Blogosphere

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: The Electability Canard
Margaret Kimberley: The latest scheme of getting Democratic voter support is to claim that particular presidential candidates are more electable than others. At this juncture that concept is highly problematic and the claims surrounding it are largely meaningless. Corporate media pundits and the party establishment use the idea of electability to get support for their favorites. Silencing progressives is also a rationale for bestowing the questionable designation. ... The charade is particularly laughable because Trump lost the popular vote. If Hillary Clinton had mustered 80,000 more votes from three states she would have won the electoral vote. Much of the speculation about electability and the need to win over Trump voters is unnecessary. ... The get out the vote effort that the 2016 campaign eschewed and an appealing program should result in a Democratic Party victory... But the Democrats don’t want a candidate who proposes what the people need and want.. [ Visit Website ]
Sep 18, 2019, 3:44pm

Blogosphere
Israel accused of planting mysterious spy devices near the White House
DANIEL LIPPMAN: The U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter. ... The miniature surveillance devices, colloquially known as “StingRays,” mimic regular cell towers to fool cellphones into giving them their locations and identity information. ... The devices were likely intended to spy on President Donald Trump, one of the former officials said, as well as his top aides and closest associates ... Based on a detailed forensic analysis, the FBI and other agencies working on the case felt confident that Israeli agents had placed the devices... [ Visit Website ]
Sep 13, 2019, 1:43pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Hollywood Propaganda Attack on Venezuela
Margaret Kimberley: The US is starving and killing Venezuelans in real life and, for your family’s viewing pleasure, on television screens. ... Americans are loathe to think of themselves as being propagandized. ... But government propaganda does not work in a vacuum. It is bolstered by the corporate media and that includes the entertainment industry. ... The latest in the story of fictitious CIA agent Jack Ryan is a case in point. ... The new season premieres in November and in this latest incarnation Ryan fights to prevent a nuclear armed Venezuela . ... Venezuela is the victim of United States aggression in reality and now on the screen. ... Imperialism is quite bipartisan and liberal Hollywood never saw propaganda it didn’t want to hype. ... Media imagery is very powerful, that is why governments work so closely with corporate media to present their narratives... [ Visit Website ]
Sep 12, 2019, 9:43am

Blogosphere
China Defies Trump on Iran Big time with $400 bn Belt-and-Road Investment, 5000 Red Army Troops
Juan Cole: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was in Beijing recently for what turns out to have been the biggest triumph of his career. China has decided it has nothing further to fear from the Trump administration, and has decided to incorporate Iran into its One Belt, One Road plan with investments totaling some $400 billion. ... To guard the China-built oil and gas facilities, China will put 5,000 People’s Liberation Army troops into Iran. ... China will build new pipelines and roads, putting $120 bn. into transportation networks ... Zarif said Iran is eager to be incorporated into its massive globe-straddling “One Belt, One Road” plan to connect Asia to Europe with new sea and road and rail and pipeline infrastructure... [ Visit Website ]
Sep 7, 2019, 2:45pm

Blogosphere
On Labor Day, US Workers are 1/3 poorer than in 2003 & Top 1% is 2x Richer
Juan Cole: On Labor Day, American workers have little to celebrate. That’s alright. The September Labor Day, while initially proposed by some workers in the 1880s, was backed by conservative President Grover Cleveland over May 1, which he associated with radicalism (i.e. with workers who would demand their rights). So it really isn’t for the workers, it is for the bosses. ... David Harrison at the Wall Street Journal reports that the lower 50% of US households by wealth have 32% less wealth than in 2003 in real numbers. ... The poor got significantly poorer in the past two decades, and the rich got significantly richer. ... Trump repaid the backers by cutting taxes massively on the top 1%, creating a $1 trillion a year Federal budget deficit. Since the government supplies services to people, and it can no longer afford to provide the same level of service, this “tax cut” is actually a tax on workers... [ Visit Website ]
Sep 2, 2019, 1:50pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Protest and the Corporate Media
Margaret Kimberley: Corporate media always let us know who is in with the in-crowd and who is on the outs with the United States government. They don’t do so with any transparency, but by promoting some stories and disappearing others. They give great attention to events that they believe are advancing U.S. interests. The invisibility treatment goes to those who tell inconvenient truths and defy American dictates. ... Protests in Hong Kong against the Chinese government and in Moscow against the Russian government are covered extensively. ... “Only those who know where to look are aware that the #NoMoreTrump campaign in Venezuela drew thousands of people into the streets of Caracas.” ... China and Russia are full of contradictions that cause confusion among the uninformed. Neither country is democratic in the way that Americans understand but, then again, their country isn’t either. The important point is that they are viewed as enemies by a nation which isn’t satisfied unless all others are allies, lap dogs or utterly destroyed... [ Visit Website ]
Aug 25, 2019, 12:16pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Trump and Baltimore
Margaret Kimberley: Anyone feeling the need to defend Baltimore from Trump’s opinions ought to talk about what really ails that city. ... There is only one person worthy of being defended in the wake of Donald Trump’s twitter tirade against Congressional Black Caucus member Elijah Cummings and the city of Baltimore. That man is Keith Davis, Jr. ... In 2015 Davis was shot by Baltimore police. When he survived the 30-shot fusillade they planted evidence and charged him with the murder of another man. After three bites at the prosecutorial apple Davis was convicted of the killing this week. ... The days of shock and outrage over every Trump utterance should end. ... Cummings is nothing more than a go along to get along member of the black political class that has worked against the interests of the people they represent. ... Baltimore police violence and corruption are endemic and the cops are notoriously crooked... [ Visit Website ]
Jul 31, 2019, 1:58pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: The Russians are Coming, for Kamala Harris
Margaret Kimberley: Kamala Harris seems to love the Russiagate narrative more than any of the other Democratic Party presidential candidates. The lightweight senator who made a name for herself as a jailer of black people has to distract voters from her troubling history. The Russian bogeyman is a perfect fit.... But the woman who uses her biracial identity as a calling card doesn’t mention how black people’s voting rights have been stolen by a rigged system. ... Her name conjures up memories of sending parents to jail if their children were truants, and mocking concerns about prison proliferation. ... so far she has gotten away with spewing foolishness and telling black people that they didn’t really support Colin Kaepernick as much as they thought. ... No one has to support her and at the very least her penchant for stupidity ought to be pointed out... [ Visit Website ]
Jul 24, 2019, 1:24pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: The Trump and Pelosi Lovefest
Margaret Kimberley: Trump and Pelosi are birds of a feather when it comes to beating up on dissident women of color. ... Pelosi trashed her members in an interview with the New York Times. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world. But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.” Like a true gangster Pelosi conducted the beatdown in public. ... Trump knows that Pelosi is his friend. She is in no way part of an opposition to his administration. She is the rainmaker for the Democratic Party and the wielder of discipline against progressives. The two tasks are linked, of course. The very wealthy speaker brings in the cash from her equally wealthy friends. They give with the expectation that nothing even vaguely resembling progressive policy will ever see the light of day... [ Visit Website ]
Jul 17, 2019, 5:29pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Time for Russiagate to End
Margaret Kimberley: Russiagate is a scheme meant to give Democrats popular support without doing anything the public want them to do. ... Mueller’s report on charges of Trump campaign collusion with the Russian government shows that nothing of the sort took place. All he could muster was a useless indictment against Russians he claims are intelligence operatives. ... All the drama is needless because Trump has left a vast trail of impeachable offenses in the wake of his career. He was a corrupt businessman and has personally profited from his presidency. There are many roads that can lead to the same result but that is not what Democrats want to do. .... Impeachment without removal could do the same for the Democrats but they want no part of a political fight. ... They like the system just fine the way it is and don’t want to give the public any ideas about change... [ Visit Website ]
Jul 10, 2019, 4:06pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: U.S. Prisons are Concentration Camps
Margaret Kimberley: There were already thousands of concentration camps in the United States before Donald Trump began his reign of terror over asylum seekers. They are called prisons. ... “All of the horrors meted out to Hondurans fleeing the government imposed upon them by the United States are already experienced by the two million people living behind bars.” ... Most Americans are loathe to condemn their own country. Even when they do they refuse to acknowledge its vast history of criminality and prefer to behave as if the latest outrage is an outlier event. ... The disgraceful treatment meted out to asylum seekers at the southern border must be condemned unequivocally. ... There is nothing new going on at the border. All of the horrors meted out to Hondurans fleeing the government imposed upon them by the United States are already experienced by the two million people living behind bars... [ Visit Website ]
Jul 4, 2019, 4:48pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: The Central Park Five and the Limits of Suffering
Margaret Kimberley: As a New Yorker this columnist will never forget the awful events that unfolded in 1989. When a white woman was raped, beaten and left unconscious in Central Park, five teenagers were swept up in a police dragnet. Anton McCray, Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana confessed on video after hours of food and sleep deprivation and in some cases separation from their parents or other adults. ... None had legal representation. ... They were all convicted and spent between 7 and 13 years in prison. ... They should have been released immediately when DNA testing proved that none of them had assaulted the victim. ... But they were condemned by people like Donald Trump who paid for a full-page newspaper ad asserting their guilt and demanding the death penalty. ... Trump was part of a very large and influential lynch mob. ... As for delayed justice, the City of New York did not compensate the men until 2014, twelve years after they were exonerated. ... The payment wasn’t made for the simple reason that mayor Michael Bloomberg refused to allow it... [ Visit Website ]
Jun 12, 2019, 5:00pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: How to Protest Trump
Maargaret Kimberley: If the British really oppose Trump’s policies they should dump their own government, which backs Washington to the hilt – and then they should apologize to the world for Britain’s crimes. ... The British government is nothing but a United States vassal. ... Both nations are among the most criminal that ever existed and if protesters want to show their bona fides they should not shrink from pointing out this easily provable fact. ... The two nations are partners in crime. Both stay on the path of austerity and endless war. Anyone who challenges the system on either side of the Atlantic ocean is beaten down and slandered. ... Because of their collusion with the deep state both the British and American people are lied to and rendered powerless by deliberate misinformation... [ Visit Website ]
Jun 5, 2019, 4:46pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: No Chemical Attacks in Syria
Margaret Kimberley: The corporate media is concealing a leaked UN agency report that shows Syrian government innocence in an alleged chemical attack. ... The corporate media march in lock step with the United States and its allies around the world. ... Claims of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government are but one example of this tactic. ... In 2013 we were told that president Assad waged a chemical weapons attack on the same day that United Nations weapons inspectors arrived in the country. It is an understatement to say that this scenario is unlikely to be true. ... “...there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at both locations rather than being delivered by aircraft.” ... The public are mostly hapless dupes who give approval for destruction and carnage just like the state want them to... [ Visit Website ]
May 29, 2019, 3:01pm

Blogosphere
Yemen: On Memorial Day, Remember the 233,000 Dead in US-Backed Saudi War
Juan Cole: Memorial Day should be rethought, as a day to mourn the death and destruction caused by war. ... Trump is using a legal loophole to declare an emergency in the Gulf and sell Saudi Arabia and its allies $8 billion in weaponry ... The US provides logistical help, including in-air refueling, and strategic advice on targeting. ... The UN Development Program says that by the end of this year 233,000 Yemenis will have died as a result of this US-backed war, and as we speak 250,000 Yemenis are on the brink of starvation. ... In addition, deadly cholera outbreaks have infected over a million people, though most have survived... [ Visit Website ]
May 27, 2019, 4:59pm

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