Interesting triple-header from the AT today:
Meet your new freedom fighters, Americans:
Meet the militants chasing China out of Pakistan
Money talks, bullshit walks. That’s the most important law of capitalism:
Chinese internet stocks soar as phony tech war fades: Washington left Alibaba and Tencent off its China blacklist for fear of retaliation
The American Flavius Stilicho:
Is Pompeo the last gasp of US imperial power?
The comparison with Nero made by the author presupposes the American Empire is still at its apex. I don’t think that’s the case.
–//–
Changing subject, it seems one cop from the Capital Police committed suicide after the “Sack of Washington”:
US Police Officer Commits Suicide After Capitol Hill Riot, Reports Suggest
Now those Trumpists not only are cop killers, they are also cop bullies. Not good PR, if you ask me.

Posted by: vk | Jan 11 2021 11:37 utc | 103

vk #164
Mentioning Estonia at any time would indicate pure unmitigated BS. But mentioning BOTH Estonia and the Grauniad in the one post is just painfully obvious that the entire story is bollocks.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jan 11 2021 12:04 utc | 105

A note from exCIA MobBoss John “Struggle Sessions” Brennan
https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnBrennan/status/1348051973174652928
John O. Brennan
@JohnBrennan
Anyone now seeking national redemption by claiming to no longer support Trump must acknowledge how wrong it was to ignore & enable his corrupt, dishonest, & divisive agenda.
Total denunciation of a despot’s legacy is necessary to eradicate any remaining malignancy
——-
When John Brennan’s got yer back you just know you’re on the right side of history!!

Posted by: Triden | Jan 11 2021 12:27 utc | 107

Kind of funny… until it’s not.
From Joe Leonard:
“Becoming GMO People In A Brave New World”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N91z-Qm77r8. (8 min)

Posted by: gm | Jan 11 2021 12:32 utc | 109

Posted by: Smith | Jan 11 2021 9:22 utc | 95
“Damn purge is already beginning and Biden isn’t even Pres yet, fucking LOL”
Look at it this way: at last Pelosi has put impeachment back on the table. Now if the Dems end the filibuster in another fit of pique, we may eventually get a government that actually tries to govern again.
Yeah, lots of heavy breathing and frothing at the lips from the woke left. High dudgeon. Witch hunts. Self pity. I can remember when being “left” here meant you thought corporations should be harassed and people should be left alone: “Do your own thing.” Homo sapiens my ass.
Joe and Nancy seem to be freaking out, one assumes because they have been pantsed in public, meanwhile Trump seems to be having a farewell visit to his wall. Interesting times.

Posted by: Bemildred | Jan 11 2021 12:43 utc | 111

Polygraph panic: CIA director fretted his vote for communist

The CIA director said the agency’s mission is to protect the values of the Constitution — which include free speech.
“We’ve all had indiscretions in our past,” he said, adding neither some drug experimentation nor activism was a non-starter. “I would not be up here if that was disqualifying.”
He proceeded to tell the story of his test.
“I froze, because I was getting so close to coming into CIA and said, ‘OK, here’s the choice, John. You can deny that, and the machine is probably going to go, you know, wacko, or I can acknowledge it and see what happens,'” Brennan said.
He said he chose to be forthcoming.
“I said I was neither Democratic or Republican, but it was my way, as I was going to college, of signaling my unhappiness with the system, and the need for change. I said I’m not a member of the Communist Party, so the polygrapher looked at me and said, ‘OK,’ and when I was finished with the polygraph and I left and said, ‘Well, I’m screwed.'”
But he soon got his admission notice to the CIA and was relieved, he said, saying that though the agency still had long strides to make in accepting gay recruits and minorities, even then it recognized the importance of freedom.
“So if back in 1980, John Brennan was allowed to say, ‘I voted for the Communist Party with Gus Hall’ … and still got through, rest assured that your rights and your expressions and your freedom of speech as Americans is something that’s not going to be disqualifying of you as you pursue a career in government.”

Well what else can you say to that other than “Gawd bless America!”

Posted by: Triden | Jan 11 2021 12:57 utc | 113

@ Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Jan 11 2021 12:34 utc | 110
Excellent review. Recommend everybody here to read it.

Posted by: vk | Jan 11 2021 13:12 utc | 115

The quickest way to end all Lockdowns is to simply freeze all income to government workers and pensioners. They’re the biggest supporters of government authoritarianism because they pay no price. I wonder, if you stop paying the police, will they cease with the Gestapo impersonations? Heinrich Himmler is green with envy!

Posted by: EoinW | Jan 11 2021 13:24 utc | 117

William Burns is Biden’s new CIA Director nomination with with State Dept career and DC Thinktank experience.
Might have better constructive peer-peer dialogue potential with Russian Foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. Now whence little Gina ‘Abu Ghraib stinker’ Haspel?
But, what about global opium and heroine supplies? Gulp, …!
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/11/politics/william-burns-cia-director-nomination/index.html

Posted by: imo | Jan 11 2021 14:17 utc | 119

On masks, i will give you some advice – salt your masks, especially if they are surgical masks. 3 studies now confirm that salting masks increases filtration efficiency and creates a self-disinfecting mask, killing the microorganisms falling on it. Salt coating is viable for at least 15 days.
The inventors received award in Canada.
Use 60 gr salt, 200 gr hot water, good mixing of solution, 2 hours bath per mask, overnight drying.

Posted by: Passer by | Jan 11 2021 14:45 utc | 121

@Mao Cheng Ji | Jan 11 2021 14:42 utc | 120
Indeed, that seems to be the preferred sanitized greeting these days. Perfectly safe without any side effects.

Posted by: Norwegian | Jan 11 2021 14:49 utc | 123

Triden @107 re: Twit by CIA crime boss “Anyone now seeking national redemption by claiming to no longer support Trump must acknowledge how wrong it was…”
This narrative was intended for November 9, 2016, but Trump’s upset victory foiled it. All corporate mass media in the US was primed to go all in on “Deplorable” shaming on that day in order to crush and demoralize the biggest threat to the imperial elites. Having to cross their legs and hold their shit for four years drove them mad, and now they are going to get their revenge.
There are posters (you know who I am talking about) who insist that Trump’s win in 2016 was all part of the elites’ grand plan, but what have the elites gained over the last four years? Their “Project for a New American Century” has gone even more than four additional years behind schedule, on top of which the US (Elon Musk) lost Bolivia. Worse still for the elites, all of the empire’s preparations for regime changes in Venezuela, Hong Kong, and Belarus have gone to waste and will likely take at least a decade to reestablish. These things take years and $billions to set up. Things have gone so poorly for the elites these last four years that many of them are now placing all of their hopes in the ridiculous fantasy of a “Great Reset”.
As crime boss Brennan’s rant makes clear the establishment’s herculean task is to somehow gaslight four score millions of Americans into believing themselves to be fringe bad people in order to get them to behave as the establishment wants. Though there is some crossover, that largely doesn’t include the scores of millions more who would have voted for Sanders if given the chance and who also need to be beaten into submission.
The empire is losing it. When things get this dicey the elites will act like cornered dogs and resort to the unthinkable.
The history books might portray 2020 as the calm before the storm. No matter how the pieces land we are in interesting times.

Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 11 2021 15:07 utc | 125

Steven “Flog’em & Hang’em” Johnson should team up with “Struggle Sessions” Brennan and get that “Cleansing Purge Roadshow”©® rolling asap.
Their joint-implementation of a “Crossroads Gallows” program, utilising locally-sourced sustainable lumber resources and employing local LGBTQI/BIPOC tradespersons would be a wonderful addition to Joe “Sharpest Knife In The Block” Biden’s eagerly awaited first economic stimulus plan

Posted by: Triden | Jan 11 2021 15:11 utc | 127

Re: Where’s Trump?
-Nick | Jan 11 2021 6:15 utc | 95
Maybe on his way to Russia asking for asylum.

Posted by: arby | Jan 11 2021 15:21 utc | 129

Just an adendum to my comment @ 115. There’s a major mistake in professor Tauger’s review, which is this paragraph:

While this review article does not allow for a full discussion of the issue of genocide and Stalin’s responsibility, we can at least note certain conclusions from the sources presented here. Stalin and other leaders made concessions to Ukraine in procurements and were clearly trying to balance the subsistence needs of Ukraine and other regions, especially people in towns and industrial sites who could not access the surrogate foods that some peasants relied on to survive (see for example Applebaum ch.12). Soviet leaders did not understand the 1932 crop failure: they thought that peasants were withholding food to drive up prices on the private market, as some of them had in 1928. They worried about the Japanese take-over of Manchuria in 1931-1932 and the Nazi victory in Germany in early 1933, and feared nationalist groups in Poland and Austria could inspire a nationalist rebellion in Ukraine. Faced with these “threats,” Soviet leaders were reluctant to make the USSR appear weak by admitting the famine and importing a lot of food, both of which they had done repeatedly earlier. The famine and the Soviets’ insufficient relief can be attributed to crop failure, and to leaders’ incompetence and paranoia regarding foreign threats and peasant speculators: a retaliatory version of the moral economy.

The Japanese, for all intents and purposes, invaded the USSR in 1938 – the “Battle of Khalkin Gol” – in which the Guandong Army was defeated and repealed. It is a known fact that the Guandong Army intended to use the Khalkin Gol basin as a springboard to invade the Soviet Union proper and conquer the entire eastern portion of Siberia, thus closing the Soviets from the Pacific entirely while creating an appropriate buffer to protect Manchuria. In other words, the conquest of Manchuria in 1931 directly led to the invasion of Khalkin Gol in 1938.
The rise of the NSDAP in 1932-33 immediately worried the Soviets. The Nazi threat to communism was so great and obvious that even the Soviet’s main diplomat in Europe at the time – Litvinov – frequently rose the question in his restless (and futile) attempts to form an alliance with France, the UK, Poland and Romania during the mid-1930s. Litvinov was a dyed-in-the-wool Menshevik who despised the Bolsheviks, highly educated middle class from a petit-bourgeois family, had an English wife and only kept in his job because he was the only one that new how to speak English fluently and knew Western Europe well. Hardly a man susceptible to “Bolshevik paranoia”. And, in fact, the Third Reich indeed had a major plan to colonize the Soviet Union, ready in 1937 (Generalplanost), and indeed invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), in what is regarded as the most ferocious and merciless war ever waged in modern History.
Poland not only was openly anticommunist, but was also the first nation to make a non-aggression pact with the Third Reich (1934). Indeed, the British, under PM Chamberlain, used this fact to refuse an alliance with the Soviets until the very end (the UK had a mutual defense agreement with Poland). This was all open and notorious knowledge well before the aforementioned pact, which was signed in 1934, but obviously took some years to negotiate.
But all of these facts are circumstantial evidence, because the famine happened in 1932-33. The NSDAP only definitely took over Germany in 1933, while Japan didn’t export food to the USSR, so its invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was irrelevant to Ukrainian affairs. Unless the Soviets had the power of clairvoyance, it is highly unlikely those events influenced the Soviets to not import food in 1931-33.
The most probable reason the Soviets didn’t import food at that time probably was the changing geopolitical landscape to a more anticommunist stance, which generated a situation of ever encroaching economic sanctions and embargoes. Let’s just remember that the Treaty of Rapallo (1922), at the time it was signed, was illegal under the existing international law, i.e. it was a secret treaty.

Posted by: vk | Jan 11 2021 15:36 utc | 131

@Mark2 | Jan 11 2021 15:42 utc | 132

b how about a post on platformming right wing fascist. I’m sure we’d all be very interested in your ‘honest’ view !!

No-one is interested in a post about you

Posted by: Norwegian | Jan 11 2021 15:55 utc | 133

“The NSDAP only definitely took over Germany in 1933” “Unless the Soviets had the power of clairvoyance”
Clairvoyance? Meh. They had the power to analyze geopolitical trends.
Already in 1931 Stalin said: “We are 50-100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1948/economic-policy.htm
He gave it 10 years – exactly 10 years before the war started. I don’t think it would be too tendentious to argue that rapid collectivization is the direct consequence of this – correct! – prediction…

Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Jan 11 2021 16:06 utc | 135

The USSR was being sanctioned by the imperialist powers since the 1917 October Revolution.
Posted by: vk | Jan 11 2021 16:17 utc | 136
Except for the Wall St bankers that loaned them a few million dollars

Posted by: Triden | Jan 11 2021 16:22 utc | 137

It looks as though b’s prediction that the Dems risk increasing Ter’rism in the USA is coming true. They seem to have almost come to terms with the fact that they can’t force Trump to resign before Biden is sworn in. But Pelosi’s even stupider (threatened) fall back position is to concoct an impeachment circus during Biden’s first 100 days as Prez.
I’m 100% in favor of Pelosi proceeding with this insane plot to ruin Trump’s future prospects of running for Public Office. The reason I like the idea is that if she successfully impeaches ex-President Trump, it will smooth the path for impeaching ex-President Obama and ex-President Bush II…
So I say “Bring It On Nancy, you silly old crank!”

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 11 2021 16:35 utc | 139

A new offering by Paul Craig Roberts:
https://www.unz.com/proberts/is-americas-future-a-civil-war/ (1800 words)

As a person who grew up in the glorious aftermath of World War II, it never occurred to me that in my later years I would be pondering whether the United States would end in civil war or a police state. In the aftermath of the stolen presidential election, it seems a 50-50 toss up.
There is abundant evidence of a police state. One feature of a police state is controlled explanations and the suppression of dissent. We certainly have that in abundance.
Experts are not permitted forums in which to challenge the official position on Covid.
Teachers are suspended for giving offense by using gender pronouns.
Recording stars are dropped by their recording studios for attending the Trump rally. Parents ratted on by their own children are fired from their jobs for attending the Trump rally. https://www.rt.com/usa/512048-capitol-riot-employees-fired/ Antifa is free to riot, loot, intimidate and hassle, but Trump supporters are insurrectionists.
White people are racists who use hateful words and concepts, but those who demonize whites are righting wrongs.
Suppression of dissent and controlling behavior are police state characteristics. It might be less clear to some why dictating permissible use of language is police state control. Think about it this way. If your use of pronouns can be controlled, so can your use of all other words. As concepts involve words, they also can be controlled. In this way inconvenient thoughts and expressions along with accurate descriptions find their way into the Memory Hole.
With the First Amendment gone, or restricted to the demonization of targeted persons, such as “the Trump Deplorables,” “white supremacists,” “Southern racists,” the Second Amendment can’t have much life left. As guns are associated with red states, that is, with Trump supporters, outlawing guns is a way to criminalize the red half of the American population that the Establishment considers “deplorable.” Those who stand on their Constitutional right will be imprisoned and become cheap prison labor for America’s global corporations.
Could all this lead to a civil war or are Americans too beat down to effectively resist? That we won’t know until it is put to the test.https://www.rt.com/usa/512048-capitol-riot-employees-fired/ Antifa is free to riot, loot, intimidate and hassle, but Trump supporters are insurrectionists.
White people are racists who use hateful words and concepts, but those who demonize whites are righting wrongs.
Suppression of dissent and controlling behavior are police state characteristics. It might be less clear to some why dictating permissible use of language is police state control. Think about it this way. If your use of pronouns can be controlled, so can your use of all other words. As concepts involve words, they also can be controlled. In this way inconvenient thoughts and expressions along with accurate descriptions find their way into the Memory Hole.
With the First Amendment gone, or restricted to the demonization of targeted persons, such as “the Trump Deplorables,” “white supremacists,” “Southern racists,” the Second Amendment can’t have much life left. As guns are associated with red states, that is, with Trump supporters, outlawing guns is a way to criminalize the red half of the American population that the Establishment considers “deplorable.” Those who stand on their Constitutional right will be imprisoned and become cheap prison labor for America’s global corporations.
Could all this lead to a civil war or are Americans too beat down to effectively resist? That we won’t know until it is put to the test.

Posted by: gm | Jan 11 2021 16:48 utc | 141

@juliania #26
The US has a fundamentally lower density of population than China.
This isn’t just overall – even “dense” US cities are relatively sparse compared to China. This was enabled/abetted by the automobile revolution – and so even if there were the will to build better rail, it is doubtful it would be useful.
For example: Even if I could take a train from San Francisco to Los Angeles – what do I do once I get there? You literally cannot walk to a grocery store from your house in LA, unless you have all day. In the San Francisco Bay Area: only in the downtown parts of SF can you survive without a car. I tried once to walk while visiting in Santa Clara – 45 minutes later, I managed to go around one single block of nothing but warehouses and office buildings.
There are serious structural issues with the US system that are not going to be fixed by any single or even dozen actions.

Posted by: c1ue | Jan 11 2021 17:03 utc | 143

@Tichard #29
Thanks for the link.
Worth reading, but I can’t say I agree with Michael Roberts’ critique.
He seeks to force definition of Hudson’s neo-feudalism with medieval feudalism – which is nonsense.
Among the problems: feudalism expropriated produce directly because it generally had no alternative. However, there were many aspects of overall feudalism which modern practices closely resemble. For example: Roberts focuses on the feudal knight to peasant side – which was product and droit du seigneir. Yet even this is wrong: peasants also had to contribute labor to capital projects like the lord’s fields, roads, castles etc.
But the feudal knights had to pay their obligations upward: money and or service themselves.
There were also trade guilds and free merchant towns; these generally paid in cash – and this is 100% monopoly rent (on power).
Roberts’ also seeks to use “empirical” evidence of capital to prove his point – but misses the forest for the trees. The Chinese government controls all money within its borders. It doesn’t need “capital” because it can and does print RMB whenever and however it feels it needs to, much as Trump and now Biden print USD as and how they see fit.
Neo-feudalism is about being able to extract value via power: the power of ownership and government enforcement of it, the power of proximity to the Fed, the power of state/local/federal government fiat and/or subsidy, etc.
Lastly: industrial vs. financial capitalism. Roberts’ totally loses it here. If “industrial and financial capital” is truly tied together, then why are the largest and fastest growing institutions in the US, banks? Why aren’t the industrial companies growing, as opposed to shrinking, with their unprecedented access to cheap labor all over the world?
So while academically interesting, Roberts’ critique is devastating only in his own ivory tower.

Posted by: c1ue | Jan 11 2021 17:14 utc | 145

[Trump tards] will have to learn to cooperate with others and give up on imperial dreams or you will be destroyed.
Posted by: Passer by | Jan 11 2021 17:08 utc | 144
—
Anyone that still thinks “Imperial Dreams” are the sole preserve of “Trump tards” really hasn’t been paying attention.

Posted by: Triden | Jan 11 2021 17:22 utc | 147

New Joe Leonard vid (it’s on yootoob so you know what that means)
Donald Trump — Dead or Alive?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsMSpqfJOqQ (6:37 min)

Posted by: gm | Jan 11 2021 17:24 utc | 149

@ Posted by: c1ue | Jan 11 2021 17:14 utc | 145
Marxist theory of capital(ism) is only an absolute truth when taking capitalism as a whole. If you analyze just by isolated countries, then you have to take into account the factor of the international division of labor, where each country specializes in one area of capitalist reproduction. In the USA’s case, it is finance and defense.

Posted by: vk | Jan 11 2021 17:27 utc | 151

video
BREAKING: President Trump Speaks After Big Tech Shutdown
Scheduled an hour from now

Posted by: Norwegian | Jan 11 2021 17:28 utc | 153

@Ian2 #87
Linux is NOT more resistant to anything.
Linux is better about some aspects of security but is far worse in many others.
The main reason Linux was more secure in the past was because it is not retail. Linux is the province of servers and so Linux was used in <5% of overall computing by CPU if we exclude the Apple OS (which is a flavor of Linux).
Nor is open source a panacea. One of the guys who first said open source was more secure, around 2005, changed his view a couple years ago. Specifically he said that when he first made the statement, every Linux line of code was more or less looked at - all 10 million of them. But today there are 10 billion or more lines of open source code. Nobody looks at most of them.
More concrete examples:
the vulnerability that took down Experian - that was Linux. Specifically Apache software, Struts addon, on Linux platform, both of which are open source.

Posted by: c1ue | Jan 11 2021 17:34 utc | 155

@vk #151
You continue to be wrong.
The US is actually a major telecoms, agriculture and manufacturing center.
Finance is big, but defense is big only in the US and primarily only to itself, secondarily to a few deep pocketed allies like Saudi Arabia.

Posted by: c1ue | Jan 11 2021 17:41 utc | 157

@Posted by: Norwegian | Jan 11 2021 17:28 utc | 153
RE: “video BREAKING: President Trump Speaks After Big Tech Shutdown”
Compare and contrast with recorded Jan 7 Trump [deep fake?] ‘concession speech: analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbL0gw8LRlM (11 min)

Posted by: gm | Jan 11 2021 18:03 utc | 159

@vk
Another critique of Applebaum:
Politics, Starvation, and Memory: A Critique of Red Famine
Tarik Cyril Amar
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 20, Number
1, Winter 2019, pp. 145-169 (Review)

Posted by: Prof K | Jan 11 2021 18:17 utc | 161

Are trumps militia planning to head for Biden’s inauguration ?
I think not. I think their all piss and wind just like all his supporters on this blog. Ha ‘truth’ you muppets don’t know the meaning of the word.
We see you.
————-
Freeze there bank accounts.

Posted by: Mark2 | Jan 11 2021 18:21 utc | 163

@ Steven
“A nonexistent program is nothing to take into account.”
In the other comment thread I listed a bunch of real policies/steps this administration enacted. You weren’t interested.
“support for wages and employment”
Protectionism — tariffs — that is support for wages and employment.
And, I should add, this was an extremely successful case of supporting wages and employment: the lowest unemployment rate in 60 years plus very fast wage growth for low-income workers.
Not too shabby for a “nonexistent program”.
“Huge increases in military budgets is not isolationism”
But of course it is. Huge increases in military budgets is an increase in domestic manufacturing, domestic science and domestic R&D. This is perfectly obvious: military keynesianism.
You’re not interested in rational discussions, you’re just parroting the Orange Man Bad line.
——————–
“Antifa is not “free” to loot.”
Antifa is not about looting, imo. I’ve seen them, they were middle-class kids. Antifa is about physically attacking non-conformists, the unwoke who dare to speak. They are brown-shirts of the Woke movement.

Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Jan 11 2021 18:24 utc | 165

Thanks to suzan and jen for answering my question about the temperature at which Pfizer vaccine is administered. The details pose still a question as to how the vaccine reacts on entering a warm human body, whether it retains whatever efficiency it may have had at the lower temperatures in preventing the virus from still infecting the person vaccinated.
I guess time will tell.

Posted by: juliania | Jan 11 2021 18:50 utc | 167

Posted by: LittleWhiteCabbage | Jan 11 2021 15:19 utc | 128
Zhuge Liang sends message from beyond to remember that Cao Cao had his worst defeat fighting a naval battle with a naval power.

Posted by: LurkingDragon | Jan 11 2021 19:05 utc | 169

@juliana – #162:
“Pride cometh before a fall!”
The pride you note in the US is based on propaganda & the false perceptions (as resolution to their primal desire to find meaning in their miserable lives), which a majority of US citizens have developed, as a result of being hornswoggled by that very same Bernays-inspired propaganda; in other words, acceptance of their exceptionalism on this planet!
That’s the blind used by USians to shield themselves from the realities of life – via blind acceptance of ‘realism’; a facsimile, thereof!

Posted by: nudge | Jan 11 2021 19:12 utc | 171

Putin in very formal tone speaks for the two presidents of a just finished war. Some interesting statistics, like area cleared of mines and the number of explosive units removed, plus the number of refugees returning home.
At first sight and for the great discomfort of whoever fears Lazarus coming back to life, that is to say Putin putting -no pun- back together the USSR, this video will give them no comfort. What it should give them though, is a lesson on real and true peacekeeping, since that word in the west has been thoroughly devalued, many years ago Mark Knopfler sang, “you might even catch a bullet from a peace keeping force”… Once upon a time in the west…
http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64877

Posted by: Paco | Jan 11 2021 19:55 utc | 173

Paco @173–
Thanks for that FYI! The joint statement that was agreed and signed looks very promising. As I’ve written, the emerging Eurasian Bloc is far and away a more powerful entity than the former combination of USSR and Warsaw Pact in both economic and armed forces terms. It’s also multi-ethnic and multi-confessional yet remains secular in its uncompromised adoption of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights-assets its adversaries lack. An action the Bloc should undertake at the UNGA is to pass an act declaring all unilateral sanctions and attempts at imposing extraterritorial laws to be 100% against the UN Charter and thus have zero force in international law while imposing penalties for those nations attempting same, such as suspension from the UN until the offending nation makes null all such sanctions and laws.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 11 2021 20:25 utc | 175

karlof1 | Jan 11 2021 20:25 utc | 175
That would be nice. I have come to the conclusion that the “outside the US bloc” are moving towards a more pro-active status. The general tone has hardened, and there is the distinct feeling that they are all beginning to ignore US dictats wherever they can. That they will now take the initiative seems a likelihood. The internal struggle in the US gives them the opportunity to take the lead now. Nothing “spectacular”, as both Russia and China have been advancing steadily, but not quickly enough to provoke a direct reaction.
There is also the advantage of taking the initiative before the Neo-war Bidenettes get into “action” mode.
One thing that might be against my rosy picture is that Israel and the Zionist financial machine have taken full control over the Democratic candidates, (Over $100 million for Ossof in Georgia race etc.) and the Israeli Airforce hare stepping up raids and overflying of Lebanon. Three raids on Damascus already this year.
They too might be tempted to start something soon.

Posted by: Stonebird | Jan 11 2021 20:53 utc | 177

karlof1 #166

So, in essence, that’s what these people wanting to derail Trump are also crusading for–the Assanging of all forms of resistance to the Neoliberal Parasites giving them a free hand to enslave as many as possible via debt. Look for legislation allowing the return of Debtors Prisons and rapid expansion of the Prison Industrial Complex’s system of Slave Labor to appear as soon as Biden is installed.

Thank you karlof1, unfortunately that is a highly probable outcome of the Biden clown cart. All those ‘debtors sponging off society’ etc, the spin masters will be crafting the speeches even now in anticipation. It does not bode well for a peaceful and prosperous future in that fair land.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jan 11 2021 21:41 utc | 179

If military Keynesianism was a real thing that actually worked, the gigantic military budgets the US has had for decades would have kept the US the greatest manufacturing power on Earth. Utter nonsense, every word of it.
The supposed recovery in wages and employment started before Trump. I’m not unreservedly endorsing Shadowstats, but taking official statistics as solidly reliable is unwise in my best judgment. The same kind of evidence that said Trump was presiding over a great economy is the same evidence that led Clinton to believe that people would vote their wallets and elect her. Either they didn’t or their wallets were screaming more than the official statistics said. Statistics are much easier to falsify than votes, so it is remarkable anyone believes them but not the bipartisan voting system. Government offices are not run bipartisan. If the economy was doing so great under Trump, the financial crisis of December 2019—*before the pandemic*—would not have made Trump frantic to keep the Fed shoveling billions of dollars into the economy. Most people haven’t done too well since the crash of 2008, something the upper strata have not noticed. Fat cat or liar?
Trump’s program is nothing but the Fed shoveling money into banks and stocks, tax giveaways to the rich, more money wasted on guns, tariff wars that have no more accomplished their end than Jefferson’s Embargo Act brought the British Empire to its knees. Again, the alleged success wasn’t. Trump’s supposed success was nothing but a partial recovery from 2008, something that started under Obama. And so far from being successful, Trump’s hodge podge of BS and crackpot economics—the stock market is not the barometer of national prosperity for God’s sake!—we went into yet another world recession. The pandemic didn’t cause the recession, it merely triggered it, because Trump completely failed to improve any fundamentals whatsoever.
(Just in case anyone here thinks Obama did, he didn’t either. The capitalist system is irrational and nobody can fix crazy.)

Posted by: steven t johnson | Jan 11 2021 22:34 utc | 181

“If military Keynesianism was a real thing that actually worked, the gigantic military budgets the US has had for decades would have kept the US the greatest manufacturing power on Earth.”
And it did. And not just manufacturing, but also scientific and technological.
“Trump’s program is nothing but the Fed shoveling money into banks and stocks”
No, that was actually the Nobel Peace Laureate’s program. QE1, QE2, QE3. QE3 ended in 2015, and the actual quantitative tightening started in 2018. Check it out, dear Steve. The pandemic-money-printing is a different story.
“The supposed recovery in wages and employment started before Trump”
The lowest unemployment rate in 60 years is not “recovery”, dear Steve. It’s the lowest unemployment rate in 60 years.

Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Jan 11 2021 22:54 utc | 183

@ Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Jan 11 2021 22:54 utc | 183
Military Keynesianism doesn’t exist. It’s a fantasy term some liberal economists invented in the 21st Century to try to convince the masses FDR didn’t implement socialism in his New Deal.
The New Deal was definitely socialism. The key here – that completely discards Keynesianism from the picture – was consumption: FDR directly took over the means of production that were necessary for economic reconstruction and later the war in order to control not only supply, but also demand. Consumption was then brutally repressed, and the USA had to ration domestic consumption of some metals (aluminium) and grains (wheat). The capitalists that owned the taken over fabrics had to produce whatever the USG wanted to produce, when it wanted, and how much it wanted. The free market was restrained over what it could produce and what it could not, and how, even though they were still allowed to profit. Clement Attlee did the exact same thing, without the war effort part and on a much lower scale.
If the New Deal was Keynesian, then consumption would be absolutely free and unlimited, the government merely controlling the flow of money through fiscal and monetary tools.

Posted by: vk | Jan 12 2021 0:27 utc | 185

I highly suggest this detailed economic report by Monthly Review, “The Contagion of Capital.” If possible, the reader should try and meld the article’s discussion with those of Dr. Hudson, which is a tall task given their length and complexity but possible.
Real Unemployment within the Outlaw US Empire today sits at 26.3% and is unchanged from December 2020.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 12 2021 0:29 utc | 187

Nashville bombing: Where the investigation, recovery stand at the start of Week 3
Jan 11, 2021; 6:00 am
by Natalie Neysa Alund and Rachel Wegner; Nashville Tennessean
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2021/01/11/nashville-bombing-update-week-3/6578422002/
Nashville bombing motive, explosives still under investigation
As of Sunday evening, a motive in the bombing remained under investigation by the FBI, the ATF and Metro police. So did the type of explosives used to detonate the blast.

Nashville police continued to release more details about when the department’s top brass was notified about a previous warning about the Christmas Day bomber. Metro police officers did not make contact with Anthony Quinn Warner in August 2019 after a woman believed to be his former girlfriend reported he may have been building a bomb in his RV.
Nashville Police Chief John Drake announced a five-member team that will review the department’s response to the 2019 report.
Police say 63-year-old Warner blew up a city block with an RV containing unidentified explosives about 6:30 a.m. on Second Avenue North outside an AT&T switch facility. The bomb injured at least three people, damaged dozens of downtown buildings and crippled telecommunication systems throughout the Southeast for days.
Recovery efforts continue
Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced that a curfew for a section of downtown has been extended. The curfew will end 5 p.m. Jan. 15 for the area bounded by Union Street, Second Avenue North, Broadway and the Cumberland River.
Additionally, Cooper said several streets are closed around the scene of the blast, including:
First Avenue North and Second Avenue North from Broadway to just north of Union Street
Church Street from First Avenue North to Third Avenue North
Commerce Street from Second Avenue North to Third Avenue North
Second Avenue North between Broadway and Commerce Street reopened to pedestrians late Friday afternoon, the Metro Nashville Police Department announced. Vehicle traffic is still not permitted.
According to the Office of Emergency Management, estimated numbers of affected entities from Fourth Avenue to the riverfront and from Union Street to Broadway include:
1,200 employees
400 residents
At least 45 businesses
46 parcels (each parcel can contain multiple structures)
The Metro Nashville Codes Department deemed 10 buildings unsafe.

To some, this is just your average, routine everyday 5G Lizard People-inspired *Lee RV Oswald* hikikomori suicide by barbeque grill propane tank(s).
Trust The FBI. Trust the Plan. [Or else….]

Posted by: gm | Jan 12 2021 0:31 utc | 189

@juliania #156
I agree that it is theoretically fixable.
The problem is that I do not see any evidence whatsoever that the mindset – which led to the present situation – has changed.
And to be clear, this isn’t a car or public transport dichotomy per se.
It is the failure of the American federal, state and local governments (for the most part) to focus on what is better for their constituents as opposed to the donor class.
Private interests are pushing electric cars instead of electrified public transport in the US even as most other nations focus on public transport in their cities and between regions. Until this mindset changes, the theoretical will never happen.

Posted by: c1ue | Jan 12 2021 2:46 utc | 191

@juliania #162
How much do people love a country in which their future and their children’s future opportunities are net negative? Both in perception and reality?
How much do people love a country where their fundamental beliefs are denigrated by the federal government both overtly and covertly?
How much do people love a country where their livelihoods are treated as literally irrelevant in the face of a serious but not world-ending pandemic?
I’ve said before that the United States is unified only by a common belief in the American Dream – the positive aspect of the United States – and the destruction of this dream bodes ill for a huge area with multiple, distinct and opposing viewpoints.
This most recent election is only one of many where the “red states” vote en masse vs. the “blue” coastal and big city elites.
Now throw in the “in your face” non-representational government diktats which have destroyed the livelihoods of literally tens of millions of people – interesting times.

Posted by: c1ue | Jan 12 2021 2:56 utc | 193

@ arby | Jan 12 2021 0:29 utc | 188
“You have any examples to back this conjecture up?
‘to their violent, criminal aims and purposes’.”
Well there were hundreds on their site which you could have enjoyed to your heart’s content, but it’s been taken down. Sorry.

Posted by: AntiSpin | Jan 12 2021 3:53 utc | 195

https://mobile.twitter.com/7815PWK/status/1347862994554920961
P KELLY
@7815PWK
Slow handclap for the morons applauding TECH GIANTS holding so much unaccountable power. A THREAD on what you are backing Clown face

Posted by: Triden | Jan 12 2021 4:03 utc | 197

Posted by: AntiSpin | Jan 12 2021 4:02 utc | 196
Other than the targets of the hate and threats, this is literally no different from what one can see written on Twitter .
For example trans-activists frequently post rape and death threats against feminists who dare to assert that there are fundamental differences between males and females, or even to claim sonething as mild as “woman =Adult human female”
PseudoLeft “activists” like Antifa and BLM post exactly the same sort of threats as you have c&p’d above. Their targets are people who are to the right of them, on the political spectrum. Their language is everybit as potentially “seditious” or “treasonous”. Other than that the sentiments expressed as almost identical
Yet Amazon has no problem at all hosting twitter on its servers. Google has no issues with adverts for twitter.
So clearly the violent language, or potential for encouraging “sedition” or “treason”, is simply NOT the issue.
Clearly something else is motivating this cancellation

Posted by: Triden | Jan 12 2021 4:17 utc | 199