his had on the trigger. If he goes in, it will be a reversal of his campaign posture, his behaviour to date, and his stance on such interventions previous to becoming a presidential candidate. Some have speculated that Trump is being hemmed in by the Democratic Caucus, who have hounded him from day one, and now have enough leverage — they sacked the office of his lawyer (Cohen)— that Trump has to obey them. Others that Trump’s bellicosity is only a feint, and that he will pull back from actual intervention. Perhaps Trump has converted, and really believes such an intervention to be in America’s best interests? Or perhaps Trump is so mercurial and inchoate any rationale would fall short of the mark.\n\nThe majority of the media and by extension the democratic (and much of the republican) establishment seem to think invading Syria not only a swell idea, but one motivated by high-mindedness and concern for human life and human rights. The cajuistry being employed by those who support intervention in Syria has become astounding; Orwell himself could not imagine doublethink of this order. Today, Eli Lake, writing in an op-ed in Bloomberg, [America Learned Wrong Lessons From Iraq, and Syria Suffers: Foreign policy has become inordinately timid because any muscular proposal is instantly derided as Iraq redux](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-11/u-s-policy-on-syria-is-distorted-by-iraq-war-legacy) draws exactly the wrong conclusions from the Iraq intervention and turns history and all available evidence on its head, arguing for intervention. Michael Graham opines for CBS News in much the same manner a few days earlier, in a column entitled [Trump’s Syria quandary](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-trumps-syria-quandary/), “Punishing a dictator for gassing children is an opportunity for America to both do the right thing and feel great about it.”",
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      "parent_permlink": "re-sunlit7-re-caitlinjohnstone-ignore-the-words-of-us-presidents-watch-their-actions-instead-20180408t120625914z",
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      "body": "I was moderator on a middle east blog site for awhile, though I didn't know much about the middle east then, I mostly posted other stuff and the page owner just volunteered me all the time, I did make a sincere effort to learn more about the ME and the different countries and fractions, I never came across any articles linking the Kurds up with known association with Israel...so that's interesting to know.  I left the site for a couple reasons, one it got to celebratory if there was a bombing somewhere in Europe...I just don't think people should be happy death came to people, especially those who have no control over the \"empire(s)\" so to speak and secondly because I became overwhelming depressed at the amount of hatred that they have for each other over there...I use to just think they hated westerns for getting involved in their countries but they just plain hate each other also.",
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      "parent_permlink": "when-a-government-declares-a-verdict-before-an-investigation-it-s-because-there-s-a-preexisting-agenda",
      "author": "rhetoric",
      "permlink": "re-caitlinjohnstone-when-a-government-declares-a-verdict-before-an-investigation-it-s-because-there-s-a-preexisting-agenda-20180412t082259882z",
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      "body": "You posit that it is a western empire that is entering post primacy. Although looking at the U.S. and NATO as an empire may be helpful in some analyses as a rubric, a clear-eyed rebel recognizes that this supposition is itself a bit fanciful, as there is no empire, per se. Perhaps a small mistake, and not an important one given the rest of your argument. But small mistakes, especially in fundamental thinking, can add up, and become larger faults.\n\nKeep fighting, you counsel, but against what and against whom; and for what and for whom? The main focus of your piece is on the injustices done to Russia and Russians, with an emphasis on recent false allegations. Animus against Russia in Europe and in the U.S. [is long standing](https://www.patreon.com/posts/radio-war-nerd-7630047) and has been [seeded over many generations.](http://harpers.org/archive/2016/12/the-new-red-scare/) These latest developments rely [on those historic prejudices](https://medium.com/@cheryladamsrychkov/biography-of-the-russian-boogie-man-601974e8102a#.9ur1op99h). “Fighting” against them [is going to be tough](https://medium.com/@johnmensing/russophobia-russomania-has-hit-a-fever-pitch-and-seems-unstoppable-simply-by-refutation-a387b638fb18).\n\nWho in the U.S. represents a responsible attitude toward Russia? Who has taken leadership to champion a more comprehensive assessment of shared Russian and U.S. interests, and proposed that our two countries and civilizations work together for mutual benefit. As a nationally prominent figure, Trump gets that mantle. Schizophrenic though he may be, and despite his recent disparagements in the wake of the still unconfirmed chemical weapons attack in Duma (which was very likely a cock-up); and the UK spy poisoning case (also almost certainly a cock-up, with [seafood poisoning now the likely culprit](http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/the-best-explanation-for-the-skripal-drama-is-food-poisoning.html)) he remains the most nationally prominent figure in favour of rapprochement. I wish there were an alternative — present them if you have them — but the strategy for fighting seems like it should include some support for Trump on this plank. You may not be a Republican — I certainly am not — nor a Democrat (the Democratic Party has been more hawkish of late than the Republicans), to realize that if your goal is rapprochement, Trump is a potential tactical ally.\n\nYou speculate about a, “ preexisting vendetta to cripple oppositional governments” with regard to what happened in Iraq and Libya, and put that forward as the general theory under which we should mobilize ourselves in support of Russia and against the U.S., the E.U., and individual NATO governments, now conveniently labeled collectively as, “the Western Empire”.\n\nIraq was a great tragedy, but we now know a more proximate reason for its decimation. The Greater Middle East Strategy holds that the countries bordering Israel need to have their secular governments destroyed and replaced by Sectarian Statelets which will share Tel Aviv as their entrepôt. The thing about Israel’s right to exist is that it can’t exist profitably enough for the appetites of its oligarchs without functioning as such. Hence, the need for the destruction and mayhem, first by destroying and destabilizing Beirut and Lebanon, the region’s historic entrepôt, and then by taking out the countries which emerged in the wake of the Ottoman Empire. Divide and conquer; and then divide up again so the resulting entities are too small, too weak, and too sectarian to pose a mortal threat to Israel.\n\nNascent Revolutionary sentiments have a history of being harnessed for what could politely be termed as distractions from what ought to be their actual targets. While the concept of a Western Empire advancing preexisting agendas against noncompliant governments may be a helpful way of organizing opposition to the bad and support of the good, I worry that it may skip over more parsimonious explanations and miss logistic opportunities because of its abstract nature. Support for Syria, Russia and Iran seems more proximate and urgently needed. Stop the war now, and rebuild relations with Russia.",
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      "permlink": "re-rhetoric-re-ideafarm-re-ctpatriot-re-ideafarm-re-caitlinjohnstone-state-dept-accuses-russia-and-syria-of-gassing-civilians-before-any-investigation-20180409t155050700z",
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      "body": "The \"obstruction\" policy declared by the Democrats is comparable to a flagging war here on steemit, and the effect is similar, but worse.  When two steemit users flag war on each other, they just take each other out of the conversation.  When the two opposing parties in Congress obstruct each other, government becomes incapable of doing anything.\n\nThe politicians (Democrats, McCain) obstructing Trump are fools, for the voters will blame them for any failures of the Trump administration to get something done that turns out was critically needed.  If Trump is really as retarded and corrupt and psychopathic as they would have us believe, the winning strategy for them would be to step back out of the way and let Trump hang himself.\n\nBut the Dems will never do that because they know that Trump would kick-ass and deliver awesome results, and that would expose the Dems for what they are:  liars and traitors.",
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      "body": "@@ -6126,16 +6126,23 @@\n justify \n+itself \n in strik\n@@ -6157,17 +6157,17 @@\n a thusly\n-,\n+:\n  as the \n@@ -6423,16 +6423,31 @@\n ts out%E2%80%9D \n+as they leave (\n with the\n@@ -6464,16 +6464,17 @@\n  arsenal\n+)\n . As per\n@@ -6534,16 +6534,22 @@\n Caitlin,\n+ maybe\n  the lon\n",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"usgovernment\",\"resistance\"],\"links\":[\"https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/lindsey-graham-trumps-response-to-syria-chemical-attack-a-defining-moment\",\"https://www.mintpressnews.com/declassified-cia-report-exposes-25-years-u-s-plans-destabilize-syria/225553/\",\"https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/we-are-one-false-flag-event-away-from-world-war-3-fe9244e70fb8\",\"https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/oligarch-owned-media-outlets-really-really-want-you-to-love-george-w-bush-8be2d806ac2c\",\"https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/dems-kept-cheerleading-bush-era-neocons-now-theres-one-in-the-white-house-84a8e32a1e25\",\"https://soundcloud.com/media-roots/great-march-of-return-killing-gaza-interview-w-max-blumenthal-dan-cohen\",\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2860676-the-twilight-of-the-presidency\",\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-09/syria-base-is-hit-after-suspected-chemical-weapons-attack\",\"https://sputniknews.com/world/201804091063353921-russia-israel-syria-airbase-attack/\",\"http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/03/28/556738/Syria-Israeli-munitions-Eastern-Ghouta\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.1\"}"
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      "parent_author": "ideafarm",
      "parent_permlink": "re-ctpatriot-re-ideafarm-re-caitlinjohnstone-state-dept-accuses-russia-and-syria-of-gassing-civilians-before-any-investigation-20180408t222500884z",
      "author": "rhetoric",
      "permlink": "re-ideafarm-re-ctpatriot-re-ideafarm-re-caitlinjohnstone-state-dept-accuses-russia-and-syria-of-gassing-civilians-before-any-investigation-20180409t153128898z",
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      "body": "I'm not as sanguine as you about Trump, his administration, or the Republican Party, but I agree with your conclusion: Give Trump a Chance! For one thing, it doesn't cost anything, and for another, it doesn't really matter. \n\nRagging on Trump isn't going to change or improve anything. It's fashionable, especially for conservative-ish Democrats, to piss on him. I think they think it's naughty, and they like it. They tend to be very obedient to authority, and Hillary has given them permission to dump on him, so they get really excited about having official approval to dump on an official.\n\nTrump's done a few things right: His former SoS, Tillerson, refused to certify the results of the Kurdistan plebiscite, and Trump himself put the kibosh on the Syria subversion funding which the CIA had started doing under Obama. \n\nAs to the rest of his government, at times it seems really fucked up, but you think, it was going to be fucked up anyway. Is this the step back necessary before the two forward? We'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, involve yourself in local politics, where you get an actual scorecard. Being a player there actually makes a difference, unlike opining on distant national and international issues.\n\nOf course, by all means remain skeptical and as informed as possible. There's no need to Trust Trump or believe in him. His past is certainly as dubious as it is colorful. But he's in a new job now. Maybe he'll excel at it, and find some inner strength his immediate predecessors lacked.",
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      "parent_author": "caitlinjohnstone",
      "parent_permlink": "state-dept-accuses-russia-and-syria-of-gassing-civilians-before-any-investigation",
      "author": "rhetoric",
      "permlink": "re-caitlinjohnstone-state-dept-accuses-russia-and-syria-of-gassing-civilians-before-any-investigation-20180409t151330920z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Trump has tweeted, recklessly. One almost feels relieved that this follows on the heels of many such inchoate Twitter utterances. The question now: is he playing to the crowd, or does it represent the prelude to an invasion? The targeting of Russia here seems to follow Mrs. Clinton’s statement (in the disclosed e-mails) that Russia would stand aside as the U.S. made Israel feel more comfortable by removing the sitting government of Syria and allowing it to be divided into parts, part of which would be a new Israel-aligned country called Kurdistan.\n\nYour argument seems to be that the U.S. public should resist and fail to support any move to re-start the war in Syria (this time presumably not by proxy). The reasons you give for Americans to foment this resistance include the shadowy and uncertain nature of the “evidence” with regard to this and previous alleged chemical warfare attacks, and a litany of past sins. It seems relevant in this context to mention Israel. Israel is the most proximate cause of the invasion of Syria, an invasion Obama supported by proxy under the guise of aid to a beleaguered population freeing themselves from a tyrannically oppressive government. When faced with the choice of invading in the wake of a similar false flag chemical weapons attack (then given the semiotic moniker “red line”) Obama demurred — or dithered, in the parlance of the neocon crowd — insisting on a fig leaf of congressional approval. As tough as AIPAC fueled congress members talk, they preferred in that instance for a President to do the walking, and may be similarly disposed today. Erstwhile Republican Presidential nominee Lindsey Graham has [called upon Trump to follow up his bellicose rhetoric with action](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/lindsey-graham-trumps-response-to-syria-chemical-attack-a-defining-moment), no doubt speaking for the majority of his peers.\n\nPolitical leaders and the media continue to embrace the false narrative Obama spun ([a tale which goes back several decades](https://www.mintpressnews.com/declassified-cia-report-exposes-25-years-u-s-plans-destabilize-syria/225553/)), all evidence to the contrary. There is no anti-war movement to speak of, like there was with the first Bush’s Iraq war, and during Obama’s administration a sizable portion of the most active left embraced the concept of regime change in Syria, painting Assad as a tyrant so terrible not removing him by force was a crime against humanity (The opposite has proven to be the case, however, with Syrians returning to the bits of Syria reclaimed by the Syrian Arab Army and Assad’s statesmanship, all the while deploring the “rebels” as barbarous, often Takfiri, fundamentalists.). While Tulsi Gabbard has been upright in promoting the counter-narrative of an Assad who does not deserve to be deposed, certainly the most prominent actor on the national U.S. stage to speak of not continuing the hostilities has been Trump. For this he has been reviled by the #Resistance Left, and at best ignored by those progressives whose leftism puts them to the left of the #Resistance Left.\n\nIs there any hope left for Trump? Although you write with absolute confidence that Trump hired Bolton and Pompeo to persecute war, it is at least remotely conceivable that Trump hired Bolton and promoted Pompeo to shore up his right flank. Trump must be more than peripherally aware that Mike and John are irredeemable Neocon Assholes, with Mikey having the additional albatross of Tea Party (and hence Koch Bros) darling. Trump may be using his executive power here. Recognizing that these are among the smelliest, he wants them to be his stinking assholes. Who, if he or she was President, wouldn’t be tempted to stick John Bolton on the White House Lawn like a scarecrow, forcing the DCC crows to circle elsewhere?\n\nAccording to Caitlin’s analysis, we are in a crucial period now where all hands are needed on deck to resist a[ potentially apocalyptic scenario](https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/we-are-one-false-flag-event-away-from-world-war-3-fe9244e70fb8). Unfortunately — as Caitlin again has been prescient to point out — most hands are not on deck; being otherwise occupied resisting Trump; [ennobling Bush](https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/oligarch-owned-media-outlets-really-really-want-you-to-love-george-w-bush-8be2d806ac2c); and[ pushing for war and more war](https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/dems-kept-cheerleading-bush-era-neocons-now-theres-one-in-the-white-house-84a8e32a1e25) while valorizing Nancy Pelosi, Cory Booker, Chuck “[Industrial Grade Anti-Palestinian Racist](https://soundcloud.com/media-roots/great-march-of-return-killing-gaza-interview-w-max-blumenthal-dan-cohen)” Schumer, and the rest of the establishment that was disempowered when Trump upset. It’s frustrating not to be able to judge how marginal the clear-eyed element is. A Google Search for news about Syria yielded a spate of “Syria Did it” headlines, the only dissenting voice being Sputnik’s.\n\nThat our best hope of avoiding war with the SAA and its Russian and Iranian allies lies with Trump may seem forlorn to too many, but that is the executive function in the American political system, and may herald, if anything, that [the twilight of the Presidency](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2860676-the-twilight-of-the-presidency) has given way to a dawn (however false). Trump may be damning Obama and Assad in those tweets to play to the crowd, and he may pull out of his hawk dive, saying that although Assad deserves to be bombed to hell and back, the moment for that has passed, and it’s no longer directly in U.S. interests to intervene. If he does so, that will leave Israel to fight the war alone, or perhaps with Saudi Arabia and a few other allies. (Further to this scenario, from Jets flying in Lebanese airspace, Israel has fired missiles into Syria, according to [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-09/syria-base-is-hit-after-suspected-chemical-weapons-attack) and [Sputnik](https://sputniknews.com/world/201804091063353921-russia-israel-syria-airbase-attack/). Israel may justify in striking Syria thusly, as the proxy “moderate rebels” [it’s been funding and arming](http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/03/28/556738/Syria-Israeli-munitions-Eastern-Ghouta) in Syria are being routed by the Syrian Arab Army.) If Israel loses, they have promised to, “turn the lights out” with their nuclear arsenal. As perverse as it may sound to a dedicated anti-warer like Caitlin, the longer Trump can pretend that he just might fight this war — allowing Syria, Russia, and Iran to shore up their position and rout the proxies — the better.",
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      "author": "baah",
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      "title": "",
      "body": "Maybe, hopefully. ",
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      "parent_permlink": "ignore-the-words-of-us-presidents-watch-their-actions-instead",
      "author": "rhetoric",
      "permlink": "re-caitlinjohnstone-ignore-the-words-of-us-presidents-watch-their-actions-instead-20180408t121051206z",
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      "body": "I think you still have your finger on the pulse. This is the issue of the moment (along with taxing Amazon). Trump has already canceled the CIA’s covert funding of “rebel” groups in Syria. Tillerson allowed the moment of Kurdistan’s statehood to come and go without recognition, thereby denying Israel a nascent non-secular ally in the right-to-exist department; preserving at least the notion of Iraq’s territorial identity, and removing yet another reason for dismembering the still conscious Syria.\n\nThat Syria’s standing still as a consequence of the Trump administration vexes all the right people — or should I write all the wrong people. There are reports from Syria that the U.S. is withdrawing. If we have time to mull this over, some respect and appreciation for Russia’s role might be in order. How to present that in a way that’s not threatening to the people Caitlin mentioned in her article is the question.\n\nIn terms of second-guessing the future, it might be safe now to conclude that the proxy war strategy has failed this time at least; and that the next step, if there is to be one, involves a full frontal direct assault, a war effort with an order of magnitude larger than W’s, difficult to imagine. Imagining a rapprochement, with praise for Russia’s role when merited; and remorse for ours — from covert funding and support of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan on out — also seems hard to imagine, but worth the effort.",
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      "author": "rhetoric",
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      "body": "The Kurds who \"rose up\" did so as a close ally of Israel, making the domestic excuses for their sedition more opaque. Add to them the Takfiri rebels, who also enjoyed Israeli patronage, and you have a dissident brew redolent of the mujaheddin, who Zbigniew Brzezinski  boasted having sponsored (as a part of an effort to lure the Soviets into a government-destabilizing conflict).",
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    {
      "parent_author": "caitlinjohnstone",
      "parent_permlink": "the-persecution-of-assange-proves-him-right",
      "author": "rhetoric",
      "permlink": "re-caitlinjohnstone-the-persecution-of-assange-proves-him-right-20180408t114144496z",
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      "body": "Well, there’s always going to be something wrong with taking someone’s correspondence or business records and making them public without their consent. That wrong could be outweighed by the right the public has to know about matters of civic interest. Wikileaks is basically a fence for those who steal private information, in the eyes of its detractors. It was only ever going to catch shit, and being in the middle, or the front of it, was a prescription for getting bloody.\n\nThe left and progressives and libertarians and all those concerned with some transparency for public policy making {should be on Assange’s side}(https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/03/op-ed-if-ecuador-withdraws-support-and-protection-from-julian-assange-it-will-be-a-tragedy/), and the government should be reformed such that the need for a Wikileaks organization is obviated by systemic transparency. That governmental reform, though, is not likely to happen, or happen sufficiently, as governments are wont to abuse their power.\n\nAs others have pointed out here, Assange is a hero and Ecuador deserves our support. It would be nice to see support vigils outside of Ecuador’s embassy in the UK, and protests by Americans at the U.S. embassy in Ecuador. Is there a fund to assist Ecuador and defray the cost of hosting Julian there?",
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      "parent_author": "caitlinjohnstone",
      "parent_permlink": "if-western-media-were-honest-about-russia",
      "author": "rhetoric",
      "permlink": "re-caitlinjohnstone-if-western-media-were-honest-about-russia-20180408t105317796z",
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      "body": "Russophobia/Russomania has hit a fever pitch, and seems unstoppable simply by refutation. What kind of counter-narrative could derail it is the question of moment. Not having an answer, I hope we can start working on it and maybe come up with one, or elements of one.\n\nIt’s helpful to note, as Caitlin does, that the threat is real. It is also long standing. Animus toward Russia has been seeded in the U.S. consciousness for many decades. J.F.K. used it to help get elected with his imaginary missile gap. It was a big part of Reagan’s appeal. Nixon used it to advance his career. American schoolchildren received propaganda in their social studies classes about “two worlds,” the free one and the Soviet one. The media routinely misreports news in Russia to fuel a narrative of totalitarian repression, the latest election in Russia being a case in point. Believing this or that factoid becomes irrelevant to the avalanche of propaganda that preceded it. We’d have to go back and re-write many decades of “history” — collective wisdom — to get to anything like a level playing field. The psuedo-events that are offered up officially to carry the false hate-the-enemy narrative rely on this distinctly pitched pitch, and you’d have to have the determination of a Sisyphus to attempt to move the ball toward the Peace and Rapprochement end of the field, with predictable results.\n\nAgain, I wish I knew a counter-narrative, or elements of a counter-narrative, that would be helpful in redressing Russomania. Hopefully, one will emerge from our collective efforts. That Trump has repeatedly stated that he seeks Rapprochement with Russia seems a ball important enough to keep one’s eye on, a utensil in the toolkit that should not be squandered.\n\nAll the fuel that’s being added these days to the fire most probably has something to do with the [reversals on the ground](https://www.mintpressnews.com/amidst-universal-opposition-krg-referendum-israel-stands-kurds/232361/) for [the Greater Middle East Strategy}(http://www.inspiretochangeworld.com/2015/09/isis-is-working-on-mossadcia-plan-to-create-greater-israel/), and the role Russia and the Trump Administration has played in those reversals. Since these are reversals which have both advanced the cause of Peace and reduced the number of casualties in Syria, they should be explicitly supported by progressives.",
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      "parent_author": "caitlinjohnstone",
      "parent_permlink": "new-syrian-chemical-weapons-attack-being-reported-by-all-the-usual-suspects",
      "author": "rhetoric",
      "permlink": "re-caitlinjohnstone-new-syrian-chemical-weapons-attack-being-reported-by-all-the-usual-suspects-20180408t103936436z",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Caitlin posits a Western Empire as being behind — well, nothing at the moment, but which could end up being — another false flag act of obverse provocateur-ism, this time to justify an invasion of Syria. An invasion that, given the level of Iranian and Russian support that would have to be overcome, would end up being larger in scale than the Iraq one, the proxy (with NATO and Israeli aerial assist) one in Libya, the Afghanistan one, and the Serbia one. Caitlin locates Syria next to Iraq, but fails to mention here its location next to Israel. [The location next to Israel seems far more crucial](http://www.tehrantimes.com/news/412070/Iran-Israeli-aggression-against-Syria-boosts-Takfiri-Zionist) than any less proximate attribution to a Western Empire (whose existence is partly speculative).\n\n[The point of going into Syria](http://www.inspiretochangeworld.com/2015/09/isis-is-working-on-mossadcia-plan-to-create-greater-israel/), an ostensibly secular country, with a modern state apparatus capable of posing a threat to Israel; was to [divide a post-colonial Arab State up into non-secular statelets](http://www.mintpressnews.com/amidst-universal-opposition-krg-referendum-israel-stands-kurds/232361/). The settler colonial state feeling threatened is an ethnocracy, and having at its re-defined border other settler colonialist countries similarly exclusivist— even if the flavour of their non-secularity differs — suits Tel Aviv’s ambition to be the entrepôt of the region. Sectarian differences can by trumped by economic necessity, they reason, as trade then flourishes through the entrepôt, realizing a Greater Middle East.\n\n[Trump is under harsh attack for asking, “Why are we in Syria?”](https://soundcloud.com/media-roots/great-march-of-return-killing-gaza-interview-w-max-blumenthal-dan-cohen) Writing in [the New York Times on April 6th](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/opinion/sunday/trump-fascism-madeleine-albright.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region), Madeleine Albright, in a piece entitled, Will We Stop Trump Before It’s Too Late? lambasts the current President for a litany of failings, and kvetches:\n\n_\"Thanks to allies in Moscow and Tehran, the tyrant Bashar al-Assad retains his stranglehold over much of Syria.\"_\n\nThe piece was widely shared among those “resisting” Trump. Albright, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, campaigned insidiously for Mrs. Clinton. For Albright, and the Resistance which supports her, stopping Trump means starting a war to depose what proxies, [notably the Israeli-sponsored Takfirs](http://yournewswire.com/israel-hosts-takfiri-terrorists-in-occupied-golan-heights/), failed to accomplish (or what Russian and Iranian assistance prevented). Whether this favours a Western Empire or not, most clearly it is the desire of Israel to see this deposition. Trump, then, as the titular head of this posited Empire, seems to be in the position of deciding whether America, and probably NATO as well, will assist Israel. The possibility that he may not do so is one of the reasons he has been reviled so intensely since day one of his administration. #Resistance?",
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      "parent_author": "caitlinjohnstone",
      "parent_permlink": "check-your-mute-list-on-twitter-for-possible-new-censorship-shenanigans",
      "author": "rhetoric",
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      "body": "It might be helpful here to compare the situation to that in other countries. I used to think America (and by extension Australia, and Europe) were quite separate and distinct in this regard from China, [where social control was authoritarian and draconian](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/10/chill-looks-set-linger-reporting-from-xis-china). If you spoke out in China, or were otherwise perceived as undesirable, you got sent to a re-education camp, where survival rates were often quite low. Your family members could suffer, too, if not from outright confinement and forced labor, then to a diminution of social and economic status, such that they could not attend University, or hold a significant employment status.\n\nLately, it seems that the U.S. is developing methods of political control, [if not as worrisome as those of China](https://pen.org/forbidden-feeds/), certainly sufficiently authoritarian enough to put the lie to the 1st Amendment and conventional notions of Freedom of the Press and Free Speech. These developments on Twitter and Facebook should be considered alongside the limitations and perversions of reporting, punditry, and communal discourse, wherein PACs and corporatist ownership constrain the flow of information to valorize the paymaster . Likewise, the specter of a Russian provenance is used [to discredit information](https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/16/the-war-on-dissent-the-specter-of-divisiveness/) which runs afoul. Dissident portals not so branded [face a de facto blackist}(https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/01/18/cens-j18.html) from algorithms which obscure their presence on Google or conceal their posts to a Facebook timeline.\n\nTwitter is of course banned in China (along with Facebook, Google, and the like), which on the surface seems an example of draconian censorship, but, in the context of [Yasha Levine’s revelations about the nature of the Internet as a tool for government surveillance](https://soundcloud.com/media-roots/surveillance-valley-the-secret-military-history-of-the-internet-interview-w-yasha-levine) — combined with Caitlin’s observations here — suggest that any country which did not want untoward U.S. interference (or the interference of U.S. based corporations) would seek to develop its own internet platforms. How the respective governments would regulate these platforms— and how the public reacts to these “regulations” — then becomes a subject for comparative study. Such comparative study is more than casually important, because globalization suggests that the least common denominator of social control, as well as business practices, working conditions,, and other matters, may come to dominate in a world where national, cultural, and other geographic barriers, are rendered increasingly permeable.\n\nIn China, it has long been the practice to evade government surveillance through metaphor, or indirect reference. One talks about things by talking about something else, with the assumption that the receiver of the message is capable of intuiting the analogy. This is still the case, but works only so long as the government fails to catch on. When it does, it clamps down hard, detaining people for messaging in ways which would seem to the outsider as innocuous. Several examples of this are discussed[ in the Globe and Mail article linked here](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/china-steps-up-internet-censorship-of-criticism-of-xi-jinping/article38269470/). One reads:\n\n   \"Two women in Wuhan, Huang Fangmei and Geng Caiwen, were detained, according to the The Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders. Ms. Huang had uploaded a video of her cheerily chanting “qing zhuyi daoche!”, a warning that a vehicle is backing up — and, in this case, a reference to China sliding backwards.\"\n\nCaught disobeying, your account doesn’t simply shed as many followers as it retains; it disappears, along with all your content. Your network vanishes, along with the virtual self, and others, therein. And if you want something else to worry about, [China’s developed a social credit score](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion) evocative of [Dark Mirror’s Episode 1 of Season 3](https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/24/13379204/black-mirror-season-3-episode-1-nosedive-recap), and has begun [to deploy it for such seemingly routine transactions](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to-bar-people-with-bad-social-credit-from-planes-trains-idUSKCN1GS10S) as buying train tickets. This to me does not seem to be a difference in kind, but only of degree, as it used to be the case that one could only get train tickets in China by having a good relationship with someone in the office which sold them. But the ability of technological developments to put a finer point on social controls does seem worrisome.\n\nWe can ponder the relative demerits of being branded a dissident and corporeally and otherwise punished, and the necessity to keep our views silent or secret when we know the firm hand of the State would smote us should we express them; versus the anomie of never gaining traction because our tree falls in a forest [when there’s no one around](http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/volmarr/71885/the-masses-are-brainwashed-and-hypnotized-by-the-government-all-the-time). For the present, it seems that the Internet Lords of the Western Apps are confining us to our quarters, limiting the contagion of revolutionary or potentially disruptive discourse to a circumscribed following. Caitlin is proposing that we compare notes to monitor this corralling, with a view to seeing whether or not our woke perspectives will either be allowed to break out, or that we will be resourceful enough to break out of the constraints thus applied. While applauding these efforts, another hope is that the growing international character of these platforms will confound the censors, who as yet are culturally and linguistically specific in their methods of control.",
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      "author": "rhetoric",
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      "body": "It continues to be common to hear remarked that W’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake, a failure, had unintended consequences, or should have been handled differently. It should be clear now that the consequences were as intended, that the country be destroyed, and broken up into smaller, non-secular entities, which would compete with each other and have as an entrepot for whatever redevelopment emerged, Tel Aviv. The country of Iraq, both the size of it (and the ability of a that-sized country to maintain a standing military force); and the secular nature of it, posed a threat to non-secular Israel. The war was about the removal of that threat.\n\nLikewise, the destruction of Libya removed from the region a country which could assist other nations beleaguered by Israel’s expansion. As it stands now, [the destruction of Syria has been thwarted](http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/syria-the-east-ghouta-afrin-exchange-is-complete-where-will-the-saa-go-next.html#more). The rehabilitation of Bush may be a piece of a strategy to reverse Syria’s victory, which will be accomplished, or will fail to be accomplished, as a result of a war with Russia, Syria’s ally. (Hence the need to demonize Russia unsparingly.)\n\nBush, his advisors, and his backers, didn’t make a mistake with Iraq. They set out to destroy the country, mercilessly, and they succeeded in their mission. This followed on the heels of years of crippling sanctions from the Clinton administration, sanctions which raised humanitarian concerns. Condemnation of W’s war, if it is to be thoroughgoing and comprehensive, should also include condemnation of the Clinton Administration’s posture toward Iraq. Likewise, Obama did nothing to reverse the course or effects of W’s invasion, and [carried on the same war by proxies](https://sputniknews.com/us/201603231036788250-clinton-email-assad-ouster/) in Libya and Syria. (Obama’s first State visit to Turkey likely involved discussions of this.) To the degree that Bush is evil, Obama carries the same mantle.\n\nYou are correct when you write, “Iraq was part of a preexisting plan, and so are many other Middle Eastern countries.” The only reversal we have seen in this plan — apart from the victory of the SAA and their allies — has been at the initiation of a U.S. administration, with Secretary Tillerson’s refusal to certify the result of a plebiscite which would have rent an “independent” (independent, but allied with Israel) Kurdistan from the carcass of Iraq (and would likely have been later conjoined with a remnant of Syria).\n\nWith Tillerson gone, and his replacement — replacements, really: both Bolton and Pompeo, as both positions have influence in these matters — presumably more loyal to Trump, but otherwise indiscernible (Bolton objected to the Qaddafi-removal strategy in Libya), we’ll have to wait and see. Trump’s executive authority will likely be a factor, so all this incessant ragging on The Donald would seem to serve primarily to empower the faction that boosted W into power, and has been pursuing the Greater Middle East Strategy.",
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      "parent_author": "caitlinjohnstone",
      "parent_permlink": "truth-is-the-first-casualty-in-war-especially-in-cold-war",
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      "permlink": "re-caitlinjohnstone-truth-is-the-first-casualty-in-war-especially-in-cold-war-20180322t033854534z",
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      "body": "The election of Putin to another term as President has become a lightning rod for inane proclamations. A Facebook Friend from High School posted an article from the Washington Post headlined: Trump’s national security advisers warned him not to congratulate Putin. He did it anyway. Above the link to the article, he wrote,\n\n    “How’s your Russian? It may be time to study up.”\n\nalleging that Trump’s “collusion” with Moscow meant Russia was on the verge of not only successfully invading, but subjugating on the order of suppressing the national language. These sentiments seem to be quite widespread. Someone else posted as a comment, “Dah” along with a picture of Trump as a hand puppet of President Putin:\nI would say that kind of xenophobia and prejudice is out of bounds. And then there’s this:\n\nIf you’ve listened to President Putin’s most recent State of the Nation speech, then you know why he was so overwhelmingly and resoundingly re-elected. Widely acknowledged outside NATO and the U.S., Putin is an impressive Statesman. One would think that whose who had access to Youtube and could read and listen to multiple sources to confirm what the rest of the world knows, would stand up and protest. But, if you live in the U.S., you probably don’t do this. You rely instead on extraordinary delusions and the madness of crowds, and I imagine you do so because you were programmed to in middle school and onward. An entire nation of Manchurian Candidates.\n\nAs a child In my American middle school, Mr. Meisenheimer, our social studies teacher, wiled away an hour of our afternoons with the curtains drawn and a series of filmstrips entitled, “Two Worlds”. As he intoned the text that went along with the images, we learned that we were free, and they were not; we learned the difference between Americanism — which was good, and Communism — which was bad.\n\nBeing a child back then, I didn’t give it much thought. I don’t recall believing any of it, but it looks as though my classmates did. It would be years before I met my first bona fide Russian, the poet Yevtushenko, who impressed me with his erudition. This was in the early eighties, when most Americans knew who Solzhenitsyn was. In the years since, the Russians I’ve met have inspired in me respect and admiration. It seemed like a great waste that the American and Russian cultures had been estranged from each other for so long.\n\nMcCarthyism, I was taught, wasn’t so much about hating Russians or Communism as it was about anti-intellectualism, a strain that runs straight through the American character. We can see this pernicious anti-intellectual mindset pilloried in the pages of Sinclair Lewis novels, or, we can look out the window and see the current Russophobia/ Russiagate shitstorm. It’s pernicious and threatens to justify contesting Syria’s air space, or to justify escalating NATO hostilities in the former Soviet Satellite States ([where the quality of life has been steadily decreasing](https://www.theglobalist.com/for-whom-the-wall-fell-a-balance-sheet-of-the-transition-to-capitalism/) since the arrival of neoliberal economics). This anti-intellectualism is being harnessed to make our adversary on the Syrian or European battlefield into an enemy so detestable that we would feel comfortable murdering. There’s been deep-seated hostility toward Russia programmed into us. Hostility which perhaps can only be countered by getting to know Russian people; and coming to understand, probably through study, Russian culture and history. For those who are resolutely anti-intellectual, this may never happen. Wallowing in their ignorance, they will become more and more rabid in their derision.",
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      "author": "rhetoric",
      "permlink": "re-caitlinjohnstone-more-evidence-that-twitter-is-unfollowing-people-from-anti-establishment-accounts-20180318t171958590z",
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      "body": "An appropriate frame for these Twitter observations is Yasha Levine’s new book on the history of the Internet, [Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet](http://surveillancevalley.com/), which Caitlin [referenced in an earlier column](https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/tell-me-more-about-how-google-isnt-part-of-the-government-and-can-therefore-censor-whoever-it-baf8bca3365f). There are several good podcast interviews with Levine while he was making the rounds promoting his new tome, and each has its virtues. There’s [This is Hell](https://soundcloud.com/this-is-hell/990yashalevine), [Radio War Nerd](https://www.patreon.com/posts/radio-war-nerd-17088250), and [Behind the Headlines](http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2018/18_02_08.mp3) for starters, but I think Levine was most forthcoming and insightful on [Media Roots](http://soundcloud.com/media-roots/surveillance-valley-the-secret-military-history-of-the-internet-interview-w-yasha-levine).\n\nLevine’s argument, which is based in a close reading of the history of the Internet’s construction, is that it was set up for surveillance. What we have come to regard as our right and freedom is looking at the internet through the wrong end of the telescope. Our ability to access information freely is the by-product, not the goal, of a series of technological advances that were funded and developed in order to give the government, the armed forces, and law enforcement agencies, a more enhanced an accurate facility to survey populations, be more effective during wartime, and have a greater capacity to manage and control the population in terms of domestic dissent and potential upheaval.\n\nFrom this perspective, it should come as no surprise that Twitter is trimming the wings of its followers. It sounds from Caitlin’s description as though they’ve developed an algorithm which is meant to detect followers who are less than enthusiastic or active, and who therefore might not notice if the targeted feed was casually removed. That the algorithm sometimes errs and Caitlin gets protest messages from those who have been surrepitiously removed from her followers list, seems the most parsimonious explanation for the phenomenon. If true, it is a form of censorship or control. But since the internet was created to control, should we be surprised or aggrieved?\n\nWe felt that Twitter was our friend, a friend who was helping us to connect to other friends and people we’d like to think of, however fantastically, as our friends. In exchange for giving us this feeling of faux friendship and easily digested conversational bits to support that fantasy, we get in exchange circumcision, if the topics of our tweets stray too far from the accepted narrative (and advertising targeted to the content of our feed). Is this a good deal?\n\nI’ll be cheering Caitlin on in her battle with the Twitter lords. Will she be able to figure out a way to up her followers by fooling the algorithm, mobilizing her supporters, or shaming the censors? Through the process, brand awareness for those affected will likely shift, to a thoroughgoing suspicion not only of Twitter, but of many other social, informational, and news portals. I hope that awareness expands to the framing of Twitter, which seems in danger of becoming [the functional equivalent of Newspeak](https://soundcloud.com/intelligence2/brave-new-world-vs-nineteen-eighty-four), an Orwellian thought-limiting abridgement to reduce the meaning of language as well as the number of words.\n\nJust because the Internet was developed to have enhanced surveillance capabilities, doesn’t mean it has to stay that way or be used that way. In China, [the world’s worst contravener of internet freedoms](https://www.axios.com/china-named-worlds-worst-abuser-of-internet-freedom-again-1513307010-b7524477-464d-4766-96a6-d66a0d6a36c6.html), Internet usage is a privilege, not a right. Free, unrestricted, no consequences internet access isn’t even a notion. If you try to post a comment on an article and it goes against the grain, [it won’t be published](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/23/china-blocks-debate-about-downfall-of-internet-censor-lu-wei). Not only are Twitter, Facebook, and unrestricted Google Searches not allowed, the tracking of your Internet history and commentary carries with it the risk of a reeducation camp sentence should you run afoul, and punishments like job loss to your relations should you be sufficiently offensive. It’s really [impossible to imagine](https://pen.org/forbidden-feeds/) how draconian the thought control apparatus is outside of a Chinese context. And [it’s getting worse](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/10/chill-looks-set-linger-reporting-from-xis-china). But you can get a bit of a sense of it from [the reaction of the CCP authorities to the recent ascension of Xi Jinping](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/china-steps-up-internet-censorship-of-criticism-of-xi-jinping/article38269470/) (see the linked article).\n\nChina doesn’t just reduce the expansion of your followers to a trickle, it deletes your whole account. And it does so with abandon. Preemptively. And this is kind of a new kind of terror. For those who live a significant part of their lives in the social media world, the deletion of their account separates them — often permanently and irreparably — from the souls they connected with only via the handles used to identify them on the platform. It’s a kind of cyber-death, or virtual solitary confinement.\n\nListening to Levine [on the Media Roots podcast](https://soundcloud.com/media-roots/surveillance-valley-the-secret-military-history-of-the-internet-interview-w-yasha-levine), it’s not surprising that China should not only block Twitter, Facebook, etc., but develop their own versions of same. If these are tools of government spying, why would China want the U.S.A. to be surveilling its citizens? (Not to mention the revenue streams these surveillance tools are accompanied by. Overseas-listed Chinese internet firms have a combined market capitalization of over one trillion dollars, and three of China’s richest people are internet moguls.)\n\nAs part of the globalization process, our civilizations become more enmeshed with each other, as they geographically abut each other in closer and closer proximity (if you allow that changes in mass transportation and communication are the functional equivalent of a change in geography). i would argue that this phenomenon calls for us to be closer to the people and the cultures around us, in this case to use our geographical tools to express solidarity. Russia has recently been characterized as a draconian foe which must be sanctioned, castigated, impugned, and confronted militarily, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is their authoritarian government. But a close look on the ground shows their culture and government to be roughly as free as ours. Let’s partner with them so that we can increase the numbers of citizens looking for alternatives to increased government control and surveillance.",
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      "body": "Amazon is untaxed?  For Creep's sake.  And requiring tax subsidies for locating offices in a city.  The real business of oligarchs is securing public funds.",
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      "body": "You present a sensible and likely narrative.  However I can't share your optimism... and progressive outlook... at least not today.. but I can tell you a fable:\n<b>\nA man was tied up naked onto a tree by pond, by a village mob because he stole from his neighbour. \nIt was evening and a passerby notice the pain the thief was suffering from the swarm of mosquitoes feeding on him. As none was there to stop him, he took pity on the thief and start waving his coat, around to disperse the pestering cloud. At this the thief cried with despair: \n\n<i>Have mercy, kind man, these ones are full, the next ones that will gather will not have had their meal.</i>\n</b>",
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      "body": "I remember when Bezos and Amazon were coming up. We thought of them like Earth Shoes and the Whole Earth Catalog. Hippie start-ups. And then when he got bigger, what was noticeable was his debt. His firm never made any money, cried poor, but somehow kept being capitalized because of its potential.\n\nNow it’s easy to see that allowing such e-commerce without State and Sales Taxation did immeasurable harm to bricks and mortar stores, and to community development. Additionally, we’d be much better served by a variety of smaller, linked e-commerce retailers, whose internet sales operations corresponded with a physical store. Amazon’s huge warehouses are nightmare employment scenarios, and having one person in charge of such retailing largess is an invitation for despotism (as Ralph Nader explains here).\n\nTrump threatened to tax Amazon. There exists the hope that as we stop shopping there, and purchase instead through other networked e-commerce sites, sufficient legislation may one day come along to couple with the boycott and reduce Amazon’s outsized influence.",
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      "body": "Alt-Right is defined here by you and those you cite in terms much narrower than those used generally. Generally, outlets like Breitbart are described as Alt-Right, and as you casually indicate, the usage of the term can be quite loose. Your purpose here is to upbraid those who sloppily use the term: David Brock, and those who consciously and unconsciously echo him and his DCCC cohorts. You accuse them of consciously misusing the term to tar as racist any opposition to Hillary and her brand.\n\nAside from the coercieon inherent in monopolistic media practices and the subterranean effect of PAC money on public discourse, it may be a cultural pattern common to both America and Australia that, for those with whom we disagree, an excess of zeal in our disparagement may be seen as no vice, since we deplore them anyway. This is hyperbolizing, stating that the other party has views more extreme than they hold, so that making them seem worse is a kind of virtue. This tarring with a broad brush seems to be easier to do in the virtual world than in the real one.\n\nBecause its so ineffective, though, and has the potential to backfire, one has to wonder why they keep doing it. Way back in the early days of the 016 primary season, Thomas Frank identified how ineffective it was to tar Trump supporters as racist simpletons. Their reasons for supporting Trump were diverse, he explained. Not all were racists. Some were sincerely concerned about the economy, specifically the TPP. Others saw in Trump a way of challenging the establishment, whether that establishment was characterized as neoliberal, or as the object of Tea Party venom. (It is suitable now to note that the Tea Party lens has probably prevailed. The ascension of Pompeo is the jewel in the crown of the Koch Bros., and the Koch Bros. are the patrons of the Tea Party.) If the mischaracterization, the hyperbolizing, the hysterics, aren’t effective at beating Trump; perhaps they are effective at beating down the progressive alternatives; alternatives not only to Trump, but to the McResistance as well.\n\nThe McResistance is always quick to condemn the alt-right, as well as to use the label generally. Caitlan has called for an attempt to listen to the concerns of some of those so labeled (even if in this essay she argues the label to be misbegotten.) I want to second her call, and expand it a bit. Listening is good.\n\nFor example, some of the arguments for ethnocentrism, even if it is white, may surprise the reader as somewhat less deplorable than is commonly assumed. One of the primary fallacies, or contestable premises, of the neoliberal world view is that of universalism. That all homo economicus can live under a — for lack of a better word — capitalist system, “free” of the constraints of race, creed, color, religion, or national affiliation. Rationally, we can allocate resources, rise meritocratically. Americans and some others in the developed world are so steeped in universalist assumptions that we have become inured to the exclusivist claims inherent in societies and civilizations from time immemorial, claims that persist to this day. Their narrow view, we aver, is wrong. Universalists and multiculturalists implicitly assume these wayward particularists will come to see the light in the full flowering of multiculturalism. But how do you fight neoliberalism except with a particularism?\n\nWhile multicultralism started as a critique of the dominant culture, it has evolved to become a standard bearer for globalist culture, which has a corresponding — almost social Darwinian, or Calvinist — elitism for the intensely affluent. Less developed cultures do not share the universalist premise. Rather, their viewpoint might be characterized as particularist. In East Asia, Japan, for example, sees the world in terms of Japan; ethnically homogeneous, and culturally unique. Korea sees itself from a similar -centric view. China is perhaps the most virulent of all, in that its government policies and apparatus of state are hitched to Han centrism (You can’t be a citizen in China unless you are deemed to have a significant enough percentage of “Chinese blood”.).\n\nBecause they are particularist, these nation- culture- or ethnic-centered viewpoints are a bit dicey to generalize about. But you can go, region by region, and find them. Bemjamin Barber characterized them all as “Jihad” and set them against the emerging neoliberal world order, which he characterized as “McWorld” (See \n[Jihad vs. McWorld] (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6224/5b9457fc9a0d41078ced104a76123d7fb465.pdf).). However one characterizes particularist vs. universalist, you end up with an identifiable tension. That tension is what is being managed, coped with, compensated for, or exacerbated with centrist movements. They are very nascent in the United States, as the proper accounting of alt-right adherents that Caitlan advocates, indicates. Still, though small in number, apologists for McWorld, like those who employ David Brock, can use their presence to advance their universalist arguments. By casting particularists as deplorables, they hope to recruit participants in political discourse to the globalist cause.\n\nWhere the rubber hits the road on this one is Israel. Israel defines itself as a non-secular state. It’s claims are unabashadly particularist. Those who would deal with it from a universalist perspective, like the United Nations (which you can view as either universalist or an amalgamation of particularist that sufficies for universalism in the absence of “true” universalism), be damned. The agenda of Israel, their right to exist, is sectarian and has exclusivist overtones. Non-Jews will always be a minority in a Zionist Israel; in a sense, second class citizens.\n\nThis becomes complicated when you compare one universalist claim with another particularist condemnation. How can you praise Israel but deplore Richard Spencer, who simply wants to give whites in America a homeland, in terms similar to the one granted the Zionists? If Richard Spencer’s advocacy is deplorable, why isn’t Israel’s? Or, to put it another way, if Israel has a “right to exist,” why doesn’t Richard Spencer’s white ethnocentrist utopia have a right to exist? I would suggest that we need Richard Spencer in the dialogue precisely so that argument can have an airing. His views, upon closer examination, are surprisingly respectable. Or, to put it another way, the views of Media Matters, ShareBlue, Correct the Record; the views of the rump of Mrs. Clinton’s coterie, are surprisingly deplorable.",
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      "body": "@@ -4706,24 +4706,25 @@\n g about the \n+(\n Russia-China\n@@ -4745,16 +4745,160 @@\n  for two\n+) %5Bhttps://medium.com/@johnmensing/youve-gotten-yourself-into-a-false-dichotomy-here-which-started-by-my-reckoning-when-you-bought-8e89445dc6fb%5D\n , though\n",
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      "body": "Thank you for posting this interview with the Tea Party Triumphalist Pompeo (and Wichita Liberty TV for preserving this artifact). During this interview he prides himself on opposition to the Economic Development Agency, one of the parts of the government bureaucracy that helps communities revitalize economically. His remarks there show him to be completely unsympathetic to any kind of government action which would revive decaying local economies. With regard to the environment, despite not having ever worked directly for an oil company, like Tillerson, he seems much more in the thrall of Big Energy (Pompeo is a darling of the Koch Bros.), and much less sympathetic to environmental imperatives, as he talks about letting the market suffice for renewables.\n\nWhat a difference between him and Tillerson! Pompeo sounds like he’ll be much more inclined to antagonize Russia, much more like a Mrs. Clinton as a Secretary of State. Much “tougher” on the drawing of red lines and the prosecution of the Greater Israel Strategy (which would see the region surrounding what was granted a right to exist carved up into non-secular Statelets, Sectarian entities which nurture exclucivist narratives; at odds with each other but sharing Tel Aviv as their entrepot).\n\nTillerson did at least one good thing: He refused to certify the plebiscite that would have rended “Kurdistan” from the carcass of Iraq, and the creation of which would have poured gasoline on the fire in Syria. The stated reason for Tillerson’s replacement by Pompeo is Iran; Tillerson supported honoring the existing arrangement, Pompeo wants to tear it up. Otherwise, Tillerson was among the most knowledgeable in Trump’s team about Russia, in terms of on the ground experience. If there was an opening for rapprochement, one expected to see him at the head of the band.\n\nPompeo, in the Liberty TV interview, talks about Russia in the most jingoistic of terms. The congressional district that catapulted Pompeo inside the beltway is also home to the Koch Bros. It is reasonable to speculate that Koch money and organizational capacity was behind Trump’s decision to make Mike his right hand; or to speculate that whatever SOS Pompeo does will be influenced thusly. Any ruler governs by overseeing a coalition of constituencies, and the Donald instinctively would know what “needs to be done” to shore up his end. The reason for the removal of the most palpably sane member of this administration could also well involve the failure of the left to express any support for a progressive foreign policy agenda. (Progressive is hereby defined as pro-rapprochement with Russia; pro-Stop the War in Syria; and pro-leave Iran the fuck alone. All of which Tillerson was.)\n\nThis is what has made all the nattering of the #McResistance so infuriating. Aside from letting off steam and having a go, these Romper Room radicals did nothing except force Trump into a corner where unsavory met more unsavory. A principled resistance, such as Sanders advocated shortly after the inauguration, would have sought item-by-item agreement on steps toward a progressive agenda. Instead, whatever chits the DCCC had have been squandered on escalating the War for Greater Israel, and “Russia”. Russia, of course, will need to be defeated bloodily in Syria for Team Neocon to triumph. The Russiagate narrative has as a hidden premise, that Russia is our enemy.\n\nThat Schumer, the titular opposition to the Trump Administration, would effectively cheer on this change of personnel (hoping that Pompeo will be tougher on Russia), and that this is chorused by the rump of Mrs. Clintion’s coterie, shows the government uniting around a renewal of hostilities in Syria. Conventional thinking is that Syria has to be taken out before Iran can be dispensed with. Russia didn’t meddle in our elections. They blocked us from expanding Greater Israel; they saved Syria, and they’re threatening to save Iran. There’s a method to their madness.\n\nThe reason for Russiagate now becomes a bit clearer. (The question Russiagate posed was: Did our enemy Russia meddle in our election? The hidden premise was that Russia was our enemy. It was not. But if you answered the question either way, you had to admit the enemy characterization.) Not merely a cover-up for DCCC miscalculation, we’re primed now to see Russia as the enemy in the war for Syria, the war for the Greater Middle East. Will Americans cheer when a Russian soldier falls in battle? When a plane is shot down or a tank destroyed? They shouldn’t. In this war, if it comes, they should be cheering on the Russians. Does the American left and the progressive community have that much backbone?\n\nI think Caitlan’s wrong about the Russia-China bicycle built for two, though. If anything, China would be encouraging the neoliberal establishment to go against Russia. Russia is China’s most proximate rival. China is busy sending settlers to colonize Siberia, and China and Russia go toe-to-toe for influence in the former CIS countries. China and Russia are civilizational rivals. Russia is a democracy; China a Dynastic totalitarian autocracy.\n\n(Developments in China)[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/10/chill-looks-set-linger-reporting-from-xis-china] are [more worrisome](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/china-steps-up-internet-censorship-of-criticism-of-xi-jinping/article38269470/] than those in the U.S.",
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      "body": "The point that you had to ask if you could instead of doing what was correct: exposing corruption, is that you didn't care for the truth when you were entrusted with protecting people through the dissemination of truth, let's work together is what you told your boss, with someone that clearly had no interest in reporting the truth, unless it was a murder, rape suicide and the kid is \"missing\".",
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      "body": "A few contradictions here. She’s never met Mike Cernovich, and yet, “ she personally doesn’t mind working with on some specific issues.” I guess you could say she was working from a virtual office, but it seems a distinction without a difference. I think the problem here is the verb “working” is being asked to mean a bit too much, and more appropriate verbiage could be chosen.\n\nRacist as a derogatory epithet should also raise flags. To the degree one respects and wants to constructively engage racially informed prejudices, it would be avoided. The term virtue signaling seems to sum it up rather well — according oneself a virtuous mantle for having the probity to attack someone else for a lack of virtue. But while defending oneself might be viewed as necessary, attacking another is not virtuous. Name calling is bad form. Yet we do it these days, with this name, seemingly too frequently and too easily. He who lives by the sword . . . I almost imagine that in one of Hillary’s focus groups, they shopped the term, and found out you get an extra five points when you call the other guy “racist”. So they leap to label that one whenever there’s the slightest opening.\n\nCriticism by some might be jealousy; by others, a gatekeeper function — trying to keep out a new competitor; and some of it comes from the opposition, the targets in the status quo who don’t appreciate being assailed and want to neutralize the attacker. The test of Caitlan’s writing will be in whether it spurs her readers to be more functional in opposition to the politics she abhors. Will it goad them on to lead more revolutionary lives? The fruit of this kind of discipline can take years to bear. In the meantime, it is either well written, interesting, informative, entertaining — or not.\n\nI came to Caitlin at Newslogue during the primary, when deception after deception was being meted out by Mrs. Clinton’s coterie, working hand in glove with many of the major media outlets, with outlets like CTR (now Shareblue) using unaccountable PAC funds to dilute and disturb public discourse in a way that must have made the CCP envious. Calling foul, Caitlan emerged as a true superstar, documenting the abuse of Berners, and debasement of all the sordid DCCC. (The Republicans had long ago debased themselves with an uninterrupted run from Goldwater and Nixon down to Bush.)\n\nI read every column, and cheered on her rise. Now, the playing field seems quite similar, with Russiagate taking the place of the election, and Russia (Syria, too) as valiant as Bernie, and just as beset by malignant untruths and a cabal of deviant sycophant malingerers. This can’t go on forever though, and the dynamic of Caitlan’s place in the sturm und drang of political epiphanies must evolve. So I expect there will be changes.\n\nWhile I think it’s healthy to disparage those on the left like Robbie, please don’t feel obliged to do so simply because he disparaged Caity. Your remarks about his firewalled documentary opus were right on the fucking mark. He’s struggling, I imagine, like we all are, and he doesn’t get it right 100% of the time. And if he gets catty about Caity sometimes, well, perhaps that’s a sign of intimacy rather than a sign of division. Who we’re going to “work with” seems a rather abstruse criterion for judgement, especially when “work” brings with it an explicit avowal of having never met the other party.",
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      "body": "As a fellow J-School grad (the Dean of my college of Journalism was a former U.S. Press Secretary), I couldn’t agree with you more. Shortly after graduating, I asked the major metropolitan daily I was working for whether I could cover a workfare scam that fingered the County Executive, and was told the subject was too touchy. Objective reporting may have been a myth sold us by the purveyors of false narratives. Even that triumph of Investigative Journalism, Watergate, turns out to have been a Deep State maneuver that used reporters as pawns.\n\nBack in the early days of American Journalism, in the time of Thomas Paine, Broadsheets seem to have been screeds knowingly biased and received as such. The idea that a media outlet could nanny information for us may have been an unrealistic expectation. The thing of it is, back then, narratives were nurtured by folk traditions, song, and word of mouth. They evolved slowly and changed slowly. Now we can shift narratives as easily as changing the channel on a remote. They might be on their way to becoming meaningless, at least to the extent that they are watered, or watered-down, by corporatist mouthpieces.\n\nYou can’t separate the journalism from the culture, and culture is a difficult thing to get an easy handle on. Back in the days of the U.S.S.R., when the headline in Pravda read, “Cabbage is Good for You” the peasant readers knew that meant the wheat crop had failed. And yet we in America called ourselves free and them oppressed. We’re not living in the free world, and we never were. Our Freedom wasn’t so free, and their Oppression {wasn’t so oppressive} (https://www.theglobalist.com/for-whom-the-wall-fell-a-balance-sheet-of-the-transition-to-capitalism/).\n\nLet’s work together with other cultures like Russia to better understand ourselves and each other, and to fight common battles, like those in the environmental arena, and income inequality.",
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      "parent_author": "caitlinjohnstone",
      "parent_permlink": "this-job-sucks-sometimes",
      "author": "rhetoric",
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      "body": "This, I imagine, is in a small measure what Russia feels like: Constantly maligned, distorted, and lied about. (Syria, too.) I don’t know about Australians, but it sometimes seems Americans will buy anything, if you sell it to them enough (look at McDonalds). What might have you peeved is this guy, these guys, are selling hard the idea that Caitlan is _____________ (something bad). It’s the salesmanship that rankles, I imagine, more than the lie. Or the combination of lie + salesmanship. I would like to promote the idea that nobody’s buying — but these days they can astroturf customers.\n\nAs Who D. Who pointed out, the minute you strike a nerve, you’ll know. I think the only danger for you now is that you become someone who purveys negativity and a sense of hopelessness. Aside from ebullient aphorisms, real good things must be going on. Partly, they are patterns now hard to discern but that will be clearer with time and distance. But reflecting from a distance can also be positive. And I think not a negative is positive. The rump of Mrs. Clinton’s coterie have only haggard negativity to spew — Trump’s so bad!!!!! Not accepting their negativity should be a positive. And if you refuse to grant them that negativity, they’ve got no toe-hold for asserting that “you” or anything you say, can be a part of that negativity (that doesn’t exist).\n\nAs you’ve pointed out, Trump is not the devil. I think we should love him as a person and support him as an office holder whom we hope does the best job he can do until someone better comes along. For all his real and imagined sins he should one day be forgiven. All of his bad karma needs to be overcome with wisdom and revelation. And through good deeds he can set his soul aright. This is the same equation for us all. Be stern, of course, with his policies, work hard to support real opposition (like, say, Medicare for All), and realize that if he is a true politician, he will compromise when faced with a large and determined enough constituency. (Or the next officehoder will).\n\nThis pretending Trump is not the President is a gateway into pure hatred, fantasy. Once you’ve entered that realm, then you become susceptible to these kinds of unjust attacks. Those who spew unjust hatred cannot but spew more unjust hatred. As a little bit of this should be unacceptable, so now a lot more appears as such.",
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