Tag Archives: Election 2016

Hillary Clinton’s Business of Corporate Shilling & War Making

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Source: Media Roots

As the circus of the 2016 presidential election grinds on, Hillary Clinton has posited herself as the candidate of the people. But not many “candidates of the people” have vacation homes in the Hamptons that cost $200,000 per month, or hang out with the world’s billionaires.

It’s hard to know who she is really–while once being a proponent of Donald Trump type positions, like building a wall at the Mexican border, supporting torture, and opposing same-sex marriage until 2013, today she presents herself as the anti-Trump, anti-Republican candidate.

There’s been a lot of outrage about the impression that the establishment has already anointed her as the Democratic nominee, and has carved out her path to the presidency.

But like in 2008, her guaranteed seat on the throne is being derailed by the unpredictable moods of the masses, and millions of young progressive voters. She continues to play her shape shifting game, morphing her positions to try to capture the support for her opponent, but the real Hillary is still inside.

In fact, every layer of Hillary’s career shows why, far from being a candidate of the people, she’s the top pick by corporations to do the real job of any US president: CEO of the Empire.

Digging deep into Hillary’s connections to Wall Street, Abby Martin reveals how the Clinton’s multi-million-dollar political machine operates. This episode of The Empire Files chronicles the Clinton’s rise to power in the 90s on a right-wing agenda, the Clinton Foundation’s revolving door with Gulf state monarchies, corporations and the world’s biggest financial institutions, and the establishment of the hyper-aggressive “Hillary Doctrine” while Secretary of State.

Why Can’t The Nation and the Left Deal With Election Theft?

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By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman

Source: Reader Supported News

here are two things we all need to know about the upcoming 2016 election:

    1. Millions of likely Democratic voters have already been stripped from the voter rolls in critical states like Ohio. The key reporting on this has been done by the great Greg Palast, who has shown that a computer program coordinated by the Republican secretary of state of Kansas is being used in some two dozen states to steal from a substantial percentage of the citizenry their right to vote. The raw numbers are high enough that they could have a significant impact on the presidential, US Senate, House and many other elections this fall. The ACLU has now sued Jon Husted, Ohio’s secretary of state, over the stripping of two million citizens from Ohio’s voter rolls.
    1. There is no way to verify the official tally on the electronic machines on which the majority of Americans will vote this fall. Nearly all the machines are a decade old, most are controlled by a single company (ES&S, owned by Warren Buffett) and the courts have ruled that the software is proprietary, making the vote counts beyond public scrutiny. In fact, they are beyond all independent monitoring altogether. In many key swing states (including Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Arizona) GOP governors and secretaries of state will have a free hand to flip the vote count to whatever they want it to be without detection or accountability. This could turn control of our government over to the GOP come November, as it did in 2000 and 2004.

These two critical markers of the upcoming national election are at center stage in our compendium The Flip & Strip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows and Electronic Election Theft (www.freepress.org / www.solartopia.org), which we’ll be publishing at the end of April.

For some reason many on the left have had a hard time accepting these realities. But they’re in fact far more critical than the question of who will make the better Democratic candidate.

In the interim, the usually solid Josh Holland has published a piece at The Nation with which we must take issue. It challenges writings that have put forward the idea that Hillary Clinton might be stealing the primaries from Bernie Sanders.

To avoid the circular firing squad in which the left indulges every election year, we should make it clear that we are both members of the Green Party. We prefer Bernie to Hillary, but like Jill Stein most of all. We hope Bernie at some point will establish a substantial string of grassroots training camps so the thousands of highly active young people who are supporting him will convert those energies to great long-term community organizing.

We are most concerned about the possibility of a GOP president come November. (For what it’s worth, we currently lay the highest odds of that nominee being the absolutely terrifying Paul Ryan. Ryan has said he won’t campaign for the nomination, but he has NOT said he’ll refuse it at a convention where he’ll be holding the gavel. His pockets will be stuffed with Koch cash. Enough said.)

We plead guilty to writing a piece at Reader Supported News pointing out that the exit polls show Bernie doing far better than the official vote count. Josh dismisses the reliability of exit polls, along with our mention of those in Germany. Suffice it to say that exit polling is the most reliable way we have of monitoring the vote count. In Germany they are usually within 1% of the official tally.

Here they are corrupted after the original compilations. They’re generally post-rigged to conform to the final official vote count, which is often pre-rigged. What matters is the original raw data, which we feel after much study is the gold standard for knowing how the public actually voted.

Of course that data can be messed with along the way. But at this point it’s the best we’ve got. And the original data can be hard to get. When statistician Ron Baiman requested original data from big-time pollster Warren Mitofsky (since deceased) Mitofsky told to him to “go fuck yourself.”

For some reason Josh drags “conspiracy theory” into the mix, with a lengthy soliloquy on 9/11. Neither of us writes about 9/11, though we know plenty of people who do. We find much of the official story not credible, but that’s about it at this point.

However, history warns us to be discerning about so-called conspiracy theories. Josh paints them all with a broad brush when he says they “tend to fall apart under the weight of their own internal illogic.”

But at the risk of rolling some eyeballs, here are (briefly) five that have proved indisputably true: Spain did NOT torpedo the battleship Maine in 1898, a false charge the led to a terrible war (the US Navy has confirmed the Maine blew up from the inside); the Lusitania WAS carrying munitions in 1915, as Germany argued; the Gulf of Tonkin incident NEVER happened, as confirmed by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara; Richard Nixon DID treasonably subvert Vietnam peace talks in 1968; and there were NO WMDs in Iraq.

Maybe we can leave the Mexican War; Pearl Harbor; the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK; and the “October Surprise” timing of the release of hostages from Iran in 1980-1981, etc., for another discussion.

About the elections of 2000 and 2004, we are way beyond conspiracy theory. That the voter rolls were stripped in numbers exceeding 90,000 throughout Florida 2000, and the vote count electronically flipped in Volusia County at the key moment, are simply beyond dispute. So is the reality that had the Supreme Court not stopped the recount, Gore would have won.

In Ohio 2004, it’s also beyond dispute that more than 300,000 voters were stripped from the registration rolls from mostly Democratic urban areas, and that the vote count was flipped by 6.7% from Kerry to Bush between 12:20 and 2 a.m. on machines in a basement in Chattanooga where the servers for Karl Rove and the Republican National Committee also resided. Thousands of Ohioans were deliberately robbed of their vote with the stripping of precincts and denial of voting machines and back-up paper ballots in African-American and student strongholds. In an election with an official victory margin of 118,775, more than 250,000 votes remain uncounted to this day. Thousands of provisional ballots were also pitched in the trash, as they already have been in this primary season, and will be again in November.

Imagine a world in which, instead of George W. Bush, Al Gore had been inaugurated as the rightfully elected president in 2001, or John Kerry in 2005. It’s easy if you open your eyes to what actually happened in those elections, and terrifying if you think about what could happen this year.

For some reason, Josh also takes us into the purported mind of a Hillary operative who would never think of rigging a primary election because she was winning anyway.

This a bit hard to follow. But let’s just say that the exit polls have indicated Bernie doing better than the official vote count, that (according to Richard Charnin) Bernie won all the hand-counted precincts in Massachusetts but lost all the machine-counted ones, and that all the caucuses have been extremely messy and open to all sorts of manipulation by both sides.

Far more important to say is that the voting machines this fall will be significantly more vulnerable to being flipped than ever before, because they are now nearly all at least ten years old. Some are decrepit enough to have been used to play PacMan or the University of Michigan fight song in public displays.

For us, the most significant event of the primary season has been the 5-hour lines in Arizona and the one-hour lines in Wisconsin. We are less concerned about whether Hillary did this to Bernie than we are worried that these will become the defining moments on the rigged path to a GOP victory in November.

Josh, if you’re reading this, we repeat our invitation to come on our radio shows (http://prn.fm/hosts-harvey-wasserman/ and http://www.talktainmentradio.com/shows/fightback.html).

Meantime, how about a piece on the “strip and flip” realities both the Democrats and the Greens will face come November? Whether it’s Hillary, Bernie, or Jill, as things stand now we are certain to see deliberately engineered long lines that will disenfranchise countless young, African-American. and Hispanic voters. We also know that in certain key swing states, the electronic vote count will come out however the hell the governor wants it to.

To you this may be conspiracy theory. But remember the Maine.

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored six books on election integrity, including the upcoming Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows and Electronic Election Theft (www.freepress.org / www.solartopia.org). Bob’s Fitrakis Files are at www.freepress.org. Harvey’s America at the Brink of Rebirth: The Organic Spiral of US History will be out soon at www.solartopia.org.

2016: The Year the Americans Found out Our Elections Are Rigged

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“Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. senators and congress members.” – Former President Jimmy Carter

By Nick Bernabe

Source: AntiMedia

The 2016 election has been a wild ride, with two insurgent grassroots campaigns literally giving the political establishment a run for its money. But as the events of this presidential primary season play out, it’s becoming clear the U.S. election — and even more so, the presidential race — is a big scam being perpetrated on the American people.

Events from the last week have exposed the system as an illusion of choice and a farce. They have reinforced at least one study showing the U.S. is an oligarchy rather than a democratic republic.

The Wyoming democratic caucus took place on Saturday, purportedly to allow voters to have their voices heard in the race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Sanders lost the Wyoming caucus by winning it with a 12 percent margin.

Wait, what?

How does one lose by winning 56 percent of the votes? This happens when the political process is, according to the New York Post, “rigged” by superdelegates. The Post summed up this “strange” phenomenon:

“[U]nder the Democratic Party’s oddball delegate system, Sanders’ winning streak — he has won seven out of the past eight contests — counts for little.

“In fact, despite his win, he splits Wyoming’s 14 pledged delegates 7 to 7 under the caucus calculus.

“Clinton, meanwhile, also gets the state’s four superdelegates — who had already pledged their allegiance to her in January. So despite ‘losing,’ she triumphs 11-7 in the delegate tally.”

Even media pundits on MSNBC openly called the process rigged:

The superdelegate process is complicated, as we’ve noted before, but they have one essential function: to prevent candidates like Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a video of Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz explaining superdelegates:

Adding insult to injury, even when Sanders does win states (despite Hillary’s advantage in superdelegates), the media can be reliably counted on to discount Sanders’s wins as nothing more than prolonging the electoral process, which will inevitably elect the presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton. This pervasive commentary continues despite the fact Sanders only trails her by several hundred pledged delegates.

Meanwhile, according to the same media, the non-establishment Trump campaign is threatened every time Ted Cruz beats him — even though Trump leads by a larger percentage of pledged delegates than Clinton does. When Clinton loses, it doesn’t matter because she already has the nomination locked up. When Trump loses, his campaign is in big trouble. Starting to see the problem with the media coverage?

When you examine these media narratives, a troubling pattern emerges that goes beyond the political establishment’s self-interest. You begin to see that American corporate media also functions as an arm of the political machine, protecting establishment candidates while attacking — or dismissing — candidates who seem non-establishment.

This brings us to the events that transpired during the Republican nomination process in Colorado on Saturday. The Republican Party of Colorado didn’t even bother letting people vote before using arcane rules to strip the democratic process of its democracy. According to the Denver Post:

“Colorado GOP leaders canceled the party’s presidential straw poll in August to avoid binding its delegates to a candidate who may not survive until the Republican National Convention in July.

“Instead, Republicans selected national delegates through the caucus process, a move that put the election of national delegates in the hands of party insiders and activists — leaving roughly 90 percent of the more than 1 million Republican voters on the sidelines.”

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s non-establishment campaign walked away with zero delegates. They were all “awarded” to Ted Cruz.

“How is it possible that the people of the great State of Colorado never got to vote in the Republican Primary? Great anger — totally unfair!” Trump said on Twitter. “The people of Colorado had their vote taken away from them by the phony politicians. Biggest story in politics. This will not be allowed!”

In an interview on Monday, Trump was even more frank. “The system is rigged, it’s crooked,” he said.

The Colorado GOP didn’t even bother hiding its intentions, tweeting — then quickly removing — what was possibly the most honest insight into the back-door dealing so far this election season:

colorado-gop

The Republican party chooses the nominee, not the voting public. Still in disbelief? Watch a Republican National Committee member explain it better than I can:

What we are witnessing — for the first time on a large scale — is the political establishment’s true role in selecting the president of the United States. The illusion of choice has become apparent. The establishment anoints their two picks for president, and the country proceeds to argue vehemently over the two candidates they are spoon-fed. This dynamic is reminiscent of a prophetic 1998 quote from philosopher Noam Chomsky:

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

Ahh, the illusion of choice. Sure, in reality there are third party candidates who should be given a fair shake, but in our mainstream media-augmented reality, third parties do not exist. They aren’t mentioned. They aren’t even included in presidential debates. This is another way the media stifles healthy debate, stamps out dissenting opinions, and preserves the status-quo.

“We The People” don’t choose our presidents; they are hand-picked by a powerful group of political party insiders — parties that have long since sold out to the highest bidders. What we have on our hands in America is a rigged oligarchy, and that’s not a conspiracy theory — it’s fact. Now, however, millions of Americans are becoming aware of it thanks to the populist campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. America’s elections are controlled by a big club, but unfortunately, “you ain’t in it!”

Sports Bar Politics and Corporate Duopolies

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GLEN_JackAssaPhant

You don’t have to feel “The Bern” to root for Sanders in the primaries, nor must you be a white supremacist to hope that Trump wins the GOP contest. Both campaigns have the potential to fracture the duopoly electoral system that “ensnares the whole U.S. electoral apparatus and ensures that one of the rich men’s parties will triumph at the end of each electoral cycle.” So, cheers for whatever brings chaos and fracture to the duopoly.

By Glen Ford

Source: Black Agenda Report

“Those who seek fundamental change in U.S. political alignments and structures should root for whatever primary election results that contribute to the dissolution of the Democratic-Republican duopoly system.”

From the perspective of a sports bar, Bernie Sanders’ 57% – 43% victory over Hillary Clinton’s Corporate Demo Crusaders, in Wisconsin, keeps his Leftish Upstarts in the playoffs, although their chances of grabbing the brass ring in Philadelphia this summer are slim to none. Donald Trump’s White Knights stumbled, but may still rally to shut out the Corporate GOP Avengers, in Cleveland, in July.

The problem with sports bar elections is that the Black and progressive teams aren’t playing, and may not even exist. As in professional sports, the “home team” isn’t really from your city: it is comprised of high-paid mercenary athletes beholden to multi-millionaire owners who are bound together in a cabal that manipulates the whole spectacle for their own mega-profits.

The corporate duopoly electoral system is the equivalent of the sports league cabal: whatever the score, the owners win. The best possible outcome of their quadrennial games would be a breakup of the duopoly, through a split in one or both of the corporate parties. For the first time in at least a century, such an earth-shaking fracture is possible, and even likely. Therefore, those who seek fundamental change in U.S. political alignments and structures should root for whatever primary election results that contribute to the dissolution of the Democratic-Republican duopoly system.

“Trump reckoned that the Republican masses wanted a real White Man’s Party – so he’s trying to give them one.”

Donald Trump has done a great service by pushing the Republican Party to the brink of disintegration. For 40 years the GOP has provided its section of the tiny capitalist class with a popular base by acting as the White Man’s Party within the duopoly structure. (Throughout U.S. history, one of the two parties has always been the White Man’s Party, whose organizing principle is white supremacy. This position is permanent, although it may be occupied by different parties at different times.) Until now, racial dog whistles sufficed to inform the white supremacist masses where to caste their ballots. Donald Trump has pumped up the volume to a (Queens-accented) rebel yell, stripping away the GOP “establishment’s” pretenses to civilized bigotry. Trump reckoned that the Republican masses wanted a real White Man’s Party – so he’s trying to give them one.

Such overt misbehavior threatens the post-civil rights ruling class consensus on race and the maintenance of political hegemony in the United States. Far worse, however, are Trump’s heresies regarding U.S. Empire. The billionaire believes he can wheel-and-deal America to continued supremacy in the world, while discarding much of global U.S. military infrastructure, halting wars of “humanitarian” intervention, and confronting China and Russia economically, rather than at the point of a missile. As we wrote in these pages, last week, “If the Trump candidacy can continue to thrive while rejecting the holiest shibboleths of the bipartisan War Party, then we must conclude that the whole U.S. foreign policy debate is a construct of the corporate media and the corporate-bought duopoly political establishments.”

“Two Republican Parties, splitting roughly the same voting constituency, are weaker than one.”

The GOP “establishment” – meaning, the Republican wing of the corporate/financial ruling class – has loudly signaled that it will abandon the Republican emblem if it cannot be retrieved from Trump’s overtly racist and “isolationist” clutches. Trump, for his part, says his followers might “riot” if he is unfairly denied the nomination – and most observers seem to believe them.

Two Republican Parties, splitting roughly the same voting constituency, are weaker than one. Therefore, anti-duopoly “fans” at the political sports bar ought to be cheering for whatever primary election outcomes bring the GOP closer to the breaking point – especially if one of the fractured parts is militarily less bellicose than the current party, while indistinguishable from it on actual racial policy. That’s not cheering for Trump; it’s rooting for a fracturing of the duopoly that ensnares the whole U.S. electoral apparatus and ensures that one of the rich men’s parties will triumph at the end of each electoral cycle.

A similar logic applies to the Democrats that bookend the Republicans. Bernie Sanders eagerly agreed to be a “sheep dog” for Hillary Clinton if she won the nomination. However, polls show that many of his supporters do not feel bound by Sanders’ promise. (And, who knows, at the end of the process, he might not feel honor-bound either, especially if Clinton keeps questioning whether he is a “real” Democrat). By far the greatest contribution the Sanders campaign could make to history would be if it resulted in a genuine and lasting split in the Democratic Party, which is the duopoly holding pen for all but the most radical elements of the U.S. polity. The Democratic Party cannot be transformed from below – and the question will be rendered moot by Clinton’s victory, which is mathematically all but certain. However, with every primary victory won by the Sandernistas, their righteous anger at the corporate stranglehold on the party and their estrangement from its structures, will increase. If Hillary loses discipline and insults them once too often, a real break from the party by a critical mass of Sanders’ left-most followers is possible – whether he swears fealty to Clinton or not.

“By far the greatest contribution the Sanders campaign could make to history would be if it resulted in a genuine and lasting split in the Democratic Party.”

There is no hope that the electoral system can play any positive role as long as the Democrats monopolize all the political terrain to the left of the White Man’s Party(s). The fracturing of the Republican Party – which seems inevitable – is a good thing under any circumstances. However, Hillary will use the crisis in the GOP to create a “big tent” Democratic campaign to absorb millions of disaffected Republicans. No matter what the Democratic Party platform says, Clinton will wage a ferociously “centrist” campaign designed to accommodate refugees from Republican chaos, and she will govern from even further to the right. The Sandernistas historical duty – if they are to have any lasting relevance at all – is to refocus their energies outside the Democratic Party. This is more likely to occur if they do as well as possible in the remaining primary contests, and emerge from the experience with an intense sense of anti-corporate mission – one that is incompatible with the Clinton agenda.

The seats on the left side of the political sports bar should, therefore, be cheering for Bernie in the primaries – and hoping that Hillary behaves like the cackling witch she is, and totally alienates them before, and at, the Philadelphia convention.

 

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Fascism, American style

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By John W. Whitehead

Source: Intrepid Report

“If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.”―Henry A. Wallace, 33rd Vice President of the United States

This is an indictment of every politician who has ever sold us out for the sake of money and power, it is a condemnation of every politician who has ever lied to us in order to advance their careers, and it is a denunciation of every political shill who has sacrificed our freedoms on the altar of Corporate America.

They’re all fascists.

If Donald Trump is a fascist—as nearly half of Americans surveyed believe—then so is every other politician in office or running for office in America who has ever prioritized money and power over human beings.

Truly, apart from Trump’s virulently bombastic comments and his metaphorical willingness to spit in the wind in order to garner media coverage and notoriety, how is he any more of a fascist than Hillary Clinton and the millions she has amassed from the financial sector?

How is Trump any more of a fascist than Barack Obama, whose willingness to march in lockstep with the military industrial complex has resulted in endless wars, covert drone strikes that have killed hundreds of civilians abroad, and militarized police who have killed thousands of American citizens here at home?

How is Trump any more of a fascist than Congress, the majority of whom are millionaires and who are more inclined to do the bidding of their corporate sponsors and benefactors, all the while remaining deaf to their less affluent constituents?

For that matter, how is Trump any more of a fascist than the Supreme Court whose decisions in recent years have been characterized most often by an abject deference to government authority, military and corporate interests?

Writing for the New York Times in 1944, Vice President Henry A. Wallace noted that “American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism. They cultivate hate and distrust . . .”

As Wallace concluded, American fascists are not pro-Constitution:

They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead . . . They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

We are being played for fools. Again.

The United States of America, that dream of what a democratic republic ought to be, has become the Fascist States of America. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age. You can call it the age of authoritarianism. Or fascism. Or oligarchy. Or the American police state.

Whatever label you want to put on it, the end result is the same.

Driven by our fears, we have entered into a corporate-controlled, militaristic state where all citizens are suspects, security trumps freedom, and the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens but instead is ruled by the rich and powerful.

Any semblance of constitutional government that we might still enjoy today is a mere shadow, a mockery of what the founders envisioned. Constitutional government today—much like the farcical circus that purports to be the presidential election—is a sham, a hoax, an elaborate ruse maintained by the powers-that-be to mollify us into believing that we still have a say in the workings of our government. We do not.

Shortly after World War II, historian William L. Shirer predicted that America may be the first country in which fascism comes to power through democratic elections.

Former presidential advisor Bertram Gross also warned that we would not recognize fascism when it took over:

Anyone looking for black shirts, mass parties, or men on horseback will miss the telltale clues of creeping fascism . . . In America, it would be supermodern and multi-ethnic—as American as Madison Avenue, executive luncheons, credit cards, and apple pie. It would be fascism with a smile. As a warning against its cosmetic facade, subtle manipulation, and velvet gloves, I call it friendly fascism. What scares me most is its subtle appeal.

They were both right.

However, what we failed to realize is that the fascist coup took place long ago. It was that subtle and that incremental.

We are now ruled by the velvet-gloved, technologically savvy, militarized iron fist of what Gross termed “friendly fascism” or fascism with a smile. Having studied Shirer and Gross, tracked the rise of fascism in past regimes, and assimilated the necessary ingredients for a fascist state, I can attest to the fact—as I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People—that the parallels to modern America are impossible to ignore.

Under fascism, the government:

  • is managed by a powerful leader (even if he or she assumes office by way of the electoral process)
  • assumes it is not restrained in its power (this is authoritarianism, which eventually evolves into totalitarianism)
  • ostensibly operates under a capitalist system while being undergirded by an immense bureaucracy
  • emits powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism through its politicians
  • has an obsession with national security while constantly invoking terrifying internal and external enemies
  • establishes a domestic and invasive surveillance system and develops a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the citizenry
  • and its various agencies (federal, state, and local) develop an obsession with crime and punishment (this is overcriminalization)
  • becomes increasingly centralized while aligning closely with corporate powers to control all aspects of the country’s social, economic, military, and governmental structures
  • uses militarism as a center point of its economic and taxing structure
  • and is increasingly imperialistic in order to maintain the military-industrial corporate forces.

Compare that to America today where, as economist Jeffrey Tucker rightly observes, “every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized. Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn’t begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect.”

Fascism thrives by hiding behind the entertainment spectacle that is partisan politics. As Tucker points out, “It’s incorrect to call fascism either right wing or left wing. It is both and neither . . . fascism does not seek to overthrow institutions like commercial establishments, family, religious centers, and civic traditions. It seeks to control them . . . it preserves most of what people hold dear but promises to improve economic, social, and cultural life through unifying their operations under government control.”

In this way, American-style fascism is deceptively appealing.

It appears friendly.

The news media covers the entertainment and political trivia. The basic forms of government remain intact. The legislators remain in session. There are elections.

Consent of the governed, however, no longer applies. Actual control has finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.

Yet the most crucial ingredient for fascism to succeed in America is that the majority of the people would have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary for the government to assume greater powers in order to keep them safe and secure, whether it’s by militarizing the police, stripping them of basic constitutional rights, criminalizing virtually every form of behavior, or spying on their communications, movements and transactions.

Sound familiar?

When you really drill down to what the various presidential candidates believe about the issues that will impact the future of our freedoms long-term—war, surveillance, civil liberties—you’ll find that most of them support the government’s position, which, conveniently enough, profits the corporate sector.

This is not freedom.

It is despotism, which Gross refers to as “faceless oligarchs [who] sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades.” Gross explains:

In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion . . .

It is, in Gross’ words, “pretended patriots who desecrate the American flag by waving it while waiving the law”:

I see at present members of the Establishment or people on its fringes who, in the name of Americanism, betray the interests of most Americans by fomenting militarism, applauding rat-race individualism, protecting undeserved privilege, or stirring up nationalistic and ethnic hatreds.

It is, concludes Gross, Big Business and Big Government in bed together:

In this present, many highly intelligent people look with but one eye and see only one part of the emerging Leviathan. From the right, we are warned against the danger of state capitalism or state socialism, in which Big Business is dominated by Big Government. From the left, we hear that the future danger (or present reality) is monopoly capitalism, with finance capitalists dominating the state. I am prepared to offer a cheer and a half for each view; together, they make enough sense for a full three cheers.Big Business and Big Government have been learning how to live in bed together and despite arguments between them, enjoy the cohabitation. Who may be on top at any particular moment is a minor matter—and in any case can be determined only by those with privileged access to a well-positioned keyhole.

When the votes have all been counted, “we the people” will be the losers.

The joke will be on us. Whether we ever realize it not, the enemy is not across party lines, as they would have us believe. It has us surrounded on all sides.

Even so, we’re not yet defeated.

We could still overcome our oppressors if we cared enough to join forces and launch a militant nonviolent revolution—a people’s revolution that starts locally and trickles upwards—but that will take some doing.

It will mean turning our backs on the political jousting contests taking place on the national stage and rejecting their appointed jesters as false prophets. It will mean not allowing ourselves to be corralled like cattle and branded with political labels that have no meaning anymore. It will mean recognizing that all the evils that surround us today—endless wars, drone strikes, invasive surveillance, militarized police, poverty, asset forfeiture schemes, overcriminalization, etc.—were not of our making but came about as a way to control and profit from us.

It will mean “voting with our feet” through sustained, mass civil disobedience. As journalist Chris Hedges points out, “There were once radicals in America, people who held fast to moral imperatives. They fought for the oppressed because it was right, not because it was easy or practical. They were willing to accept the state persecution that comes with open defiance. They had the courage of their convictions. They were not afraid.”

Ultimately, it will mean refusing to be divided, one against each other, as Democrats versus Republicans, and instead uniting behind the only distinction that has ever mattered: “we the people” against tyranny.

 

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book “The Freedom Wars” (TRI Press) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

 

The Slow, Inevitable Collapse of the Two-Party System

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By Russell A. Whitehouse

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

In this election year, it’s clear that a seismic political shift is rumbling through America.  Widespread discontent for the status quo is surfacing from both the left and right.  A year ago, it would have been impossible to envision a card-carrying socialist and a pre-WWII style populist mounting legitimate presidential campaigns (much less without Super PACs).  Now, far-left and far-right sentiments are emerging from the underground as perfectly palatable options to Middle America.  Establishment darlings like Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush & Marco Rubio have faced extreme pressure from the New Normal in their respective political tents.

It has become clear that the traditional 2-party system in America is starting to erode.  Sanders’ supporters view Clinton as too untrustworthy & beholden to Big Business.   Meanwhile Trump’s blue-collar base has rejected rank-and-file Republicans as being too unsympathetic to their economic concerns, while his surprising chunk of the evangelical contingent is refuting the Bush-flavored puritanism of Ted Cruz.  Conversely, Clinton’s supporters reject Sander’s bold platform as delusional and Cruz’s base is increasingly being filled by #NeverTrump neocon purists and Romey-ite country club Republicans.

One can see political parallels across the pond, in the UK’s 2015 Parliamentary elections.  The two main parties in Westminster Palace, Conservative and Labour (roughly equivalent to the GOP and Democrats), were shaken up by two popular insurgencies.  UKIP, the UK Independence Party, rose up from the rising flames of the relatively conservative British heartland’s fears of free trade in the EU and immigration, winning an eighth of the popular vote in England. To the north, SNP, the Scottish National Party, won 95% of Scotland’s seats by inspiring among other things, record youth turnout and social media support (sound familiar?), with a message of social democracy and defiance against the British status quo.

Intra-party schisms are also forming in the two Anglophone democracies.  The Tories are tearing themselves apart over the Brexit, austerity and jockeying to succeed Cameron as Party Leader, while the American neocons are assessing the fallout of Trump’s ascendance while in free fall.  Labour officials are debating whether to follow their insurgent leader Jeremy Corbyn to the far Left after 20 years of Tony Blair’s New Labour movement, which moved the party to the center to win back the support of big business and blue-collar voters.  The New Labour centrist putsch coincided with Bill Clinton (and later Obama’s) similar efforts as the face of the Democrats.   Now, Democratic voters are beginning to second-guess this political realignment, spearheaded by the presumptive Democratic nominee’s husband.  Her opponent Bernie Sanders is siphoning away the youth vote and blue-collar moderates from the Democratic establishment, two of the Party’s traditional constituencies, by railing against neoliberal policies like free trade and social welfare cuts.

Given the rise of social-democratic populism and nativist-protectionist populism to either flank of American politics, it would make sense to look at the formation of entirely new parties.  Bernie Sanders can form a Stars-and-Pinstripes version of SNP; he too has the momentum of a more secular, progressive generation reaching political maturity as the more religious, conservative Baby Boomers begin to die out.  Assuming Trump completes his takeover of the Grand Old Party at July’s convention, the neocon brain trust can form a new conservative movement; this is already being planned by members of the #NeverTrump triad. Evangelical and free market diehards can unite to mount a serious challenge to Trump’s right by fielding a Texas crusader like Ted Cruz or Rick Perry, or Mormon elder statesman Mitt Romney.

Regardless of how Trump and Sanders fare in their respective conventions, they could still operate a serious race for the White House.  Both New York loudmouths boast a gigantic wave of rabid new voters, as well as a wellspring of working-class Americans desperate to reverse Wall Street’s increasingly oligarchical dominance, mass layoffs/underemployment, stagnant wages, crumbling infrastructure & the other byproducts of the neoliberal-neoconservative economic policy alliance.  Sanders could march into November as the nominee of the new Democratic Socialist Party, with a trail of young, idealistic future leaders tweeting and live-streaming behind him.  Depending on July’s RNC, we could see a Make America Great Again Party (MAGAP, for short) trumpeting Trump’s message of putting power back in the hands of the American working class or a Romney-Cruz True Conservatives Party ticket touting Christian piety and Wall St fiscal policy.

Get used to Sanders, Clinton, Trump & Cruz.  You may see all 4 of them, come November…

The Color Counterrevolution Cometh

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By Dmitry Orlov

Source: Club Orlov

Had Sun Tsu co-authored a treatise on the art of sports with Capt. Obvious, a quote from that seminal work would probably read as follows:

If your team keeps playing an offensive game and keeps losing, eventually it will end up playing a defensive game, and will lose that too.

Stands to reason, doesn’t it? The team I have in mind is the neocon-infested Washington régime, which is by now almost universally hated, both within the US and outside of its borders, and the offensive game is the game that has been played by the Color Revolution Syndicate, with George Soros writing the checks and calling the shots. Having lost ground around the world, it is now turning its attention to trying to hold on to its home turf, which is the US.

Behind the Washington régime stands a group of transnational oligarchs, including many of the richest people in the world, and the game they play is as follows:

1. Saddle countries around the world with unrepayable levels of debt, most of which is stolen as soon as it is disbursed, leaving a population perpetually saddled with onerous repayment terms. This used to be done by the US to countries around the world, and has most recently been done to the US itself.

2. This game often results in rebellion, and the well-bribed national leaders in the rebellious countries are expected to put down the rebellion using any means necessary. But if they fail to suppress the rebellion, or if they side with the rebels, then they need to be regime-changed and replaced with a more subservient leadership, and the Color Revolution Syndicate swings into action.

3. The first ploy is to organize young people into a “nonviolent” protest movement (“nonviolent” is in quotes because mobbing the streets, shutting down commerce and blocking access to public buildings are all acts of violence). Their goal is to erode the boundaries of what’s allowed, until law and order break down and chaos and mayhem take over. At that point, the leadership that is to be regime-changed is supposed to jump on a plane never to be heard from again. But if they fail to do so, the next step in the program is…

4. Mass murder. Snipers are flown in and kill lots of people indiscriminately, while Western media blames the deaths on the soon-to-be-overthrown government. At this point most national leaders, sensing that their lives are at risk, choose to flee. This is what happened with the Ukraine’s Yanukovich. But sometimes, as happened with Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, they simply retreat to a well-defended residence outside the capital and wait things out. And then a magic thing happens: the revolution chokes on itself. Local self-defense units form to protect neighborhoods; out of them emerges a partisan movement to thwart attempts by foreigners to further destabilize the country; and, after much bloodshed, law and order and a legitimate government return. This could have happened in Egypt, if it weren’t for the efforts of traitors within Mubarak’s own government. But then there is always…

5. Political assassination. If mass murder doesn’t work, it’s time to send in the assassins and physically eliminate the leadership. This has happened in Libya. As Hillary Clinton put it, paraphrasing Julius Caesar, “We came, we saw, he died!” Beware the Ides of March, Hillary!

By this time, it generally has to be conceded that the Color Revolution did not go according to plan, and the Washington régime starts doing its best to pretend that the sad country in question doesn’t exist. If someone manages to make it past face control and has the temerity to point out that it does exist, then the point is made doesn’t matter because it isn’t a vital interest. As Obama just pointed out [paraphrased by Jeffrey Goldberg writing for The Atlantic]: “Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one.” This caused one Zbigniew Brzezinski to spit up all over his shirt. To be sure, there is fine comedy to be had when things don’t go according to plan for the Washington régime.

Recently, things have only been going downhill for the Color Revolution Syndicate. George Soros’s NGOs, which have been used to organize Color Revolutions, have been kicked out of both Russia and China; the silly “Umbrella Revolution” in Hong-Kong went nowhere slowly; Russia used its military training budget to rescue the government in Syria and to thrash ISIS and friends, and then moved on to negotiating a political settlement. And when Soros, in a fit of pique, tried to attack the Chinese currency, the Chinese laughed in his face and beat him about the head and shoulders with a printing press until he retreated.

Not only that, but things haven’t been going so well for the Washington régime either. The fake Democrat/Republican duopoly, which it has been using to simulate democracy and to disguise the fact that it’s all made to order for the same bunch of transnational oligarchs, is in trouble: a barbarian is at the gates. His name is Donald Trump, and he’s had the régime in his sights for many years. And now he is moving in for the kill.

Trump isn’t even that good at it, but this is a super-easy job. As I said, the Washington régime is just as hated within the US as it is around the world, if not more. Trump’s slogan of “Make America great again!” may sound overly ambitious, but what if his promise is to make America great again at exactly one thing—throwing members of the Washington régime on the ground and stomping on their heads until they pop? I am pretty sure that he can get this done.

Moreover, Trump doesn’t even try to be that good, although he is certainly very good at causing people to lose their minds. I came across one commentator who bounced off Carl Jung’s proto-new-age woo-woo on Hitler being a reincarnation of the Norse god Wotan and went on to claim that Trump is a reincarnation of Wotan’s brother Loki the Trickster. But here is a much simpler idea: Trump is an epitome of Trump. He enjoys being himself, and the unwashed multitudes find this aspirational because they are sick and tired of being told how they should think and behave by a bunch of clueless puppets.

Lastly, Trump gets a lot of help—from his enemies. All they have to do for him to prevail is to carry on being themselves—saying politically and perhaps even factually correct things, toeing the party line, carefully distancing themselves from Trump, repeating the talking points fed to them by Washington think tanks and generally being as useless and boring as possible. Then all Trump has to do to win is to distinguish himself from them by being rude, crude, vulgar, crass, obnoxious and raucously fun. Can you figure out on your own which one the people will pick—useless and boring or raucously fun—or will I need to summon Capt. Obvious again?

The Washington régime, and the oligarchs that back it and profit from it, have finally groked all of this, which is why they have been huddling and trying to organize a Color Counterrevolution that can stop Trump in his tracks. Soros and the ‘garchs started throwing around big bags of cash to get the counterrevolution on even before the actual Trump revolution happens. They were initially successful, shutting down a venue in Chicago with the help of Soros-owned Moveon.org. But it seems doubtful that they will prevail in the end. Instead, it seems more likely that they will give rise to a partisan movement.

You see, in the US hatred of the Washington régime runs very deep, with millions of people sick and tired of being swindled by various hated bureaucracies—in government, law, medicine, education, the military, banking… They hate those who took away their jobs and gave them to foreigners and immigrants. They hate those who stole their retirement savings and ruined their children’s futures. They hate the smug university types who keep telling them what to think and how to speak, making them feel inadequate simply for being who they are—salt of the earth Americans, racist, bigoted, small-minded, parochial, willfully ignorant, armed to the teeth and proud of it. There is very little that the régime can ask of these people, because the response to every possible ask is “no, because we hate you.”

And when these people, who are already seething with hatred, look at the political landscape, what do they see? They see the Democrats pushing the candidacy of the banker-crony-crook Clinton, and the only alternative is the full-socialistard “I am from the US government and I am here to help” Sanders who seems to be stuck in some sort of Great Society time warp. (There may be governments that get socialism right; the US government will never be one of them.)

They also see that the Republican establishment, previously so full of pseudorevolutionary puffery, is now so afraid of Trump that it would rather throw the election to the Democrats than support their own candidate, and this fills them with anger and disgust. Take all that seething hatred, mix in lots of anger and disgust, knead it, let it rise, and now you can bake a popular insurgency.

And a popular insurgency, or a partisan movement, is exactly what it takes to defeat the Color Revolution Syndicate. You see, the official authorities, be they the police, the army, the secret service or private security, are limited in the things they can do. In some ways, their hands are tied: if they violate law and order in order to defend law and order, they become mired in self-contradiction, and that just makes it more difficult for them to defend it the next time around.

But the partisans can do anything they want. They can infiltrate the protest movement and commit acts of violence in order to provoke the authorities into taking perfectly justifiable action. They can act to misdirect, demoralize and splinter protest groups. They can use social media to “out” the Color Revolution’s leaders and those who finance them (who, to remain effective, must hide in the shadows). They can liaise with the official authorities and trade favors for information.

If the Color Revolution shows signs of proceeding to the point where the tactics of Massacre and Political Assassination are about to be tried, they can form commando units, to make sure that these tactics lead to some massive unintended consequences, preventing their productive use. And if all else fails, they can form a guerrilla movement which, in order to win, simply has to not lose.

If all goes well then, starting next year, tens of thousands of Washington operatives, along with their friends in various politically connected industries, such as banking, defense, medicine and education, will evacuate to a variety of nonextradition countries (which will no doubt respond by raising the prices of their passports) while thousands more will begin their lengthy sojourns at federal penitentiaries. And thus the crisis will be defused.

And if it doesn’t go well, then we’ll probably be looking at a “deteriorating security environment.” How far it will deteriorate is anyone’s guess, but if you are one of the Washington régime’s stooges then you may want to get yourself a second passport before the prices go up and get out ahead of time.

Credible Account Says Clinton Is Behind Violent Protesters at Trump Rallies

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By Eric Zuesse

Source: RINF

This concerns the question of the identity of the people who are behind the violent protesters at Donald Trump’s rallies.

There are going to be ad-hominem attacks against me for my reporting this account, which will contradict the myths that both progressives and conservatives hold regarding the U.S. government, but anyone who recognizes that the press to this day hides its having hidden the incontestable fact that George W. Bush knowingly falsified, lied regarding the evidence concerning “Saddam’s WMD,” will at least give this account, and its source, fair and unprejudiced consideration, as being possibly accurate and honest. Sometimes, in order to get to the truth in a case, it’s necessary to rely upon the testimony of people that one considers despicable; the FBI wouldn’t be able to crack many cases otherwise — and, sad to say, neither can I. So: please don’t dismiss me for relying here upon a researcher whom I personally detest — and whom you might likewise detest.

I believe that the libertarian Roger Stone, who is the Republican Party’s most gifted opposition-researcher, after having been Richard Nixon’s most gifted dirty-trickster, and after his having ferreted out the hypocrisy of Eliot Spitzer for paying prostitutes — after, in other words, Stone’s having worked for politicians I despise, and destroyed the careers of ones I admire — is among this nation’s stellar investigative journalists; and I have found, over the years, that, when he reports about dirty tricks, what he has reported is only confirmed, not disconfirmed, as time passes. In other words: though I don’t like the man, and I disagree with his politics, I respect his news-reporting. And, here is what he says, in a rush interview with the ‘conspiracy theorist’ (another libertarian) Alex Jones, on Saturday evening, March 12th, and I think that the entire nation needs to hear Stone’s account, at least to give it consideration. So, here it is:

https://www.facebook.com/AlexanderEmerickJones/videos/10153989651258459

My rush transcript of highlights from his rush-interview:

I think everybody in the country has now heard about these violent protests [at Trump rallies] which are being blamed on supporters of Bernie Sanders. … This is a false-flag. These demonstrators are flying under a false banner. They are not Sanders supporters by-and-large. This is an operation directed by supporters of Hillary Clinton, paid for by George Soros and Move-On, by David Brock at Media Matters for America, also funded by Soros, and also by the reclusive billionaire Jonathan Lewis. Now, Lewis was identified by the Miami New Times as a ‘mystery man.’ He inherited roughly a billion dollars from his father Peter Lewis … [founder of Progressive Insurance Company]. Jonathan Lewis interestingly withdrew his support of the Democratic National Committee over the immigration bill that he thought was unfair to gays. In any event, this is a Hillary Clinton operation. The idea here, very clearly, is to divide the Sanders economic voters from Trump; in other words, those voters who lost their jobs because of NAFTA and all of the other globalist international trade-deals that have screwed this country, they now realize that these voters are potentially, when Sanders is out of the race, Trump votes, and this is an effort to make Trump toxic, to disqualify him, [as a] racist, bigot, the whole thing is essentially a hoax. It’s a gambit directed, by the way, by Brock. Brock was once a friend of mine and was a comrade in the fight for freedom; but he went over to the dark side, with the Clintons, for money: big, big, big, money; and this is unfortunately his little dirty trick, Unfortunately, they have leaks within their operation, my sources are of the very best. The entire collaboration in Chicago is a Hillary Clinton operation. And, frankly, I can’t see Bernie Sanders having anything to do with it. I don’t agree with Bernie, but I respect him, and this is not his handiwork or the handiwork of his campaign.

[Jones here goes on to explain why he respects the investigative reports from Stone, then says, “When I saw all these Bernie shirts and Bernie people saying ‘We attack!’ — you know, people shooting guns in the air saying ‘We support Bernie!’  that is so clearly a way to attack him, make him look like a radical revolutionary, and to make Hillary look good, and also make Trump look like a racist when the media plays this up. You’re absolutely right. … To be clear: you have sources inside saying this is a Soros/Brock Media Matters, which they admit is run by the White House, they have weekly meetings, Obama’s former transition chief. … We’ve seen the build-up toward race-war this summer, this fall, to try to cloud the entire election; is that what you’re getting at; is this the opening salvo …  ]

[Stone continues] I think Hillary understands that Trump would lose the votes of certain establishment Republicans if he is the nominee. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter, because of his crossover outreach. Right now in Ohio, Democrats and independents in the Mahoning Valley, these people have lost their jobs because of these great globalist trade deals, are lining up to vote for Donald Trump in the Republican primary, which is legal in Ohio with some paperwork. And we saw this same crossover in Michigan. So it occurred to the Clinton people that Bernie’s economic voters — not his hard-left voters, she’s not going to get them, they’re not going for Hillary, blue-collar folks who have just figured out that they have been left out of the new-world-order economy, are a ripe target for Trump; he’s already getting that, she is petrified of it; so, this little maneuver, this David Brock dirty trick, solves two problems at once: it helps knock down Bernie, because after all these people are involved in violence; and it also disqualifies Trump as a future vote, by portraying him as a racist or a bigot. The whole thing is a kabuki dance. And I think it’s very important that Trump understand that it’s not the Sanders campaign that’s disrupting his rallies; this is a Hillary Clinton operation.

[Jones asks for more details.]

[Stone continues] Hillary Clinton empowered a certain member of Congress to approach the billionaire John Lewis to pay for a portion of this overall program. This isn’t just Chicago. You’re now going to see these phony demonstrators, these ringers, showing up at other Trump events. … That’s as much as I’m prepared to say. … 

——

That’s the interview.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign benefits enormously by this tactic:

1: It re-orients the issue away from economics toward race; away from economic issues and toward ethnic conflicts

2: It identifies Sanders with violent supporters.

3: It identifies Trump with racism and violence by his having black ‘Bernie supporters’ (of which there are few) disrupting Trump’s rallies.

4: While it smears both Sanders, her current opponent, and Trump, her likely future opponent, it leaves Hillary herself unscathed.

So: the proposed explanation makes sense, and it’s entirely in character for Hillary Clinton.

Therefore: I believe it.