Hillary Clinton is American, owned by financial interests to whom she is completely in thrall, a rabid neo-conservative warmonger, completely uncritical of Israel and focused for any claim to be progressive entirely on identity politics. Which is also a precise description of today’s Guardian newspaper. The once august and intellectual title is now a shrill cheerleader for far right Blairites and wealthy American feminists.
The Guardian is as unabashed in its support for Clinton as in its support for the Blairites. The stream of “feminist” articles about why it would advance the cause of women to have a deeply corrupt right winger in the White House is steadily growing into a torrent. It is a perfect example of what I wrote of a month ago, the cause of feminism being hijacked to neo-conservative ends.
Bernie Sanders is not perfect – nobody is. But he understands that obscene and still burgeoning wealth inequality is the greatest problem of western society, and that the state framework supporting crazed banking structures is the root cause of this. The support for him is a sign of the inevitable popular reaction to the extreme inequality of society. Sanders is channelling that reaction effectively.
The establishment therefore circles its wagons around Hillary Clinton. The hope is that women can be persuaded it is an act of misogyny simply to stand in her way. The other great establishment hope is that the Democrat party machinery is so strong in black communities, that black Americans can be in effect ordered to vote for a woman who epitomises the system which disadvantages them, rather than an apostle of genuine change in the economic order. I retain hope the establishment may find that black Americans are cleverer than that.
The machinery used to manipulate identity politics – racial and gender – is all that Clinton has. If Clinton beats Sanders, it will be the perfect demonstration of the fact that identity politics has become the enemy of progress in society.
In the field of identity, Bernie Sanders would be the first non-Christian President of the United States. Would that not be wonderful in a country whose politicians feel the need to genuflect to swarms of religious evolution-denying nutters who believe foreign wars are good because they presage the Rapture?
And would it not be great if the first President since Carter not in thrall to Israel were Jewish?
OK RobG, you tell me then. What is the “right side of history” as you put it? And what do you have to say about climate change?
While I’m waiting for RobG, I’ll restate my position on the Fukushima nuclear disaster. It seems unlikely to be a near-term extinction event because it’s presumably comparable with the Chernobyl disaster which happened decades ago and hasn’t apparently slowed human population growth; cancer is at record levels and rising but it’s nowhere near the population growth rate and we’re not seeing global infertility or cumulative mutation. I expect that the Pacific marine food chain has been badly perturbed but evidence has been posted that it is already recovering.
Unless RobG is proposing nearly complete corruption of the academic community marine biologists are the people to ask and they seem FAR more concerned about climate change than about the Fukushima disaster.
So, RobG, either you’re caught in a filter-bubble producing confirmation bias and you need to change IP address, clear your cache and cookies and start reading more widely, or you have an ulterior motive.
@Clark 11.55PM,
I find it laudable that you are still of the opinion that its still possible to put alternative and contrary views across via the UK’s MSM, and indeed remember the days when the likes of John Pilger and Seymour Hersh were taken very seriously indeed, and elements within our media were prepared to detail abuses and fight for justice – those days are long gone I’m afraid to say.
You also seem to be of the opinion that it is fine for certain contributors to derail actual themes covered by disruptive techniques, techniques they seem well versed at – as witnessed just my a 12 month trawl of back issues on this site.
Surely the purpose of a website, who’s Blog owner is allegedly a proponent of human rights, is to highlight abuses and remedy blatant biases of our own media and those who seem incapable of discerning fact from fiction, or those who sow dissent by adhering to lies and deception to justify some political axe they may have to grind.
For the record, from a political perspective I’ve very much on the libertarian left, that is I have a great fear of concentrated power held in a few hands. Whilst my own colleague Prof. Graeber coined the term ‘the 1%’, for my sins i’d much prefer we actually concentrated our firepower on the 0.3% that in reality would constitute economically speaking those who actually hold sway – many of whom can be seen at Davos on an annual basis. As ever it really is a case of follow the money, which seems to be the fundamental driver for many of the issues confronting the World today, and this applies as much to Syria and it does to the Ukraine.
Of course other elements are also at play, but the fact remains certain interests seem hellbent on creating chaos internationally, whilst selling out their own people, such as the BS one David Cameron proclaimed yesterday that he’s batting for the UK, which is a blatant lie, but one nonetheless spun for all to see, despite much evidence to suggest the only persons this guy bats for are those with incredible wealth, much of which is concentrated in the City of London.
I’ll leave it there, but will remind you as a concerned global citizen I have a moral duty to oppose much of the propaganda that is taken as fact by the gullible, the deceived and the ill-informed, some of which I’ve attempted to detail on these boards for a week or two.
However, if you desire trolls to rule the roost, so be it, but that hardly upholds standards you seem to deem important.
I’ll leave it there and desist from posting unless said post is pertinent to the theme of this thread, which has digressed greatly from Ms. Clinton, The Guardian and the neoconservative BS they spread.
Important article on MSM disinformation on Syria from Stephen Kinzer, which also mentions Clinton’s duplicity;
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/18/the-media-are-misleading-public-syria/8YB75otYirPzUCnlwaVtcK/story.html
Macky
17 Feb, 2016 – 8:41 pm
“It reminds me of other common misrepresentation, that of the Immaculate Conception, which most people thinks relates to Mary bearing Jesus, whereas it’s actually refers to the birth of Mary herself, as her mother Saint Anne, was free from original sin.”
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I didn’t know that Macky; it must have been the first IVF treatment carried out. As to the virgin Mary, did Joseph not give her one? Or was that the second IVF?
Doug Scorgie; “I didn’t know that Macky”
Don’t worry Doug, most “religious” people don’t know either, so what chance the non-religious ! 🙂
Clark
18 Feb, 2016 – 10:29 pm
Everyone ignored my link; apparently, they’d rather take out their frustration on Habbabkuk. Look, if people didn’t keep posting rubbish Habbabkuk wouldn’t be able to keep complaining about it, right?
Look. This is a declassified US Department of Defense document from 2012 about the US knowingly supporting ISIS to overthrow the Syrian government:
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I read it Clark but its hardly something we didn’t already know or suspect; so not much to say about it really.
@Macky 9.19PM,
Macky, I am sorry I had not noticed this post as I’d have responded promptly and congratulated you on bring it to our attention.
Suffice to say, and by way of a comparison, Robert Ford’s lies/propaganda on behalf of the Bush and Obama Administrations is breathtaking, particularly compared to the brutal honesty that has been displayed by the UK’s former Ambassador to Syria in posts that are detailed elsewhere on this thread.
Some seem to think we are playing games and point scoring – no need to name these, but the sad fact remains Syria is in chaos and countless thousands dying as a result of the crazies and lunatics taking over US overseas policy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks – policies that easily sit side-by-side those genocidal policies of Israel as it pursues its own chaos agenda in the ME, supported by the West, House of Saud and numerous other despots – and then they have the temerity to denounce Assad and Putin. Some hypocrisy that, but hypocrisy seems to be a major theme of many of the deniers posting on this Blog.
Doug Scorgie, 9:48 am; thanks for letting me know you read it. Gets lonely, y’know.
Doug it is a kind of affirmation process that some people look for, to ascertain the veracity of data they already have. This is the kind of scepticism that the neocon scum rely on, to further their cause. As manifestly the lag between the initiation of their shenanigans/skulduggery and the data of actualities trickling its way out into the public domain affords the neocon scum the opportunity of having moved onto cause a new disaster.
This is the kind of mass MK ultra experiment that these neocon scum subject the wider public to, and count on/use all manner of abuse, to render the masses susceptible to suggestions. That ultimately is designed for confusing them and pushing them into a submissive posture, albeit through searching for the veracity of the available data.
But that success is subject to people buying into the cock and bull yarn of “democracy”, “freedom”, “free markets”, …………. which then become the source of the confusion for those believing all that bullshit and then face the contradictory and weird actualities; bombing people into freedom!
Thus the existence of the redacted images in the target pdf file comforts those whom find it difficult to understand the tenets of the current systems of governance in the West; strong arming everyone into submission.
Not soon after the government banning the BDS campaign now councils and public bodies are banned from divesting from the fossil fuel industry!!! As Norman Finkelstein points out; “Jews in US were moving locked in step with the establishment” that in reality the establishment uses various groups as and when it requires to further it’s goals. As in the use of the gays and lesbians as and when there is a need to attack the Muslims or Christians for that matter. Or the all singing and and dancing “secularism” getting promoted with an almost religious zeal
=================
In the other news the evil vigilante in uniform in zionistan are busy practising “democracy”
Note that after knocking the disabled Palestinian from his wheel chair; who had gone to the aid of young girl shot by one of the vigilante thugs in uniform. Then the rest of the hive of the vigilante thugs in uniform proceed to threaten unarmed Palestinian youth with loaded rifles whilst kicking and punching the said youth that is followed up by throwing stun grenades/pepper gas grenades into the crowd of the unarmed civilians gathered to protest the barbaric treatment of a disabled individual and the shooting of the young girl*
* conveniently these days all those Palestinian shot dead are accused of attacking the vigilante thugs in uniform with a knife!!!! Where is the international communities’ outrage? Why is there not a “no fly zone” declared in zionstan? Why the plight of the oppressed Palestinians after seven decades still is not being addressed?
@Fedup,
Can we for the record not clump all followers of Judaism with Zionists and neocons who purport to represent International Jewery, which is like David Cameron claiming to represent all of the UK, despite the majority being opposed to him and the Conservatives. Suffice to say the Zionists, like their neocon bedfellows, attack all who stand in their way. And that includes orthodox Jews – now mysteriously tarnished with the title ‘ULTRA”, as in ultra orthodox – which is a bit of a misnomer given Jewish scripture forbids its followers from establishing a Jewish State or nation, hence notions of the ‘eternal wandering Jew’, which sounds like an insult, until you understand the significance of the actual meaning behind it, namely followers of Judaism in their journey’s from the Holy Land were to act as beacons of all that was good about mankind and those who believed in but one God, and by these Godly actions would inspire others – similar indeed to Mormonism.
Hence having a Jewish community in one’s midst was a positive – obviously many followers of Christianity, which essentially equates to Heretical Judaism, there being no resurrection belief tolerated by true followers of the religion/scripture.
Whilst this is all arcane stuff, the fact remains that those followers who remain loyal to Jewish scripture and actively oppose Zionists are themselves beaten, tortured and vilified. And many of these in principle have joined in solidarity with their Palestinian peers, which is most laudable because less we forget the true followers of Judaism were at the forefront of working class political movements in America and Europe, as they were in the forefront of fighting racial intolerance in the USA in the 50’s and 60’s.
This is one reason I despise anti-semitism because many followers of Judaism are our comrades and struggled on everyones behalf for equality and justice, those who follow and advocate Zionism I have zero time for or tolerance, for as with fascism and NAZISM it’s a stain on the good character of Judaism.It will be nice for others to fill in gaps, but the reality is not all Jews living in Israel are bad or support Zionism – their lives too are blighted.
Another nail in the coffin of Big oil.
https://animpossibleinvention.com/2016/02/18/historic-event-one-year-1-megawatt-e-cat-trial-completed/
Chris Rogers, 7:40 am: it has taken me a fair while to compose this reply to your 07:40 comment; I regard such issues as surprisingly complex, involving millions of individuals’ motives, both conscious and unconscious, and those individuals’ behaviour within the turbulent flow of information as receivers, selectors and transmitters of information themselves. What we don’t and cannot know is always many times greater than that which we can or do know, and thus each of us falls into promoting our own personal ‘propaganda’, despite even our own best efforts to the contrary.
When is it justifiable to call someone a troll or a disrupter? Their choices of which opinions and beliefs they propagate regarding reported events are inevitably influenced by their position within the the chaotic swirl of information in which we are all immersed; just about any set of opinions may be being advanced in good faith…
(…whereas facts cannot be denied without dishonesty. Repeatedly we see individuals ignoring specific facts which conflict with their opinions, but those labelled “trolls” or “eminences” have no monopoly on this behaviour, just as secret services have no monopoly on the use of plausible deniability).
However, when someone tells me what my motive is, they are trespassing. Often I have been told, for instance, that I am propagandising on behalf of Israel; just last night RobG accused me of pro-Neocon propagandising. Usually, commenters seem to do this because I won’t fully accept their hobby-horse campaign, so therefore, they seem to reason, I must be part of “the enemy”.
Grief, what does it take? If climate change can teach us anything at all, surely it is that we are our own worst enemy (anyone reading this on papyrus excepted). And from that it follows that we choose others to define as our “enemy”, so that we can justify ourselves by projecting our very own faults onto them.
There are many conflicts in this world, many of them deliberately exacerbated. But playing a major role in each of them and in the exacerbation process itself is human nature, which we all share.
Tolerance. Love. Peace.
Time is running out…
Clark @ 02:05: “RobG, I have never seen any comment from Glenn_uk urging anyone to go to war. Link to evidence or withdraw the charge.”
Thanks Clark, but I doubt if RobG is going to have the courage to substantiate the charge, or have the decency to withdraw it for that matter.
Then we have Anon1 telling lies and making up quotes that he attributes to me, for reasons best known to himself, and – again – lacks the courage or decency to substantiate or withdraw the charge.
I can’t think why anyone goes to the effort to make stuff up, sullying what little reputation they have in the process. After all, with all the junk and nonsense I’ve written, why don’t they just quote something profoundly stupid that I _did_ actually say?
Chris thanks for explaining it for the benefit of others. The “US Jews” is an allusion to the middles class Jews in the US who are differentiated from the other Jews across the globe.
Further elaboration for the record, is the Jews in zionistan in fact fall into three main categories, Ashkenazim this tribe is the top tier and is the managerial class if you will; does not do the hard work of any kind, basically lording it over the rest. For hard work there are the Sephardim who are the workers and the next tier down from the top, Then there is the Arab Jews who are for doing the dirty and unsavoury work, that is not too dirty work, because for that there always is the oppressed Palestinians who will work for pittance doing all manner of jobs that Jews in zionistan won’t do.
Some of the Sephardim, and more so numbers of Arab Jews are now emigrating out of zionistan and going back to where they originally came from. This last group in particular has been somewhat troublesome because they are not buying into the tribal imperatives as they are expected to, and some of them are pretty vocal about it too. Hence they are going back to their original countries ie Morocco etc.
Further the black Jews from Sudan and Ethiopia having been discriminated against that they have held numerous demonstrations against are now leaving zionistan for African destinations too.
The elegant course of all supremacist policies always ends up in discriminations getting devised within the supremacist group itself. As it has been empirically the case throughout the history.
In conclusion as you have pointed out the Jews themselves are being oppressed by the zionist policies at times paying huge prices for their perceived disloyalty or even misdeeds, as this poor chap has been subject of; Rabbi Dovid Weiss on Judaism, Israel and Zionism
Not forgetting the poor Mordechai Vanunu a true human being indeed.
Thanks for all the links From Brian and Clark, the latter was not a surprise as we all suspected IS being funded from the west since we started training Al Nusra and Al Quaeda terrorists in Jordan.
Freely translated first paragraph
“NATO allies, (for the first time, imho,) signalled to Ankara that Turkey could not rely on the support of fellow members if they are to start an aggressive confrontation with Russia.”
Now this somewhat proves my theory that we are not going to nuclear war because its more profitable to have conventional confrontations, the arms dealers and manufactures are already determining foreign policy in some perverse way.
Turkey has played with matches given to them by the US, together with Saudi Arabia and Quatar they thought to provide a blazing inferno, but as it happened, Putin has peed on it by hurting them very hard.
Assad will most likely stay in power, in a parliament that might allow more freedom and access for others, depending on negotiations in Vienna, but Syria, buoyed by its support from Putin, might follow through and re- take the Golan after a long period of occupation by Israel, without compensating the pirtaes trying to steal Syria’s resources.
Thats’ when it gets interesting as we will hear Murdoch and Cheney, both involved in Genie Oil, will scream to high heaven about the ‘brutality of the Syrian regime’, the blatant advances of Russia trying to defeat small poor little Israel….
sorry link to the story for all those able to read German.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/nato-warnt-tuerkei-kein-bedingungsloser-schutz-gegen-russland-a-1078275.html
Clark,
Anyone who posts anything in good faith, right or wrong, gets some credit from me, for even i’m guilty of it, and when reality is offered to me I have the good grace to withdraw and apologise. However, I’m afraid to say we do seem to have a fair few on here who are not posting in good faith, quite the reverse they are repetitive in their behaviour to an extent I find hard to fathom.
And as for issues of black and white, right and wrong ultimately sides are drawn, and for me at least I’ve always known which side of the barricade I belong too – whilst many like sitting on the fence, some of us with strong moral and political convictions cannot do so. Indeed, had I’d been in my 20’s, no doubt I may have travelled to the ME to engage in the real struggle with imperialist forces, as many from my neck of the woods did in the 1930s when travelling to Spain in support of its Republic.
Again, a liberal I am not, i’m happy for give and take and a good old dialogue if it progresses the cause, but I’m opposed to those trying to close down dialogue with well known tricks of the trade and expect to get away with it. Such instances were rampant on CIF on The Guardian website – and as we see i have the courage of my convictions, which is why I don’t hid behind silly user names, despite any blowback i may get for my convictions and willingness to convey them under my real name wherever I post, or try too as in the case of the Grauniad itself.
Finally, a little MSM light on the Syrian hall of mirrors:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/18/the-media-are-misleading-public-syria/8YB75otYirPzUCnlwaVtcK/story.html
Washington Post: For the first time, a major poll shows Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton.
Three-point lead for Sanders in this new national Fox News poll. I tried to follow the article’s link to the Fox News site, but I couldn’t get through. I guess a lot of people may be trying to go to that site. So I can’t tell you what the margin of error and the degree of confidence are for this poll.
“Well MI6 and SIS are one of the same and NDEDIU is part of the civil police, all are intelligence or counter intelligence agencies and not secret police forces; the role of which is to detect and crush dissent. Real or imagined.”
______________
Kempe.
I thought you might say that, but you’ve not fully understood the roll of a secret police force. In many ways there remit tends to overlap that of the security agencies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_police
UPDATE: I got through to the Fox News site. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/02/18/fox-news-poll-clinton-feels-bern-trails-sanders-by-three-points-nationally.html . Sanders is ahead 47-44 nationally. Margin of error of 3% for all registered voters and 4.5% for sample of Democratic primary voters. Presumably for the Sanders-Clinton gap, it’s the latter margin that matters. Assuming they used the conventional 95% confidence interval, at 2 standard deviations from the mean, that would put the gap at 1.5 standard deviations, with approximately 86% probability that Sanders is actually ahead of Clinton. (Journalists, who don’t understand statistics, always assume that, if a result is within the margin of error, it is meaningless. That isn’t true. All it means is that the probability of the poll’s result actually being correct is less than the 95% confidence interval usually used. It may still be true, as it is here, that the probability of its being correct, although below 95%, is still well above 50%.)
The Hill: Sanders overtakes Clinton in Colorado: poll. Washington Free Beacon poll puts Sanders ahead in CO 49-43. Democratic caucus in CO Mar. 1.
Youtube: Trump: “You will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center”. Might have been the Saudis, he says. Talks about secret papers the government has. Sounds as if he might reveal the truth about 9/11 if he becomes president.
Las Vegas Sun: Culinary Union won’t take sides in [Nevada] Democratic caucuses.
Bernie Sanders wins backing of African American group in Nevada’s largest county.
Kempe
18 Feb, 2016 – 11:35 pm
“Well MI6 and SIS are one of the same and NDEDIU is part of the civil police, all are intelligence or counter intelligence agencies and not secret police forces; the role of which is to detect and crush dissent. Real or imagined.”
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We have a secret police department in the UK Kempe and its role is to detect and crush dissent; it is called the Special Branch.
They work hand in glove with MI5.
MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Special Branch. That’s four.
How many more? Doesn’t SAS often do MI6’s bidding? For Death on the Rock, I imagine they were working for MI5.
lysias
18 Feb, 2016 – 11:55 pm
“Amitai Etzioni writes in Ha’aretz that Israel should “flatten Beirut” (because Hezbollah is there). Prominent American professor proposes that Israel “flatten Beirut” — a 1 million-person city it previously decimated.”
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I wonder if our resident trolls will condemn that proposal?
Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies_of_the_United_Kingdom lists 9 UK intel agencies.
Lysias
18 Feb, 2016 – 11:55 pm
“Amitai Etzioni writes in Ha’aretz that Israel should “flatten Beirut” (because Hezbollah is there). Prominent American professor proposes that Israel “flatten Beirut” — a 1 million-person city it previously decimated.”
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Will our resident Zionist trolls condemn this proposal?