To Celebrate or to Not? The Mueller Question

On March 26, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Finally, it’s over. Well, sort of, anyway. Late Sunday afternoon, Attorney General Bill Barr released his much-anticipated summary of Bob Mueller’s Russia investigation. The big news, of course, was that nobody in Trump’s orbit “knowingly” coordinated with Russian efforts to disrupt the 2016 election. Trump won’t be charged with obstruction of justice and not a single American was indicted for conspiracy.

To the delight of Russiagate skeptics, it was a complete vindication. To the dismay of the liberal establishment and MSDNC — who all cashed in on the chaos — it was an enormous letdown.

Much of the celebration, however, took on a twisted form. Matt Taibbi was the most contorted, writing in a column that, “WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfs the last mess.”

There’s no question Russiagate was a colossal abstraction, but comparing Russia-mania to the WMD deception, which led to an illegal war that killed a half million people while germinating ISIS, was a depraved mischaracterization.

The Intercept‘s $500,000 man Glenn Greenwald wasn’t far behind Taibbi’s glee, exclaiming on Democracy Now! that the last two years was “the saddest media spectacle I’ve ever seen.” Like Taibbi, Greenwald appears to have a memory lapse, forgetting just how culpable mainstream media was in perpetuating the lies that led us into the bloody war on Iraq. Maybe we should cut him some slack. It could just be that Greenwald wasn’t keeping tabs on the media’s mishaps back then, as he never abandoned his “trust in the Bush administration,” and accepted Bush’s “judgment that American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country.”

Yes, Glenn, Russiagate was bad, but it didn’t lead us into an endless string of wars in the Middle East. Just a reminder, millions of us were ahead of the curve in opposing the fucking monstrosity and we never for a second bought Bush’s bullshit lies.

Greenwald’s childish delight was also contradictory. The same report he glorified in exonerating Trump on collusion matters also found that Russia attempted to “conduct disinformation and social media operations” in an attempt to interfere with the 2016 election. A part of that effort, claims Mueller, was the hack of the Democratic Party by the Russian government that included caches of emails from John Podesta and the DNC, which were later handed over to Wikileaks and trusted journalists like Greenwald at The Intercept. As Barr’s summary notes:

“The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including Wikileaks.”

Let’s break it down. According to Mueller, Wikileaks along with Greenwald, were spoon-fed Democratic emails that were hacked by Russian operatives in the form of Guccifer 2.0 that were intended to damage Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. One doesn’t have to be a fan on Hillary to understand the motives and implications behind Russia’s alleged disruption campaign, but a transparent journalist, at least in hindsight, would be honest about their source’s motives as well as the timing of the dump, which happened at the same moment Trump’s p-grabbing tape from Access Hollywood hit the airwaves. Yet, Greenwald is cherishing the portion of Mueller’s report that claims there was no collusion while ignoring the Russian meddling charge, specifically his role in the matter. Don’t expect that to change. If Greenwald were to ponder whether or not Mueller’s team got it right on the DNC hack, it would throw the veracity of the whole report into question.

For the record, as many of our readers know, CounterPunch was also a target of alleged Russian interference in the form of the fictitious reporter Alice Donovan, who was directly named in Mueller’s July indictment. Donovan was accused by Mueller as having been the first persona to promote the DCLeaks project around social media. We published one story by Donovan during the election on cyber-warfare. Even though we were catfished, we were skeptical early on of the real intent of the Russia fixation and opted to reserve judgment on the Mueller report until it was wrapped up.

There’s no doubt Russiagate infected many liberal minds that obsessed over the prospect of Trump as a Russian agent beholden to Putin’s masculine appeal. The most pompous among them was Rachel Maddow, who, during a six-week stretch in 2017, covered Russiagate more than all other news topics combined. Maddow’s fear-mongering delirium only served as a 24/7 distraction to Trump’s much more tangible crimes. It was all by design, as Maddow’s sky-high ratings kept her show smoldering atop the stinky pile of cable news punditry.

Unfortunately, Russiagate isn’t likely to die a slow death. Wikileaks, who Mueller says played a role in disseminating the Democrats’ hacked emails, is still under investigation. The Julian Assange saga, whose indictment appears to be under seal, doesn’t look to be ending soon either. Chelsea Manning remains in solitary confinement for refusing a grand jury subpoena that’s tied to the Fed’s investigation of Assange. And on Monday, the Supreme Court decided it would not hear a challenge by an unknown foreign financial institution that’s fighting a Mueller subpoena. Then there is Michael Cohen’s ongoing cooperation and the dangling matters of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.

The tentacles of the Mueller inquiry are likely to slither on for years in the form of probes by the Southern District of New York and others involving campaign finance and Trump Organization affairs. The House Judiciary Committee, the final arbiter on the question of impeachment, will continue its own investigation, utilizing its subpoena powers while pressing for the full release of the Mueller report, which the public deserves to untangle. In other words, the buck doesn’t stop with Bob Mueller and Bill Barr.

Despite the outright jubilation by the likes of Greenwald, the tepid denial by MSDNC, and sanctimonious relief by Republicans that there were no indictments filed against Trump, it’s pertinent to remember that criminal offenses aren’t always impeachable, and impeachable offenses aren’t always criminal in nature.

This administration has committed so many crimes, perpetrated so much destruction, it makes little difference if they “colluded” with Russia to influence the election or not, there is still much more fodder. Remember, Russia isn’t the real enemy. The entire bi-partisan establishment is.

FBI joining criminal investigation into BOEING…

On March 26, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

FBI joining criminal investigation into certification of Boeing 737 MAX

The FBI has joined the criminal investigation into the certification of the Boeing 737 MAX, lending its considerable resources to an inquiry already being conducted by U.S. Department of Transportation agents, according to people familiar with the matter.

The federal grand jury investigation, based in Washington, D.C., is looking into the certification process that approved the safety of the new Boeing plane, two of which have crashed since October.

The FBI’s Seattle field office lies in proximity to Boeing’s 737 manufacturing plant in Renton, as well as nearby offices of Boeing and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials involved in the certification of the plane.

The investigation, which is being overseen by the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal division and carried out by the Transportation Department’s Inspector General, began in response to information obtained after a Lion Air 737 MAX 8 crashed shortly after takeoff from Jakarta on Oct. 29, killing 189 people, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, citing an unnamed source.

It has widened since then, The Associated Press reported this week, with the grand jury issuing a subpoena on March 11 for information from someone involved in the plane’s development, one day after the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 near Addis Ababa that killed 157 people.

The FBI’s support role was described by people on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the investigation.

Representatives of the Justice Department, the FBI and Transportation Department declined to comment, saying they could neither confirm nor deny an investigation.

A Seattle Times story over the weekend detailed how FAA managers pushed its engineers to delegate more of the certification process to Boeing itself. The Times story also detailed flaws in an original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA.

Criminal investigations into the federal oversight of airplane manufacturing and flight are rare, in part because of the longstanding belief that a civil-enforcement system better promotes candid reporting of concerns without fear of criminal repercussions.

Those criminal cases that have occurred have focused on false entries and misrepresentations.

In 1998, Transportation Department and FBI agents, acting on a whistleblower’s allegations, served a criminal search warrant on Alaska Airlines, seeking evidence of maintenance irregularities.

The investigation expanded to include the January 2000 crash of Alaska Flight 261 that killed 88 people, which the National Transportation Safety Board later blamed on the airline’s faulty maintenance practices and poor FAA oversight.

But no criminal charges were filed, although the FAA, in a separate administrative review, ultimately found that Alaska and three of its managers had violated safety regulations, fining the carrier $44,000, revoking the mechanic licenses of two of the managers and suspending the license of the third.

Federal criminal charges were brought over the May 11, 1996, ValuJet Flight 592 crash that took off from Miami International Airport and plunged into the Everglades minutes later, killing 110 people.

Federal prosecutors in Florida filed a 24-count indictment against SabreTech, an airline maintenance contractor, and its workers over alleged violations in the handling of oxygen containers blamed for the crash. SabreTech was found guilty on nine counts but was acquitted on conspiracy charges, according to news reports. An appeals court later overturned all but one of the counts, the improper training of employees.

One issue that has arisen in criminal investigations of safety matters is whether they deter people from cooperating in other government investigations and civil proceedings.

In 2000, the National Transportation Safety Board warned that its findings on the cause of the 1999 deadly pipeline explosion in Bellingham could be indefinitely delayed because of a separate criminal investigation that had silenced key witnesses.

Then-NTSB Chairman Jim Hall said his agency had yet to question eight computer-room operators at Olympic Pipe Line who invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination shortly after the June 10 blast that killed two boys and led to the death of a young man.

Eric Weiss, a NTSB spokesman, said he couldn’t comment on whether any individuals have declined to provide information on the Boeing 737 MAX crashes in light of the criminal investigation.

How China Is Outmaneuvering Trump on Trade

On March 26, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

As
Chinese President Xi Jinping concludes his first foreign trip of 2019, he can
congratulate himself on at least one thing: masterfully making use of the
daylight between Brussels and Washington when it comes to China policy. While
the Trump administration pursues its ongoing trade war, it has failed to
convince European countries to banish Huawei’s equipment from their 5G
infrastructures, or to resist China’s international infrastructure development
strategy known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), designed to build
pathways for trade but which also, critics say, expands Chinese influence and
entraps countries in Chinese debt.

Xi’s trip took him to Italy, Monaco, and
France, a clever itinerary that allowed him to maximize cooperative
opportunities, painting China as a willing economic and global governance
partner for the EU, and allaying Chinese citizens’ fears about being
blackballed by the West.

The Italian portion of the visit focused on the
BRI, Rome’s endorsement being Xi’s greatest win so far in 2019. Italy, a
founding member of the EU, is the first G7 country to formally sign on to China’s
grand infrastructure project, breathing new life into the much-maligned initiative.
Over the past year, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, among others, canceled or cut back BRI projects. The seizure of the
Sri Lankan port of Hambantota and fears of so-called “debt-trap diplomacy” further
eroded faith in the project, with many countries questioning Beijing’s promises
of “win-win” cooperation. But Italy is the wealthiest country to join the BRI,
and Xi will be able to signal to his constituents that the project is still
held in high international regard despite the aforementioned setbacks.

Though many EU countries, particularly Germany
and France, have been highly skeptical of the BRI, the Five Star Movement wing
of Italy’s populist coalition government has observed the success of Greece’s
Piraeus Port, a majority share of which is held by COSCO, a Chinese state-owned
enterprise. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte hopes to make Italy’s own ports,
notably those in Trieste and Genoa, similar entry points for Chinese trade with
Europe. And while another group in the governing coalition—the far-right League—takes
a dim view of engagement with China, during Xi’s visit, Rome signed 29
deals worth $2.8 billion, wagering on
Chinese investments to help pull it out of a grinding recession. Among other things, the deal is a reminder that the EU has not
been able to offer its members attractive
alternatives to Chinese investment.

Xi’s visit to Monaco had much do with the
country’s endorsement of Huawei, the telecommunications and electronics giant
which the U.S. has accused of enabling Chinese state surveillance. On February
27, Monaco Telecom and Huawei signed a
memorandum of understanding to develop and deploy “smart city” technology for
the principality. Last week, this victory for Xi was followed by EU countries
rejecting the Trump administration’s calls to ban Huawei from European 5G
infrastructure. New Zealand and Australia have followed the United States’
lead, but Europe has fallen far behind China and the United States in 5G: The
decision reflects, at least in part, the recognition that it cannot afford to
ban Huawei from its networks.

France, the current chair of the G7 and a
strong U.S. ally, was supposed to be Xi’s toughest stop on his Mediterranean
swing. In a bid to emphasize European unity, French President Emmanuel Macron
invited German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker to join his meeting with Xi on Tuesday. Macron, who has
been supportive of the BRI in the past, has recently coarsened his rhetoric,
noting that the initiative should not be “one-way.”  He has been invited to the
upcoming BRI forum in April but is unlikely to attend.

While in France, however, Xi cemented a new phase of economic
cooperation with Europe, signing an almost $34
billion deal with Airbus for 300 airplanes. China has historically been one of
U.S.-based Boeing’s best customers, accounting for almost 20 percent of the
company’s sales as of 2017. But
given Boeing’s recent disasters and the contentious U.S.-China relationship, Xi
has deftly shifted the trajectory of China’s aviation sector, simultaneously
shoring up economic ties with the EU and dealing a blow to Washington.

The Airbus deal is pragmatic for Macron,
demonstrating that he believes China and France, as well as China and the EU,
can engage in concurrent cooperation and competition. Xi, for his part, seems to be hoping Beijing can collaborate with Paris, Berlin, and Brussels on multilateral
initiatives such as the Paris Agreement on climate change and what’s left of
the Iran nuclear agreement, as well as the need to protect the international
trade and economic order from Trumpian protectionism.

The broader international community will
probably remain suspicious of China and its motives. But the point of these
visits was for Xi to demonstrate that he’s willing to work with the EU, and
equally willing approach member states one by one with specially tailored
bilateral deals. 

Speaking last Friday after a meeting of 27 EU
countries in Brussels, Macron proclaimed an end
to the “time of European naïveté” or “uncoordinated” approaches to
Beijing. But as much as Macron and the EU would like to believe that Europe has
an actionable bloc-wide China strategy, it still seems like wishful thinking.
Though Brussels’ EU-Asia Connectivity Strategy offers some kind of alternative
to the BRI, many EU countries have shunned it in favor of Chinese investments.
Thirteen central and eastern European countries have signed on to the
BRI, and that does not count Portugal, and now Italy. The continued importance
of the 16+1 grouping, through which China engages with Central and Eastern
European countries outside of EU diplomatic mechanisms, further complicates
achieving a coordinated EU approach to Beijing.

Though China has said it does not want to split
the EU, its intent is secondary. Beijing is offering deals countries want. And
while China will undoubtedly still have difficulties with both the EU and the
United States, on this trip, at least, Xi seems to have thoroughly
outmaneuvered those set against him in Washington.

How ISIS’s Brutal Project in the Middle East was Finally Overthrown

On March 26, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Up to its dying days the self-declared Islamic State has retained the ability to top the news agenda, even as its fighters were losing their last battle for bomb-shattered villages in the deserts of eastern Syria. When their spokesman promised retaliation for the massacre of Muslims in the Christchurch mosques his threat was taken seriously.

Given the record of Isis atrocities it is not surprising that nobody can discount its ability to exact revenge through existing adherents, new converts or those using its name to spread terror. This is not just western paranoia: in Syria and Iraq people speak continually of Isis sleeper cells waiting to emerge and exact revenge.

There is a largely sterile debate about whether or not Isis – whose territory once stretched from the outskirts of Baghdad to the hills overlooking the Mediterranean – is dead and buried, as Donald Trump claims. Could it be reborn if the pressure against it is relaxed? The answer is simple enough: Isis is defeated as a state apparatus that once ruled eight million people, but it can persist as a terrorist and guerrilla organisation.

I was in Baghdad in June 2014 when Isis was advancing south towards the capital, capturing cities and towns like Tikrit and Baiji with scarcely a shot being fired. The rout of the Iraqi army seemed total and for several days there was no defensive lines between us and Isis advance patrols. As many as 1,700 Shia air force cadets were massacred amid the ruins of Saddam Hussein’s old palaces on the banks of the Tigris river near Tikrit.

Isis had 100 days of stunning victories in Iraq and Syria but its emirs were never to reach the same level of success again. Instead of focusing all their forces on seizing Baghdad, they moved north and attacked the autonomous and near independent Iraqi Kurdish enclave. The US and its allies started using their devastating air power. If Isis ever had a chance of complete victory, it came and went very quickly.

The success of its blitzkrieg tactics in 2014 depended in part on Isis’s ability to spread terror through the internet by broadcasting its atrocities. Iraqi families would watch them and tell their soldier sons to desert the army and keep out of the fighting. The unexpected capture of Mosul in 2014 gave the impression to many Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria that the forces of the newly declared caliphate were divinely inspired. Isis commanders certainly believed this.

But now with obliteration on the battlefield Isis can no longer make any convincing claim for divine inspiration or support. One of the great attractions of Isis – that it had almost magical powers guaranteeing victory – has gone. For the eight million Iraqi and Syrians whom Isis once controlled, its rule brought nothing but death and destruction. Almost all of Raqqa, its Syrian de facto capital, and much of Mosul, its Iraqi counterpart, are in ruins. Tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs in both countries have died in the relentless US-led bomb and artillery bombardments that finally overwhelmed Isis defences.

But could the thousands of dispersed Isis fighters that the Pentagon says are hiding out in the vast deserts and semi-deserts between Syria and Iraq reorganise and stage a convincing counter-attack? After all, the US “Surge” in Iraq in between 2007 and 2009 was trumpeted at the time as marking the final defeat of al-Qaeda in there, which was Isis under another name. Isis commanders are reported to draw inspiration from that period, arguing that they have come back before and they will do so again.

It is not very likely that favourable circumstances will once more combine in such a way that Isis could relaunch itself. It has lost the advantage of surprise and has too many enemies who may not like each other but know what Isis can do given half a chance. In 2014 it enjoyed a certain tolerance and even support from Sunni states like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar which is no longer there.

But this not quite the same as saying that Isis is finished. The deserts of Syria and Iraq are vast and impossible to police in their entirety. Occupation forces, be they Kurds in Raqqa or Iraqi Shia troops in Sunni parts of Iraq, are resented and often hated by Sunni Arabs and Isis could benefit from their disaffection. And even if Isis does not regain such popularity as it once enjoyed in these places, its reputation for homicidal fury means that it does not have to do very much to spread terror.

Isis as Isis has probably had its day. But could it transmute into something else? The defeat of Isis does not mean the defeat of al-Qaeda of which Isis was only a single clone. In north-west Syria Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), despite several changes of name, has been for over a year the largest jihadi or al-Qaeda type movement in the country. In western Idlib, northern Hama and western Aleppo provinces it has displaced other armed opposition groups. It now may have as many as 50,000 fighters and control three million people. HTS might also establish itself as an ally of Turkey in northern Syria which would allow the al-Qaeda brand to live on.

But one should not let such possibilities to run riot and pretend that the old al-Qaeda formula of making war – with suicide attacks as acts of faith – has the destructive power it once did. President Trump is largely right in his claims that Islamic State is destroyed – even if he is grossly, even ludicrously, inflating his own role in its demise.

Making jokes at university gets you reported to bias response team…

On March 26, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Making jokes at Portland State gets you reported to its bias response team – The College Fix

Members of the campus community at Portland State better think twice about making a joke on campus — it could very well lead to their names being reported to the university’s bias response team.

Two bias reports filed at the public institution last fall were against people making jokes or similar off-hand comments on campus, according to documents obtained by The College Fix through a public records act request.

In one case from last September, a student overheard someone in their classroom making a comment about sometimes feeling like they having schizophrenia.

“She then stated she was not trying to make fun of schizophrenia,” the student reported, “but that sometimes she can be ‘schizophrenic.’ … She stated this in a joking manner and even laughed about it.”

The student reported the incident to the PSU Bias Review Team, keeping his or her identity a secret. But the person who allegedly made the offending remark, however, was named in the complaint to the administration.

In the second instance, last October a student settled into a seat in the front row of a lecture when they heard the instructor telling another student he knew a lot of “insensitive jokes” he couldn’t tell in class.

“He proceeded to describe one he like [sic] about Native Americans where he called the characters racist names like chief running water and other names in that style,” the student complained. “He did not tell the whole joke, but he said it ended with one of the chief’s sons killing someone or being killed,” the student said, adding “I did not hear his exact words because he was trying to be quiet.” According to the student, the instructor said he knows many more jokes he could not tell in class.

“I am worried he may have impacted any Native students’ ability to learn safely in his class by taking advantage of stereotypes created by people to dehumanize Native people after taking their land and committing genocide and the generational trauma they face from that,” the student added.

Once again, the complaint was submitted anonymously, but the instructor’s name was reported to the university.

According to the PSU Global Diversity and Inclusion department’s website, making an online report “does NOT initiate an employee discrimination and harassment or a student conduct investigation.”

In the documents provided to The Fix, all personal identifying information was redacted.

According to the university’s website, “Any person who has experienced, witnessed, or heard of a bias incident” is encouraged to file a complaint electronically. Students and faculty members are allowed to file a complaint of discrimination against “any PSU student, staff, or faculty member who you believe is engaging in discrimination, discriminatory harassment, or retaliation.”

According to the university, “bias” is “a state of mind, tendency, or inclination that impacts our behaviors and perceptions of others (either positively or negatively) based upon preconceived notions.” Bias can be “directed toward an attitude, an individual, or group regarding their protected class, including (but not limited to) race, color, religious ideology, national origin, veteran status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, physical or mental ability, or political affiliation.”

During the fall of 2018, four total complaints were filed with the bias response team.

In addition to the ones involving jokes, on October 14 a university employee was pulling into the Shattuck Hall parking lot on campus when they saw a white male walking near the entrance to the lot. While the employee waited for the man to pass so they could pull in, the man allegedly looked into the windshield, made his hand into the shape of a pistol and “pulled the trigger.” The man then turned away and began to walk south along Broadway.

In the final complaint filed, the student simply reported the place of the incident as “poo” and described the incident with the words “pee pee.”

Portland State has long been a hotbed of progressive activism. In just the past few weeks, psychology student Lesley Guerra attempted to testify before the university Board of Trustees in favor of armed police officers on campus, but was repeatedly shouted down by protesters.

Earlier in March, pro-gun activist Michael Strickland came to speak on campus but was prevented from doing so by a bell-ringing activist who stood next to Strickland as he attempted to speak. Campus police later said they were unable to do anything to restrain the disruptive bell-ringer.

According to Portland State professor Peter Boghossian, Bias Response Teams create a “chilling” atmosphere on college campuses. Boghossian has been a staunch free speech advocate on the PSU campus following his publication of a nationally famous “Grievance Studies Hoax,” in which he and his coauthors successfully published a number of phony “studies” in prestigious academic journals.

“Students and faculty are afraid to have honest conversations—or even joke around with each other—out of fear of being reported for a faux pas,” said Boghossian in an email to The College Fix. “Bias Response Teams also prevent authentic relationships from emerging because you’re never sure if the people you’re speaking to believe what they’re saying.”

In an email to The Fix, Portland State’s communications office said the campus Bias Review Team “communicates and meets regularly to respond to a reported bias incident, and to support students, employees and community members who experience or witness an act of bias.”

“When we are informed of bias incidents, we will work hard to get to the root causes and to improve the culture and climate at PSU,” said the administration in the statement.

MORE: Joke Gets Female Student Dragged To Campus Tribunal For ‘Harassment,’ ‘Disorderly Conduct’

IMAGE: Shutterstock

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A Foreign Policy Without War or Corporate Power

On March 26, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

The left is thinking about foreign policy, sort of. Last October, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders gave a speech at Johns Hopkins, calling for a new progressive internationalism. Trumpism, he said, is as borderless a problem as rising CO2, and Donald Trump but a node on a corrupt global “network” of “authoritarianism, oligarchy, and kleptocracy.” “Our job,” Sanders said, “is to rally the entire planet.” Recently seated members of the House, especially representatives Ro Khanna and Ilhan Omar, have also challenged previously consensus positions, especially support for Israel and Palestine.


This new attention to international relations is a welcome development, for, as nearly all of United States history shows, the political coalition that dominates foreign policy dominates domestic policy. Foreign policy is the realm where aspiring governing elites establish hegemony, not only over other countries but within this one, reconciling contradictory interests and ideas, and unifying domestic constituencies. Donald Trump’s Venezuela putsch, for example, reorders international relations, while deftly keeping Florida’s electoral votes and setting the terms of the 2020 presidential election: America will never be socialist. 


Sanders’s vision of a just world is ambitious and sweeping, and maybe it will help the left establish domestic legitimacy and advance domestic reform. But it also raises a question. The projection of global power has, over the years, strengthened militarism, justified interventionism, and reinforced corporate power—all the things the left is committed to fight against. Can progressives put forward an internationalism that isn’t linked to war and corporate power? 


The United States was founded on the idea that expansion was necessary to achieve and protect social progress. Over the centuries, that idea was realized, again and again, mostly through war. Extending the vote to the white working class went in hand with removing Native Americans, stealing their land, and then stealing Mexican land, thefts that served as the foundation of white settler democracy. The Union Army defeat of the Confederacy didn’t just end slavery, but marked the beginning of the final pacification of the West. Millions more acres were distributed to veterans. Never before in history could so many white men consider themselves so free, winning a greater liberty by putting down people of color, and then defining that liberty in opposition to the people of color they put down.


Go further down the line: There’s no moment of political reform, no widening of the promise of liberalism to oppressed groups within the nation, that didn’t entail a projection of power outside the nation. The interdependent relationship between domestic reform and foreign expansion is complicated. Sometimes the link was ideological: Breaking up the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean and the Philippines, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson believed, would create a sense of national purpose that could be used to break up the trusts at home. Other times the link was nakedly transactional: Some suffragists would trade Woodrow Wilson their support for U.S. entry into World War I for his support for their campaign, as did some trade unionists for labor reform. The connection could be economic: In the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt struck trade deals with Latin America that won him the support of pharmaceutical, chemical, airline, petroleum, and electronic companies, and in return they supported the New Deal’s gradual expansion of domestic liberalism. And the relationship was always political: Civil rights activists leveraged Cold War rivalry to press their claims for equal rights at home. Meanwhile, military service became a primary mechanism of social mobility, giving African Americans access to benefits such as education, housing, and health care, through all the twentieth century’s many wars. 


Later, the New Right used Ronald Reagan’s escalation of the Cold War and his drive back into the Third World to reorder domestic political culture, to vilify the welfare state, and once again elevate the Promethean capitalist man as the creator of private and public wealth. 


Democrats, for their part, had been turning inward since Vietnam. Holding tight to George McGovern’s old campaign slogan, “Come Home, America,” they invoked it more as prayer than policy, while their opposition to war atrophied to two main reflexes, either a call to “nation-build at home” (to spend money—which would be wasted on militarism—on hospitals, schools, and bridges), or a warning about blowback (that the effects of intervention will be worse than the benefits).


Those arguments didn’t prevent a bipartisan political elite from intervening in the Persian Gulf in 1991, launching a global war a decade later, building hundreds of military bases around the world, or unleashing the fossil fuel industry, and they didn’t stop that same elite from restructuring the world’s economy so that inequality, stockpiled wealth, corruption, volatility, and environmental destruction became features, not failures, of the system.


Today, with that system in tatters, the left wing of the Democratic Party seems to be gathering its energy, mobilized by young people who want action on climate change and who believe in the legitimacy of social rights, including the right to health care and education. In many ways, this aspiring governing coalition faces all the same challenges as past rising coalitions, including the New Deal and the New Right: It needs to unify diverse and unwieldy regional, economic, and ideological constituencies; and it needs to consolidate an economic base, some combination of influential industries that see their interests tied to a social-democratic policy agenda. 


What progressives don’t have, however, is the privilege of using the expectation of endless growth to organize domestic politics. After the wars of the 1990s, troops returned to communities, already hard hit by the farm crisis, that were being hollowed out by trade treaties that benefited corporations. Then came the catastrophic, morally bankrupting campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by punishing tax cuts, and the exhaustion of the free-trade growth model. 


Barack Obama inherited an empire in disarray, and managed, for a time, to stabilize its operations. Yet there was no aspect of foreign policy that he could have used to force a lasting realignment, to articulate a larger vision of the common good; no realm of international relations was available to him that he could use to overcome domestic polarization: not war, not humanitarian intervention, and not trade. 


In February, Bernie Sanders announced his run for the presidency with a robust domestic platform but very little talk about foreign policy, a notable silence considering his rousing call for a new internationalism at Johns Hopkins in October. Still, his reluctance to put forth specifics is understandable and even desirable, given the incoherent belligerence of many who oppose Trump. On the one hand, polls indicate that an increasing number of Democrats support tougher action on those countries deemed to be Trump’s allies, including Russia. On the other hand, Florida Democrats are saying that no candidate can win their party’s presidential nomination unless they support Trump’s effort to stage a coup in Venezuela. What have long been consensus positions, on, say, Israel and Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and China and trade, seem today to be unraveling. 


Eventually, though, social democrats will have to develop a coherent agenda that reflects the new reality, a reality where progress at home can no longer ride on the back of national power abroad. They will have to dismantle the engines of expansion themselves. Cut the military budget; euthanize the fossil-fuel industry; fetter finance; close the bases, and bring the troops home.  

TWITTER testing more extreme 'shadowban' technique…

On March 26, 2019 By admin

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Journalist Accuses Twitter of Testing More Extreme 'Shadowban' Technique on His Account | Breitbart

The post, about Lisa Page’s congressional testimony, was shown as an active post when Davis looked at it on his account, but the URL actually displayed the same way as a deleted tweet for other users — essentially making it invisible to the public.

“Is @Twitter experimenting with shadow bans by deleting tweets so others can’t see them, but keeping them visible to you while you’re logged in? I had to re-publish my original Lisa Page transcript tweet because it was disappeared to everyone but me,” complained Davis on Twitter last Tuesday.

Is @Twitter experimenting with shadow bans by deleting tweets so others can’t see them, but keeping them visible to you while you’re logged in? I had to re-publish my original Lisa Page transcript tweet because it was disappeared to everyone but me. pic.twitter.com/RugtpK2MYn

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 12, 2019

Then, on Monday, Davis published a follow-up post containing an email Twitter had sent to him which he says admits that the post had been shadowbanned.

“Our priority is to keep people safe on Twitter. As part of that work, we err on the side of protecting people and sometimes mistakenly remove content that doesn’t break our rules,” claimed Twitter. “When those mistakes happen, we work quickly to fix them. We have corrected the issue.”

Titter claimed in its e-mail to me that it “mistakenly remove[d]” a completely anodyne tweet about public congressional testimony, but didn’t explain why it left the tweet–and metrics showing no engagement–visible to me when logged in. Is conning users a bug, or a feature? pic.twitter.com/bqtc8Klcam

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 18, 2019

Davis then questioned why Twitter would remove the post, but make it appear as though it had not been removed when Davis himself looked at the tweet.

“Twitter confirmed to me today via e-mail that it did shadowban one of my tweets about Lisa Page’s congressional testimony in order to ‘keep people safe[.]’ Twitter deliberately deleted the tweet/URL, yet kept it visible for me when I was logged in so I’d think it was still up,” Davis explained. “Titter [sic] claimed in its e-mail to me that it ‘mistakenly remove[d]’ a completely anodyne tweet about public congressional testimony, but didn’t explain why it left the tweet–and metrics showing no engagement–visible to me when logged in. Is conning users a bug, or a feature?”

“Twitter gave me no notice or explanation when it shadowbanned one of my Tweets about Russian interference in our elections,” he continued. “But what’s worse is how Twitter apparently gives its users the fraudulent impression that their tweets, which Twitter secretly bans, are still public.”

Twitter has previously denied shadowbanning users, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and last year, the Big Tech company declared, “We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”

In July 2018, even Vice News agreed that Twitter was shadowbanning prominent conservatives, and in the same month, President Trump vowed to look into the practice.

“Twitter ‘SHADOW BANNING’ prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints,” Trump tweeted.

In January 2018, Project Veritas filmed Twitter direct messaging engineer Pranay Singh admitting to mass-banning accounts which express interest in God, guns, and America.

“Just go to a random [Trump] tweet and just look at the followers. They’ll all be like, guns, God, ‘Merica, and with the American flag and the cross,” declared Singh. “Like, who says that? Who talks like that? It’s for sure a bot.”

“You just delete them, but, like, the problem is there are hundreds of thousands of them, so you’ve got to, like, write algorithms that do it for you,” he expressed.

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter, or like his page at Facebook.

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