Tag Archives: Democrats

Israel Lobby Rebuts Omar’s Claims About Its Immense Influence By Exerting Its Immense Influence

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

In response to criticisms made by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar that US political leaders have too much allegiance to Israel and its lobbying groups, House Democrats have put forward an entire House resolution in accordance with demands made by AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League.

“The backlash [over Omar’s comments] continued on Monday, as the Anti-Defamation League wrote a letter to Pelosi calling for a House resolution to specifically reject what the organization calls Omar’s ‘latest slur,’” Politico reports. “‘We urge you and your colleagues to send the unambiguous message that the United States Congress is no place for hate,’ the group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, wrote in a letter.”

“The charge of dual loyalty not only raises the ominous specter of classic anti-Semitism, but it is also deeply insulting to the millions upon millions of patriotic Americans, Jewish and non-Jewish, who stand by our democratic ally, Israel,” tweeted the Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Friday in response to Omar’s comments.

“I hope @AIPAC isn’t too angry that it took Democratic House leaders almost 48 whole hours to do what they’re told to condemn their own member and will instead be understanding that it was a weekend and that’s what caused the delay,” snarked journalist Glenn Greenwald in response to the news of the House resolution.

US politicians of all faiths and in both parties have indeed been falling all over themselves in a mad scramble to tell the freshman congresswoman that she is wrong and evil for suggesting that there is undue loyalty to Israel among US politicians.

“It is disturbing that Rep. Omar continues to perpetuate hurtful anti-Semitic stereotypes that misrepresent our Jewish community,” tweeted California Congressman Juan Vargas, who is not Jewish. “Additionally, questioning support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is unacceptable,” Vargas continued, inadvertently re-stating Omar’s original argument.

“But serious question: How is it anti-Semitic to question Christian Republican allegiance to Israel?” asked journalist Rania Khalek in response to the controversy. “Because it’s people like Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Marco Rubio who Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib were initially called anti-Semitic for challenging on loyalty to Israel.”

It is indeed interesting that the label “antisemitism” is being pinned on an argument directed at mostly non-Jewish lawmakers and not at Jews at all. It is also interesting that the House resolution’s current text twists that reality on its head by falsely implying that the comments were directed at Jewish politicians. The most Omar-specific parts of the resolution read as follows:

Whereas the definition further includes ‘‘accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations’’;

Whereas the myth of dual loyalty, including allegations that Jews should be suspected of being disloyal neighbors or citizens, has been used to marginalize and persecute the Jewish people for centuries for being a stateless minority;

Whereas accusing Jews of dual loyalty because they support Israel, whether out of a religious connection, a commitment to Jewish self-determination after millennia of persecution, or an appreciation for shared values and interests, suggests that Jews cannot be patriotic Americans and trusted neighbors, when Jews have served our Nation since its founding, whether in public life or military service;

Whereas accusations of dual loyalty generally have an insidious, bigoted history, including (1) the discriminatory internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II on the basis of race; (2) the Dreyfuss affair; when Alfred Dreyfuss, a Jewish French artillery captain was falsely convicted of passing secrets to Germany based on his Jewish background; (3) when the loyalty of President John F. Kennedy was questioned because of his Catholic faith; and (4) the post-9/11 conditions faced by Muslim-Americans in the United States, including unfounded, vicious attacks on and threats to Muslim-American Members of Congress;

Omar’s comments have nothing to do with Jews, Judaism or Jewishness, but with the geopolitical entanglements between the US and a nation which currently serves as an outpost for US military agendas in the Middle East. It’s a basic, unassailable fact that the agenda to maintain this relationship holds immense sway in America’s capitol, which is why the only arguments you see against it are fallacious, dishonest, irrelevant, or even prove it to be true.

“It is so disingenuous of some of these members of Congress who are lining up to condemn these questioning voices as if they have no campaign finance interest in the outcome,” former congressman Brian Baird told the New York Times today. “If one dares to criticize Israel or dares to criticize AIPAC, one gets branded anti-Semitic, and that’s a danger to a democratic republic.”

Ilhan Omar has sparked one of the most interesting conversations happening in America today, and the smear campaign against her has nothing to do with fighting antisemitism, but with silencing that conversation. The social engineers are not interested in fighting religious bigotry, they are interested in shutting her up.

In an increasingly neoliberalism-weary world, the old smear tactics of labeling a dissident voice a “communist” or a “socialist” don’t pack the kind of punching power they used to, so new ones are needed. The propagandists have been field testing them for a while now, and whenever a successful prototype rolls off the conveyor belt you quickly see it shipped around the world. Smears of Kremlin servitude found purchase in the US, and it wasn’t long before we saw the BBC posing an image of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn against the backdrop of the Kremlin wearing what was made to resemble a Soviet-era hat. Antisemitism smears found purchase against Corbyn in the UK, and it wasn’t long before we saw those same smear tactics used across the pond against Ilhan Omar. If an imperial smear field tests well in our new political climate, you can be certain you’ll see it used elsewhere within the empire before long.

https://twitter.com/PrettyBadLefty/status/1102748288309231618

This bogus concern trolling about antisemitism has always been about smearing, and the smearing has always been about narrative control. If they can manipulate the public into distrusting someone who voices a dissenting narrative, they can keep that dissenting narrative from entering the bloodstream of mainstream consciousness. The need to keep a nuclear-armed branch of the US-centralized empire in the heart of the most crucial strategic location on earth is too important for our rulers to allow its fate to be left in the hands of the democratic process, so they control the narrative about it with extreme aggression and smear anyone who questions it. That’s all this has ever been.

Five Reasons I’m Excited About Tulsi Gabbard’s Candidacy

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard has announced her intent to campaign for President of the United States, and the entire political spectrum is shitting bricks about it. Mainstream liberals and neocons are calling her a Putin puppet and Assad’s BFF, leftists and progressives are criticizing her associations with right-wing factions in India and anti-LGBT comments she made in the early 2000s, conspiracy analysts are criticizing her Council on Foreign Relations membership, and the Zionist elements of Trump’s base are openly promising to destroy her candidacy. A lot of others, myself included, got a lot more interested in the 2020 elections when she threw her hat in.

I’m not interested in defending Gabbard from the criticisms that have been leveled at her at this time; many articles have been written toward that end already, and if she’s going to run for the most powerful elected office on the planet it’s fair to scrutinize and question what kind of person she is. I’m also not interested in endorsing anyone for the presidency. What I am interested in is the way Gabbard’s presence in the Democratic presidential primary race is already in January 2019 upsetting the standard establishment script and forcing foreign policy debates that need to happen.

Here are a five thoughts on that subject:

1 – Gabbard will definitely be the most antiwar candidate on the debate stage by a wide margin, except in the highly unlikely event that someone steps up from way out of left field to run like Dennis Kucinich. Being the most antiwar candidate in anything associated with the Democratic Party is a very low bar, but her vocal positions on Syria, Iran, Yemen, Russia, North Korea, Afghanistan, Gaza, and previous US regime change interventions set her so far from the establishment orthodoxy that she’ll look as different from the other candidates as Ron Paul looked on the Republican debate stage.

2 – Make no mistake, it is this opposition to significant aspects of the US war machine that is the driving force behind the overwhelming bulk of the shrieking objection to Gabbard’s candidacy, not any of the more valid criticisms. We have learned from the mainstream acceptance of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that some criticism of the status quo will be tolerated when it comes to domestic policy, but it’s an excommunicable offense when it comes to foreign policy. The idea that the US should forcefully control world affairs using the carrot of alliance and the stick of military violence is so ubiquitous in both of America’s mainstream parties that it takes a Washington Postcolumnist getting dismembered alive to start a debate about something so self-evidently evil as the Saudi-led destruction of Yemen.

3 – Foreign policy is undeniably the area in which the greater part of US government depravity takes place, and as far as America’s permanent government is concerned it is by far the most important. Forcing a debate on an issue you’re not even supposed to bring up on mainstream media will get a lot of ordinary Americans asking questions that very powerful individuals don’t want asked. The DNC went from scheduling over 20 debates in 2008 to trying to limit it to six in 2016 because they didn’t want Sanders’ excellent domestic policy ideas getting out to the public and making their coronated status quo candidate look bad. Gabbard could have the same impact on foreign policy in an audience that has been aggressively propagandized by MSNBC warmongering.

4 – Gabbard’s progressive positions on issues like Medicare for All, environmentalism, $15 minimum wage, Wall Street accountability, the failed war on drugs, marijuana legalization, criminal justice reform and indigenous water rights will also set her further to the left on domestic policy than anyone on the debate stage besides Sanders should he run. This is a self-evident fact, but a lot of narrative control efforts are being poured into painting her as a right-winger. She will definitely help force the debate to the left, and her position on withdrawing from expensive interventionist war policies answers the “But how are you going to PAY for it??” questions the MSM talking heads are so fond of grilling progressives with on social programs.

5 – For me the most telling thing about Gabbard is the way she resigned from her position as vice chair of the DNC in order to endorse Bernie Sanders in 2016. Other DNC operatives remained inside the Committee and actively schemed to give Clinton every unfair advantage in the primary, but Gabbard showed integrity and refused to advance a biased agenda in violation of the DNC charter. It showed that she’s a real person operating within one of the phoniest places in the world, and that she’s willing to throw a spanner in the works of the machine when it’s in the highest interest. This unwillingness to march to the beat of the establishment drum for such proceedings could lead to some very interesting things as the presidential race heats up.

And that’s good enough for me. She’s not perfect, she’s a major long shot to actually win, but Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign for president will definitely shake things up in all the right places, and good things will come from it. Which is why all the right people are outraged by her bid today.

 

Democrats downplay Google censorship at congressional hearing

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By Andre Damon

Source: WSWS.org

Google CEO Sundar Pichai denied allegations that the company was engaged in political censorship Monday at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Throughout the hearing, Republicans repeatedly claimed that the company was censoring search results to the detriment of right-wing viewpoints, while Democrats either denied the company’s censorship or justified it.

The fundamental reality—completely ignored at the hearing—is that the real targets of censorship by Silicon Valley, working with the US intelligence agencies and with the consent of both political parties, are left-wing, anti-war and socialist political organizations.

In August 2017, Google announced that it would implement changes to its search algorithm to promote “authoritative” news sources to the detriment of what it called “alternative” viewpoints. This action led to a massive decline in search rankings and traffic to left-wing, anti-war and progressive websites.

The campaign to implement this censorship regime was spearheaded by the Democratic Party, which, based on claims of Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election, sought to pressure the technology giants to block and suppress left-wing opposition, which it branded as “extremist viewpoints.”

The narrative of both parties is strikingly at odds with reality. Compared to April 2017, the far-right Breitbart.com had its search traffic increase by 25 percent. By contrast, search results for the World Socialist Web Site are down by 76 percent over the same period, and other left-wing sites remain down by 50 percent or more.

At the hearing, Pichai made one of Google’s most explicit denials to date that it was carrying out political censorship.

“I lead this company without political bias and work to ensure that our products continue to operate that way,” Pichai declared. “To do otherwise would go against our core principles and our business interests. We are a company that provides platforms for diverse perspectives and opinions,” he said.

He added, “It’s not possible for any employee or groups of employees to manipulate our search results.”

In fact, the changes implemented in 2017 by the company were intended to empower “search evaluators” to impact Google search results. These individuals, whose input was added to Google’s more impartial PageRank algorithm, were told to respond negatively to pages displaying “alternative” viewpoints unless users explicitly specified they were looking for such views.

While some political organizations aligned with the Democratic Party were affected by Google’s actions, they either ignored or supported the censorship regime. The far right, meanwhile, made opposition to censorship a rallying cry.

US President Donald Trump, setting the tone for substantial sections of the Republican Party, has prominently accused Google of censoring search results. Republican members of Congress repeatedly held hearings accusing the company of suppressing right-wing and conservative political views.

“Google has long faced criticism for manipulating search results to censor conservatives,” Representative Lamar Smith declared at Monday’s hearing.

The Democrats, for their part, used Pichai’s testimony to alternately deny and justify the company’s censorship. In his remarks, committee chairman Jerrold Nadler declared that “no credible evidence supports this right-wing conspiracy theory.” In effect, Nadler and the other Democrats used the Republicans’ accusations about Google’s ‘liberal’ bias as a straw man, arguing, by extension, that all claims that Google is manipulating search results are a “conspiracy theory.”

Nadler then proceeded to justify Google’s censorship, which he had just denied. “Even if Google were deliberately discriminating against conservative viewpoints, just as Fox News and Sinclair broadcasting and conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh discriminate against liberal points of view, that would be its right as a private company to do so, and not to be questioned by government.”

This, too, is a straw-man. In carrying out their censorship of left-wing views, Google and the other technology giants are acting at the instigation of the US intelligence agencies and leading political figures, serving as the state’s accomplice in violating the Constitution.

Responding to the Republicans’ claims, The Washington Post wrote in an editorial, “Members of the conservative majority on the House Judiciary Committee spent much of their time hammering Mr. Pichai with baseless accusations that Google rigs its search results to censor conservative content. Black-box algorithms will inevitably prioritize some content over other content, and to the extent companies can be transparent about how their systems work, they should be. But a single-minded and mindless focus on a nonexistent left-wing conspiracy within Google has had the paradoxical effect of discouraging companies from properly policing their platforms, as they hesitate to remove content that should be removed for fear of unfounded criticism.”

In other words, the Post is concerned that the Republican’s grandstanding about what they allege to be a bias against right-wing viewpoints might undermine the plans by the US intelligence agencies to intensify their censorship of left-wing opposition.

As working class-opposition throughout Europe and around the world continues to mount, the American political establishment is ramping up demands for censorship. Responding to the Yellow Vest demonstrations against social inequality in France, the New York Times wrote an editorial warning that “the power of social media to quickly mobilize mass anger, without any mechanism for dialogue or restraint, is a danger to which a liberal democracy cannot succumb.”

The clear implication is that a growing international upsurge of the working class will be met with even further repression and censorship.

Democrats rally to defend fired Attorney General Sessions, Special Counsel Mueller

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By Tom Eley

Source: WSWS.org

The Democrats and their fake “left” allies held war-mongering demonstrations in a number of cities on Thursday in defense of the fired far-right attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and the anti-Russia investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Wednesday’s ouster of Sessions and his replacement by Trump ally Matthew G. Whitaker has brought forth a wave of condemnation from Democratic Party figures and their media allies, including the New York Times and Washington Post, asserting that the move is the prelude to Trump’s closing down of the Justice Department probe into allegations of Russian “meddling” in the 2016 elections and possible collusion by the Trump campaign.

Trump had repeatedly denounced Sessions for having recused himself from the Russia investigation in March of 2017, leaving Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a defender of the investigation, in overall charge of its conduct. Whitaker, a former US attorney and now acting attorney general and therefore responsible for overseeing the Mueller probe, is on record criticizing Mueller and suggesting that the Justice Department could cut off funding for his office.

Mueller’s investigation has been at the center of a McCarthyite-style campaign against Russia spearheaded by the intelligence agencies and the Democratic Party, based on fabricated claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the presidential election to undermine the candidacy of Democrat Hillary Clinton and boost Trump. It has been used as a weapon in the drive by the Democrats and sections of the military/intelligence establishment to force Trump to adopt a more aggressive posture against Moscow and in the war for regime-change in Syria.

To the extent that the Democrats oppose the right-wing Trump administration, it is on this entirely reactionary basis. In the lead-up to Tuesday’s midterm elections, they not only called no demonstrations, they were entirely silent on Trump’s fascistic attacks on immigrants, his deployment of troops to the border against the caravan of Central American asylum seekers, and his pledge to overturn the 14th Amendment guarantee of birthright citizenship—a cornerstone of the Bill of Rights.

Following the election, in which the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives, the party leadership called repeatedly for bipartisan unity and collaboration with Trump, underscoring their essential agreement with his policies of war, austerity and repression. It was only when Trump fired Sessions, a right-wing anti-immigrant zealot, that they swung into action, reviving their denunciations of Trump as a stooge of Putin.

The aim of shifting the Trump administration to a war footing against Russia has been achieved to the extent that there is now a substantial risk of nuclear conflict between the US and the second-leading nuclear power. War could quickly erupt in a number of flash points, especially Syria, where Russian soldiers, sailors and airmen carry out combat operations within miles of their American counterparts, as well as US-allied Islamist proxies armed by Saudi Arabia.

Though promoted in the media and sponsored by over 50 Democratic Party-linked organizations, including MoveOn.org, the rallies on Tuesday were small, reflecting the lack of support in the general population for the anti-Russia crusade. The protests were notable primarily for their unvarnished right-wing and neo-McCarthyite character.

Two of the largest were in Washington DC and New York City, which each drew roughly 1,000 demonstrators, many of whom held hammer and cycle posters with Putin’s image. Sessions began his career as a segregationist in Jim Crow Alabama and went on to become a right-wing Republican senator from the state. Mueller, for his part, was director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013, during which time he helped institute mass domestic surveillance and other sweeping attacks on democratic rights linked to the so-called “war on terror.”

At the Washington demonstration, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin led those in attendance in a round of applause for Sessions. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, appealed to the military against Trump, declaring, “You are the defenders of our democracy,” and led a chant of “protect Mueller.”

In defending Sessions, the Democrats and their allies are rallying around the most right–wing attorney general in American history, who, prior to joining the Trump cabinet, had won a well-earned reputation as a bitter opponent of civil rights. As attorney general, Sessions will primarily be remembered for the persecution of immigrants, most notably the separation of immigrant children from their parents and their imprisonment in detention camps built in the desert.

The task of spearheading the attack on immigrants and democratic rights will now fall, pending the installation of a permanent attorney general, to Whitaker, who has boasted that he interprets the Constitution from a biblical standpoint. His very first act as head of the Department of Justice was to issue, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, a directive stripping the right to asylum from anyone who enters the US over the Mexican border and has not first gained legal status—a move that is tantamount to abolishing the right to asylum, which is guaranteed under international and US law.

This move, a new landmark in the attack on immigrants, due process and basic democratic rights, has been virtually ignored by the media and the Democratic Party. It was not mentioned in the press release calling Thursday’s demonstration, nor by speakers at the demonstrations in Washington and New York.

Why Is Russiagate Rumbling Into the 2018 Midterms?

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By Alan Macleod

Source: FAIR

The November 6 midterms are fast approaching, yet much of the media is still looking back to the 2016 elections, and specifically the alleged Russian interference in them.

The New Yorker (10/1/18) published a 7,000-word article headlined “How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump.” Considering other explanations for Trump’s victory and Clinton’s loss, such as her tactical campaign errors, gerrymandering, vote suppression, racism and the actions of James Comey for only a paragraph, it quotes one expert claiming, “It stretches credulity to think the Russians didn’t” win it for him.

Meanwhile, the New York Times (9/20/18) released an intensive 10,000-word history and analysis of the Trump/Russia story, explaining to its readers that it was Putin’s “seething” ambivalence towards the West and his “nostalgia for Russia’s lost superpower status” that were the driving forces behind Russia’s nefarious actions.

There is also a great deal of fear about supposed hacking of the upcoming midterms. USA Today (10/9/18) warned, “As Russia and perhaps other foreign governments seek to undermine democratic elections, Congress and states need to get serious about defenses.” The PBS NewsHour (10/11/18) quoted one official who noted, “Given our experiences of 2016 and what we saw the Russians attempt to do across the nation’s election equipment, the election infrastructure, we certainly have a degree of concern of what their capability is.” Meanwhile, the Washington Post(9/26/18) writes, “While Russia is clearly trying to influence the 2018 elections, this time the United States is prepared and taking action to counter it.”

There is little concrete evidence offered in these reports; see Gareth Porter in Consortium News (10/10/18) for a dash of cold water on the New York Times’ narrative. Yet even the lack of evidence is an ominous sign for some. The Daily Beast (10/8/18) published an article headlined, “No Evidence That Russia Is Messing with Campaign 2018—Yet.” Despite that lack of evidence, the article asserted that the US should brace itself: “Russia has an arsenal of disruption capabilities… to sow havoc on election day,” it said, and “everyone is expecting the 2016 shock and awe” again.

The concern of the media over Russian actions has not resonated with the public more generally; a July Gallup poll reported that the number of Americans who considered Russia a top problem for the country was less than 1 percent. On the subject of the midterms and threats to their legitimacy, NPR (9/17/18) found that large majorities feel voter fraud or suppression to be a much greater danger to election integrity than foreign interference. Yet these concerns are not addressed nearly as thoroughly by the media. A search for “Russia” and “election” in the New York Timesdatabase generates 4,489 stories since the start of 2017, as compared to just 234 for “voter suppression” and “election,” 306 “gerrymandering” and “election” and 727 “racism” and “election.”

The question is not whether Russia, like other countries with extensive intelligence apparatuses, seeks to influence the elections of foreign nations. The question is why corporate media are concentrating on foreign interference, and not the other threats to democracy. In a previous article (FAIR.org, 7/27/18), I argued that the Democrats are using Russia to deflect anger and discontent away from their own failings. If Russia is to blame, there is no need for introspection, nor to address the deep race and class divides in the country that are addressed by surging political movements on the left, from Sanders to Black Lives Matter, and exploited by Trump and the alt-right. The focus on Russia as the sole reason for Trump’s victory allows establishment Democrats to continue as normal, without need for radical internal or policy change. As Clinton said, “America is already great.” To deflect pressure from the left, they can construct a narrative to explain why they lost to the most unpopular candidate ever.

For corporate media, the story of Russia covertly influencing the country promotes a climate where they can re-tighten their grip on the means of communication by accusing alternative media on both left and right of being Russian-sponsored “fake news.” As previously reported (FAIR.org, 8/22/18), under the guise of protecting readers, big media companies like Google, YouTube and Bing have changed their algorithms, resulting in devastating drops in traffic for reputable alternative media sites. Alternative media has been deleted, de-ranked, de-listed and de-monetized, effectively sidelining them. In response to ostensible Russian meddling, media giant Facebook announced last week (Washington Post, 10/11/18) it had shut down over 800 US accounts and pages for “inauthentic behavior,” a term even more nebulous than “fake news.” Included in the 800 were several police accountability watchdog groups and other alternative media, adding to its recent (temporary) deleting of TeleSUR English.

However, the best example of fake news and “inauthentic behavior” by media outlets in the modern age remains the manufacture of consent for the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, with the crucial assistance of corporate outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post and NBC (FAIR.org, 11/1/01; 3/18/03; 10/23/17). Forty-five percent of Americans get their news from Facebook, but it seems doubtful the tech giant will remove accounts belonging to those publications.

While it is clear that Moscow has an interest in who the US elects and doesn’t elect, the media’s focus on Russiagate through the midterm elections has as much to do with its political utility as with the evidence. With President Trump accusing China of midterm interference (CNN, 8/26/18), it appears that both major parties have sown doubt into the process and have a pre-made excuse if they fail on November 6. Both sides undermining trust in the democratic process does not augur well for the future of US politics.

Wealth of 400 richest Americans hits record $2.9 trillion

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These six men own as much wealth as half the world’s population

By Alec Anderson

Source: WSWS.org

On Wednesday, the US finance magazine Forbes released its annual “Forbes 400” list of wealthiest Americans, revealing an immense increase in wealth among the top social stratum in the United States.

The total net worth of the 400 people included on the list hit a record $2.9 trillion this year, up from $2.7 trillion last year. The most heavily represented sector was finance, from which 88 people on the list, including bank executives, hedge fund managers and investors, drew their wealth.

The next highest proportion comes from technology giants such as Google and Facebook. The CEO of Twitter and payments firm Square, Jack Dorsey, registered the greatest percentage growth in wealth from the previous year, an increase of 186 percent to $6.3 billion. This was due in large part to a jump in Square’s stock price.

The threshold necessary for inclusion on the list rose to $2.2 billion in 2018, up $100 billion from last year’s threshold. Fully one-third of billionaires in the United States, a record 204 individuals, failed to make this year’s Forbes 400 list.

The average net worth of billionaires on the list rose to $7.2 billion, an increase of a half-billion over last year’s average of $6.7 billion.

As Forbes notes, the vast increase in wealth among the very richest Americans is largely thanks to a continuing surge in US stock indexes. They have reached new record highs in part due to unprecedented levels of stock buybacks and dividend increases, which are parasitic diversions of wealth away from productive investment in areas that produce decent-paying jobs and to the detriment of pursuits such as research and development. The billionaires on the Forbes 400 list have also benefited immensely from the Trump tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy signed into law in December 2017.

Topping the list is Amazon CEO and world’s richest person Jeff Bezos, whose $160 billion is $63 billion more than the second-wealthiest person on the list, Bill Gates, and a full $78.5 billion more than last year. Bezos has made his fortune through the super-exploitation of warehouse workers around the world, enabling Amazon to move its products faster and at cheaper prices than its retail competitors.

The staggering increase in Bezos’s wealth over the past year has been due to the more than 100 percent increase in Amazon’s stock price. The $2,950 Jeff Bezos has earned per second in 2018 is more than the $2,796 a fulfillment center worker in India makes in an entire year.

Ironically, the Forbes report was published the same day that the press was full of praise for Bezos’s supposed generosity and humanitarian concern for his workers, occasioned by the announcement that he was raising the minimum wage of his US-based employees to the poverty-level wage of $15 an hour.

If the $160 billion fortune Bezos holds were divided among Amazon’s global workforce of 500,000, each worker would receive $320,000.

Coming in second on the list with a net worth of $97 billion is Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates, who had topped the Forbes list since 1994. The top 10 wealthiest people on the list alone have a total net worth of $730 billion, up from $610 billion in 2018.

However, just the top 45 individuals out of the 400 on the list accounted for fully half of the total wealth, or $1.45 trillion. That amounts to an average fortune of more than $32 billion each, which is more than the estimated $30 billion required to end world hunger, according to a United Nations estimate.

The Forbes report illustrates that the barrier to resolving societal ills, such as poverty, hunger and disease, is the siphoning off and hoarding of a growing proportion of society’s resources by the wealthiest segment of society.

The $2.9 trillion in the hands of these 400 richest people in the United States is roughly three-quarters of the total federal budget. It represents nearly three times the 2018 budget for the Department of Health and Human Services, which was slashed from over $1.126 trillion in 2017 to $1.112 trillion this year, and 176 times the $16.4 billion budget for the Department of Education in 2018.

Rather than addressing these issues, the Democratic Party’s midterm election campaign has instead been centered on a right-wing effort to channel opposition to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump behind a #MeToo-style hysteria over alleged sexual abuse. This is accompanied by the ongoing campaign to demonize Russia and Vladimir Putin and brand Trump as a stooge of the Kremlin.

The timing of the release of the Forbes list is significant, coming as it does on the 10-year anniversary of the passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)—the $700 billion bank bailout that set the stage for the trillions that were essentially stolen from the working class to rescue the financial oligarchy and make it richer than ever. The result of the decade-long plundering of society since the crash, carried out by both Republican and Democratic administrations, is the ever-increasing concentration of wealth at the very top reflected in the new Forbes 400 list.

When Worse is the Enemy of Bad

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By Paul Edwards

Source: CounterPunch.org

There comes a time in the decline of an empire when–in its hubris, its arrogance–it decouples from reason and blindly blunders toward its fate in a ludicrous ugly trance of stupidity.  To paraphrase Walter Cronkite–we are there.

Trump makes his one positive, even useful, gesture as President, and the decayed corpse of the Democratic Party bursts its cerements with a stinking roar of horror.

The claim that all that is wrong with America is due to the malignant machinations of Putin is the most blatantly false, potentially disastrous bucket of bullshit ever inflicted by the matrix on this ignorant, credulous, propagandized people.

The MSM–the PR arm of the War Machine Complex that owns us–has so infected the national mind with the sleazy fiction concocted by the Democrat’s Geezer Politburo–the DNC slugs, Schumer, Pelosi and their geriatric myrmidons–that Trumpophobe Automatons rage at Putin and howl for a war, the horror of which they can’t begin to imagine.

Because hostility, provocation and resultant war is exactly what is comprehended in this national insanity.  Blaming their election loss on Russia, after decades impoverishing working people for the obscene enrichment of the War Machine and its megacorporate monsters, would just be ridiculous if it weren’t so foolishly, desperately dangerous.

As vile, as odious as he is, Democrat honchos know they can’ t beat Trump by shell-gaming Americans for their Wall Street donors any more–hey, it worked fine for ages–so they slime him as a traitor in bed with that monster we’ve been made to fear most: Putin and the Evil Empire Redux.

More incredibly, they’ve persuaded so-called progressives, who, historically, fiercely defended the Bill of Rights and valiantly battled the house organs of the National Security State, that those goats nests of dishonesty and disease are pure, unsullied repositories of Constitutional rectitude.

After decades of proven baldfaced crime, deceit and the  dirtiest pool at home and abroad, the CIA, FBI, NSA, the Justice Department and the whole foetid nomenklatura of  sociopathic rats, are portrayed as white knights of virtue dispensing verity as holy writ.  And “progressives” buy it.

These are the vermin that gave us Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, Chile, the Contras, Iraq’s WMD, and along the way managed to miss the falls of the Shah and Communism.

Truly an Orwellian clusterfuck, this.  War Party Dems misleading naive liberal souls sickened by Trump into embracing the dirty, vicious lunacy Hillary peddled to her fans, the bankers, brokers, and CEOs of the War Machine.

Trump is a fool who may yet blunder us into war; the Dems and the Deep State cabal would give us war by design.

The Utility of the RussiaGate Conspiracy

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New McCarthyism allows corporate media to tighten grip, Democrats to ignore their own failings

By Alan MacLeod

Source: FAIR

To the shock of many, Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential elections, becoming the 45th president of the United States. Not least shocked were corporate media, and the political establishment more generally; the Princeton Election Consortium confidently predicted an over 99 percent chance of a Clinton victory, while MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (10/17/16) said it could be a “Goldwater-style landslide.”

Indeed, Hillary Clinton and her team actively attempted to secure a Trump primary victory, assured that he would be the easiest candidate to beat. The Podesta emails show that her team considered even before the primaries that associating Trump with Vladimir Putin and Russia would be a winning strategy and employed the tactic throughout 2016 and beyond.

With Clinton claiming, “Putin would rather have a puppet as president,” Russia was by far the most discussed topic during the presidential debates (FAIR.org, 10/13/16), easily eclipsing healthcare, terrorism, poverty and inequality. Media seized upon the theme, with Paul Krugman (New York Times, 7/22/16) asserting Trump would be a “Siberian candidate,” while ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden (Washington Post, 5/16/16) claimed Trump would be Russia’s “useful fool.”

The day after the election, Jonathan Allen’s book Shattered detailed, Clinton’s team decided that the proliferation of Russian-sponsored “fake news” online was the primary reason for their loss.

Within weeks, the Washington Post (11/24/16) was publicizing the website PropOrNot.com, which purports to help users differentiate sources as fake or genuine, as an invaluable tool in the battle against fake news (FAIR.org, 12/1/16, 12/8/16). The website soberly informs its readers that you see news sources critiquing the “mainstream media,” the EU, NATO, Obama, Clinton, Angela Merkel or other centrists are a telltale sign of Russian propaganda. It also claims that when news sources argue against foreign intervention and war with Russia, that’s evidence that you are reading Kremlin-penned fake news.

PropOrNot claims it has identified over 200 popular websites that “routinely peddle…Russian propaganda.” Included in the list were Wikileaks, Trump-supporting right-wing websites like InfoWars and the Drudge Report, libertarian outlets like the Ron Paul Institute and Antiwar.com, and award-winning anti-Trump (but also Clinton-critical) left-wing sites like TruthDig and Naked Capitalism. Thus it was uniquely news sources that did not lie in the fairway between Clinton Democrats and moderate Republicans that were tarred as propaganda.

PropOrNot calls for an FBI investigation into the news sources listed. Even its creators see the resemblance to a new McCarthyism, as it appears as a frequently asked question on their website. (They say it is not McCarthyism, because “we are not accusing anyone of lawbreaking, treason, or ‘being a member of the Communist Party.’”) However, this new McCarthyism does not stem from the conservative right like before, but from the establishment center.

That the list is so evidently flawed and its creators refuse to reveal their identities or funding did not stop the issue becoming one of the most discussed in mainstream circles. Media talk of fake news sparked organizations like Google, Facebook, Bing and YouTube to change their algorithms, ostensibly to combat it.

However, one major effect of the change has been to hammer progressive outlets that challenge the status quo. The Intercept reported a 19 percent reduction in Google search traffic, AlterNet 63 percent and Democracy Now! 36 percent. Reddit and Twitter deleted thousands of accounts, while in what came to be called the “AdPocalypse,” YouTube began demonetizing videos from independent creators like Majority Report and the Jimmy Dore Show on controversial political topics like environmental protests, war and mass shootings. (In contrast, corporate outlets like CNN did not have their content on those subjects demonetized.) Journalists that questioned aspects of the Russia narrative, like Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Maté, were accused of being agents of the Kremlin (Shadowproof, 7/9/18).

The effect has been to pull away the financial underpinnings of alternative media that question the corporate state and capitalism in general, and to reassert corporate control over communication, something that had been loosened during the election in particular. It also impels liberal journalists to prove their loyalty by employing sufficiently bellicose and anti-Russian rhetoric, lest they also be tarred as Kremlin agents.

When it was reported in February that 13 Russian trolls had been indicted by a US grand jury for sharing and promoting pro-Trump and anti-Clinton memes on Facebook, the response was a general uproar. Multiple senior political figures declared it an “act of war.” Clinton herself described Russian interference as a “cyber 9/11,” while Thomas Friedman said that it was a “Pearl Harbor–scale event.” Morgan Freeman’s viral video, produced by Rob Reiner’s Committee to Investigate Russia, summed up the outrage:  “We have been attacked,” the actor declared; “We are at war with Russia.” Liberals declared Trump’s refusal to react in a sufficiently aggressive manner further proof he was Putin’s puppet.

The McCarthyist wave swept over other politicians that challenged the liberal center. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein refused to endorse the Russia narrative, leading mainstream figures like Rachel Maddow to insinuate she was a Kremlin stooge as well. After news broke that Stein’s connection to Russia was being officially investigated, top Clinton staffer Zac Petkanas announced:

Jill Stein is a Russian agent.

Jill Stein is a Russian agent.

Jill Stein is a Russian agent.

Jill Stein is a Russian agent.

Jill Stein is a Russian agent.

Jill Stein is a Russian agent.

Jill Stein is a Russian agent.

Jill Stein is a Russian agent.

“Commentary” that succinctly summed up the political atmosphere.

In contrast, Bernie Sanders has consistently and explicitly endorsed the RussiaGate theory, claiming it is “clear to everyone (except Donald Trump) that Russia was deeply involved in the 2016 election and intends to be involved in 2018.” Despite his stance, Sanders has also been constantly presented as another Russian agent, with the Washington Post (11/12/17) asking its readers, “When Russia interferes with the 2020 election on behalf of Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders, how will liberals respond?” The message is clear: The progressive wave rising across America is and will be a consequence of Russia, not of the failures of the system, nor of the Democrats.

It is not just politicians who have been smeared as Russian agents, witting or unwitting; virtually every major progressive movement challenging the system is increasingly dismissed in the same way. Multiple media outlets, including CNN (6/29/18), Slate (5/11/18), Vox (4/11/18) and the New York Times (2/16/18), have produced articles linking Black Lives Matter to the Kremlin, insinuating the outrage over racist police brutality is another Russian psyop. Others claimed Russia funded the riots in Ferguson and that Russian trolls promoted the Standing Rock environmental protests.

Meanwhile, Democratic insider Neera Tanden retweeted a description of Chelsea Manning as a “Russian stooge,” writing off her campaign for the Senate as “the Kremlin paying the extreme left to swing elections. Remember that.” Thus corporate media are promoting the idea that any challenge to the establishment is likely a Kremlin-funded astroturf effort.

The tactic has spread to Europe as well. After the poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, the UK government immediately blamed Russia and imposed sanctions (without publicly presenting evidence). Jeremy Corbyn, the pacifist, leftist leader of the Labour Party, was uncharacteristically bellicose, asserting, “The Russian authorities must be held to account on the basis of the evidence and our response must be both decisive and proportionate.”

The British press was outraged—at Corbyn’s insufficient jingoism. The Sun‘s front page (3/15/18) attacked him as “Putin’s Puppet,” while the Daily Mail (3/15/18) went with “Corbyn the Kremlin Stooge.” As with Sanders, the fact that Corbyn endorsed the official narrative didn’t keep him from being attacked, showing that the conspiratorial mindset seeing Russia behind everything has little to do with evidence-based reality, and is increasingly a tool to demonize the establishment’s political enemies.

The Atlantic Council published a report claiming Greek political parties Syriza and Golden Dawn were not expressions of popular frustration and disillusionment, but “the Kremlin’s Trojan horses,” undermining democracy in its birthplace. Providing scant evidence, the report went on to link virtually every major European political party challenging the center, from right or left, to Putin. From Britian’s UKIP to Spain’s Podemos to Italy’s Five Star Movement, all are charged with being under one man’s control. It is this council that Facebook announced it was partnering with to help promote “trustworthy” news and weed out “untrustworthy” sources (FAIR.org, 5/21/18), as its CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with representatives from some of the largest corporate outlets, like the New York Times, CNN and News Corp, to help develop a system to control what content we see on the website.

The utility of this wave of suspicion is captured in Freeman’s aforementioned video. After asserting that “for 241 years, our democracy has been a shining example to the world of what we can all aspire to”—a tally that would count nearly a century of chattel slavery and almost another hundred years of de jure racial disenfranchisement—the actor explains that “Putin uses social media to spread propaganda and false information, he convinces people in democratic societies to distrust their media, their political process.”

The obvious implication is that the political process and media ought to be trusted, and would be trusted were it not for Putin’s propaganda. It was not the failures of capitalism and the deep inequalities it created that led to widespread popular resentment and movements on both left and right pressing for radical change across Europe and America, but Vladimir Putin himself. In other words, “America is already great.”

For the Democrats, Russiagate allows them to ignore calls for change and not scrutinize why they lost to the most unpopular presidential candidate in history. Since Russia hacked the election, there is no need for introspection, and certainly no need to accommodate the Sanders wing or to engage with progressive challenges from activists on the left, who are Putin’s puppets anyway. The party can continue on the same course, painting over the deep cracks in American society. Similarly, for centrists in Europe, under threat from both left and right, the Russia narrative allows them to sow distrust among the public for any movement challenging the dominant order.

For the state, Russiagate has encouraged liberals to forego their faculties and develop a state-worshiping, conspiratorial mindset in the face of a common, manufactured enemy. Liberal trust in institutions like the FBI has markedly increased since 2016, while liberals also now espouse a neocon foreign policy in Syria, Ukraine and other regions, with many supporting the vast increases in the US military budget and attacking Trump from the right.

For corporate media, too, the disciplining effect of the Russia narrative is highly useful, allowing them to reassert control over the means of communication under the guise of preventing a Russian “fake news” infiltration. News sources that challenge the establishment are censored, defunded or deranked, as corporate sources stoke mistrust of them. Meanwhile, it allows them to portray themselves as arbiters of truth. This strategy has had some success, with Democrats’ trust in media increasing since the election.

None of this is to say that Russia does not strive to influence other countries’ elections, a tactic that the United States has employed even more frequently (NPR, 12/22/16). Yet the extent to which the story has dominated the US media to the detriment of other issues is a remarkable testament to its utility for those in power.