JR @ 89
Somewhere else in a comment to you I indicated I believed Bevin is correct in his view….and also in agreement with the article by Bernie I linked to way back up at 3….of course the first steps towards sustaining leftism must begin in the fight against domestic political structures standing in the way….but outreach and coordination with movements in other countries and solidarity with the poor of all countries (and yes all “races”) must become a priority.
And yes I grok that somehow the Russian and Chinese can be considered the lesser evils but when did that strategy ever find resonance in these environs?
Someone else said it well, paraphrasing here, but do you truly think the arch conservative Putin gives two shits about western socialists who are illogically sympathetic to his repressive rightwing crony capitalist government?
No he is in much more in concert with the crony capitalists in our countries with whom his cronies do business, take lunch and live next door.
As far as correcting Circe’s views, huh? I state my viewpoints clearly for the most part. She can accept, reject or ignore a she sees fit. As can everybody.

Posted by: donkeytale | Apr 8 2019 13:17 utc | 103

Mishko – Lol. I loves me sum James. I hope that is clear. Mine was a weak attemt to defuse the escalation of thread discord with humour. Unfunny humour to be sure.
As for your more serious notes I agree…to a point. The election of Trump can be seen as the ultimate F you to the PTB in a way. So too could the elevation of Hitler…at one point in time [Godwins alert].

Posted by: donkeytale | Apr 8 2019 13:40 utc | 105

Further to @81
This story shows that they targeted Flynn in 2014:

Mike Flynn’s Alleged Honeypot Slams Russiagate ‘Spy’ Stefan Halper And Journos Who Covered For Him

As most of you know, they finally got him in 2017 after he spoke to the Russia Ambassador asking that Putin refrain from responding to Obama’s expulsion of diplomats.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 8 2019 14:22 utc | 107

Correction: The Bernie link I posted is @ 8 not 3.

Posted by: donkeytale | Apr 8 2019 14:30 utc | 109

@mourning dove
Please learn how to correctly post a link.
Look at the description above the comment entry field.
The URL does not belong into the Text field of the HREF statement.

Posted by: b | Apr 8 2019 14:55 utc | 111

@ Posted by: bevin | Apr 8, 2019 9:07:54 AM | 103
In Lenin’s Complete Works first book, he studies the Russian peasant class in the Caucasus region. His only objective there was to demonstrate the majority of the peasants in Russia were actually workers, not peasants (or, that was in what he wanted to believe). He demonstrated the vast majority of the peasants of the regions analysed were so poor that they had to resort selling their labor force to the richer peasants (kulaks), who had more land and more animals. Not only they had to resort to that, but selling the workforce was the main source of income for them.
In other words, he bet that 1) Russia was already capitalist (therefore, able to sustain a communist revolution) and 2) the “working peasant class”, this silent majority, would come to the socialist cause if the revolution happened in the forseeable future (book I was by his end of 19th Century writings).
Turned out he was half-right: yes, Russia already had a capitalist part (mainly, the urban centers), but the peasantry was still ideologically feudal — in the sense it still saw the world as a nuclear family living an idyllic life of self-sufficiency until death and an afterlife in Paradise came. Their alliance only went until WWI was over.

Posted by: vk | Apr 8 2019 17:47 utc | 113

Piotr Berman @77:
… Seth Rich could be killed by the very people who got the stolen files and who did not want to take a risk of the guy getting remorseful …
How do you know Seth Rich was killed? Maybe his death was faked and he was simply reassigned?
<== Jackrabbit | Apr 7, 2019 10:32:14 PM IMHO, "faking death" is hard, especially if it involves people who allegedly found the body, and people who examined the body and produced coroner report etc. It is vastly simpler to kill someone. Alternatively, the person may vanish with some clues about death, clues can be faked. The other thing is that I was writing in conditional: if some organization used Seth Rich to steal the files, this organization becomes one of the murder suspects given ability and motifs. Seth Rich was involved with IT, so he had more reason to have capability than an ordinary worker. Of course, all of that is speculation, but files of e-mails were definitely obtained by some un-authorized person, and it is vastly easier for an insider, so insiders should be among the suspects. His death has some strange aspects: what he was doing on a street near his home at 4 am, given that he visited a bar "until 1:30 am", but there are many valid reason to leave home at a weird hour, e.g. craving for something in convenience store.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Apr 8 2019 18:22 utc | 115

John Anthony La Pietra @ 74 and Bart Hansen @ next Trump/Iran thread & the rest of the board:
Apologies for screwing up Michael Hudson’s name @ 51. Have no idea where (Hedges) came from, must have been asleep at the keyboard.
Found the interview to be very informative and highly recommend reading it. Must say I found a few items a bit disconcerting and two of them are copied below…
“MH: We have to restore a balanced economy where the oligarchy is controlled, so as to prevent the financial sector from impoverishing society, imposing austerity and reducing the population to clientage and debt serfdom.
JS: How do you do that without a Hammurabi-style “divine kingship”?
MH: You need civil law to do what Near Eastern kings once did. You need a body of civil law with a strong democratic government acting to shape markets in society’s overall long-term interest, not that of the One Percent obtaining wealth by impoverishing the 99 Percent. You need civil law that protects the population from an oligarchy whose business plan is to accumulate wealth in ways that impoverish the economy at large. This requires a body of civil law that would cancel debts when they grow too large for the population to pay. That probably requires public banking and credit – in other words, deprivatization of banking that has become dysfunctional.”
…
“JS: Is any of this going to change, either in Europe or here?
MH: Not until there’s a crash. Not until it gets serious enough that people realize that there has to be an alternative. Right now Margaret Thatcher and the neoliberals have won. She said there was no alternative, and as long as people believe There Is No Alternative, they’re not going to realize that it doesn’t have to be this way, and that you don’t need a private banking sector. A public banking sector would be much more efficient.”
Interview closes with question of timing:
“JS: So how much longer does this go on — for months, for years, for decades?
MH: It always goes on longer than you think it will. Inertia has a great elastic self-reinforcing power. Polarization will widen until people believe that there is an alternative and decide to fight for it. Two things are required for this to happen: First, a large proportion of people need to see that the economy is impoverishing them, and that the existing picture of what is happening is misleading. Instead of wealth trickling down, it is defying gravity and sucking income up from the base of the economic pyramid. People are having to work harder just to stay in place, until their life style breaks down.
Second, people must realize that it doesn’t have to be this way. There isan alternative
JS: Right now most people think that government regulation and progressive taxation will make things worse, and that the wealthy are job creators, not job destroyers. They think that the system needs to be bolstered, not replaced, because the alternative is “socialism” — that is, what the Soviets did, not what Franklin Roosevelt was doing. But today bailing out the banks and giving subsidies to new employers is said to be for our own good.
MH: That’s what the Romans told their provinces. Everything they did was always to preserve “good order,” meaning open opportunities for their own wealth grabbing. They never said they were out to destroy and loot other societies. Madeline Albright followed this rhetorical pattern in describing as being, like the Romans and France’s brutal mission civilisatrice, a program to uplift the world free-market efficiency. For performing this service, the imperial power takes all the money that its colonies, provinces and allies can generate. That’s why the U.S. meddles in foreign politics, as we have just seen in Ukraine, Libya and Syria.“
Seems like it’s not going to be a pretty picture getting this fixed and going in a positive direction.
Enacting civil laws and preparing for the crash so we can pick up the pieces seems like a long term approach. With the destruction of the planet and changes to the climate how much time will we be given, or do we have?

Posted by: Tex | Apr 8 2019 20:15 utc | 117

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Apr 8, 2019 2:22:42 PM | 117:

IMHO, “faking death” is hard, especially if it involves people who allegedly found the body, and people who examined the body and produced coroner report etc.

LOL. IMHO faking a humanitarian organization that is associated with terrorists and getting them an Oscar is also really really hard. Yet the White Helmets exist, don’t they? And faking a chemical weapons attack in a first-world country like UK is also really really hard, yet that appears to be what happened with the Skripals.
What’s really hard for you and me is easy for an organization like CIA, Mossad, or MI6. People who “found the body” would simply need to be operatives. Need a coroner that’s friendly to CIA/FBI? LOL! Easy peasy. Was the coroner ex-Mil?

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 8 2019 20:27 utc | 119

Why George Clooney’s a Zionist: It’s a family affair:
“WOW! D. Pressman is #GeorgeClooney´s cousin?!! https://unitedwithisrael.org/us-official-slams-un-for-comparing-israel-to-terror-groups/ … In 2015, then US alternate representative to the UN for Special Political Affairs, Pressman defended Israel and slammed the UN for comparing the Jewish state to terror organizations.”
Yet another reason to boycott everything Clooney touches/promotes.

Posted by: karlof1 | Apr 8 2019 22:57 utc | 121

S @124: This is where I strongly disagree with Jackrabbit.
I never said that Hillary would know what was planned wrt the DNC leak. She had her part to play and she (and/or Bill) probably approved of the the anti-Russia strategy but they didn’t need to know details like how Wikileaks might be set up.
I’m not sure how one “disagrees” with the fact patter here:

1) Russia and China form an Alliance and Russia blocks US bombing Syria (2013) and take over of Crimea (2014) which has important Russian military installations.
Hillary respects Kissinger greatly and the Clintons and Trumps have had a relationship over many years prior to 2015 (when Trump entered the race).
2) Kissinger called for MAGA in August 2014. Trump enters the race as the MAGA Candidate.
3) Hillary ran a terrible race, making what appear to be obvious mistakes that would cost her the race.
4) Trump wins. Forgives Hillary and brings friends and allies of Trump’s supposed enemies (McCain, Brennan, Mueller, neocons, etc) into his Administration.
5) Mueller investigation turns up no collusion – just as Trump has always said it would – yet somehow Trump has been ‘turned’ by the Deep State.
LOL – HE WAS ALWAYS THEIR GUY!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 8 2019 23:38 utc | 123

oops. typo @125: “pattern”

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 9 2019 1:00 utc | 125

VK @ 102, Bevin @ 103:
It’s my understanding that in Russia after the peasants were emancipated from serfdom in 1861, and were able to travel outside their landlords’ estates for perhaps the first time in several centuries, many of them migrated to the cities, where they quickly learned to read and write, and were able to send news and information back to their families in the country. Especially after 1905, in different parts of Russia peasants formed councils (then called ‘soviets’ before that term acquired its post-1917 meaning), seized land from landlords and made their own decisions about how to farm and use it.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/1917-peasant-revolutions-russia-serfs-bolsheviks
By late 1917, the Bolsheviks (after they had seized power) found that they had to play catch-up with peasant mini-revolutions in various parts of the country.
Modernisation in various parts of the Russian empire often proceeded very differently depending on the dominant ethnic or religious groups there. In areas where Muslim Tatars lived (along the Volga river and around Kazan), they launched an intellectual modernisation movement called Jadidism in the second half of the 19th century. This movement promoted educational and religious reform. One result of this movement was that Muslim communities living along the Volga river quickly became part of the new middle class in Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadid
At the same time, Muslim areas in southern Russia and the Caucasus were destitute and backward as a result of the Russian conquest of these areas during the 1850s / 60s and the flight of refugees to the Ottoman empire.
In China, modernisation proceeded differently, depending on the regions involved. Southern China, especially the Cantonese-speaking areas around Guangzhou and Hong Kong, quickly became cosmopolitan as a result of migrations from the countryside into the cities, and often overseas to participate in gold rushes in parts of North America and the British colonies in Australia. Chinese labour helped build railways in Canada and the western United States. Chinese migration back to southern China brought new ideas to the common people there. Some of the earliest Chinese revolutionaries, like Sun Yisun (or Sun Yat-sen), came from Guangdong province.

Posted by: Jen | Apr 9 2019 7:58 utc | 127

They say I suffer, perhaps they’re right, and that I’d feel better if I did this, said that, if my body stirred, if my head understood, if they went silent and departed, perhaps they’re right, how would I know about these things, how would I understand what they’re talking about, I’ll never stir, never speak, they’ll never go silent, never depart, they’ll never catch me, never stop trying, that’s that, I’m listening.
Well I prefer that, I must say I prefer that, that what, oh you know, who you, oh I suppose the audience, well well, so there’s an audience, it’s a public show, you buy your seat and wait, perhaps it’s free, a free show, you take your seat and you wait for it to begin, or perhaps it’s compulsory, a compulsory show, you wait for the compulsory show to begin, it takes time, you hear a voice, perhaps it’s a recitation, that’s the show, someone reciting, selected passages, old favourites, a poetry matinée, or someone improvising, you can barely hear him, that’s the show, you can’t leave, you’re afraid to leave, it might be worse elsewhere, you make the best of it, you try and be reasonable, you came too early, here we’d need Latin, it’s only beginning, it hasn’t begun, he’s only preluding, clearing his throat, alone in his dressing-room, he’ll appear any moment, he’ll begin any moment, or it’s the stage-manager, giving his instructions, his last recommendations, before the curtain rises, that’s the show, waiting for the (((show)))
(excerpt from Samuel Beckett’s “The Unnameable”)

Posted by: Mahood | Apr 9 2019 23:06 utc | 129