Trump Orders Rexit – Torture Woman To Head CIA – (Updated)

March 13, 2018

U.S. President Donald Trump just fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – 12:44 PM – 13 Mar 2018
Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!

According to the anti Russian propagandists (vid) Tillerson got the job because Trump loves Russia and Tillerson was in good standing with Putin. The same people now claim that Tillerson was fired from his job because Trump loves Russia and Tillerson was not in good standing with Putin.

Neither is correct. The plan to oust Tillerson and elevate Pompeo to State has been rumored and written about for several month. The plan was "developed by John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff". It had nothing to do with Russia.

Tillerson never got traction as Secretary of State. Congress disliked him for cutting down some State Department programs. Trump overruled him publicly several times.

There is some contradiction in the statements coming from the White House and the State Department. According to the Washington Post:

Trump last Friday asked Tillerson to step aside, and the embattled top diplomat cut short his trip to Africa on Monday to return to Washington.

Last Friday Tillerson suddenly fell ill while traveling in Africa and canceled several scheduled events.

But a statement by Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein contradicts the Friday claim:

"The Secretary had every intention of staying, because of critical progress made in national security. […] The Secretary did not speak to the president and is unaware of the reason.”

Tillerson knew he was fired but did not tell his staff?

[UPDATE:]
From the Associated Press White House correspondent:

Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller – 3:49 PM – 13 Mar 2018
WH official says chief of staff John Kelly called Tillerson Friday and again on Saturday. Both calls to Tillerson, the official says, warned that Trump was about to take imminent action if he did not step aside. When Tillerson didn't act, Trump fired him.

And shortly thereafter:

NBC Politics @NBCPolitics – 4:22 PM – 13 Mar 2018
JUST IN: Under Secretary of State Steve Goldstein is being fired for contradicting the account of Rex Tillerson’s dismissal, White House official tells @PeterAlexander

Thus ends the 2018 insurrection at State.

[End-Update]

With Tillerson leaving Secretary of Defense Mattis is losing an ally in the cabinet:

[I]t starts with me having breakfast every week with Secretary of State Tillerson. And we talk two, three times a day, sometimes. We settle all of our issues between he and I, and then we walk together into the White House meetings. That way, State and Defense are together.

Mattis sometimes calming influence over Trump on military issues will now become less effective.

CIA head Pompeo, the new Secretary of State, is a neoconservative with a racist anti-Muslim attitude and a special hate for Iran which he compared to ISIS. That he will now become Secretary of State is a bad sign for the nuclear agreement with Iran. The Europeans especially should take note of that and should stop to look for a compromise with Trump on the issue. The deal is now dead. There is no chance that a compromise will happen.

The new CIA director Gina Haspel is well known for actively directing and participating in the torture of prisoners at 'black sites':

Beyond all that, she played a vital role in the destruction of interrogation videotapes that showed the torture of detainees both at the black site she ran and other secret agency locations. The concealment of those interrogation tapes, which violated multiple court orders as well as the demands of the 9/11 commission and the advice of White House lawyers, was condemned as “obstruction” by commission chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Keane.

Haspel would be in jail if former president Barack Obama had not decided against prosecuting the CIA torture crimes. Torturing prisoners is a war crime. Obstruction of courts and destruction of evidence are likewise crimes.

Both, Pompeo and Haspel, will need to be confirmed by Congress. Both will receive a significant number of 'yes'-votes from the Democratic side of the aisle.

Posted by b on March 13, 2018 at 15:01 UTC | Permalink

Comments

@Petri #29
The whole Skripal (plus Nikolay Glushkov) murder attempt is very strange.
He reportedly was regular visitor at Russian embassy
m.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/sergej-skripal-ein-bekannter-berichtet-von-treffen-waleri-morosow-a-1197166.html
His daughter lived without problems in Russia and visited him.
May it be he wanted to come back to Russia like Berezovsky before he got suicided?
Or quite the opposite, it could be just a black swan, a random event no one expected and now everyone is desperately improvising.
What if Skripal just saw all recent turmoil as an opportunity to demand a second paycheck for his “Steele Dossier” when MI6 has more pressing tasks at hands, maybe blackmailed them with full disclosure, or something. But MI6 turned being less distracted and more decisive than he miscalculated…

Posted by: Arioch | Mar 14 2018 11:31 utc | 101

The US is the king of the south from Daniel 8. Trump is that fierce king. He leads a nation of renegades who think they are superior. The US will go up against Russia and her allies in Syria and be utterly crushed by Russian military might.

Posted by: Whorin Piece | Mar 14 2018 12:15 utc | 102

@ john #99
thank you for your sage, timely, and kind advice, amigo.

Posted by: wendy davis | Mar 14 2018 13:01 utc | 103

Just great….the only person who could remotely be considered the “adult” in the room, is now gone…
This is going to become “The Lord Of The Flies” quickly
regards
D

Posted by: oldenyoung | Mar 14 2018 13:11 utc | 104

They’re all deep state actors of one kind or another. However, interestingly William Binney thinks Haspel may be okay heading the CIA for having done mea culpas about her and the CIA’s past. I believe Binney is mistaken.

Posted by: BRF | Mar 14 2018 14:07 utc | 105

101
The whole Skripal (plus Nikolay Glushkov) murder attempt is very strange.
indeed indeed almost like a normal standard quality bbc drama acript first draft knocked out down the vauxhall gaydar mi6 wine bar.
At this point the assumption of Israel’s involvement in everything is a rebuttable presumption.
any one Got any evidence IsReal WASN’T involved?

Posted by: simon | Mar 14 2018 15:49 utc | 106

3;Executive?The judicial,and legislature are both out of whack.

Posted by: dahoit | Mar 14 2018 16:12 utc | 107

The slow moving coup has picked up speed. The American Junta is in power … today.

Posted by: ger | Mar 14 2018 16:43 utc | 108

We truly are living in a simulacrum today. The fate of the entire world is held hostage to official narratives that are as transparent as asserting “When did you stop beating your wife?” as a reason to impugn an unpopular but faithful husband.
The entire Russiagate nonsense is the lamest of all distractions. And yet the sad truth is that though many of us see through it, many more take it at face value. Propaganda is both an art and a science, and it works on a credulous captive audience that is inculcated on force-fed lies and calling it truth. Unfortunately for the Mighty Wurlizter, they only know one tune, and the only way they know how to drown out pings of growing awareness of their patently ridiculous narrative is to play it louder.
Poster dan @95 said “Perhaps I under estimate the psychopathy of these clowns. Its just out of my imagination periphery.” Such a statement indicates that dan does indeed underestimate them. One cannot ever underestimate the pathologies of the elite in power. These are people who actually meet in guarded, private colloquies at the world’s most luxurious resorts to hash out plans of global depopulation, and all because they don’t want to share their wealth. These are people who, to fatten their coffers, are happy to spread misery, whether it’s starting wars, spreading famine, or poisoning continents. (To really understand their mindset I suggest a reading of Sade’s Juliette will provide some much needed insight. I am happy to provide astonishingly prescient examples on request.)
But these aren’t just psychopaths. One can reason with psychopaths, even if only to convince them of their own self-preservation. No, what we are dealing with here are zealots. There is no reasoning with zealots. That makes them the most dangerous of people. And these zealots will not back down: they are committed to their belief systems, and all others are heathens that deserve what’s coming to them, even if the believers go down with them.
So now we have a new official narrative: “How do we send a message to Assad that he cannot continue to WMD his own people?” It doesn’t matter that the planned false-flag didn’t happen. They’ll just assert that it did, and that’s enough to provide the excuse for payback. Evidence is so old-fashioned. So is truth, for that matter. (Poster Peter AU 1 @58 made a very astute observation that could be the reason for the recent flurry of calls to do something now! against Russia…)
And so humanity stands at the cusp of its extinction because of a stupid hoax that didn’t even happen, committed by nothing more than infantile delinquents with far too much power.
Somehow it seems like a fitting end for us.
But should we get through this period, humanity does have a change to evolve. But first, we needs to follow the advice of @69 Debisdead, who is absolutely correct: “Tillerson is more than enough evidence for the premise that the first move of any truly revolutionary political movement must be to put the entire elite up against a wall and shoot them. For, as debilitating as such a move can be for the moral hygiene of a revolution, history has taught us that allowing sociopathic scum such as he to keep breathing, ultimately costs the lives of millions of ordinary decent, non-sociopathic humans. Sad but true.”

Posted by: Lohmann | Mar 14 2018 16:45 utc | 109

The sacking of Tillerson was expected, predicted, a while ago. Apparently it took some time to jell.
– b mentions in top post, here see MSM –
A you-tubie from the Real News Network, published on Dec. 1, 2017.
Descr. : The Trump administration will reportedly oust Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and install CIA Director Mike Pompeo in his place, with Republican Sen. Tom Cotton replacing Pompeo. Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council says that’s a recipe for a US war on Iran…
https://youtu.be/LZE5YVOXBWk
So Tom Cotton was replaced with Gina xxx.

Posted by: Noirette | Mar 14 2018 17:15 utc | 110

Lohmann
i empathized with that last paragraph as well, realizing that i’m recently on record claiming not to be a vengeful person.
i’m also on record for quoting many times over these past too many dismal years,
‘fascists only relinquish power when it is pried from their cold, dead hands.’

Posted by: john | Mar 14 2018 17:25 utc | 111

The exact details around Tillerson’s end seem hazy. It appears he may have been pressured to resign for some time and resisting that he was finally sacked, or ordered to hand in his resignation. This coming just after he backed UK/May against Russia.
Reading the Mercouris article on the results of May’s propaganda effort, it seems to have fallen flat as UK has no cards to play. Is this because UK expected US backing and did not receive it?

Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Mar 14 2018 17:56 utc | 112

As b noted, both will need to be confirmed by Congress wherein opposition was just announced:
Senator Rand Paul vows to block Trump nominees to run State and CIA:

Link to Washington Examiner
Sen. Rand Paul announced Wednesday he will oppose the nominations of both Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel, who President Trump has selected to serve as secretary of state and CIA director, respectively.
Paul, R-Ky., pledged “I’m going to do everything I can to block them,” and was particularly critical of Haspel, who he said showed “joyful glee” when a suspected terrorist was tortured at one of the so-called black sites during the Iraq War. Haspel has served at the CIA for more than three decades and is currently the deputy director. She was in charge of one black site located in Thailand.
Paul said he opposes Pompeo, who is now the CIA director, because he backs “regime change” in Iran and was a supporter of the Iraq War.
Paul voted against Pompeo when he was confirmed as the head of the CIA last year. He’s even more determined to keep Haspel from confirmation.
“It’s galling to read of her glee during the waterboarding,” Paul said. “It’s absolutely appalling.” [.]

O, my.
As per a Snowden tweet, it seems Madame Haspel will be subject to arrest if s/he sets foot on EU soil.

Posted by: likklemore | Mar 14 2018 18:16 utc | 113

Almost Off Topic.
According to CGTN (China) South Korea has confirmed the growing irrelevance of the US. Desperate for a peaceful solution to the NK problem (created and stoked by the US), SK has turned to Russia for wisdom and guidance. Russia’s response was to send a delegation, led by Lavrov, to Seoul.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 14 2018 18:35 utc | 114

@ 96 Perimetr | Mar 14, 2018 4:31:41 AM
Von Clausewitz observed in his works that the military required political direction – always. What is becoming more and more obvious is the disappearance of political leadership from U.S. governance; Congress abdicated long enough ago most citizens no longer have a memory of such responsibility; the Judicial abhorrence abnegates jurisdiction over military jurisprudence, a legalism separated from all civil oversight; and the present administration having neither experience nor temperament for the political process promises total failure to bring political oversight over either the military or intelligence operations. Grave danger also develops from the failure to establish an operational political administration to oversee government operations, rather the president must rely on military and intelligence experience in managing the executive With the latest ‘adjustments’ to Trump management ‘team’, now even fewer politically astute managers are available. Trump shows himself to be un-selfgoverned, attempting to be ‘unpredictable’ and will instead show himself to be unreliable – who indeed would make a deal with such perfect perfidy on the hoof.

Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Mar 14 2018 18:51 utc | 115

I like that quote, “true law is right reason in agreement with nature.” and the other that “Law is a flag, and gold is the wind that makes it wave.”
It’s difficult to deal with people who believe they have their backs against the wall. Especially if they fancy themselves persons of importance, in the midst of a crisis they can’t control, and who are lashing out irrationally. Who seem incapable of explaining or supporting their ideas either with evidence, or with truth and honesty. Or for that matter, with anything other than anger, hostility and rage.
I don’t hold out very much hope that eventually the problems going on aren’t going to escalate into a conflagration. I mean, since the day I was born this (or any other) era has been headed more or less in that direction? But to see all the nonsense out there, that people defend, in violation of nature, it’s difficult to foresee any other outcome.

Posted by: Geoff | Mar 14 2018 18:54 utc | 116

Hey Peter AU 1, I have a vague recollection of you remarking on SST, many weeks ago, that you have a copy of Trump’s Art Of The Deal. Have you read it, and if so how would you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10?

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 14 2018 19:04 utc | 117

Hoarsewhisperer
The bulk of the book consists of chapters describing various individual deals and how he went about them. I have not read the bulk of those.
One chapter in particlular, I think the second chapter he describes his outlook in general, how he goes about a deal ect. That is well worth reading. Wife must have put it away somewhere and I cannot locate it at the moment.
Just off memory – He targets a market, uses hyperbole to sell his product, but above all else, must deliver what he promises. He has a great deal of respect for people who can deliver what they promise. Also promising and delivering what people want as compared to delivering what is thought good for them.
Will dig the book up later and have another read through the chapter.

Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Mar 14 2018 19:33 utc | 118

To add to that, he does not use analysts and bean counters. He talks to the man on the street and taxi drivers from an area he is interested to get get a feel for the area.

Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Mar 14 2018 19:41 utc | 119

Just how deadly is this nunchuck agent?
i) Absolutely deadly – you need total body protection with positive pressure suit and self-contained rebreather.
ii) Just your average toxic industrial chemical – tyvek suit, boots, gloves and gasmask.
iii) Meh – come across worse on a Friday night outside a curry house.
iv) All of the above

Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 14 2018 20:05 utc | 120

Regarding nuclear war, I remind MoA’s gentle readers that 0.01%ers like David Rockefeller and Bill Gates have been calling for a culling of global population by 80% to 90% for decades.
dan is correct that the Southern hemisphere is likely to suffer the least in such a war. So, I note that the Bush Crime Family has bought some 100s of 1,000s of acres of land in Uruguay, South America, directly above the largest fresh water aquifer on earth.
We “Westerners” in the “developed world” have already bought most of the products transnational corporations produce. We still buy some new stuff, but mostly we’re just replacing gear that planned obsolescence has rendered undesirable.
Further, we’re “spoiled.” We expect decent wages and benefits, and to live in some comfort and security.
But in the Southern hemisphere, people are anxious to buy all the goodies we take for granted. And they are willing to work for far less and suffer far greater inequities to attain them.

Posted by: Daniel | Mar 14 2018 20:14 utc | 121

Hoarsewhisperer, located the book and yes well worth reading for chapter two ‘Elements of the deal’.
I bought mine secondhand off ebay. If you cannot locate one I can send you my copy.

Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Mar 14 2018 20:24 utc | 122

Thanks to Formerly T-Bear for the eloquent reply.

Posted by: Perimetr | Mar 14 2018 20:28 utc | 123

@109 Noirette
“So Tom Cotton was replaced with Gina”
Tom Cotton is a zionist sockpuppet who has been propelled onto the national stage via funding from a number of prominent zionists includiing Bill Kristol, Paul Singer and Sheldon Adelson. He is 100% owned – lock, stock and rolling barrel.
Bad Moon Rising – Philip Giraldi
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/topic/tom-cotton/
“And Pompeo will be replaced as CIA Director by Tom Cotton. The less said about Tom the better, but I will attempt to summarize in 8 words here: Tom is completely owned by the Israel Lobby. In his 2014 election as junior Senator from Arkansas, he received $1 million from the Emergency Committee for Israel headed by Bill Kristol as well as additional assistance from the Republican Jewish Coalition. In March 2015, Tom paid those supporters back when 47 Republican United States Senators signed a letter allegedly written by him that was then sent to the Iranian government directly, warning that any agreement over that country’s nuclear program reached with President Barack Obama would likely be overturned by the Congress. The letter, which undercuts the authority of the American president before an international audience, was signed by the entire Republican Party leadership in the Senate…”
from Lobeblog:
“Cotton’s rise to prominence didn’t come cheap and required friends with very deep pockets. His Senate campaign cost $13.9 million, and some of his biggest campaign contributions came from far outside his home state of Arkansas. That doesn’t include the nearly one-million-dollar contribution in supportive political advertising made by Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel in the closing days of Cotton’s Senate campaign…”
and
“Paul Singer’s New York-based Elliot Management hedge fund…went on to become the second biggest source of direct contributions to Cotton’s Senate campaign …”
note: Marco Rubio, the past (and probably future) Republican presidential contender is a similar such creature.

Posted by: pantaraxia | Mar 14 2018 21:07 utc | 124

Peter AU 1 | Mar 14, 2018 3:33:12 PM | 118, 119, 122
Thanks (bigly) for the book review, especially your opinion of the goto chapter. I was curious to hear whether you detected any wisdom. Trump isn’t the first, or the only, successful businessman to regard taxi drivers as a useful resource.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 14 2018 21:48 utc | 125

I found this word so well said that I could not stop sharing it from the following article:
“Every time Russia fails to finish the job, as in Syria and Ukraine, Russia does not win Washington’s friendship, but extends to Washington yet another run at prevailing in the conflict that Washington initiated. Washington will not slack off until Washington is halted in its track, something that Russia does not seem willing to do. Consequently, Washington continues to drive the world to nuclear war”.
I HATE PUTIN FOR THAT, as it prolonged the suffering of the people!

Posted by: kemi | Mar 14 2018 22:16 utc | 126

b 27
Not surprising. In fact the original ZH article on Tillerson’s ouster did not mention his statements on the Iran deal. But I would not be surprised that a GCC member added to Trump/Haley/Iran/etc anti-Iran scales.

Posted by: Curtis | Mar 14 2018 22:50 utc | 127

Hoarsewhisperer 125
More of an understanding of how Trump operates rather than a source of wisdom. His thought is that he has a knack for what he does, rather than being smarter or having a higher IQ than others. He likened it to say gulf where not everyone who plays has a knack for it like Tiger Woods, but then others who have never played, may actually be better than woods if they were to play gulf.
Although he explains how he operates and the steps he uses, I guess he considers it more of an art than a science.
No doubt there would be bits and pieces in the book that different people could take as pieces of wisdom.

Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Mar 15 2018 3:08 utc | 128

Who is Mike Pompeo, the new secretary of state ? the ‘congressman from Koch’, the american oligarchs ? john nichols profile,
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-koch-brothers-get-their-very-own-secretary-of-state/
and Gina Haspel, new CIA director, ‘tortured for the sake of torture’ i.e. enjoyed hurting opponents ? John Kiriakou on democracy now
https://www.opednews.com/articles/She-Tortured-Just-for-the-by-Democracy-Now-CIA_Gina-Haspel_John-Kiriakou_Trump-Cruelty-180314-297.html
‘ JOHN KIRIAKOU: We did call her Bloody Gina. Gina was always very quick and very willing to use force. You know, there was a group of officers in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, when I was — when I was serving there, who — I hate to even make the accusation out loud, but I’m going to say it: who enjoyed using force. Yeah, everybody knew that torture didn’t work. That’s not even the issue. Lots of different things work. Was it moral, and was it ethical, and was it legal? I think the answers to those questions are very clearly no. But Gina and people like Gina did it, I think, because they enjoyed doing it. They tortured just for the sake of torture, not for the sake of gathering information. ‘

Posted by: anon | Mar 15 2018 9:47 utc | 129

Here’s a class analysis:
“The Koch Brothers Get Their Very Own Secretary of State
Trump’s pick to replace Rex Tillerson is an errand boy for billionaires.”
In the Republican wave election of 2010, when Charles and David Koch emerged as defining figures in American politics, the greatest beneficiary of Koch Industries largesse was a political newcomer named Mike Pompeo. After his election to the House eight years ago, Pompeo was referred to as the “Koch Brothers’ Congressman” and “the congressman from Koch.”
Now Pompeo is positioned to become a Koch brothers–influenced secretary of state.
After serving for a little more than a year as Donald Trump’s top yes-man at the Central Intelligence Agency, Pompeo is Trump’s pick to replace Rex Tillerson, the administration’s listless placeholder at the Department of State.
In a measure of the extent to which Trump and Tillerson had disengaged from one another, the outgoing secretary of state apparently learned of his firing via Twitter Tuesday morning—when an aide showed the nation’s top diplomat a tweet from the president announcing the transition. A statement from the department indicated that Tillerson was “unaware of the reason” for his removal.
Tillerson displayed a measure of independence from Trump on issues ranging from Russian cyber attacks to the aggressive approach of Saudi Arabia to Qatar and other countries.
Donald Trump has decided to put “the congressman from Koch” in charge of the State Department and, by extension, the engagement of the United States government with a world in which the brothers Koch have many, many interests.
Pompeo’s pattern of deference to his political benefactors is likely to make him a better fit with a self-absorbed president. He will also bring to the position an edge that Tillerson lacked. Pompeo is a foreign-policy hawk who fiercely opposed the Iran nuclear deal, stoked fears about Muslims in the United States and abroad, opposed closing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, and defended the National Security Agency’s unconstitutional surveillance programs as “good and important work.” He has even gone so far as to say that NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden “should be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence.”
Pompeo’s open disregard for privacy rights in particular and civil liberties in general, as well as his penchant for extreme language and more extreme policies, are anything but diplomatic. That’s likely to make him an even more troublesome Secretary of State than Tillerson, who was relentlessly corporate in his worldview but not generally inclined to pick fights—even when it came to standing up for a State Department that decayed on his watch.
In addition to being a hothead, Pompeo has long been one of the most conflicted political figures in the conflicted city of Washington, thanks to his ties to the privately held and secretive global business empire that has played a pivotal role in advancing his political career. Pompeo came out of the same Wichita, Kansas, business community where the Koch family’s oil-and-gas conglomerate is headquartered. Indeed, Pompeo built his own company with seed money from Koch Venture Capital.
More important, from a political standpoint, is the fact that Pompeo made the leap from business to government with a big boost from the Koch brothers and their employees. “I’m sure he would vigorously dispute this, but it’s hard not to characterize him as the congressman from Koch,” says University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis.
In fact, that’s a generally appropriate characterization for the man whom Donald Trump is angling to make his secretary of state. (With due regard to the Kochs, they can be somewhat more nuanced than their caricatures suggest. As thoughtful observers with publications such as The American Conservative remind us, projects funded by the Kochs have over the years diverted from the bombastic language and stances of more-militaristic conservatives. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with Republican recipients of Koch cash and encouragement, it is the advocacy by these billionaire businessmen and their allies for domestic and international policies that favor multinational corporations that tends to influences the likes of Pompeo.)
As the Center for Food Safety, which has wrangled with Pompeo on food-labeling issues that are of tremendous interest to the global agribusiness and grocery industries, noted in 2014:
Congressman Mike Pompeo was the single largest recipient of campaign funds from the Koch Brothers in 2010. After winning election with Koch money, Congressman Pompeo hired a Koch Industries lawyer to run his office. According to The Washington Post, Congressman Pompeo then introduced bills friendly to Koch Industries while Koch hired outside lobbyists to support them.

Posted by: ninel | Mar 15 2018 13:16 utc | 130

ninel – thanks for the vimeo link to the putin show on the other thread… i watched that and it was very interesting..

Posted by: james | Mar 15 2018 17:46 utc | 131

…
No doubt there would be bits and pieces in the book that different people could take as pieces of wisdom.
Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Mar 14, 2018 11:08:30 PM | 128
Thank you, again, for rounding out a useful book review.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 15 2018 19:38 utc | 132

…
It’s unfortunate but true, though, that Rudd became unworkable in the early part of 2010- not consulting, not taking decisions etc, making the normal operation of government difficult, if not impossible. Rudd had to go to keep the government working effectively. He wasn’t stabbed in the back, and it wasn’t because of his ‘anti-neoliberal’ actions.
Posted by: extra | Mar 13, 2018 6:29:48 PM | 55
Oh yes it was.
In fact that was the central and only issue.
Oz’s Neolibs (ALL of the Liberal Party polis and more than half of Labor’s) are there to enrich themselves and/or their friends via the Neolib de-regulation gravy train. Rudd was a visionary with a social conscience which he wore on his sleeve.
Rudd’s bailout of The People instead of The Crooks made it abundantly clear to The Crooks that his next move would be to tighten up Govt Regulation of Financial Institutions and “agents” on the periphery, such as Credit Ratings agencies, and to punish fraudulent behavior by such organisations.
Being a Sino-phile, it was only a matter of time until he introduced such “Commie” procedures as a Popular Vision For The Future in the form of a string of all-encompassing 5-year plans – absolute anathema for Neolibs because they’d lose their ability to bribe politicians into making Govt Policy turn-on-a-dime to perpetuate windfall profits derived from The Next Big Scam.
But you’re right. They got rid of him before he could ‘damage’ the 1%.
Hence the current Inquiry into fraudulent behaviour of ALL of Oz’s big banks.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 15 2018 20:33 utc | 133

Tillerson couldnt stay at his SoS position…hes got to rush back to Exxon to put together the big LNG deal we talked the UK into…
regards
OY

Posted by: oldenyoung | Mar 16 2018 0:12 utc | 134

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