hey slad
"tough call? really?"
Yes, in the scenario I conjured, which was entirely imaginary.
I abstain from the Presidential follies and see no hope there.
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by km artlu » Sat Jul 23, 2016 4:32 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 4:40 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 5:01 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 5:11 pm
by Novem5er » Sat Jul 23, 2016 5:12 pm
seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 4:40 pm wrote:for folks who have to exist in the real world and can not escape it there is only hope
thank the lord for the hopes of slaves..... women and gays
white men don't need much hope...they live on pure power
....not all white men....the ones that have had previous lives and understand oppression are pretty decent people
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 5:25 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 5:33 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 6:01 pm
by Novem5er » Sat Jul 23, 2016 6:03 pm
by American Dream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 9:02 pm
Donald Trump, the American Vladimir Putin
Yesterday I was rather taken aback to see the near brawl that took place on the set of “The Young Turks” between the host Cenk Uygur and two supporters of the Trump campaign, Roger Stone and Alex Jones. Uygur’s show, which is webcast only, was in Cleveland covering the Republican convention when Stone and Jones literally hijacked the broadcast and began baiting him about supporting Saudi Arabia, calling one of Uygur’s assistants a “little jihad”. This really got Uygur enraged, who jumped out of his seat and screamed, “We are against Saudi Arabia, you dumbass.” Getting in Stone’s face, he looked on the verge of punching out Stone’s clock. All in all, it had the ambience of those afternoon TV shows like the Jerry Springer Show that were popular about 20 years ago, when, for example, the two men who a woman was having sex with on alternate days, had to be separated by crew members to avoid a fist fight. The Springer shows were pretty much staged but I have no doubt that Uygur was ready to kick some ass.
Guess what, neo-Nazi group attacked in Sacramento is pro-Assad and pro-Putin
It is old news by now that virtually every neo-Nazi or ultraright outfit in Europe is solidly behind Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, from Golden Dawn to Marine Le Pen’s National Front. As you are also probably aware, the Brexit campaign was pushed heavily by Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party, a rabidly anti-immigrant group that advocates working with Bashar al-Assad.
The first sign of a similar development in the USA was obviously the Donald Trump campaign that is first cousin to the UKIP. Trump stated that the Brexit vote was a great thing and hoped that its goals could be replicated in the USA. As it happens, the neo-Nazi group that was attacked in Sacramento yesterday by anti-fascists falls squarely within the global Red-Brown alliance. You almost have to wonder whether a pro-Assad group like the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) might be tempted to come to their aid the next time the neo-Nazi group is threatened.
The neo-Nazis are constituted as the Traditional Worker Party and led by a character named Matthew Heimbach who first came to attention as the Donald Trump supporter who roughed up a Black female protester at his rally in Louisville in early March. That’s him in the red baseball cap.
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 9:11 pm
seemslikeadream » Fri Jul 22, 2016 4:46 pm wrote:Trump campaign manager’s Ukrainian clients have Panama Papers connections
By Adam Weinstein and Laura Juncadella
GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump sent shudders through US foreign policy circles and the international community this week, when he suggested that, as president, he might not fulfill America’s promises to defend NATO members against a Russian attack. That departure from historical American policies, and Republican wisdom, came days after the Trump campaign reportedly softened the GOP platform’s hardline stance against pro-Russian rebels fighting to control Ukraine.
Those moves were less surprising to critics of Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who for more than a decade has cultivated business ties to pro-Russian politicians and industrialists in Ukraine.
Now, Fusion has learned that the names of several of Manafort’s connections appear in shell company records from the notorious Panama Papers and the Offshore Leaks, troves of information on offshore companies unearthed in recent years by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
From Washington to Kiev
After several fairly conventional decades in conservative American politics, Manafort won headlines in 2007 for his paid work rebranding former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych and his “Party of Regions” as mild-mannered reformers. That was no small feat for Yanukovych, a Ukrainian politician who had been described by the New York Times‘s Kiev reporter as “a divisive figure reviled by some here as a shady reactionary and Kremlin pawn,” and who was driven from power in 2005 amid allegations he’d tried to rig his re-election with Russian help. (His election opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, fell ill due to poisoning during the campaign — a mystery that still goes unsolved.)
“The West has not been willing to move beyond the cold war mentality and to see this man and the outreach that he has extended,” Manafort told the Times of Yanukovych.
Manafort’s efforts paid off: Over the next several years, the Party of Regions gained power in the legislative and judicial branches. By 2010, Yanukovych had made a stunning comeback, again winning the presidency, and overseeing a regime that held on to power by funneling government money to his “Family” of oligarchs and party apparatchiks. As a 2007 US embassy cable describing the Party of Regions inner circle put it: “Ukraine’s history is marred with non-transparent privatizations that have benefited a few well-connected insiders.”
Some of those party insiders were banned from travel to the United States or faced visa delays, based on allegations that they supported the pro-Russian forces who’ve occupied Eastern Ukraine since a 2014 popular uprising deposed Yanukovych, who remains in exile in Russia. Some of them have clear connections to Manafort. And some of them, or their relatives and associates, also appear in records of shell companies in the Panama Papers or Offshore Leaks.
As Fusion and its partners in the Panama Papers investigation have previously reported, there are benign reasons for individuals to set up offshore shell corporations. But the anonymity they provide owners, and the lack of transparency into where their money originates and is headed, make them attractive vehicles for funneling ill-gotten gains, concealing wealth, and sidestepping regulations and sanctions. A recent World Bank study of 213 major global corruption cases found that 70 percent of them involved the use of at least one secret corporation to hide true ownership.
It is unknown whether Manafort had any involvement with these shell companies; Fusion’s messages requesting comment from Manafort and the Trump campaign were not returned.
The Caribbean candy company
Manafort’s earliest engagement in Ukrainian affairs appears to have come in 2005, when he advised Rinat Akhmetov — the country’s richest man — on strategic communications for one of the billionaire’s many companies. But the pro-Russian Akhmetov quickly paired Manafort with his political ally, Yanukovych, for an image makeover.
Akhmetov, whose personal and political fortunes were allegedly enhanced by government funds and organized crime, does not appear in the Panama Papers — but his older brother, who stays out of the public limelight, does. Leaked records show that Igor Akhmetov was one of several secret beneficial owners of “Konti Confectionary Limited,” incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in 2014 and seeded with 23.4 million euros. The other beneficial owners included Boris Kolesnikov, another Yanukovich party insider and childhood friend of Rinat Ahkmetov’s who in 2007 praised Manafort as ‘one of a lot of good people” consulting Ukraine’s politicians.
The sour $26.3 million telecom deal
Many relationships Manafort made in Ukraine spilled over into US business relationships. These include Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who has been called “Vladimir Putin’s favourite industrialist.” Deripaska, who is barred from US travel over alleged organized crime ties that he denies, partnered up with Manafort in 2007 to form a Cayman Islands-based investment company. Deripaska reportedly paid Manafort’s firm $7.4 million in fees, then invested $18.9 million to buy a Ukrainian telecom firm. But Deripaska eventually pulled out and asked for that money back; according to a lawsuit filed in Virginia by Cayman liquidators, Manafort never returned the cash. A lawyer for Manafort, Richard Hibert, did not answer Fusion’s request for comment, but he told Yahoo in April that Manafort had been deposed in the case, which is ongoing.
As Fusion’s reporting partners in the McClatchy DC bureau reported last April, Deripaska shows up in the Panama Papers as the secret owner of a Mongolian coal company formed in the British Virgin Islands that sold part of itself to another of Deripaska’s Russian metal companies in 2006. Deripaska’s mother, Valentina, is also listed in the ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks as a beneficial owner of the BVI-incorporated “Bennet Select Corporation,” whose activities are unclear.
The billion-dollar firm that couldn’t pay its employees
In another lawsuit against Manafort and several associates, former workers in company he formed with an ex-Trump real estate employee allege that they didn’t receive their promised salaries. That company, according to court filings, set up a billion-dollar US-based property-investment vehicle for Dmitro Firtash, another controversial Yanukovych insider and billionaire. The filings allege that Manafort and Firtash also worked together on other deals, including an abandoned $850 million plan to buy the Drake Hotel in New York.
Firtash is now wanted by authorities in Washington on suspicion of bribery and organized criminal activity; he was arrested in Austria in 2014 and the US has sought his extradition since. (His company has called the charges a “misunderstanding.”)
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BERLIN, GERMANY - SEPTEMBER 08: A visitor walks past paintings by Pablo Picasso during a preview for foreign journalists at the "Von Hockney bis Holbein, die Sammlung Würth" ("From Hockney to Holbein, the Würth Collection") exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau on September 8, 2015 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition will be open to the public from September 11 through January 16. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Today in Panama Papers: Works of art, political backlash, bank CEO resigns
Firtash is listed in ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks database; he set up an offshore holding company in 2006 for assets related to his government-aided businesses.
He also has business ties to what the ICIJ calls one of the Panama Papers’ key “malefactors,” Ukrainian mob boss Semion Mogilevich — a man the FBI once called a “global con artist and ruthless criminal” implicated in “weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale.” According to an internal State Department cable, Firtash told the US ambassador to Ukraine “that he needed, and received, permission from Mogilievich when he established various businesses.”
Big government in Russia and Ukraine
Observers have long argued that one basis for most of these Russians’ and Ukrainians fortunes was their support for Yanukovych — and Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s desire for close coordination between the Moscow and Kiev regimes. Both times Yanukovych gained the presidency of Ukraine, Putin offered him incentives to keep the country in Russia’s orbit; those incentives included an eye-popping $15 billion aid package in 2013.
That same year, Forbes Ukraine reported that Yanukovych had taken advantage of relaxed government rules to award a lion’s share of state contracts to his inner circle. Two of the top contract-winners are former partners of Manafort’s: Akhmetov and Firtash. In the first 10 months of 2012 alone, they had raked in contracts worth billions of dollars.
In early 2014, just before Yanukovych and his cronies were thrown out of power for the last time — and several months before Akhmetov’s brother and other party associates set up the candy company listed in the Panama Papers — Akhmetov alone had won 31 percent of Ukraine’s state contracts, according to Forbes.
A murky record
How much money did Manafort make for his years of work on behalf of some of Ukraine’s richest, most influential pro-Moscow billionaires and politicians? The answer is unclear; consultants don’t have to publicly disclose their fees. Such campaign consulting relationships can typically command seven- or eight-fee figures. Department of Justice records show only that in 2008, Manafort hired the communications firm Edelman to lobby for Yanukovych’s party for $35,000 a month; the company collected $63,750 on the contract in the first half of that year.
Manafort “told a congressional oversight panel in 1989 that his firm normally accepted only clients who would pay at least $250,000 a year as a retainer,” according to Bloomberg View.
Manafort, the Trump campaign, Firtash, Deripaska, and Rinat Akhmetov did not respond Fusion’s requests for comment; Igor Akhmetov and Mogilevich could not be reached for comment, their whereabouts unknown.
Panama Papers
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39684&hilit=panama+papers
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 9:33 pm
U.S. Election Thread 2016-05
Clinton selects Kaine, a "moderate" right winger somewhat left to her, as her Vice President candidate. "Screw all progressives," she said.
Trump selects right winger Pence as his Vice President candidate. "Blah, blah, blah," he said while no one at the lunatic Republican National Convention listened.
The Democratic National Committee under its Zionist leader Wasserman-Schultz had from day one on schemed against other primary candidates to get Clinton elected. (True even if some of the leaked DNC emails may well be fakes.)
Sanders proved he was fake himself when he sold out to Clinton and endorsed her.
That's my take. Yours may vary.
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 9:49 pm
“Close Your Hearts to Pity”: A Security State Critic Embraces Total War
Chris Floyd Published: 18 July 2016
William Arkin has long been an outstanding investigator of the “National Security State,” bringing to light many of its sinister operations. But he seems to have looked into the abyss too long, for now, in a recent article in Cryptome, he is offering a counsel of despair that reflects the worst and most extreme stances of the National Security State toward terrorism, while completely overlooking that same State’s role — still continuing today — in fostering, funding and arming Islamic extremism.
We have not even begun to address this “root cause” of violent Islamic extremism in its modern, organized form. Arkin undoubtedly knows this history. He knows how an international jihad army was shaped, funded and armed by the United States and Saudi Arabia in order to create so much terror and chaos in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union would be forced to intervene to save the secular government there. He knows that the architect of this policy, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is very open and proud of this. He knows about Reagan’s “freedom fighters” who tied their opponents between tanks and tore them to pieces. He knows how Washington fuelled extremist jihad for years, until it achieved its aim: giving the Soviet Union “its own Vietnam,” as Brzezinski put it to Jimmy Carter. Once the Soviets pulled out, of course, the United States promptly forgot about Afghanistan, leaving it at the mercy of pitiless warlords and extremists.
Arkin knows that the United States facilitated Islamic extremists in the former Yugoslavia. Arkin knows that the United States is helping vicious extremists in Syria right now, including extremist factions allied with Al Qaeda. Arkin knows the United States has a long-standing, no-questions-asked alliance with the greatest purveyor of virulent Islamic extremism in the world: Saudi Arabia. Arkin knows that the United States is directly involved in Saudi Arabia’s savage slaughter in Yemen, which has cleared the way for the growth of both al Qaeda and Isis in that country.
Arkin knows that America’s chief ally in the region, Israel, is in a tacit alliance with Saudi Arabia to support violent extremists in Syria. He knows Israel treats ISIS soldiers in its hospitals, he knows Israeli officials have said they would prefer an Islamist regime in Syria to Asad’s government. Arkin knows that Barack Obama said, with admirable candor, that he held off on taking action against ISIS as it began its rampage through Iraq precisely because he wanted to “put pressure” on the government in Baghdad to change its leadership, which Washington no longer liked. This was said in a much-publicized interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Arkin cannot be unaware of this.
In sum — and leaving out a much longer history of American and Western and Israeli policies of fostering Islamic extremism to advance various political goals — the continuing and active involvement of the world’s leading democracies in directly and indirectly arming, funding and spreading Islamic extremism cannot be denied. But it is not even mentioned by Arkin. He simply says that ALL “reasonable” approaches to quelling terrorism have been tried, and have failed. Therefore, there is nothing left to do but examine “our enemies” — with, to be sure, due acknowledgement of their humanity and a careful consideration of their cause — and then “embrace an uncompromising war” against those unfit for human society. Somehow, he thinks, this will lead to the end of the growing militarization and authoritarianism that he says, quite rightly, is destroying our own freedoms. Somehow, the launching of an all-out, uncompromising, unreasonable war against “pure evil” will cause the militarists and authoritarians to have LESS power in our society. The hyper-militarization of society such a total war would require will somehow, magically, lead us back to our freedom. For surely history has taught us that authoritarians always happily give up their authority once “pure evil” has been defeated.
And of course, such an approach will not solve the problem of terrorism as he outlines it. He says that if, after judicious examination of their cause, we decide “our enemies” are “just pure evil”, then we need to steel ourselves and “embrace an uncompromising war to better humanity.” Who will make this judgment? (I think we know who.) What if other nations don’t agree that this or that enemy is “beyond the pale” and decide to support them instead? And if we embrace this unreasonable, uncompromising war — which will certainly kill multitudes of innocent people — why will this not create even more hatred, extremism and thirst for revenge? Since “terrorism” does not abide in one nation, where will this uncompromising war be aimed? Arkin says his approach doesn’t mean “bombs and more bombs” — what then does it mean? An “uncompromising war” fought with water pistols? How can you eliminate “pure evil” without bombs and more bombs? Or is he advocating the expansion of death squads to take out individuals whom someone somewhere has concluded are “pure evil” and must be eliminated?
I understand where Arkin is coming from. I know he thinks that this will somehow stop the societal rot being caused by the Terror War. But what he is doing, ultimately, is “embracing” the most extremist stance of the Terror Warriors: that we should stop all this pussyfooting around and just slaughter these wretches of “pure evil” with a savage war that “won’t be pretty.” This, he says — just like Trump, Cruz and many others — is a “better path” to peace than our “muddled reasonableness.”
But again, he has failed to consider one of the most vital and consequential factors in the growth of violent Islamic extremism: its support by the very forces who claim to be fighting for civilization. You cannot say we have “tried everything” to quell terrorism and now must embrace total war, if we have not even acknowledged this factor, much less tried to deal with it.
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 9:56 pm
Published on
Friday, July 22, 2016
by The Nation
If Trump’s Speech Sounded Familiar, That’s Because Nixon Gave It First
Donald Trump’s law-and-order message is strikingly similar to the speech Richard Nixon delivered in 1968.
byJohn Nichols
Donald Trump formally accepts the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, July 21, 2016. (Photo: Reuters / Carlo Allegri)
Cleveland—Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president on a Thursday night in the long hot summer of 2016 with a speech that signaled his determination to exploit fears of violence as part of crusade to seize the White House from the Democrats.
Promising a fierce campaign on behalf of law and order, he declared:
Our Convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation. The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country.
Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence personally, some have even been its victims.
I have a message for all of you: the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon—and I mean very soon—come to an end. Beginning on January 20th of 2017, safety will be restored.
Sound familiar?
It will, for those who recall a Republican convention almost 50 years ago.
Richard Nixon accepted the Republican nomination for president on a Thursday night in the long hot summer of 1968 with a speech that signaled his determination to exploit fears of violence as part of crusade to seize the White House from the Democrats.
Promising a fierce campaign on behalf of law and order, he declared:
As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame.
We hear sirens in the night.
We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad.
We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home.
And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish.
Did we come all this way for this?
Did American boys die in Normandy, and Korea, and in Valley Forge for this?
The permissive ’60s would end, Nixon argued, with the transition of power from a Democratic administration to a Republican who was prepared to crack down on violence.
“Tonight, it is time for some honest talk about the problem of order in the United States,” declared Nixon in 1968.
“It is finally time for a straightforward assessment of the state of our nation,” declared Trump in 2016.
“The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead,” Trump told Republican delegates in 2016.
“When the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness…then it’s time for new leadership for the United States of America,” Nixon told Republican delegates in 1968.
Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort indicated Monday that his candidate was looking to Nixon’s 1968 speech as a model. “The Nixon 1968 speech—if you go back and read that speech—is pretty much on line with a lot of the issues that are going on today,” Manafort explained. “And it was an instructive speech.”
Very, very instructive.
The language is different enough to guard against charges of plagiarism. Nixon was rougher on people who relied on welfare programs, while Trump was rougher on immigrants, promising to launch crackdowns, to build walls, and to “immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place.” Nixon talked about Vietnam and fighting communism. Trump talked about Syria and fighting Islamic terrorism.
But the core premises adopted by Nixon in 1968 and Trump in 2016 are parallel—not just on criminal-justice issues but also on questions about how the United States might project an image of strength on the global stage. Trump’s speech even included an extended riff on the failings of President Lyndon Johnson, the man Nixon sought to replace.
Trump is a different man from Nixon. Twenty sixteen is a different year from 1968.
But it was difficult to listen to Donald Trump on Thursday night without getting a powerful sense that he plans to run in 2016 as Richard Nixon did in 1968.
That should give Americans pause. While Nixon promised to “bring us together,” he actually tore the country apart, adopting a “Southern strategy” that sought to capitalize on resentment over progress on civil rights and voting rights, adopting the bizarre calculus that blames liberal social programs for poverty and hopelessness, ushering in policies that set the stage for a mass incarceration of Americans that now even conservatives recognize as a crisis. The peace he promised at home proved to be as illusive as his “secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam.
Nineteen sixty-eight was a difficult and challenging moment in America. The summer of that year saw racial division, clashes in the streets, and traumatizing instances of violence in the nation’s cities. Nixon exploited the difficulties, the challenges, the violence in order to usher in a new politics of code words and backlash.
Twenty sixteen is a difficult and challenging moment in America. The summer of this year has seen racial division, clashes in the streets, and traumatizing instances of violence in the nation’s cities. Trump is exploiting the difficulties, the challenges, the violence in order to usher in a new politics of code words and backlash.
Nixon promised in 1968 to be the voice of a silent majority. Trump promised in 2016 to be the the voice of “forgotten men and women of our country. People who work hard but no longer have a voice.”
“We make great history tonight,” said Richard Milhous Nixon in the summer of 1968. “We do not fire a shot heard ’round the world but we shall light the lamp of hope in millions of homes across this land in which there is no hope today. And that great light shining out from America will again become a beacon of hope for all those in the world who seek freedom and opportunity.”
“History is watching us now,” said Donald John Trump in the summer of 2016. “It’s waiting to see if we will rise to the occasion, and if we will show the whole world that America is still free and independent and strong.”
The parallels point to what may turn out to be the most vital question of 2016: Will history repeat itself?
by Luther Blissett » Sun Jul 24, 2016 12:56 am
seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 23, 2016 4:01 pm wrote:That’s ultimately the danger of Trump’s candidacy—not that he will win, but that even in losing, he is corroding that buffer against the unacceptable. He is making what Roth in “The Plot Against America” called “the unfolding of the unforeseen” possible.
Trump will fade. Trumpism may not. And the longer the Republican establishment is willing to appease him—to make its Munich with him—as a better alternative to Clinton, the more it legitimizes his racism as an acceptable American value at the very moment when white America is fading to minority status.
It can’t happen here? My friends, Trump or no Trump, it is happening here.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/ ... -appeasers
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