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Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Quits As ‘Deep State’ Remarks Cause Uproar | Zero Hedge

Posted by M. C. on August 22, 2019

Deep State

IT LIVES!

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-22/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-quits-over-uproar-following-deep-state-remarks

by Tyler Durden

With his company’s stock in free fall, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne resigned as CEO on Thursday effective immediately, after he stunned investors by disclosing his entanglements with the “Deep State” as we reported previously.

Byrne, 56, who founded the company in 1999 and took it public three years later, will be succeeded by director Jonathan Johnson who was with the company for 17 years and has recently served as president of Overstock’s blockchain business, Medici Ventures.

“While I believe that I did what was necessary for the good of the country, for the good of the firm, I am in the sad position of having to sever ties with Overstock,” Byrne wrote in a lengthy 1,600-word letter.

The letter opened with two quotes, one stating the founder is “already far too controversial to serve as CEO” and the other simply noting “do not wish to disrupt possible strategic discussions.”

Byrne’s resignation comes after conspiratorial comments from August 12, where he confessed his role in the ‘deep state’, claiming that he helped cause “damage done to our nation for three years and felt my duty as a citizen precluded me from staying silent any longer.”  In the “comments on Deep State” statement, Byrne referred to law-enforcement officials as “the Men in Black” and said his choice to go public was encouraged by his “Omaha Rabbi.”

“Thus, while I believe that I did what was necessary for the good of the country, for the good of the firm, I am in the sad position of having to sever ties with Overstock, both as CEO and board member, effective Thursday August 22,” Byrne wrote.

Byrne released an initial statement last week where he discussed his involvement in the federal government’s investigation into the 2016 election interference, though he wasn’t super-specific, he said he assisted in ‘investigations’ related to the Clintons and Russia…

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It’s Always About Control

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Stop Hating on Self-Checkouts – Foundation for Economic Education

Posted by M. C. on August 22, 2019

https://fee.org/articles/in-praise-of-self-checkouts/

Tyler Curtis

If you’ve been to the grocery store lately, then you’ve probably had to make this choice: regular cashier or self-checkout? For many shoppers, the choice often depends on which option has a line, how many items they have in their basket, and sometimes they’ll just choose whichever lane is closest. Others, however, hate self-checkouts with a visceral passion. Not only do they refuse to use the machines, they don’t want self-checkouts to exist at all.

This attitude is woefully misguided. While there is nothing wrong with preferring to engage with a human cashier, a fair number of shoppers enjoy the benefits self-checkouts have to offer. Indeed, there is much about self-checkouts to praise.

Why All the Fuss?

Though most shoppers who tacitly boycott self-checkouts do so with respect, patiently waiting in line for a human cashier, there is a vocal minority who would like nothing more than to take a Louisville slugger to the dastardly appliances.

One such malcontent is Kaitlyn Tiffany, a Vox writer who presumably would have felt comfortable with mobs destroying power-looms in 19th century England. In an article bluntly entitled, “Wouldn’t it be better if self-checkout just died?” Tiffany laid out precisely why she believes retail stores ought to eliminate the machines.

Her first objection is a simple one: self-checkouts are annoying. And admittedly, that’s hard to argue with. Those who’ve been scolded for placing an “unexpected item in the bagging area” will understand. “Seemingly everyone hates them,” writes Tiffany.

As someone who worked as a self-checkout attendant for three years, I can confidently say that Tiffany’s generalization is way off base. Not only are self-checkouts not universally loathed, there are a large number of shoppers who actually prefer them over a human cashier.

To the self-checkout haters, this is ludicrous. “Why would I want to scan and bag my own groceries?” they ask with haughty indignation. Well, there are a number of reasons.

First, no one is going to treat your items with as much care as you do. One does not have to be a cynic to understand that there are reckless cashiers who will bruise your fruit or smash your bread. You can also bag your groceries in whichever way you prefer. For those worried about breaking their eggs, or mixing that leaky package of meat with the vegetables, being able to bag your own groceries is nothing to scoff at. Self-service often means better service.

Second, using the self-checkout is frequently the fastest option, at least for those who feel comfortable with the technology (no unexpected items in the bagging area!). Even its relative unpopularity with other customers is a bonus for those who like them; after all, if fewer people want to use the self-checkout, the chance of there being a line is diminished…

The great thing about the free market is that it doesn’t force everyone into one-size-fits-all products. Sadly, there are many who see this as a bug rather than a feature. Market skeptics like Kaitlyn Tiffany observe shoppers scanning their own groceries and see nothing but capitalist trickery. But for those who value having more choices, the only complaint can be: I wish this had been available sooner!

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Is that Sean Penn?

 

 

 

 

 

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Taliban Peace Talks Must Not Ignore CIA-Funded Militias

Posted by M. C. on August 22, 2019

Another CIA success story.

There are so many they are embarrassed to tell US about them.

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/21/taliban-peace-talks-afghanistan-militias/

After 18 years of war, and months of direct talks, the United States appears to be on the brink of reaching an unprecedented peace agreement with the Taliban that would bring about U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A draft agreement was reached in March, and negotiators in Qatar have reportedly been ironing out the details ahead of a September 1 deadline — including exactly when U.S. troops will withdraw and when a permanent ceasefire between the parties will take effect. The U.S. is reportedly also seeking assurances from the Taliban that it won’t harbor foreign terror groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda and will engage in dialogue with the Afghan government after the U.S. military leaves.

It’s the closest the U.S. has come to a diplomatic breakthrough with the Taliban, and foreign policy scholars are cautiously optimistic that it could facilitate a U.S. exit. But a new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute argues that the agreement won’t lead to real peace unless it addresses the elephant in the room: the fate of regional Afghan militias paid and directed by the CIA.

“Militias that operate outside the control of the central state and the chain of command of its armed forces will undermine the process of state formation and the prospects for a sustainable peace,” the report reads.

It is unclear to what extent the fate of the militias has been discussed at all by the U.S. or Taliban negotiators. In July, Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief U.S. negotiator, mentioned the fate of militias while listing topics that needed to be encompassed by a general agreement. But the authors of the report note that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, once director of the CIA, has not.

If the issue goes unaddressed, the report argues, it could lead to the breakdown of a ceasefire or agreement, which would in turn jeopardize Afghanistan’s future. “If violence continues at some level after the agreement is signed,” the report says, “militias will be in much demand in the political market place.”

The use of CIA-backed militias goes back to 2001, when, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the CIA rapidly organized Afghan militias under its payroll to overthrow the Taliban. This allowed the CIA to send Al Qaeda’s fighters fleeing the country with a minimal U.S. footprint.

Initially, these local militias were viewed as a temporary solution, but they eventually became a permanent fixture of secret CIA operations in the country — sometimes acting without the knowledge of U.S. diplomats and Afghan military leaders.

Not much is publicly known about specific groups the CIA directs, the best known of which is the Khost Protection Force. The force has no basis in the Afghan Constitution or law and operates out of the CIA’s Camp Chapman in the province of Khost.

In 2010, journalist Bob Woodward wrote that the CIA’s “army” consisted of about 3,000 Afghan fighters, but since then the number has likely ballooned. According to the New York Times, as of December, the Khost Force alone may number as many as 10,000. (The U.S. currently has approximately 14,000 troops in the country.)

President Donald Trump has further expanded the CIA’s paramilitary role in Afghanistan, using local militias in hunt-and-kill operations…

According to the report, the size and power of the CIA’s forces could pose a problem for the Afghan government after the peace talks. For the militias, integration into the regular armed forces could mean a significant pay cut and a loss of the privileged status that has allowed them to operate largely without transparency or legal accountability. “If cut loose by the CIA,” the report notes, “they may be reborn as private armies or ‘security guards’ in the service of powerful individuals, or operate autonomously to prey on civilians and commercial sources.”

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GUYANA: CIA meddling, race riots and a phantom death squad ...

 

 

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10 declassified Russia collusion revelations that could rock Washington this fall | TheHill

Posted by M. C. on August 22, 2019

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/458173-10-declassified-russia-collusion-revelations-that-could-rock-washington-this

By John Solomon

Behind the scenes, some major events were set in motion last autumn that could soon change the tenor in Washington, at least as it relates to the debunked Russia collusion narrative that distracted America for nearly three years.

It was in September 2018 that President Trump told my Hill.TV colleague Buck Sexton and me that he would order the release of all classified documents showing what the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other U.S. intelligence agencies may have done wrong in the Russia probe.

About the same time, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, under then-Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), voted unanimously to send 53 nonpublic transcripts of witnesses in its Russia review to the director of national intelligence (DNI) for declassification. The transcripts were officially delivered in November.

Now, nearly a year later, neither release has happened.

To put that into perspective, it took just a couple of months in 2004 to declassify the final report on the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks after a presidential commission finished its work, which contained some of the nation’s most secretive intelligence revelations.

But the long wait for transparency may soon end.

The foot-dragging inside the intelligence community (IC) that occurred under now-departed DNI Dan Coats and his deputy, Sue Gordon, could halt abruptly. That’s particularly true if Trump appoints a new IC sheriff, such as former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the current ambassador to the Netherlands, or longtime national security expert Fred Fleitz…

1.)   Christopher Steele’s confidential human source reports at the FBI. These documents, known in bureau parlance as 1023 reports, show exactly what transpired each time Steele and his FBI handlers met in the summer and fall of 2016 to discuss his anti-Trump dossier. The big reveal, my sources say, could be the first evidence that the FBI shared sensitive information with Steele, such as the existence of the classified Crossfire Hurricane operation targeting the Trump campaign. It would be a huge discovery if the FBI fed Trump-Russia intel to Steele in the midst of an election, especially when his ultimate opposition-research client was Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The FBI has released only one or two of these reports under Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and they were 100 percent redacted. The American public deserves better.

2.)   The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I’m told, including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had Russia-related contacts at the CIA.

3.)   The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk, worked as FBI sources. We know for sure that one or both had contact with targeted Trump aides like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos at the end of the election. My sources tell me there may be other documents showing Halper continued working his way to the top of Trump’s transition and administration, eventually reaching senior advisers like Peter Navarro inside the White House in summer 2017. These documents would show what intelligence agencies worked with Halper, who directed his activity, how much he was paid and how long his contacts with Trump officials were directed by the U.S. government’s Russia probe.

4.)   The October 2016 FBI email chain. This is a key document identified by Rep. Nunes and his investigators. My sources say it will show exactly what concerns the FBI knew about and discussed with DOJ about using Steele’s dossier and other evidence to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in October 2016. If those concerns weren’t shared with FISA judges who approved the warrant, there could be major repercussions.

5.)   Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes’s five buckets, these documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. If he made that statement with the FBI monitoring, and it was not disclosed to the FISA court, it could be another case of FBI or DOJ misconduct.

6.)   The ‘Gang of Eight’ briefing materials. These were a series of classified briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. Of all the documents congressional leaders were shown, this is most frequently cited to me in private as having changed the minds of lawmakers who weren’t initially convinced of FISA abuses or FBI irregularities.

7.)   The Steele spreadsheet. I wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet rumors. Given Steele’s own effort to leak intel in his dossier to the media before Election Day, the public deserves to see the FBI’s final analysis of his credibility. A document I reviewed recently showed the FBI described Steele’s information as only “minimally corroborated” and the bureau’s confidence in him as “medium.”

8.)   The Steele interview. It has been reported, and confirmed, that the DOJ’s inspector general interviewed the former British intelligence operative for as long as 16 hours about his contacts with the FBI while working with Clinton’s opposition research firm, Fusion GPS. It is clear from documents already forced into the public view by lawsuits that Steele admitted in the fall of 2016 that he was desperate to defeat Trump, had a political deadline to make his dirt public, was working for the DNC/Clinton campaign and was leaking to the news media. If he told that to the FBI and it wasn’t disclosed to the FISA court, there could be serious repercussions.

9.)   The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe had started and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. It is the one FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I’m told the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to infiltrate Trump’s orbit.

10.)  Records of allies’ assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S. allies overseas — possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy — were asked to assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. Members of Congress have searched recently for some key contact documents with British intelligence. My sources say these documents might help explain Attorney General William Barr’s recent comments that “the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is unprecedented and it’s a serious red line that’s been crossed.”

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More Spying and Lying – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 22, 2019

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/andrew-p-napolitano/more-spying-and-lying/

By

While most of us have been thinking about the end of summer and while the political class frets over the Democratic presidential debates and the aborted visit of two members of Congress to Israel, the Trump administration has quietly moved to extend and make permanent the government’s authority to spy on all persons in America.

The president, never at a loss for words, must have been asked by the intelligence community he once reviled not to address these matters in public.

These matters include the very means and the very secret court about which he complained loud and long during the Mueller investigation. Now, he wants to be able to unleash permanently on all of us the evils he claims were visited upon him by the Obama-era FBI and by his own FBI. What’s going on?

Here is the backstory.

After the lawlessness of Watergate had been exposed — a president spying on his political adversaries without warrants in the name of national security — Congress enacted in 1978 the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It prescribed a means for surveillance other than that which the Constitution requires.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution — written in the aftermath of British soldiers and agents using general warrants obtained from a secret court in London to spy on whomever in the colonies they wished and to seize whatever they found — was ratified as part of the Bill of Rights to limit the government’s ability to intrude upon the privacy of all persons, thereby prohibiting those procedures used by the British.

Thus, we have the constitutional requirements that no searches and seizures can occur without a warrant issued by a judge based on a showing, under oath, of probable cause of crime. The courts have uniformly characterized electronic surveillance as a search.

I am not addressing eyesight surveillance on a public street. I am addressing electronic surveillance wherever one is when one sends or receives digital communications. FISA is an unconstitutional congressional effort to lower the standards required by the Fourth Amendment from probable cause of crime to probable cause of foreign agency.

Can Congress do that? Can it change a provision of the Constitution? Of course not. If it could, we wouldn’t have a Constitution.

It gets worse.

The court established by FISA — that’s the same court that President Donald Trump asserts authorized spying on him in 2015 and 2016 — has morphed the requirement of probable cause of being a foreign agent to probable cause of communicating with a foreign person as the standard for authorizing surveillance.

What was initially aimed at foreign agents physically present in the United States has secretly become a means to spy on innocent Americans. In Trump’s case, the FISA court used the foreign and irrelevant communications of two part-time campaign workers to justify surveillance on the campaign…

The late Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland once wrote that we cannot pick and choose which parts of the Constitution to follow and which to ignore. If we could, the Constitution would be meaningless.

Did he foresee our present woes when he wrote, “If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned”?

Is that where we are headed?

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d0b4d-iu

 

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Siege at Ruby Ridge – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 22, 2019

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/no_author/siege-at-ruby-ridge/

Ammo.com

…During the standoff, a voluntary surrender date was negotiated with the Marshals Service for October 1991, but the United States Attorney’s Office refused the settlement. The Deputy Director of the Special Operations Group of the Marshals Service, using evidence obtained through surveillance, believed that the best course of action was to drop the indictment, issue a new one under seal, and use undercover agents to arrest Weaver, who presumably would have dropped his guard. This recommendation was again rejected.

Shooting the Weavers’ Dog: The Siege of Ruby Ridge Begins

On August 21, 1992, six heavily armed, camouflaged U.S. Marshals went to the Weaver property with the purpose of reconnaissance. The Weavers’ dogs gave away the position of the Marshals, alerting their 14-year-old son Sammy and a 24-year-old friend of the family named Kevin Harris, who investigated what the dogs were barking at while armed.

Unsurprisingly, there are several accounts of how the shooting began.

The Weavers claim that the camouflaged Marshals fired first and refused to identify themselves. The Marshals claim that when they rose to identify themselves, they were fired on by Sammy Weaver and Kevin Harris. In yet another version of events, Marshals shot the Weavers’ dog Striker as he exposed their position and were fired upon by Sammy in retaliation.

Once the shooting began, Randy Weaver’s son, Sammy, was shot in the back by Marshals immediately after yelling, “I’m coming, dad!” as he ran back to the house. That is to say, he was fleeing the scene, not regrouping for another attack.

After this initial exchange, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team – sometimes disparagingly called the “Hostage Roasting Team,” due to their proclivity to burn down buildings – was called in to assess the situation.

Sniper and observer teams were deployed by the Hostage Rescue Team. A sniper aimed for an instant kill shot on Randy, but Randy moved at the last minute and the shot entered his shoulder, exiting through his armpit. He then fled back to the house from the shed where he had been viewing the body of his dead son.

A second shot missed Kevin Harris and hit Vicki in the head, who was holding their 10-month-old daughter at the time in her arms, a powerful image often invoked in the telling of the story. This same second shot hit Harris after exiting Vicki. An internal investigation found that the second shot was out of policy and that the failure to request surrender was “inexcusable.”

FBI Sniper Lon Horiuchi fired through a door without seeing who was on the other side of it – at people who were fleeing and posed no threat. He was later charged with manslaughter in these deaths, but the charges were dropped. Horiuchi was also involved in the Waco siege, and Timothy McVeigh printed up cards for gun shows encouraging people to target him. Indeed, McVeigh considered targeting Horiuchi and his family rather than the federal building. In 1995, he pleaded the Fifth when questioned about the matter by the United States Senate. His whereabouts are currently unknown.

The rules of engagement were changed on the fly to effectively encourage shooting anyone on sight. This included the remaining Weaver children, who were known to carry weapons 81 percent of the time. Once the siege began, none of the Weavers fired a shot.

The standoff lasted ten days, and involved between 350 and 400 agents who cruelly named their camp, “Camp Vicki.” They would routinely call out “Vicki, we have blueberry pancakes,” but claimed to not know that she was dead. Supporters of the Weavers and opponents of the ATF and FBI formed a vigil.

Weaver’s commanding officer from Vietnam, James “Bo” Gritz (who was currently running for President on the Populist Party ticket) acted as a mediator between the family and government agents. Radio broadcaster Paul Harvey intervened, offering to pay for a robust defense for Weaver if he surrendered. This was what led Weaver to abandon the standoff and surrender himself to federal authorities.

The Aftermath of the Federal Siege at Ruby Ridge

Weaver was charged with ten counts, including the original charges, of illegal firearms sales. His attorney, Gerry Spence, successfully defended Weaver against a host of charges, including murder, by using a self-defense argument. Weaver was ultimately only convicted of the charge of failure to appear, for which he was sentenced to 18 months in prison and a fine of $10,000. He was credited with time served plus three months. Kevin Harris was acquitted of all charges. These were the longest deliberations in Idaho criminal history.

Weaver sued the federal government, which avoided a civil trial by awarding damages of $1,000,000 each to the three surviving Weaver children and $100,000 to Randy. Harris eventually received a settlement of $380,000 after several years of appeals against a government who claimed they would never issue any payment to someone who had killed a federal marshal.

It is worth noting that the federal government took active steps to cover their tracks after the Siege of Ruby Ridge. The chief of the bureau’s Violent Crimes and Major Offenders Section pled guilty to attempting to destroy all copies of the FBI’s internal report on the siege. Federal Judge Edward Lodge penned a lengthy list of misdeeds, including fabrication of evidence and refusing to comply with court orders.

Deval Patrick, then-Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and later Governor of Massachusetts, later found that federal agents had not used excessive force.

One of the biggest changes after the Siege of Ruby Ridge was a change in the rules of engagement. In October 1995, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information ordered all federal agencies to standardize their rules of engagement, particularly as pertained to deadly force. Randy and his daughter Sara wrote a book about the events in 1998 entitled The Federal Siege at Ruby Ridge. The family now live in Kalispell, Montana. Sara became a Born Again Christian in 2012, and forgave the federal agents.

There was, predictably, very little meaningful blowback on the United States Marshals Service or any other parts of the federal government. The Ruby Ridge Task Force delivered a highly redacted 542-page report. And the six marshals involved in the initial shootout were given the highest commendations awarded by the United States Marshal Service.

In 1997, the Justice Department declined to prosecute senior FBI officials for covering up the details of the case. Two FBI agents were prosecuted, one served 18 months in prison for destruction of evidence and the other had the charges dismissed. The second-in-command of the FBI was demoted and three other agents were suspended.

In 1996, Weaver offered his services to defuse tensions between the FBI and the Montana Freeman, however, this offer was declined. In 2000, Weaver visited the former site of the Branch Davidian Church that had been destroyed in another high-profile siege. He later offered support to Edward and Elaine Brown, who were resisting federal taxes at the time…

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The Demise of the West? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 22, 2019

Mr. Rockwell’s article makes some good points which is why I re-posted. The remainder of the article is a request to help fund his new book.

I encourage you to lick the link to investigate.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/lew-rockwell/the-demise-of-the-west/

By

The Left is the most dangerous ideological phenomenon in the history of mankind. It glorifies poverty, the total state, and mass death. The Left wants to destroy Western civilization, based on Christianity, the traditional family, and the free market.

It’s no coincidence that Communists killed more than 100 million people, not including their wars.

By the way, young people are not taught about the evils of the Left, only its myths. They do not believe there were gigantic atrocities in the Lenin-Stalin Soviet Union, nor Mao’s China. Socialism is good! Everyone is better off under socialism. Everyone is Equal.

Equality is the magic word. Since it does not and cannot exist, it is is a license for total state power. After all, some people are smart, some stupid. Some good looking, some ugly. Some creative, some dull. Some hard working, some lazy. Some athletic, some couch potatoes.

According to the Left, private property and the free market are evil, not the sources of prosperity and civilization itself. The family is the ultimate evil, since is the ultimate source of inequality. That’s why Karl Marx called for its abolition.

The key fact about the human race is our radical inequality, said Mises. Without it, there could be no division of labor, no social cooperation, no market. There could be no liberty, because liberty depends on the ability of people to exercise without hindrance their unequal talents.

It’s more than ironic that Leftists call us fascists and Nazis, since fascism had its origins in communism and socialism, and Nazism was National Socialism. Both Mussolini and Hitler denounced the free market and all it stands for. But then, Leftists never tell the truth.

Where did this poison originate? Not so much in the ancient world, though it had its advocates there too. One Greek myth talked about the ruler Procrustes, who would force visitors to sleep in his iron bedstead. If you were too tall, he’d have your feet chopped off. If too short, he’d have you stretched on the rack. It’s still a good summary of egalitarianism.

The birth of modern Leftism was the French Revolution, with its wars, conscription, egalitarianism, mass deaths, and total state. Defeated, it rose again in Communist Marxism, the Russian Revolution, and all its despicable offspring.

Yet Marx’s idea of a proletarian revolution proved ridiculous and impossible. The attempt to put this idea into practice in Soviet Russia led to terror and mass murder that staggered the world. Far more effective was Cultural Marxism, originated by mostly German Communists in the 1930s, who moved like a plague to the United States in the 1940s. Putting aside direct efforts to revolutionize the means of production, they focused on destroying bourgeois culture—the family and Christianity especially—as the path to power…

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Germany 1880 1945: Art Posters of the Third Reich

 

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American Gulag Death Of Jeffrey Epstein: Will Julian Assange Be Next?

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2019

“People in the United States are skeptical of anything that the government puts out because the intelligence-gathering process in our country has been weaponized for political ends,”

Really? I frequent the letters section of my local paper. The people still talk about how Russia spread DNC info. Assad gassed his people. On and On and ON…

Where do your friends get their news. Stephen Colbert or The Intercept?

Chris Cuomo or Ron Paul?

Do they say The InterWhat…Ron Who.  Thought so.

You better get to work.

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/american-gulag-death-of-jeffrey-epstein-will-julian-assange-be-next_08202019

Mac Slavo

The death of millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein behind bars should trigger “system-wide self-reflection” on how prisoners are treated. The Metropolitan Correctional Center “is sort of like an American gulag for people who have not been convicted of anything,” Epstein lawyer Marc Fernich said.

Epstein had at least some dirt on some high-powered people like Bill Clinton and he could very well be dead because he was going to talk.

And another person currently jailed for giving the American public information the United States government desperately wanted to keep secret, is Julian Assange.  His health is failing and the highly dubious death of Jeffrey Epstein in a U.S. maximum-security prison is another strong reason not to extradite Assange into one.

Epstein’s death has gotten his lawyer to speak out about the conditions in American prisons, likening them to the gulags of the Soviet Union. MCC is “institutionally ill-equipped” to deal with someone like Epstein who wouldn’t last long in general population but who isn’t a hardened criminal, Fernich explained to RT.  “This is one of the toughest pre-trial detention facilities in the country. And the conditions are inhumane.” Epstein, he insists, was “presumed innocent,” despite his 2008 conviction for soliciting underage prostitutes – part of a slap-on-the-wrist plea deal the fallout from which culminated in this year’s sex trafficking charges – and should not have been confined in such “barbaric” conditions.

But there is every reason to fear Assange is already in danger, in Belmarsh maximum-security prison, where he is currently incarcerated. Assange did the unthinkable. He exposed the government for what it really is: a corrupt authoritarian entity that firmly believes it has the right to enslave everyone else.  Pressenza wrote: “The Establishment has conspired to reduce his ability to defend himself in court.  I am not convinced it is not conspiring to destroy him.”…

“People in the United States are skeptical of anything that the government puts out because the intelligence-gathering process in our country has been weaponized for political ends,” said Fernich.

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Sheeple Quotes. QuotesGram

 

 

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America’s Interventionist Middle East Policy Started 66 Years Ago – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2019

The collapse of our towers on September 11th was one large entry in a long running history of western interference in the lands of Islam, and if any more oil tankers get attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, it’s worth remembering that it was not Persia who cast the first stone.

https://original.antiwar.com/andrew_corbley/2019/08/20/americas-interventionist-middle-east-policy-started-66-years-ago/

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As the late-summer date of August 20th passes stateside, very few Americans will recognize the significance of it in our nation’s history. It marks the 66th anniversary of a sinister turn in the history of American foreign policy, and while neocons and hawks of all sorts will tell you history started on September 12th 2001, a quick visit to the Tehran Times will remind you this is not the case.

In 1953 following a request for assistance by Great Britain, and enthusiastic support from Ike Eisenhower, the United States overthrew the democratically-elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddegh, in what was the first major coup d’état the United States would carry out since the end of World War II.

Dubbed Operation Ajax, it would set the stage for future decades of America’s sandpaper relations with the greater Middle East.

Dust and echoes

In cutting Britain out of the Iranian oil market, Mohammad Mosaddegh made not one but two terrible enemies as the British asked the Americans for help in reclaiming the oil supply. August 19th comes around and out goes Mosaddegh, his heinous crime being that he thought Persians should be able to elect whom they wish, and decide what happens with the resources extracted within their own borders.

Installed in his place, the shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and General Fazlollah Zahedi – members of a monarchical ruling class directed their efforts into the business of oppressing, torturing, killing, and turning what was becoming a prosperous and democratic country into a tyrannical Bronze Age satrapy.

Two decades later the Islamic revolution sends the shah and his secret police force packing, establishing what is now the Islamic Republic of Iran. Incensed by the attack on American interests, the United States brokers an agreement with neighboring Iraq to invade and repress the popular uprising, setting off the Iran-Iraq War, a horrible conflict that’s been likened to World War I because of the large-scale trench warfare, chemical weapons, bayonet charges, and massive casualty figures, which much like the first World War, all amounted to a steaming pile of nothing in terms of achieved geopolitical objectives.

Iraq started the war on the offensive, attempting to take advantage of the chaos following the Islamic revolution. Saddam Hussein, America’s ally at the time also had the logistical support of the Gulf States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France, while Iran stood alone.

The root of the problem

Ever since the Islamic Republic of Iran stood up against the American-backed dictator, the goal of every presidential administration to take of residence in the White House has been vengeance. Nothing as of yet has stood in America’s way of a Mongol-like destruction of the Shiite Middle East beyond the weapons of Persia herself. Not even our former ally Saddam Hussein was spared from the directive to place the Islamic Republic under the highest degree of geopolitical, military, and economic pressure.

No matter how many times Saddam assured the west that the only WMDs under his belt were the decommissioned chemical weapons which NATO countries had given him to use against the Iranians, he and his Baathist regime would have to go. And thus the United States wrongly invaded Iraq, wherein about four and a half thousand Americans died.

Throughout the 21st century the names of the countries have changed but the victims are always those among her neighbors who Iran might look to for help. Meanwhile the Sunni states all around her pledge in unity to fight the Iranians until the last American, as Obama’s Secretary of Defense Robert Gates famously told the French foreign minister in 2010.

Operation Ajax’s legacy

As Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zariff tweeted today: “66 years ago today, a coup instigated by the US and the UK overthrew the democratically-elected Government of Iran. This atrocity followed years of ‘maximum pressure’ on Iranians”.

The maximum pressure levied now against the Iranians is breathtaking in scope. Upon the denizens of this ancient land the United States has placed crippling economic sanctions; upon her borders, an armada of military bases; upon her shores, the crosshairs of the most powerful navy in the world; and upon her neighbors, utter devastation.

President Barack Obama saw a need to “knock Iran down a peg,” with a regime-change war containing all sorts of despicable behavior, such as arming “moderate rebels” like Jabot al-Nusra, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, and using the armed-forces of the United States to bomb sovereign Syrian military targets under the justification of preventing future chemical weapon attacks which have now been widely reported to have been conducted by non-governmental forces.

Not to be outdone, President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear treaty, as Javad Zariff claimed, “without even reading it,” instated further sanctions, and has managed with the help of Iran’s eternal antagonist John Bolton, to press America as close to the brink of a war with Iran as we’ve yet seen.

Americans must remember August 20th 1953 as the day when America dipped her toes into the water (or sand) and thought it good. President Eisenhower thought it was a great way to affect positive change in the world that didn’t involve land invasions. Ike is not unique in holding that perspective, since many presidents have felt the same way about coups, and have since enjoyed playing the coup card in countries like Nicaragua, Guatemala, Libya, Egypt, and most recently Venezuela.

The overthrowing of Mosaddegh was a major step on America’s dangerous path to premier imperial world superpower in the sense that it reminded her that she could get away with murder and political terrorism, and demonstrated how greatly she could affect the world without bothering the American people over the details.

The collapse of our towers on September 11th was one large entry in a long running history of western interference in the lands of Islam, and if any more oil tankers get attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, it’s worth remembering that it was not Persia who cast the first stone.

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NPR Mocks Cancer Survivor in Drumbeat of Syria Propaganda – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2019

https://original.antiwar.com/rick_sterling/2019/08/20/npr-mocks-cancer-survivor-in-drumbeat-of-syria-propaganda/

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It may be a new low in propaganda. National Public Radio (NPR) used the news that Syrian First Lady Asma Assad had overcome breast cancer to mock her and continue the information war against Syria. They interviewed a Human Rights Watch staffer named Lama Fakih who is an American from Michigan now based in Beirut.

Do you believe Ms. Fakih in Beirut or do you believe people who live in Syria who say we are being lied to? Lilly Martin is such a person. Although she is American from Fresno California, Lilly has lived in Syria for nearly 25 years. She is married to a Syrian and has two Syrian sons. Dr. Nabil Antaki is another such person. He is a medical doctor in Aleppo, fluent in English and French as well as his native Arabic.

While NPR snorts about Asma Assad “sporting a chic blonde pixie cut”, Lilly Martin points out that she was recently bald while fighting for her life.

While Ms. Fakir in Beirut says that there is “quite a lot of anger” because Asma Assad has conquered cancer, Dr. Antaki says that Syrians are happy at the news. Asma Assad is First Lady, mother to three children, and known for her compassion. Lilly Martin says that even while she battled cancer Mrs. Assad continued her charitable work.

While Ms. Fakih says that the “Assad government has been systematically targeting medical facilities and medical personnel”, Dr. Antaki, who has remained in Aleppo throughout the conflict, says this is not true. While there are many western accusations that the Syrian government attacks hospitals, the evidence is remarkably thin. One of the most highly publicized cases was regarding “Al Quds Hospital” in east Aleppo. In April 2016 there was a media blitz about this hospital having been destroyed by the Syrian Army. Following the departure of the “rebels”, it was discovered that “Al Quds Hospital” was an unmarked portion of an apartment building, that it had NOT been bombed and was the LEAST damaged building in the area. It was determined that the nearby Nusra (Al Qaeda) headquarters and ammunition depot was the Syrian army target. Accusations that “Al Quds Hospital” was bombed were false. It was a media stunt.

Ms. Fakih says that “Syrians have not been able to benefit from medical care in Syria since the beginning of the uprising in 2012”. Lilly Martin simply says “This is factually untrue. The Syrian system of national hospitals, free services to the public, are in every area of Syria and have run continuously throughout the war.” Dr. Antaki is an example; he is one of thousands of doctors working at hundreds of hospitals throughout Syria. But you would never know it from NPR or Ms. Fakih…

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