Jonathan Cook analyzes what progressives can glean from a major squabble between different wings of the same neoliberal establishment.
By JonathanCook
Jonathan-Cook.net
Here are three important lessons for the progressive left to consider now that it is clear the inquiry by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russia-gate is never going to uncover collusion between Donald Trump’s camp and the Kremlin in the 2016 presidential election.
No. 1: Painting the Pig’s face
The left never had a dog in this race. This was always an in-house squabble between different wings of the establishment. Late-stage capitalism is in terminal crisis, and the biggest problem facing our corporate elites is how to emerge from this crisis with their power intact. One wing wants to make sure the pig’s face remains painted, the other is happy simply getting its snout deeper into the trough while the food lasts.
Russia-gate was never about substance, it was about who gets to image-manage the decline of a turbo-charged, self-harming neoliberal capitalism.
The leaders of the Democratic Party are less terrified of Trump and what he represents than they are of us and what we might do if we understood how they have rigged the political and economic system to their permanent advantage.
For them, it may look like Russia-gate was a failure, but it was actually a success. It deflected the left’s attention from endemic corruption within the leadership of the Democratic Party, which supposedly represents the left. It diverted the left’s political energies towards the convenient bogeymen targets of Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Caricature of Putin helping Trump win election. (DonkeyHotey via Flickr)
What Mueller found – all he was ever going to find – was marginal corruption in the Trump camp. And that was inevitable because Washington is mired in corruption. In fact, what Mueller revealed was the most exceptional forms of corruption among Trump’s team while obscuring the run-of-the-mill stuff that would have served as a reminder of the endemic corruption infecting the Democratic leadership too.
An anti-corruption investigation would have run much deeper and exposed far more. It would have highlighted the Clinton Foundation, and the role of mega-donors such as James Simons, George Soros and Haim Saban who funded Hillary’s campaign with one aim in mind: to get their issues into a paid-for national “consensus.”
Further, in focusing on the Trump camp – and relative minnows such as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone – the Russia-gate inquiry actually served to shield the Democratic leadership from an investigation into the much worse corruption revealed in the content of the Democratic National Committee emails. It was the leaking / hacking of those emails that provided the rationale for Mueller’s investigations. What should have been at the front and center of any inquiry was how the Democratic Party sought to rig its primaries to prevent party members selecting anyone but Hillary as their presidential candidate.
So, in short, Russia-gate has been two years of wasted energy by the left, energy that could have been spent both targeting Trump for what he is really doing rather than what it is imagined he has done, and targeting the Democratic leadership for its own, equally corrupt practices.
No. 2: Trump Empowered
But it’s far worse than that. It is not just that the left wasted two years of political energy on Russia-gate. At the same time, it empowered Trump, breathing life into his phony arguments that he is the anti-establishment president, a people’s president the elites are determined to destroy.
Trump: Establishment’s image threat. (Succo from Pixabay)
Trump faces opposition from within the establishment not because he is “anti-establishment” but because he refuses to decorate the pig’s snout with lipstick. He is tearing the mask off late-stage capitalism’s greed and self-destructiveness. And he is doing so not because he wants to reform or overthrow turbo-charged capitalism but because he wants to remove the last, largely cosmetic constraints on the system so that he and his friends can plunder with greater abandon – and destroy the planet more quickly.
The other wing of the neoliberal establishment, the one represented by the Democratic Party leadership, fears that exposing capitalism in this way – making explicit its inherently brutal, wrist-slitting tendencies – will awaken the masses, that over time it will risk turning them into revolutionaries. Democratic Party leaders fear Trump chiefly because of the threat he poses to the image of the political and economic system they have so lovingly crafted so that they can continue enriching themselves and their children.
Trump’s genius – his only genius – is to have appropriated, and misappropriated, some of the language of the left to advance the interests of the 1 percent. When he attacks the corporate “liberal” media for having a harmful agenda, for serving as propagandists, he is not wrong. When he rails against the identity politics cultivated by “liberal” elites over the past two decades – suggesting that it has weakened the U.S. – he is not wrong. But he is right for the wrong reasons.
The corporate media, and the journalists they employ, are propagandists – for a system that keeps them wealthy. When Trump was a Republican primary candidate, the entire corporate media loved him because he was TV’s equivalent of clickbait, just as he had been since reality TV began to usurp the place of current affairs programs and meaningful political debate.
The handful of corporations that own the U.S. media – and much of corporate America besides – are there both to make ever-more money by expanding profits and to maintain the credibility of a political and economic system that lets them make ever more money.
The “liberal” corporate media shares the values of the Democratic Party leadership. In other words, it is heavily invested in making sure the pig doesn’t lose its lipstick. By contrast, Fox News and the shock-jocks, such as Trump, prioritize making money in the short term over the long-term credibility of a system that gives them license to make money. They care much less whether the pig’s face remains painted.
So Trump is right that the “liberal” media is undemocratic and that it is now propagandizing against him. But he is wrong about why. In fact, all corporate media – whether “liberal” or not, whether against Trump or for him – is undemocratic. All of the media propagandizes for a rotten system that keeps the vast majority of Americans impoverished. All of the media cares more for Trump and the elites he belongs to than it cares for the 99 percent.
Similarly, with identity politics. Trump says he wants to make (a white) America great again, and uses the left’s obsession with identity as a way to energize a backlash from his own supporters.
Just as too many on the left sleep-walked through the past two years waiting for Mueller – a former head of the FBI, the U.S. secret police, for chrissakes! – to save them from Trump, they have been manipulated by liberal elites into the political cul-de-sac of identity politics.
2017 anti-Trump rally, Salisbury, Connecticut. (Corinna Barnard)
Just as Mueller put the left on standby — into waiting-for-the-Messiah mode — so simple-minded, pussy-hat-wearing identity politics has been cultivated in the supposedly liberal bastions of the corporate media and Ivy League universities – the same universities that have turned out generations of Muellers and Clintons – to deplete the left’s political energies. While we argue over who is most entitled and most victimized, the establishment has carried on raping and pillaging Third World countries, destroying the planet and siphoning off the wealth produced by the rest of us.
These liberal elites long ago worked out that if we could be made to fight among ourselves about who was most entitled to scraps from the table, they could keep gorging on the main course.
The “liberal” elites exploited identity politics to keep us divided by pacifying the most marginalized with the offer of a few additional crumbs. Trump has exploited identity politics to keep us divided by inflaming tensions as he reorders the hierarchy of “privilege” in which those crumbs are offered. In the process, both wings of the elite have averted the danger that class consciousness and real solidarity might develop and start to challenge their privileges.
No. 3: The Corbyn Experience
But the most important lesson of all for the left is that support among its ranks for the Mueller inquiry against Trump was foolhardy in the extreme.
Not only was the inquiry doomed to failure – in fact, not only was it designed to fail – but it has set a precedent for future politicized investigations that will be used against the progressive left should it make any significant political gains. And an inquiry against the real left will be far more aggressive and far more “productive” than Mueller was.
Corbyn: First true progressive with shot at power in living memory. (Sophie Brown via Wikimedia)
If there is any doubt about that look to the U.K. Britain now has within reach of power the first truly progressive politician in living memory, someone seeking to represent the 99 per cent, not the 1 percent. But Jeremy Corbyn’s experience as the leader of the Labour Party – massively swelling the membership’s ranks to make it the largest political party in Europe – has been eye-popping.
I have documented Corbyn’s travails regularly in this blog over the past four years at the hands of the British political and media establishment. You can find many examples here.
Corbyn, even more so than the small, new wave of insurgency politicians in the U.S. Congress, has faced a relentless barrage of criticism from across the U.K.’s similarly narrow political spectrum. He has been attacked by both the rightwing media and the supposedly “liberal” media. He has been savaged by the ruling Conservative Party, as was to be expected, and by his own parliamentary Labour Party. The U.K.’s two-party system has been exposed as just as hollow as the one in the U.S.
The ferocity of the attacks has been necessary because, unlike the Democratic Party’s success in keeping a progressive left-winger away from the presidential campaign, the U.K. system accidentally allowed a socialist to slip past the gatekeepers. All hell has broken out ever since.
Corbyn rally in Bristol, 2016. (Wikimedia)
What is so noticeable is that Corbyn is rarely attacked over his policies – mainly because they have wide popular appeal. Instead he has been hounded over fanciful claims that, despite being a life-long and very visible anti-racism campaigner, he suddenly morphed into an outright anti-Semite the moment party members elected him leader.
I will not reprise again how implausible these claims are. Simply look through these previous blog posts should you be in any doubt.
But what is amazing is that, just as with the Mueller inquiry, much of the British left – including prominent figures like Owen Jones and the supposedly countercultural Novara Media – have sapped their political energies in trying to placate or support those leading the preposterous claims that Labour under Corbyn has become “institutionally anti-Semitic.” Again, the promotion of a simple-minded identity politics – which pits the rights of Palestinians against the sensitivities of Zionist Jews about Israel – was exploited to divide the left.
The more the left has conceded to this campaign, the angrier, the more implacable, the more self-righteous Corbyn’s opponents have become – to the point that the Labour Party is now in serious danger of imploding.
Were the U.S. to get its own Corbyn as president, he or she would undoubtedly face a Mueller-style inquiry, and one far more effective at securing the president’s impeachment than this one was ever going to be.
That is not because a leftwing U.S. president would be more corrupt or more likely to have colluded with a foreign power. As the U.K. example shows, it would be because the entire media system – from The New York Timesto Fox News– would be against such a president. And as the U.K. example also shows, it would be because the leaderships of both the Republican and Democratic parties would work as one to finish off such a president.
In the combined success-failure of the Mueller inquiry, the left has an opportunity to understand in a much more sophisticated way how real power works and in whose favor it is exercised. It is moment that should be clarifying – if we are willing to open our eyes to Mueller’s real lessons.
Jonathan Cook is a freelance journalist based in Nazareth. He blogs at https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/.
Even with all the dire future tripping, it would still be a step forward, away from our corporate dominated government to have a socialist IN OFFICE to Attack! I’m so glad AOC and Talib and all the others elected didn’t listen to the old white guys who predicted doom if the left even TRIED to attack the Corpracrats. I think esp of Thumb Hartman, that depressing old gatekeeper. Now this bozo. Go away boys. The pussy hats did more to change the US than all your pontificating about how bad it all is. For DECADES! Stop talking and start listening to women and climb down off your privilege and start supporting the women who have actually begun to change the calculus. It’s going to be a long fight, why not get on the winning side right now?
And I just looked thru the comments and realized everyone is STILL obsessed with this nothing burger! Don’t you have work to do?
According to a new report from the New York Times Mueller has farmed out federal indictments to 1) the SDNY, in Manhattan, 2) the EDNY, in Brooklyn, 3) the EDVA in Virginia, 4) the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, 5) the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington DC, 6) the DOJ National Security Division, and 7) the DOJ Criminal Division. So what is the take away from all this? Those who are familiar with Mueller’s investigation understand that “no more indictments from Mueller” doesn’t mean “no more indictments.” It means every single one of Mueller’s existing indictments resides in a “presidential pardon proof” prosecutorial district. Recall how Mueller handed off the Cohen case to the U.S. Attorneys’ office for the SDNY, who sent Cohen to prison. As his own investigation ends, it becomes clear Mueller plans to handle all indictments/prosecutions resulting from his investigation through these seven federal prosecutorial entities.
No. 4:
“Robert Swann Mueller III. Robert was born into the upper crust in our American class system. At one point in his education in private schools John Kerry was a classmate. (Kerry was also a fellow Bonesman with the Bushes.) Mueller met his eventual bride, Ann Cabell Standish, at one of the dances they attended. They married in 1966, three years after John Kennedy’s assassination. If you have read much about the JFK assassination you would recognize her middle name. Her grandfather, Charles Cabell, had been second in command at the CIA when John Kennedy was elected President. In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy fired three men from leadership positions at the CIA: Director Allen Dulles, Cabell and Richard Bissell. Charles Cabell was Ann’s grandfather. Her grand uncle, Earle Cabell, was the mayor of Dallas at the time of Kennedy’s murder there. Recently declassified JFK documents revealed that Mayor Cabell was also an asset of the CIA at the time. Small world. You could say that Mueller married into the CIA, except that his great uncle was Richard Bissell. So between his family and his wife’s family Mueller had two of the three people that Kennedy fired before he was assassinated by a “lone nut”, as well as the mayor who hosted the assassination. The third man fired was Allen Dulles, who sat on the Warren Commission and managed to keep the CIA out of the investigation into JFK’s murder. Perhaps Dulles was a guest at the wedding.”
No. 5:
“What was obvious to me from the start, that this was a psyop that involved U.S. intelligence, Ukrainian intelligence, Clinton and the DNC, will not be obvious to Mueller. Thus, as his career has shown, Mueller has been put in place not merely to prosecute those around Trump as a means of pressure on his administration, but to not see the CIA’s hand in it.”
https://caucus99percent.com/content/what-mueller-wont-find
Russiagate was a highly sophisticated military-intelligence-media 2- year psychological operation engineered to make everyone forget about WikiLeaks Clinton emails showing she and the U.S. establishment KNEW about Saudi Arabia, Qatar etc. financing ISIS, the supposed “Most dangerous terrorist organization in the history of the world!”.
Robert Mueller succeeded, beyond probably even his wildest dreams; it’s back to “business as usual” and the world is safe for “freedom and democracy”; everyone became dazzled by the “bright, shiny ball” for 2-years, ending up totally oblivious amnesiacs on the most harmful series of major covert war crimes ever devised: “state-sponsored terrorism”.
… and where is Israel’s Corbyn … ?
Trump-Russia propaganda has had the tactical advantage of mis-directing people’s attention from Hillary’s own deals with, and receipt of money from, Russia. The uranium deal, her degenerate husband being paid $500,000 for one speech, the corrupt Clinton “charity” foundation, and who knows what else.
Accusing others of what the actual perpetrator has done is a good tactical move that confuses people – it makes the issue appear indecipherable to much of the public.
And corruption in American media and upper levels of law enforcement, intelligence, helps a lot.
This is why the deep state does not want the public to be familiar the real situation of the JFK assassination of 55+ years ago. Once its absorbed, people will figure they’re often looking big kabuki shows being played in these political dramas..
Here are some lessons you can take away from it:
Based upon what we know so far, the “investigation” could have been wrapped up BEFORE the mid terms.
The DNC will apparently corrupt all aspects of government to attain power.
The MSM is nothing, NOTHING, more than a propaganda house of presstitutes.
Progressives will go to any length to delude themselves.
Nuclear war with RU, no problem. Civil war, no problem. Whatever it takes to get corrupt old drunk’s name on the door. It was, after all, her TURN.
Matt
I’m with you except for the last one. In no way are the latte-sippers real progressives. Real progressives have been excluded from the DNC flimflam because they favor waging peace in a multi-polar world. Just like the Libertarians, they are enemies of the evil empire.
There’s no mystery about the reasons that the Democratic centrists, the Clintonites et al, promoted this Russiagate nonsense.
But what it less well understood is the eagerness with which large sections of the Democratic ‘left’ -the actual victims of the cheating that the emails exposed- leaped on the bandwagon, adding their energies and their credibility, much greater than the DNC’s, to propel forward a mythology which clearly undercuts the entire political rationale of the ‘left.’ And whose only beneficiaries are the Wall St Regulars of the party machine.
It’s a mystery solved by recognising that one thing that the ‘left’ has in common with the Pelosis and Schumers is contempt for the average American, the working class-the masses that both they and Clinton find ‘deplorable.’
The ‘left’ strategy therefore was to intensify the McCarthyism, to whip up a lynch mob mentality among voters-who they were certain would be convinced that Trump is a traitor and his victory the result of one of those conspiracies which the great unwashed are, deplorably, so prone to believe. They believed that then, with the public overtaken by a mad frenzy for blood, long prison terms, mighty ones humbled, they would be able to smuggle some progressives into Congress in a Democratic landslide-a Blue Wave.
That is how dumb they were. Are.
All of this was just to destract everyone from Hilary’s crimes!
FEBRUARY 19, 2015 Foreign cash pours into Clinton family foundation
More than 40 percent of the top donors to the Clinton family foundation are based in foreign countries, which could lead to conflict-of-interest questions for Hillary Clinton as she prepares to launch her campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article10677056.html
I’m reminded of the War of The Spanish Succession . Who will sit in the throne? Get the bigger piece of the pie? War of oligarchies. Wouldn’t mean a damn to the farmer or shoe maker or domestic. That’s the GOP vs DEMS in-house battle.
We need to rail against the Duopoly—a pox on both houses!—as false dichotomy designed to divide and conquer the People so the rich can get richer and prove Thrasymachus’ point that “power makes right”.
!
Propaganda always wins, if we let it. The main stream media is controlled by money, not ethics. Finding distractions is the common demoniator. The Mueller episode is a great example. What’s next? Exposing the U.S. sponsored assassination program would be a good start in exposing current foreign policy.
Official British media watchdog Ofcom penalized George Galloway for denouncing attacks on Jeremy Corbyn as anti-Semitic on his talkRADIo show. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/26/three-lessons-from-failed-mueller-inquiry/
I read several articles in the Sycophant (sorry, the Guardian) where Ofcom each time pretended that any comment not in the official line about Skripal and the evil Russkies was considered unbalanced.
Who appoints the independent members?????
IMO the basic problem is greed. If you wave a million dollars in front of most people they will take it, consequences be damned. For politicians a billion dollars may be required but the response is the same.
Only when the vast inequality that crapitalism promotes is eliminated will things get better. I’m not holding my hat.
Your analysis is spot on and astute. Great article.
This is a very fine article in general and it makes several points quite convincingly. Unfortunately, its central argument about who is behind the entire interminable Russiagate hoax remains incomplete, and therfore, I believe, incorrect. The Democratic Party establishment and the MSM are both mentioned here as sources of the great, and amazing still burgeoning, distractions that are perpetrated deliberately to keep public discourse sidetracked from our real and enormous problems in this society. That is all true as far as it goes. But it is a third element, namely the national security/surveillance state, the vast and incidious “spookocracy” blob, that is at the very center of, and provides the only “authorization,” however specious, of these propaganda ploys. All of the leading organs of the MSM, especially the NYT WaPo, CNN, WSJ, MSNBC, CBS, NPR, CPB etc. are now thoroughly captured by the CIA and other elements within the national security apparatus. They have also been in control of the entire unsucessful campaign to demonize and, they hope, depose, Donald Trump. As long as even the most allegedly “reputable” MSM outlets remains thoroughly “captured” by such malicious elements of the encroaching totalitarianism there is little hope for countering the effective deployment of CIA directed talking points throughout the American media system. The alliance between the Dem Party and the deep state spookocracy is merely temporary and a marriage of convenience. Soon they will probably utilize the Rep Party instead. What must be forever combatted, however, is the continuing “ownership” — in the case of the WaPo quite literally — of all the MSM outlets by a small cabal ofneocon/Zionist/MICC warmongers in the various agencies and government departments who keep the limits of discourse within properly reactionary and imperialistic boundaries.
The “spookocracy”!! Love it. Anyway, they are thoroughly entrenched in both parties, and every MSM outlet. They have ALL the real power and politics is only theater. As Frank Zappa said long ago “Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.”
Could not have said it better. In addition, I wish that people who have recognized that ‘collusion’ was a lie would also come to the realization that the entire Russia ‘interference’ is also a complete fabrication. If someone is a liar, why not assume everything they say is a lie. In fact, the lie about Russia is even more useful as it directly supports the Neocon/MICC warmongers.
“Left”? There is no left left in the Democratic party, if there ever was. It is a neo-colonial, war mongering, neocon, totalitarian party, in cahoots with the military/intelligence/security complex. How can this evil monster be called left? As for their supporters, they are not leftists – rather brain-washed sheeple, unable to entertain any independent thoughts.
Beyond that, it is a great article. especially, the 3rd lesson is going to haunt us terribly.
Yes! You nutshelled it brilliantly! Now…what do we do?
Real life politics can get pretty basic. Most votes come down to economic issues. The Dem voting base had long consisted of the poor and middle class, for the common good. The Clinton wing split this base wide apart in the ’90s, and the Obama years confirmed that this split is permanent. Much the way the Reagan Republicans “gained influence” over the MSM, the powerful Clinton Dems “gained influence” over the cable and online media marketed to middle class liberals. They tend to promote neoliberal ideology to the beat of a rock and roll song, so they’ve had a clear interest in promoting the Clinton wing.
2016: Many said from the start that if Clinton were selected, a Republican would be elected. But they couldn’t be heard above the noise of MSNBC, etc. The election results turned out to be more complicated. Roughly half of all registered voters rejected both Clinton and Trump, for some of the same reasons. In the end, Clinton got more votes, but Trump got the most electoral votes. Dem Party marketers knew that the issue of the electoral college process would fly over the heads of many, so they quickly latched onto “Russia stole the election!” The hope was that this could be used to ultimately replace Trump with Clinton. Media grabbed onto this simplistic theme, and ran with it. They ultimately built a tale that brought the country dangerously close to a catastrophic war, playing straight into the hands of the Republicans.
The Dem Party relies on liberal media to “rally the troops” and do fund-raising. Because they had invested so much in the Clinton wing, we knew from the start of Mueller’s investigation that they would reject any outcome that didn’t confirm “Russiagate.” Let me guess that they will announce another “bombshell” revelation in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election. After all, it’s all the Democrats have left to sell.
Basically the Mensheviks (left) vs Bolsheviks (right). They agree on the goals but differ only in how to get there. One is for brute force using crude lies and chaos of its growling twitterhead, the other prefers the deception of pursuing equality and while working toward inequality while wearing a smiley green painted face
The fight between the two factions is Fake Wrestling. The winner is of no importance since the earnings from the match go into the same pockets.
The Mr Cover it up Mueller investigation was never about bringing traitors to justice. Since when did he ever do that? 9/11, Anthrax, BCCI, etc. Not that I ever believed there was Russian government collusion with Trump, but his associations with Russian Mafia, Israel, business conflict of interest with China and Russia, DNC involvement with the email leaks, Comeys interference with the election by saying he was reopening the HC investigation should have led somewhere more than it did, even if only obstruction charges
Of course the guy charged with deciding on obstruction is a longtime Mueller associate also involved with squashing investigations into Irangate and BCCI for Bush, the recently appointed AJ Barr himself
The investigation gave Trump the excuse his supporters needed to defend him for backtracking on his promises. Perhaps this was the main purpose of the Fake Wrestling Mueller Investigation.
The other benefit was justification for censoring news and alt media. If you remember Obama kicked it off before he left office by creating a Ministry of Truth with the Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act. Shortly thereafter we had Prop or Not followed by the social media giants censoring programs. You can be sure money is flowing to certain sites to influence content in alt media as well. UK, France, EU and even Russia have followed suit with similar programs/legislation.
>The Mr Cover it up Mueller investigation was never about bringing traitors to justice.<
If he was interested in investigating treason and corruption, he would have investigated Hillary and the Clinton foundation, the DNC, the Podestas, etc.
There's a lot there.
“Late-stage capitalism is in terminal crisis”
I’m afraid that’s completely wrong. The world is ruled by industrial corporate fascism (the author calls it “capitalism”), and industrial fascism is getting stronger by the day, thanks to electronic surveillance, automation and other ‘technologies’.
I believe this has been already discussed in works like “1984” and “Brave New World”.
But those tales were predicated on no big storms, say, re-insurers would have to deal with, right? Plus valuable land areas and sea areas dropping out of the picture due to radiation contamination. Based on no crop seeds becoming a problem having been contaminated by man made versions, or fewer insect pollinators being a problem. Or no particulate pollution from frieghter bunker fuel. If the system is based on accelerated “growth,” and you stop fracking [China wants to frack] what happens to the equilibrium of a system that’s based on acceleration? Or if too many wells off Guyana and/or Brazil get yanked out of place?
Why do so many people spell “crapitalism” incorrectly???
1. Critics of Israeli policy wrt the aggression against Palestinians, especially Jewish intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein (who was denied tenure at De Paul University because he spoke out against Israeli policy wrt Gaza are falsely accused of being anti-semitic. Bizarre….. Finkelstein’s web site features a video of Noam Chomsky saying “I support Gaza”)
2. New Deal initiatives which were conceived and established following the financial instability and suffering of the Great Depression are now decried and disparaged as “socialism”. Bizarre…..
There are so many other instances of shrieks of outrage by special interests who twist the truth in an effort to discredit the people who dare to question policies that serve entrenched interests at the expense of the vast majority of people.
Whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and their publishers like wikileaks suffer attacks claiming they threaten “national security”. Those attacks even come out of our Ivy League Schools – The JFK School at Harvard withdrew the honorary degree they had awarded Ms Chelsea Manning. Bizarre!…..
It’s constant.
That weasel Newt Gingrich brought a new wave of it, as Sally Snyder pointed out in her comment, and the Neoliberal elite continue using this fear mongering and distortion to distract from the truth and shut down dissent.
If we can’t smack down the lies and create a more honest narrative about what’s going on/what’s going wrong, we’ll fail to be able to responsibly deal with what’s at hand for the majority of people in this country and the challenges we face.
Honorary title wasn’t it? But valid points all.
I just added 2 comments….First they appeared….Then suddenly they disappeared!….Has this happened before?….Can anybody explain?
And now they appeared again!….Magic!
Hi Maxine,
Welcome Aboard! And, Great – Great Comments! Thank You!!
I myself, I learn something new every time I visit the Consortium. This site, it is the True Citizen’s Globalization.
I will try my best to help, but please bare in mind, that I ‘am only a fellow commentor; as well.
It is standard for this site to post the comments in batches as the available time allows. So, it is possible for your comment not to appear, for possibly several hours. (These folks need rest too. (..smile..))
You can have a quick 5 minute review of everyone’s latest posts by making a “mock” post. Something as simple as any single character for your comment, and also any single character for your name will work. This will provide all of the real time posts, including those that are still waiting in the que on the server. (at least, this is how I understand it) But, as soon as you make your “test” post, hit F5 on your keyboard to refresh your current screen. This will allow you to delete your “mock” post, and yet still be able to read all of the other current contributions to the server.
But, there are also some key words that may flag and segregate your comment so that it will need to be manually reviewed for it’s content. I ‘am not at all sure what these words or phrases are. .. And, for this segregation, last year I copied this post that Joe Lauria had made to address this special circumstance:
Joe Lauria
October 17, 2018 at 10:53 am
Thank you O.
As explained many times, we don’t have the staff to review every comment made and so we need an imperfect automated system to help us. We ask for patience while a comment automatically pulled out is manually reviewed.
A part-timer who works four hours a day, five days a week does our comment moderation. Comments made outside these hours may remain on the pending list for several hours, i.e. from 3 pm EST to 11 am EST the next weekday. From Friday 3 p.m. EST to Monday 11 a.m. EST, no one is on duty to manually review comments the automated system has pulled out.
Comments aren’t “disappearing.” We just don’t have the staff to immediately review every comment pulled out by the automated system.
The system certainly needs refining. My comment was posted about 14 hours ago and there is still no sign of it. I would be interested to learn why.
Censorship is so widespread nowadays that we really would be better off without the pretence of allowing debate which is then carefully controlled.
By the way, Mike, thanks for your help. It is ‘bear in mind’ incidentally.
Hi Mike….Really appreciate your explanation….Many thanks….Maxine
Of course, there was never any evidence of collusion….However, since the investigation was fraudulent to begin with, ANYTHING coming out of it is inherently untrustworthy….By paying attention to the “conclusion” of this so-called investigation, we give face to Hillary Clinton and the other blockhead Democratic sore losers who started the rumor to begin with…And we also give credence to the fake Democracy that carried it out.
One more thing….Why are we still calling the Democratic party the “LEFT”??….When it comes to money, support of the 1% and warmaking , they are as “RIGHT” as any Republican.
And that goes for the MSM dullards as well.
” Moral depravity defines US politics.—- N. Chomsky
>so simple-minded, pussy-hat-wearing identity politics has been cultivated in the supposedly liberal bastions of the corporate media and Ivy League universities <
LOL – nicely said. God what a pack of moronic turds.
Get rid of any vestiges of male identity.
For christs sake disarm these baboons.
The Constitution is a piece of paper fit only for Sotheby auctions.
Get their kids into transgenderism classes.
I'll quit now ;-))
“The more the left has conceded to this campaign, the angrier, the more implacable, the more self-righteous Corbyn’s opponents have become – to the point that the Labour Party is now in serious danger of imploding.”
To the delight of the zionists.
Some serious truth-telling here. As Chris Hedges notes, the two functions of liberalism are to 1) keep hope alive that change is possible and 2) firmly dismiss any proposal for real improvement as radical. That is the role of the liberal establishment with respect to Corbin in the UK and Sanders in tge US.
Tnx CN… & Jonathan Cook… “Lipstick”: the perfect metaphor.
Of course the payoff2 “Yer Fired!” is lotsa Facetime4 same across the bored!
Spot on. I believe your observations are correct as they mirror my own.
What an inaccurate hit peace against capitalism…
Some quotes:
“Late-stage capitalism is in terminal crisis…”
What? Pure speculation- and likely wrong. Jonathan Cook’s first sign of a hate of capitalism.
“…exposing capitalism in this way – making explicit its inherently brutal, wrist-slitting tendencies – will awaken the masses, that over time it will risk turning them into revolutionaries.”
What extreme non sense from a capitalist hating and apparent socialist. Relatively- these are the best of times. This is not the environment from which revolutions are born. Cook is delusional.
Referring to Trump “so that he and his friends can plunder with greater abandon – and destroy the planet more quickly.”
OK- So now the writers “green” extremism is evident.
“All of the media propagandizes for a rotten system that keeps the vast majority of Americans impoverished.”
Americans are not impoverished. Far from it. Record “real” median household income. Fifty year record low unemployment. Again- the writers anti capitalist views run counter to reality and actual success of capitalism.
“While we argue over who is most entitled and most victimized, the establishment has carried on raping and pillaging Third World countries, destroying the planet and siphoning off the wealth produced by the rest of us.”
Cook sounds like he has lost his mind or is an anti capitalist extremist. If he’s not a socialist he is a communist.
Cook’s anti capitalist agenda is not hidden here. Disgraceful.
(“The 26 richest people on earth in 2018 had the same net worth as the poorest half of the world’s population, some 3.8 billion people.”) – Oxfam report.
So Jeffrey, perhaps you can share some inspiring “trickle down” words for the poorest one half of the entire earth’s population and explain to them how, in your words, “these are the best of times.”
Please, by all means tell them why it is preferable that a few wealthy continue to amass yet more everyday, endlessly plundering the global poor in classic neo-imperialist fashion, while said poor hunger and go without the basics of a decent and humane life.
What I assume you meant to say Jeffrey, but that perhaps propriety makes you blush to consider speaking aloud, is that as long as the West continues to militarily and economically impose our brutal neoliberal imperial exploitation on the rest of humanity, your stock portfolio will do just fine thank you. On that point I’m sure we can all agree.
Your reply to Cook shows you to be an ideologue for “Americanism” and an inept student of American history. You’re a perfect example of a man with his head in the ground. You make me feel there is no hope that Americans will awaken from their “exceptionalist” stupor.
> “…exposing capitalism in this way – making explicit its inherently brutal, wrist-slitting tendencies – will awaken the masses, that over time it will risk turning them into revolutionaries.” <
Lighten up – the author is an optimist.
A revolution, a real one, will involve violent attacks on law enforcement groups and US govt. military forces.
Such attacks will involve KIAs, WIAs, and captures of revolutionary combatives.
Within hours, the NSA communications data on the identified KIAs, unevacuated WIAs, captures, will reveal their comm networks going back at least a decade.
The rollups will be quick, and lead to further rollups.
They won't even need to threaten or torture.
Why is having an anti-capitalist agenda disgraceful? Social Security and Medicare are socialist programs, yet they are supported by the vast majority of the US public. Our current form of Capitalism has brought us to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States#/media/File:If_US_land_mass_were_distributed_like_US_wealth.png
For the forty percent on the little red dot, this is hardly “the best of times”
Fifty year record low unemployment? Do you have any clue as to how they fudge their numbers?
I dont know, I have to give credit where credit is due. If Trump’s objective was to expose the corruption of the media, the Clintons, and the decrepit DNC leadership, the “Swamp” if you will, by giving them enough rope to hang themselves, he succeeded brilliantly.
When US troops actually invade Venezuela and kill Madura or the bombing in Iran begins, then there is enough evidence to understand very clearly who he is and what is his game, until then the jury is still out. Of course, the response is by then it is too late, but how else does one deal with the massive corruption in DC, by portraying oneself as a crusader and thus getting instantly eliminated by the real criminals? Obama was a wolf in sheeps clothing, it is still possible, although admittedly improbable, that Trump is not actually a Wolf; that is certainly what the alt-right has been claiming.
We will see how this transpires now that Trump is free of Russia gate. If he should decide to reject the advice of the henious Bolton, Pompeo, Pence trio and pursue collaborative relationships with Russia and negotiate new and comprehensive arms control agreements. Not saying he will but if he does he may find the Republicans will join the call with Democrats to have him impeached and removed from office.
Cook’s remarks about “the left” are misplaced. The people he refers to are barely left of center in a rightist political milieu.
Excellent article. Mr. Cook wrote:
“Were the U.S. to get its own Corbyn as president, he or she would undoubtedly face a Mueller-style inquiry, and one far more effective at securing the president’s impeachment than this one was ever going to be.”
Indeed, the U.S. has its own potential Corbyn. Her name is Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard – on national television no less – pointed out that the CIA had been funding ISIS. She stated that point blank. That type of honesty takes real guts. A person can’t “speak truth to power” more courageously than that. If her campaign picks up steam, America is going to see a media witch hunt the likes of which will make Russiagate supporters look like the “Trump Cheerleading Team.”
Fasten your seatbelts for this one.
Agreed Mike, I really hope readers here will take the time to donate, even $1.oo to Tulsi’s campaign, as she needs a total of 65,000 individual discreet donors to be able to participates in the Democratic debates. Simply having her on that debate stage will be a huge positive in terms of exposing the workings of our immoral bi-partisan foreign policy to public view.
“For [the leaders of the Democratic Party], it may look like Russia-gate was a failure, but it was actually a success.”
This reminds me of Chomsky explaining that the U.S. didn’t actually lose the war against Vietnam. Just because Washington didn’t achieve maximal success in perpetuating or expanding its zombie-colonialist client regime in Saigon, does not mean it didn’t achieve its fundamental goal of crippling the promise of a sovereign, socialist Vietnam, ensuring it didn’t become an example that a better world is possible.
“Were the U.S. to get its own Corbyn as president, he or she would undoubtedly face a Mueller-style inquiry, and one far more effective at securing the president’s impeachment than this one was ever going to be.”
Hell, if there was ever president who was a true threat to the establishment in the U.S., impeachment would be on the table in an instant – no investigation necessary. Democrats might have to go through the charade of an investigation, but for Republicans, who can impeach for any reason at all (like lying about getting a blowjob), it would be a walk in the park.
Sad.
In a Nov. 19, 2018 piece on Truthdig, Chris Hedges basically acknowledges that there is something to the Mueller inquiry; Hedges (and Nader) in that 11/19/18 piece essentially assert that Mueller will most likely find something.
Now today, 3/26/19, on Truthdig, Hedges has a piece in which he chastises the mainstream media and establishment press for playing up Russiagate for the last two years.
Now wait a minute here. Ah, this is a problem.
I love Hedges and Nader, but that 11/19/18 piece is something they both need to apologize for and move on.
It should have (and maybe does) shed light on how the 1% runs everything.
With few exceptions I listen to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour every week…or for sure parts of same, bigger portions when the topic grabs me.
Indebted for this Cook article.
Sorry to digress just a bit here, but I think it’s relevant. Skip and Herman’s statements under Johnstone’s piece yesterday to me seem pretty apropos. I can empathize with uncivil reactions, this thing having been so blown out of proportion; but, needless to say, the gateway to uncivility is when the details aren’t available. This thing is just as involved as what went wrong in New Orleans with Katrina. The layperson has to slog through endless stuff. In the end one little aspect in retrospect demonstrates, for example, that whoever happened to dwell on the little [unaddressed] aspect…in some cases had just as much a reason to buy Russiagate as folks had to take a chance with Trump [Arlie Russell Hochschild’s observations eg]. The example I wrote about last night under Johnstone’s piece was the Reality Winner leak.
The only other thing that Cook left out in this piece or that Greenwald left out yesterday is probably just a small facet of PR science/”research.” Half the whole playing field of getting informed has become social media [usually I go to the real consortium, commondreams, and/or sometimes intercept, cp, eastwestaccord, or moonofalabama…first]
Car’s in the shop, so there’s time on my hands. Normally I’d of said my piece and been out of here. But, as time’s available, I’ll return to the “little aspect” I mentioned yesterday. I’ll return asking for some feedback, from VIP or from whomever. Surely there’s someone reading here who’s capable of saying something (re Winner leak, and disrupt-trust-tactics). The fb shares inciting both sides (at one location) always struck me as indeed some kind of “research,” but I never could figure out what they (whomever, probably IRA) were trying to get to…until yesterday when I went trapsing off to find the latest from Bruce Schneier [ended up not too recent]. Again, same quote…
I don’t think we should rely on one energy hegemony, or any given set of same, always being more ethical than those “toeing the line for the interests of the PNACers” [Skip, yesterday…he didn’t say we should]. So far, though, one hegemony seems to have been a bit moreso, at least “geopolitically.” But they all want to gobble up everything, and sometimes the only way to send a message to the world, besides wearing a yellow vest, that we’ll fight for less CO2 and less inequality…seems to be supporting better trade deals.
And then there was this guy….
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-26/hogwashed-shaken-john-brennan-suggests-he-may-have-received-bad-information
It would be interesting to see Brennan grilled about who gave him this “bad information” and if they should be held accountable, but it sure ain’t gonna happen on MSDNC.
Brennan is just so pathetic. What many don’t realize is that he’s just not that bright.
Thanks for this link Mr. Tedesky.
“The leaders of the Democratic Party are less terrified of Trump and what he represents than they are of us and what we might do if we understood how they have rigged the political and economic system to their permanent advantage.”
That is an absolutely brilliant insight.
And here is another pithy truth from this piece by Mr Cook:
“The corporate media, and the journalists they employ, are propagandists – for a system that keeps them wealthy.”
Everything reads like a spy novel of intrigue and subterfuge. There were some stark differences between Clinton and Trump, which I won’t list here but suffice to say most Trump voters didn’t like what Clinton was offering. Despite Trump’s crassness, he is superior to Clinton by a mile. The biggest concern I have is the complete sell out by Trump to Israel.
“And an inquiry against the real left will be far more aggressive and far more “productive” than Mueller was”. How true. The problem is Democrats fell for the deep state line that Trump is the enemy. They completely ignored his policies, which, if they had been proposed by Democrats, would have been considered too far to the left. Indeed, some of Trump’s main policies were identical to those of Bernie Sanders. Sanders clearly identified the threat posed by illegal migrants to US workers. He clearly identified the threat posed by the WTO and free trade agreements to US manufacturing jobs. These are Trump’s policies, but while I see many progressives supporting Sanders, they oppose these same policies when Trump proposed them. Sanders is proposing universal health care without the insurance companies. Trump himself identified insurance companies and big pharma as the major threat to universal health care, yet Nancy Pelosi recently assured insurance companies that they would be an integral part of any universal health care package. You have a situation where American workers and farmers voted for Trump based on his sensible economic policies, the same policies once advocated by Bernie Sanders. The attacks on Trump by Republican and Democrat elites and MSM are focused on his “unsuitable to be President” character, but are really based on corporate opposition to his WTO and free trade policies. American voters on both the right and left are far ahead of Democrat and Republican politicians who oppose these policies, and while many Republicans are now supporting Trump and these policies, the Democrat establishment, supported by multi-nationals and too-big-to-fail banks, are staunchly opposed to them. Even Bernie Sanders has backed away from his policies on the WTO, free trade, and illegal economic migrants.
Thank you, Jonathan Cook for your (as usual) honest, concise, clear, cogent piece. It is always good to read your work – if not always a pleasure (I’m thinking about your really significant essays on Palestine-Israel specifically).
This author is still missing part of the point. He believes that Trump represents another “side” of Deepstate.
There are no “sides”. Deepstate creates puppets of different colors and appearances, all reading from the same script, all working toward the same goal.
Trump is a classic Agent Provocateur designed to pull anti-globalist Deplorables out of the woodwork so they can be exterminated more efficiently. The most important fact about Trump was revealed incidentally by CNN a year ago: Trump was Roy Cohn’s protege. If you know anything about Roy, this tells you EVERYTHING about Trump.
Here is an interesting look at the roots of America’s growing political polarization:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-roots-of-americas-political.html
The political tactics adopted two decades ago set the stage for the political polarization, partisan divisions and anti-Trump hyperbole that are plaguing American political theatre today.
Thank you Sally Snyder for this link! I couldn’t read through the pages of Gingrich bullshit ‘cause it/he makes me sick BUT!!!! at the end of the Gingrich letter on using propaganda to bury the “other side” that you shared, he adds two lists – the list of words that are to be used like weapons against the opposing party and the list of positive words that propagandize for his side. The list of negative words that we all now recognize were used to demonize, divide and distract the country from reality. It was catastrophically effective for decades.
It’s very simple folks, it is the Rich who are screwing you and destroying our world. If you are not capable of seeing that, then you are doomed to suffer endlessly. Wake up and get the rich bastards off our back!
There are about say, 30 to 50 traitors in the parliamentary Labour party that have been trying to oust Corbyn ever since he was first elected leader of the party. I truly believe that Corbyn should put independent Labour candidates against these people to stand against them in the forth coming election. Of course, this would split the Labour vote and allow another party to take the seat. It might be a Liberal, but I suggest that Labour could afford to lose these seats as the Tories will most certainly lose just as many seats as Labour. A few more or less Liberals won’t affect the parliamentary arithmetic. I think those who have deserted the Labour party and now think they are some kind of new saviour party have got another think coming. They will lose so I don’t think a Labour (independent) will lose in those particular seats. As the author of this piece points out, most people like Corbyn’s policies and the phrase “its the economy stupid” might well win the day for Corbyn.
There is no doubt that any right wing former Labour MP running against the official Party endorsed nominee will lose. It is unlikely that they will cost the Labour Party votes even if they do collect votes. They are more likely to split the right wing vote and make Labour’s victory easier.
By the way, I think that there are a lot more than 50 MPs working against Corbyn, it is easily a majority of the caucus and the great majority of the Lords.
In the meantime MPs are being selected, re-selected and de-selected by local parties. Anyone can join them and take part in the process.
[The Secret Uranium One Memos]
To understand RUSSIAGATE “Just follow the yellow cake road”
The article carefully ignores the fact that all of Clinton’s top ten donors and the largest Clinton foundation donors are all zionists, with some pro-zionist Saudis helping out. The real meaning of “Russiagate” is Israelgate, which it was designed to conceal. Not a word on that from Nazareth.
What a shameless, idiotic attack. So Jonathan Cook is a zionist?!! It’s as disgusting and baseless as smearing Corbyn to be anti-semite.
Agreed. Simply idiotic.
Why not read more carefully and avoid presumptions and zionist appeals. You would make fewer mistakes.
You failed to argue against the observation. He ignored the Israelgate problem, for whatever reason.
So any idiocy is not in the comment. Why don’t you want to hear about Israelgate?
No, I do hear and see about the “greater” Israelgate and here’s a truthful and powerful summary of it: https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/26/how-the-israel-lobby-got-its-start/
As for Jonathan Cook, if you have a look at (at least) some of his articles you’ll find similar attitude to the above linked article.
I am fully aware that Mr. Cook writes well and is aware of the problem. But he conspicuously left it out here, where it certainly belongs. My comment stated that well. You need to read more carefully before making ad hominem attacks.
Well said Jonathan Cook! The real lesson is about hubris and cognitive bias and propaganda. Are we ready to listen yet?
https://opensociet.org/2019/03/25/youre-never-too-old-to-learn-something-stupid/