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The CIA’s Murderous Practices, Disinformation Campaigns, and Interference in Other Countries Still Shape the World Order and U.S. Politics

Posted by M. C. on June 1, 2020

https://theintercept.com/2020/05/21/the-cias-murderous-practices-disinformation-campaigns-and-interference-in-other-countries-still-shapes-the-world-order-and-u-s-politics/

In the weeks before the 2016 presidential election, the most powerful former leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency did everything they could to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump. President Obama’s former acting CIA chief Michael Morrell published a full-throated endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed “Putin ha[s] recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” while George W. Bush’s post-9/11 CIA and NSA Chief, Gen. Michael Hayden, writing in the Washington Post, refrained from endorsing Clinton outright but echoed Morrell by accusing Trump of being a “useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow” and sounding “a little bit the conspiratorial Marxist.” Meanwhile, the intelligence community under James Clapper and John Brennan fed morsels to both the Obama DOJ and the U.S. media to suggest a Trump/Russia conspiracy and fuel what became the Russiagate investigation.

In his extraordinary election-advocating op-ed, Hayden, Bush/Cheney’s CIA chief, candidly explained the reasons for the CIA’s antipathy for Trump: namely, the GOP candidate’s stated opposition to allowing CIA regime change efforts in Syria to expand as well as his opposition to arming Ukrainians with lethal weapons to fight Russia (supposedly “pro-Putin” positions which, we are now all supposed to forget, Obama largely shared).

As has been true since President Harry Truman’s creation of the CIA after World War II, interfering in other countries and dictating or changing their governments — through campaigns of mass murder, military coups, arming guerrilla groups, the abolition of democracy, systemic disinformation, and the imposition of savage despots — is regarded as a divine right, inherent to American exceptionalism. Anyone who questions that or, worse, opposes it and seeks to impede it (as the CIA perceived Trump was) is of suspect loyalties at best.

The CIA’s antipathy toward Trump continued after his election victory. The agency became the primary vector for anonymous illegal leaks designed to depict Trump as a Kremlin agent and/or blackmail victim. It worked to ensure the leak of the Steele dossier that clouded at least the first two years of Trump’s presidency. It drove the scam Russiagate conspiracy theories. And before Trump was even inaugurated, open warfare erupted between the president-elect and the agency to the point where Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explicitly warned Trump on the Rachel Maddow Show that he was risking full-on subversion of his presidency by the agency:

Democrats, early in Trump’s presidency, saw clearly that the CIA had become one of Trump’s most devoted enemies, and thus began viewing them as a valuable ally. Leading out-of-power Democratic foreign policy elites from the Obama administration and Clinton campaign joined forces not only with Bush/Cheney neocons but also former CIA officials to create new foreign policy advocacy groups designed to malign and undermine Trump and promote hawkish confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. Meanwhile, other ex-CIA and Homeland Security officials, such as John Brennan and James Clapper, became beloved liberal celebrities by being hired by MSNBC and CNN to deliver liberal-pleasing anti-Trump messaging that, on a virtually daily basis, masqueraded as news.

The all-consuming Russiagate narrative that dominated the first three years of Trump’s presidency further served to elevate the CIA as a noble and admirable institution while whitewashing its grotesque history. Liberal conventional wisdom held that Russian Facebook ads, Twitter bots and the hacking and release of authentic, incriminating DNC emails was some sort of unprecedented, off-the-charts, out-of-the-ordinary crime-of-the-century attack, with several leading Democrats (including Hillary Clinton) actually comparing it to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.

 

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U.S. Warplane Profits Scramble Over Germany’s Anti-Nuclear Push — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on June 1, 2020

This would explain why the recent German debate calling for removal of U.S. nuclear weapons has sparked such a fierce reaction from Washington. It’s not just about American dominance over Europe through its historic NATO nuclear pact. In addition, there are billions of dollars at stake for the makers of American warplanes. That’s why Washington is pressuring Berlin to keep its nuclear weapons. It’s part and parcel of selling more U.S. warplanes.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/22/us-warplane-profits-scramble-over-germany-anti-nuclear-push/

Finian Cunningham

When Germany’s Social Democrats – the junior governing coalition partner – renewed long-standing calls for withdrawing U.S. nuclear bombs from the country, the backlash from Washington was fast and furious.

Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Berlin, wrote an oped for German media slamming the move as “undermining” NATO’s nuclear deterrence in Europe. Grenell, who is also the acting U.S. Director of National Intelligence, was scathing, reiterating President Trump’s vituperative claims that Germany was not pulling its weight in NATO commitments.

Grenell has been the bane of many German politicians of all stripes over what they view as his high-handed interference in the country’s internal affairs, with one former Social Democrat leader likening him to a “colonial officer”.

Then came the intervention from the American ambassador to Poland, Georgette Mosbacher, who mischievously proffered that if Germany didn’t want to station U.S. nuclear warheads, then Poland would provide an alternative site for the weapons. Given the history of bad blood between Germany and Poland, not to mention the incendiary provocation to Russia, Mosbacher’s suggestion is ludicrous. Nevertheless it illustrates the strenuous pushback by Washington to the renewed calls for removing U.S. nuclear weapons from German soil.

There are believed to be some 20 B-61-3/4 nuclear bombs stored at the Bucher airbase in western Germany under U.S. command. In the event of a nuclear war, the bombs would be fitted to German aircraft flown by Luftwaffe pilots and activated by American secret codes. The arrangement is part of a wider historical NATO nuclear-sharing agreement in Europe dating back to the Cold War, which sees U.S.-commanded bombs assigned also to Belgium, Netherlands and Italy.

German citizens have long called for the removal of the U.S. bombs from their territory, fearing that the weapons increase instability and the danger of war with Russia. In 2010, the German parliament (Bundestag) voted for the Berlin government to work towards Washington’s removal of the bombs.

However, successive German governments have ignored the parliamentary vote. Most recently, earlier this month, Berlin vowed it would continue to uphold the NATO nuclear-sharing agreement.

It must have come as considerable alarm to Washington when the Social Democrats – junior partner to Angel Merkel’s Christian Democrats – recently reinvigorated calls for the U.S. to withdraw its nuclear arsenal.

Rolf Mützenich, the parliamentary leader of the Social Democrats is quoted as saying: “It is time Germany ruled out them [U.S. nuclear weapons] being stationed here in future.

He added: “Nuclear arms on German soil do not strengthen our security, quite the contrary.”

Having its nuclear weapons on European territory is a crucial element of Washington’s control over NATO and European foreign policy. In particular, the bombs allow the U.S. to project power at Russia. But more importantly, the strategic value stems from Washington being able to impose a scaremongering agenda in order to divide Europe from conducting normal relations with Moscow. That has long been the real purpose of the U.S.-dominated NATO alliance. “To keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in and the Germans down,” remarked one of its founders.

But there is also a more contemporary factor – multi-billion-dollar profits for the U.S. military industry.

There has been a long-running political fight in Berlin over the upgrade of Germany’s air force. The Luftwaffe’s aging fleet of Tornados dating from the early 1980s are due to be replaced by 2025. German officials have been mulling whether to replace the Tornados with European-made Eurofighter Typhoons or U.S.-made F-35s and F-18s. Sometimes Berlin seems to favor the Eurofighter, and then at other times the American option.

The Airbus consortium involved in manufacturing the Eurofighter is a joint venture between several European governments, including Germany’s. Apart from lucrative revenue from aircraft sales, there are also follow-on benefits from employment and service maintenance contracts.

Boeing, the maker of the F-18 fighter bomber, has been hit with devastating financial losses over the past year due to deadly crashes involving its civilian Max-8 airliner. There is thus a lot at stake for the company – a flagship of American manufacturing – depending on the decision by Germany on what aircraft it will purchase for upgrading its fleet of Tornados.

German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer reportedly informed her American counterpart Mark Esper in April that Berlin had finally made the decision to buy at least 45 F-18s.

Kramp-Karrenbauer is also head of the Christian Democrat party, having taken over the leadership from Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2018. She is a keen advocate of Germany remaining part of the NATO nuclear-sharing agreement, which means retaining U.S. nuclear bombs on German territory. Kramp-Karrenbauer has emphasized that any German aircraft upgrade must “seamlessly” fill the dual role of the aging Tornadoes to operate in conventional and nuclear warfare.

If a future Berlin government were to achieve the removal of American nuclear weapons from Germany that would obviate the need for nuclear-capable warplanes. The F-18 and F-35 are easily certifiable by Washington to carry the U.S. B-61 bombs whereas the Eurofighter is not certified and it would face long-drawn-out delay to gain American authorization, if it eventually did, which is not certain. The Americans have openly said that the Eurofighter would be disadvantaged compared with the F-35 or F-18 in acquiring authorization to operate with U.S.-made nuclear bombs.

However, if Germany were no longer part of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and its aircraft no longer providing delivery capability, the Eurofighter option would become even more attractive especially given the advantage for European industries and jobs.

This would explain why the recent German debate calling for removal of U.S. nuclear weapons has sparked such a fierce reaction from Washington. It’s not just about American dominance over Europe through its historic NATO nuclear pact. In addition, there are billions of dollars at stake for the makers of American warplanes. That’s why Washington is pressuring Berlin to keep its nuclear weapons. It’s part and parcel of selling more U.S. warplanes.

 

Be seeing you

 

 

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Baby Talk and Bad Language – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on June 1, 2020

https://www.takimag.com/article/baby-talk-and-bad-language/

Taki

GSTAAD—Well, Theodora did not wait and I missed yet another grandchild’s birth. (The prettiest little blue-eyed thing ever, if I say so myself.) Funny thing is, I’ve never been able to be there when it counts. I missed my daughter’s birth because I was playing tennis in Palm Beach and got to the Bagel ten minutes too late. (She rarely forgets to mention it.) I missed my boy’s because I went back to sleep and Alexandra chose not to wake me. Taki and Maria were born in Rome, and Antonius and Theodora in Salzburg. This makes children and grandchildren 6, yours truly 0. Nothing to be proud of but I make up for it.

For example: After my father died I instructed the household to always refer to my person as the GP. GP did not stand for general practitioner, nor for great pretender, but for great provider. The children howled in laughter and mock anger, but the great provider endured as my name until the kids grew up. Then the great provider became the great pest. Now that I have turned everything over to them and the wife I am the great pain. Lolly has three residences, JT has four, and poor little me is down to two, both in the name of the wife. What I need is a GP, as in a great psychoanalyst.

Never mind. Up here in the Alps all I hear is ding-dong all day as the cows that surround me bask peacefully in the surrounding fields. The weather has been sunny and breezy, and I exercise all day. How ironic this is. When I was young and competing at a high level in various sports, I was always out of shape from drinking, chasing, and staying up late. Now, with one foot in the grave, I’m in the best shape of my life and looking forward to meeting the man in the white suit while in excellent trim. The lockdown is good for one’s health and very bad for one’s social life.

“Today’s trendsetters have nothing but vulgarity.”

Perhaps it sounds stuffy, but reading Susan Hill’s column in the brilliant 10,000th issue of The Spectator got me going. It was about manners, or lack of nowadays. What I miss most are the good old days when manners were exquisite. Good manners are very simple to define: It means putting other people before yourself without thinking about it. Actually, Christianity is good manners. We are now in the age of the f-bomb, and in the power of the halfwit elite. The absolute dirt emanating from the TV channels, with movies and TV shows of coarse people using the coarsest language possible, makes viewing anything filmed over the past twenty years unbearable. People speaking without using the f-word are always depicted as bigots, whereas those using the most degrading of words and actions are shown in a favorable light.

Now, I’m no virgin shocked, shocked at discovering strong language and even violence. I’ve covered a few wars, gambled with some pretty lowlifes, and hung out with tough hombres who doubled as bouncers in clubs that are not exactly located in St. James’s. But what appears on screen nowadays truly shocks me. How did we get to this point? Why are we allowing those who are supposed to entertain us to bring us down to a level that would surprise even hoodlums of old? In fact why have we allowed ourselves to be brought down to the level of the hoodlum?

Edmund Burke insisted that manners are more important than laws, but I wonder how many of today’s TV producers or Hollywood biggies have ever heard of him. The race is on to push the boundaries, to promote “edge,” to break taboos. Yet these untalented and coarse individuals are the first to shout fire and impose a political agenda on anyone like the poor little Greek boy when I write something politically incorrect. I predict that these ruffians will one day soon deem good manners politically incorrect, just as they did in Orwell’s 1984.

Music, movies, and books follow trends, they do not set them. Bleeding American hearts of the ’60s salivated at ghetto language. (Leonard Bernstein’s party for the Black Panthers.) Hollywood and the mainstream media cast the military and cops as the baddies. A diet of anti-cop, anti-family, anti-church followed, along with a diet of smut and porn.

Fifty years later my children and grandchildren are condemned to a Hollywood view of the world, a world that talks the way they used to at Muriel’s during Jeff Bernard’s heyday—night, rather. But those lowlifes at Muriel’s had talent galore; some even had names like Bacon. Today’s trendsetters have nothing but vulgarity.

In the meantime, the two-day-old Theodora, I am told, has my mother’s hands, very beautiful ones, and she’s as elegant as a two-day-old baby can be. Born on the same day as Andrew Neil, six days after The Spectator’s sainted editor, and a day before my buddy the Duke of Beaufort. I celebrate by watching black-and-white films of yesterday on Moving Pictures, and am in love again with Valerie Hobson, a lady I never met whom the uxorious Simon Heffer recently wrote beautifully about. Oh, how I suffer. Every Friday evening I drown my sorrows with exactly one bottle of very good claret followed by three-quarters of a vodka or whiskey bottle. Heaven.

Be seeing you

 

 

 

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What Would Happen If… – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on June 1, 2020

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/06/paul-hein/what-would-happen-if/

By

Clerk of the Court:  Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Witness for the plaintiff: No

CC: What?

Witness: No. I said “No.”

Judge: Sir, am I to understand that you are not willing to tell the truth in this matter?

W:  My objection is to the oath. My faith tells me not to take oaths, but to say yes when I mean yes and no when I mean no.

Judge: Very well. If we eliminate the words “so help you God” will that satisfy you?

W: Well, it’s a start, but I still have an objection.

J: To what?

W:  I object to the phrase “the whole truth.” It’s vague.

J: No one has ever had that objection before. Why do you, now?

W: I am sure that the prosecutor has coached his witnesses to tell the truth, but no more than is absolutely necessary to avoid revealing anything that might be exculpatory. I am sure the police and other investigators have been similar coaching.

J: Are you suggesting that there is anything improper in the prosecution’s presentation of his case?

W: I simply want to avail myself of the same opportunity, namely, to tell the truth, but no more of it as seems prudent.

J: You’ve heard many other witnesses in this case take the oath to which you reject. None of them have presented any objections, much less those to which you object. Doesn’t that tell you something?

W: Yes, sir. It tells me that it is very easy to follow the lead of thousands of people doing the same thing over the years—even the centuries. It smooths the way, and obviates any requirement to think about what you are doing.

J: Be that as it may, your attitude suggests that you might be willing to play fast and loose with the truth in this matter. Be assured, sir, that lying under oath is a serious crime—a felony.

W: You have just reinforced my conviction that it best, given your warning, not to take an oath.

J: Are you going to tell this court the truth, or not?

W: I assure you, sir, that I will not lie to this court.

J: But the whole truth?

W: Where does the whole truth end? Would it include the vulgar and offensive language used by the policeman when he arrested the defendant? Would it include the fact that the policeman, the prosecutor, and you, sir, are all employees of the same political organization, namely, the state, thus raising the question of conflict of interest?

A moment of pause

J: I’d like to see the attorneys, and you, sir, in my chambers—now.

Or there might be this:

Cop: You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in court of law. Do you understand this?

Prisoner is silent.

Cop: Did you understand? Do you want me to repeat what I said?

P remains silent.

C: listen, fella, I’m not playing games here. Did you hear me or not?

Silence continues

Cop, to bystanders: Anybody know this guy? Is he simple or something? Doesn’t he understand English?

Bystander: I know this man. He understood you perfectly.

C: Yeah? Then why doesn’t he say so?

B: You just told him he didn’t have to.

C: I asked him if he understood. Does he, or not?

B: But before that, you said he had the right to remain silent.

C: Yeah, sure, but he can at least tell me that he understands it.

B: But his remaining silent tells you that he understands perfectly.

C (under his breath) : bunch of goddam wiseguys around here.

B: Could that remark be used against YOU in court?

C: What are you talking about?

B: Your disparaging remarks indicate a bias against this man you’ve just arrested. Perhaps you should be warned that anything you say can be used against you.

C: Listen, smart alec, I don’t answer to you. Butt out. This has nothing to do with you. Keep sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, and you could find yourself in big trouble.

B: How can that be, officer? You didn’t warn me that anything I said could be used against me.

C (assorted obscenities)

Be seeing you

 

 

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Is Violence Necessary To Suppress the Violence of Antifa? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on June 1, 2020

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/06/michael-s-rozeff/violence-necessary-to-suppress-violence-of-antifa/

By

There has been some local violence in Buffalo. Buffalo’s Mayor Brown and Erie County’s Supervisor Poloncarz both said that outsiders instigated violence:

“Both Brown and Poloncarz indicated some members of the protest were not from the city.”

“‘There are people who are here in this community who are not from this community,’ Brown said, ‘and their intent is to create violence and mayhem.’”

“‘The vast majority of protesters were peaceful, we expected them to be peaceful,’ Poloncarz later added, ‘but we’re also getting intelligence that there were individuals coming from outside this area who had nothing but violence on their mind.’”

“Poloncarz said he has been in contact with Monroe County, and that he believes splinter groups sent people to both Rochester and Buffalo ‘for the sole purpose of inciting violence.’”

This blog focuses on one thing: antifa and its role in the recent riots. It’s preliminary and incomplete. Evidence one way or another will be accumulating. Even before that, we know already that there is an organized group of vandals inside America that wants to destroy the republic and the country by means of violence. Because they’ve made their position known years ago and because they’ve acted violently before in places like Portland, it’s a good bet that they are almost surely inciting and causing violent destruction throughout the country. This group is antifa. They are violent anarchists, and they should be destroyed. It will be very surprising if we find that antifa hasn’t been exploiting the bad situations caused by government failures of many kinds, including the lockdown fiasco.

One expects videos to be analyzed and other evidence to build up that shows antifa’s participation. They may even take credit and boast about it. We’ll see.

Antifa’s agenda has been evident for years. The need for its suppression was evident years ago.

When and if evidence surfaces of other collections of people or individuals acting as vandals, then they too should be treated with whatever level of violence it takes to stop them and end their violent activities for good.

Only violence and the threat of violence can suppress such unlawful violence as that of antifa and violent rioters who have no knowledge of antifa or participation in it. Self-defense is essential or else the thugs and/or thuggery take over.

Antifa needs to be singled out because of its past known activities and professed agenda to cause mayhem and to destroy whatever it can.

  No government can exist without keeping order. This is its main purpose, according to Hobbes; and his analysis best describes the situation we face. Therefore, unless governments ramp up their own violence against instigators like antifa, they will be failing in their fundamental mission; and these government failures will return us to a multitude in some version of the Hobbesian state of nature. No one knows what that would look like, but it would be very bad, as one can well imagine, until local peoples united and violently suppressed offenders against the peace. But this process would involve disruption of everyone’s lives for an indeterminate period. It is far better to suppress the agitators through existing governments and do it now.

The good people who are against such outrageous violent rioting are already demanding far more violent government action against the perpetrators. And they want it now. Just read the comments underneath videos of the rioting.

The reason why antifa or like violent instigators and vandals could gain in strength and determination is that governments have so far failed to suppress them.

Antifa is one piece of a situation in which responsibilities for crimes reach to various groups. Rioters are not off the hook because they never heard of antifa or follow their lead on the street or the lead of someone else. Non-antifa persons who riot and loot are responsible for their individual behavior. They are exercising their will, and if they go for immoral, unethical or unlawful behavior, they are responsible. One cannot discount personal responsibility by referring to social forces, antifa, lockdowns, anger, or the many government failures like police brutality, etc.

Be seeing you

 

 

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War for Hong Kong? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on June 1, 2020

As the writer “Moon of Alabama” has said, “European countries do not fear China or even Chinese spying. They know that the U.S. is doing similar on a much larger scale. Europeans do not see China as a threat and they do not want to get involved in the escalating U.S.-China spat. . . Every nation spies. It is one of the oldest trades in this world. That the U.S. is making such a fuss about putative Chinese spying when it itself is the biggest sinner is unbecoming.”

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/06/lew-rockwell/war-for-hong-kong/

By

President Trump faces trouble, and he is handling it in a dangerous way. Our economy is reeling, as the Fed pours out billions of dollars in a futile effort to avert disaster. We know to our cost that politicians, faced with crisis at home, provoke war “to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.”

Unfortunately, this is just what Trump is doing. According to a CNN news report on Friday, May 28, “President Donald Trump launched a blistering attack on Beijing Friday, naming misdeeds that range from espionage to the violation of Hong Kong’s freedoms, and announced a slew of retaliatory measures that will plunge US-China relations deeper into crisis.

‘They’ve ripped off the United States like no one has ever done before,’ Trump said of China, as he decried the way Beijing has ‘raided our factories’ and ‘gutted’ American industry, casting Beijing as a central foil he will run against in the remaining months of his re-election campaign.

Trump called out China for ‘espionage to steal our industrial secrets, of which there are many,’ announced steps to protect American investors from Chinese financial practices, accused Beijing of ‘unlawfully claiming territory in the Pacific Ocean’ and threatening freedom of navigation.

The President also blasted Beijing for passing a national security law that fundamentally undermines Hong Kong’s autonomy, announcing that going forward the US will no longer grant Hong Kong special status on trade or in other areas and instead will apply the same restrictions to the territory it has in place with China. Trump outlined that the US will strip Hong Kong of the special policy measures on extradition, trade, travel and customs Washington had previously granted it.”

Let’s look at Hong Kong first, as this is the issue most likely to get the American public roused up. “Isn’t it terrible,” some people will say, “that the Chinese government has rounded up and imprisoned rioters against its authority in Hong Kong?” In answer to this, you need to bear in mind a key fact. The American government instigated the Hong Kong protests, and egged them on in a direct challenge to the Chinese government. As Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially known for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook,” pointed out last September, “even US policymakers have all but admitted that the US is funnelling millions of dollars into Hong Kong specifically to support ‘programs’ there. The Hudson Institute in an article titled, ‘China Tries to Blame US for Hong Kong Protests’ would admit:

A Chinese state-run newspaper’s claim that the United States is helping pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong is only partially inaccurate, a top foreign policy expert said Monday. 

Michael Pillsbury, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told Fox News National Security Analyst KT McFarland the U.S. holds some influence over political matters in the region.

The article would then quote Pillsbury as saying:

We have a large consulate there that’s in charge of taking care of the Hong Kong Policy Act passed by Congress to insure democracy in Hong Kong, and we have also funded millions of dollars of programs through the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] … so in that sense the Chinese accusation is not totally false.

A visit to the NED’s website reveals an entire section of declared funding for Hong Kong specifically. The wording for program titles and their descriptions is intentionally ambiguous to give those like US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plausible deniability.

However, deeper research reveals NED recipients are literally leading the protests.”

Given this provocative US behavior, the Chinese government could not back down. As Pat Buchanan warned back in December: “There is another issue here — the matter of face.

China has just celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Revolution where Mao proclaimed, ‘China has stood up!’ after a century of foreign humiliations and occupations.

Can Xi Jinping, already the object of a Maoist cult of personality, accept U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of his country or a city that belongs to China? Not likely. Nor is China likely to accede to demands for greater sovereignty, self-determination or independence for Hong Kong.

This would only raise hopes of the city’s eventual escape from its ordained destiny: direct rule by Beijing when the 50-year China-U.K. treaty regarding the transfer of Hong Kong expires in 2047. For Xi to capitulate to the demands of Hong Kong’s demonstrators could cause an outbreak of protests in other Chinese cities and bring on a crisis of the regime.”

In thinking about what to do, we need to be guided by the wisdom of Murray Rothbard. He long ago pointed out that we should oppose American intervention into foreign countries. It isn’t our job to act as a world rights enforcing agency. We should mind our own business. As he put it, “We must say rather that, given the unfortunate existence of the State, we must limit and reduce its power, anywhere and everywhere, and wherever possible. We must try constantly to abolish or at least lower taxes-whether for ‘defense’ or for anything else-and never, never advocate any tax increase. Given the existence of the State, we must try to abolish, and if not abolish to limit and reduce, its internal power-its internal exercise of taxation, counterfeiting, police state aggression, controls, regulations, or whatever. And similarly, we must try to abolish its external power-its power over the citizens of other States. The criminal State must be reduced as much as we can everywhere-whether it be in its internal or external power. In contrast to the usual right-wing partiality for – foreign over domestic intervention, we must recognize that foreign intervention tends to be far worse.”

What Murray said about intervention in Eastern Europe when it was under communist control applies perfectly to our situation: “Now don’t misunderstand me; I have not abandoned moral principle for cynicism. My heart yearns for ethnic justice, for national self-determination for all peoples. . . . But, to paraphrase Sydney Smith’s famous letter to Lady Grey, please let them work this out for themselves! Let us abandon the criminal immorality and folly of continual coercive meddling by non-Eastern European powers (e.g. Britain, France, and now the U.S.) in the affairs of East Europe. Let us hope that one day Germany and Russia, at peace, will willingly grant justice to the peoples of East Europe, but let us not bring about perpetual wars to try to achieve this artificially.”

Trump’s complaints about China’s trade policies again ignore the role of American provocation. Eric Margolis identifies the core fallacy in Trump’s strategy: “Trump’s wars are economic.  They deploy the huge economic and financial might of the United States to steamroll other nations that fail to comply with orders from Washington.  Washington’s motto is ‘obey me or else!’  Economic wars are not bloodless.  Imperial Germany and the Central Powers were starved into surrender in 1918 by a crushing British naval blockade.

Trade sanctions are not making America great, as Trump claims.  They are making America detested around the globe as a crude bully.  Trump’s efforts to undermine the European Union and intimidate Canada add to this ugly, brutal image.

Trump’s ultimate objective, as China clearly knows, is to whip up a world crisis over trade, then dramatically end it – of course, before next year’s elections.  Trump has become a master dictator of US financial markets, rising or lowering them by surprise tweets.  No president should ever have such power, but Trump has seized it.

Trade wars rarely produce any benefits for either side.  They are the equivalent of sending tens of thousands of soldiers to be mowed down by machine guns on the blood-soaked Somme battlefield in WWI.  Glory for the stupid generals; death and misery for the common soldiers.”

Trump also mentioned Chinese claims of territory in the Pacific Ocean.  He ignored the fact that the South China Sea belongs to them, not to us, yet we send our ships there and insist we have a right to control what happens there. Also, a great deal of China’s industry and agriculture is privately owned, so an attack on China would be an attack on private property. Both the neocons and the nationalist “Right” want war with China. We should aim at peace instead, as Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul have taught us.

It is ironic that Trump accused China of industrial espionage. The US has for decades spied and monitored governments and industries all over the world, of course including China.

As the writer “Moon of Alabama” has said, “European countries do not fear China or even Chinese spying. They know that the U.S. is doing similar on a much larger scale. Europeans do not see China as a threat and they do not want to get involved in the escalating U.S.-China spat. . . Every nation spies. It is one of the oldest trades in this world. That the U.S. is making such a fuss about putative Chinese spying when it itself is the biggest sinner is unbecoming.”

The Chinese people are highly productive and intelligent, and their success doesn’t depend on industrial espionage against the United States. Rather than condemn the Chinese, Trump should commend them for their monumental steps toward a free market, with unprecedented economic growth, after suffering the carnage of Maoist communism.

Trump spoke about suing the Chinese for the damage caused by the Covid-19 epidemic. As I wrote in an article last month, “There is good reason to believe that the coronavirus epidemic is part of an American biological warfare campaign against China and Iran. The brilliant physicist Ron Unz, who has time and time again been proved right by events, makes this case in a scintillating analysis.”

Even if the US didn’t do this, it would be highly irregular to sue a nation just because a virus began there. Besides, if America wants to go that route, wouldn’t many countries have grounds to sue America for what the American government did to them? What about Iraq, which has suffered from US bombing and blockades in a war now widely admitted to be a mistake? What about people all over the world who have been killed with arms supplied to foreign governments by the US?

Rather than stir up trouble with China, President Trump should promote free trade. How can it help the people of Hong Kong to deny them its free port, with no tariffs on imports or exports? America needs to confront its domestic crisis, brought on by the terrible lockdown and financial irresponsibility.  War with China will only make our present crisis immeasurably worse.

Be seeing you

 

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Erie Times E-Edition Article-‘This violence was clearly planned’

Posted by M. C. on June 1, 2020

The 800 pound gorilla in the room everyone else is already mentioning:

Antifa (and its enabler George Soros)
http://tinyurl.com/ycc88so4

Erie police said outsiders most likely fueled the unrest that plunged downtown into chaos late Saturday night and into early Sunday morning.

Police arrested seven Erie residents on Sunday in the rioting, which turned a peaceful protest violent, though Erie Police Chief Dan Spizarny said the rioters got help from people who were not from Erie.

He said the situation in Erie mirrored the violence that broke out in other cities nationwide following peaceful protests

Jeff Kidder, 55, cleans up broken glass and debris in front of a building he owns in the 400 block of State Street in downtown Erie on Sunday. The building houses two businesses, including the Ember + Forge coffee shop, and 10 apartments.

Erie Bureau of Police presence was heavy Sunday on lower State Street, which was shut down. [CHRISTOPHER MILLETTE/ETN PHOTOS]

over the death of George Floyd after his arrest in Minneapolis on May 25.

In Erie, “this violence was clearly planned ahead of time by a small group,” Spizarny said in a statement released shortly before 5:30 p.m. Sunday. “It was very similar to the way riots unfolded in other cities across the country and was clearly following the same playbook.

“While those who were arrested all live in Erie, we believe that there were professional rioters present from out-of-town because we overheard them asking for directions. These organizers know how to get away by using the crowd as cover.”

The seven defendants, who were charged and awaiting arraignment on Sunday afternoon, are, according to police records: Robert Walker, 21; Timothy M. Dabrowski, 31; Doneata M. Young, 28; Carlos D. Young, 31; Tyvrah Nicholson, 28; Timothy J. McCafferty, 35; and Alyssa Vanduzer, 22.

Police said the seven were charged with offenses related to the disorder downtown. The processing of the defendants came as shop owners cleaned up the broken windows and other riotrelated damage. Eleven businesses were damaged, mainly along State Street between Fourth and Fifth streets, Mayor Joe Schember said.

A number of the protesters threw large fireworks at the police, and some of the fireworks came from a car that pulled up outside City Hall shortly before the unrest escalated and led to police firing tear gas into the crowd.

“And in our case,“ Spizarny said in an interview, ”people came prepared with large fireworks to attack our police officers.”

Spizarny in the statement described the fireworks as mortars, which are used in fireworks displays, and he likened them to grenades. He also said protesters used Molotov cocktails to try to set buildings on fire.

“This was a situation in which our officers were under attack,” Spizarny said in the statement. “Deadly force was being used against them.”

“Keep in mind that our officers were under deadly assault,” he also said. “They were attempting to peacefully disperse the crowd and were warned several times that they could be arrested. In the meantime, buildings were being lit on fire. Police needed to clear people out so they could get to the people who were causing the damage.

“Right now, our focus is on arresting the arsonists and the looters who set fire to our local businesses and tried to destroy downtown, and on preventing any further damage to our city.”

Schember echoed Spizarny’s comments about outside influence.

“We believe it is people from the outside because no one recognized them and they were asking for directions and for information that would indicate they were not from Erie,“ he said in an interview. ”This is not a surprise because I was aware of this possibility.”

The city on Sunday night remained under the state of emergency that Schember declared at 11:55 p.m. Saturday. Spizarny said the city was prohibiting large gatherings under the state of emergency but was allowing a sit-in to occur from 6 to 8 p.m. He said organizers agreed to end the sit-in at 8 p.m., before nightfall.

“We are hoping we don’t have a repeat of (Saturday) night,” Schember said. “The police presence will be pretty substantial. We will be prepared.”

Police ended up breaking up the sit-in around 6:20 p.m., stating that the protesters were violating the state of emergency order. Police said about 25 people initially showed up, but the crowd was growing.

Schember’s emergency declaration came after Gov. Tom Wolf at around 11:15 p.m. on Saturday signed a disaster emergency declaration to provide assistance municipalities statewide as they respond to the escalating protests in Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Schember said Wolf’s office had not contacted Erie City Hall as of early Sunday afternoon.

Wolf at 1:30 p.m.on Sunday held a news conference in Harrisburg on the protests, but did not mention Erie, though the Pennsylvania National Guard on Sunday evening said it had “placed over 600 Guardsmen on state active duty to provide support to local law enforcement in keeping order during protests.”

Bricks also thrown

Police said officers had no reports of injuries to protesters, though a video circulating online showed an Erie police officer kicking a seated protester in the shoulder. The protester told the Erie Times-News that she did not seek medical attention, and police said they are reviewing the video.

During the rioting, as many as eight officers, and possibly more, were injured in the rioting, Erie police Capt. Rick Lorah said Sunday afternoon.

“We’re still trying to collect facts from (Saturday) night and speak with all the officers involved,” Lorah said. “These officers worked exhaustive shifts overnight, and all of the officers who were injured worked through those injuries. None of them went to the hospital and we’re still trying to get an exact number on it.”

One officer suffered facial injuries after a protester threw a brick that struck the officer’s face shield, shattering it, Lorah said.

“Mostly injuries were from objects thrown at the officers, but we had some burns from fireworks that struck officers,” Lorah said. “We had some bricks and rocks that were thrown at and hit officers, so they obviously have bumps, bruises, cuts and burns. It’s going to take a day or two for us to fully understand the extent of some of these officers’ injuries.”

Police also are investigating a shooting that occurred Saturday night. Police found a man who had suffered a gunshot wound to his thigh at about 11:10 p.m. at Fifth and State streets.

The victim has not been cooperating with detectives, Lorah said.

“Our detectives are working on that, but the victim is being less than forthcoming with how or when or where he was shot at,” Lorah said.

Downtown Erie remained under a heavy police presence Sunday morning as city crews cleaned up the area around Perry Square and lower State Street after a peaceful demonstration against police brutality in Minneapolis turned into a riot.

In Erie, the rioters smashed the windows of storefronts between Fourth and Fifth streets as the Erie police SWAT team, wearing helmets and carrying shields, fired tear gas on a crowd that numbered about 100. Protesters threw water bottles and large fireworks at the police, fueling the disorder.

Cleanup commences

On Sunday morning, police cruisers blocked off State Street between Fourth and Seventh streets. Crews used brooms to sweep up glass and other debris as building owners and others inspected the damage.

Among the businesses damaged was Ember + Forge, the coffee shop at 401 State St. Its windows were smashed and someone had tried to set a fire inside. The owner of the building in which Ember + Forge does business, Erie architect Jeff Kidder, was cleaning up glass on Sunday morning.

“People have the right to express their thoughts, but I feel that people could have made their point in another manner,” Kidder said.

The coffee shop is below 10 apartments, and Kidder said he is upset that someone would light a fire in a business so close to the apartments.

Also at Ember + Forge was John Buchna, executive director of the Erie Downtown Partnership.

“I don’t have words,” he said. “It’s more than the physical (buildings). It’s the people involved. I think Erie is better than this.”

The partnership posted a message on its Facebook page: “This is a very frustrating and difficult time for Erie and for our country. We see your frustration and we feel it too.

“Racial and social inequities are always magnified under economic strain such as the kind we are experiencing right now. These issues have become impossible to ignore.

“We will work diligently to help with the cleanup efforts in Downtown Erie, to help the affected businesses, and to listen to our community and work toward actionable solutions to these inequities.”

Farther south, at 502 State St., the Starbucks had its windows broken. No other damage was reported there.

Other buildings with smashed windows included the historic Cashier’s House, 413 State St. It was built in 1839. The Erie Downtown Development Corp. has its office.

Security cameras

Buchna said security camera footage from outside several State Street businesses, including Ember + Forge, as well as footage from cameras in Perry Square is in the process of being reviewed by police, because that footage is believed to contain images “that could be valuable in the investigation.”

Ember + Forge is among a number of downtown businesses that have obtained security cameras through the Erie Downtown Partnership’s security camera grant program.

One stipulation regarding those grants is that businesses agree to turn over any video that could assist the police in an ongoing investigation.

“There are security cameras throughout the downtown because of our grant and because of the Erie Innovation District,” Buchna said. “That footage is being reviewed in light of these events.”

The Erie Innovation District installed several security cameras in Perry Square as part of Erie’s Smart City initiative.

The downtown smart city pilot project was announced in April 2018 and focused on downtown and Perry Square. New LED lighting, video surveillance cameras and free Wi-Fi were installed in an area encompassing State Street between Sixth and 12th streets.

EDDC CEO John Persinger and Matt Wachter, its vice president of finance and development, were in the organization’s headquarters at the Cashier’s House at mid-morning on Sunday. The building’s windows facing State Street had been smashed out during the riot.

Persinger said the broken windows and resulting mess were the only damage to the building, and that apparently no one entered the building and stole anything. He said he did understand that someone tried to set a fire out front but did not succeed.

“You can replace windows. You can’t replace people,” he said.

‘Undercurrent of restlessness’

Gary Horton, president of the NAACP of Erie, did not attend the rally Saturday. He was not familiar with the organizers and said he feared volatility, given events unfolding across the country.

Horton is concerned that the violence perpetrated distracts people from the issue at stake.

“We have to be courageous and disciplined enough to maintain focus on the real issue — systemic, structural, continual and historic oppression, suppression and violence rooted in anti-blackness, especially state-sanctioned violence against black men, women and children.”

The riots Saturday show the “undercurrent of restlessness in our own kids, the desire of our own kids to have better, to do better, to want better. All these people walking around and talking about how great Erie is. They’re not saying it from these kids’ shoes when they can’t get a job, they don’t have any money.

“I think we have to reassess what we do for people who have no hope and the factors that lead them not to have any hope or trust,” Horton said. “And then we have to invest in that if it means anything to us.”

Digital content editor Christopher Millette and staff writers Lisa Thompson and Kevin Flowers contributed to this report.

 

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Deepfakes Are Going To Wreak Havoc On Society. We Are Not Prepared.

Posted by M. C. on May 31, 2020

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2020/05/25/deepfakes-are-going-to-wreak-havoc-on-society-we-are-not-prepared/#60d451f67494

Rob Toews  Contributor

Last month during ESPN’s hit documentary series The Last Dance, State Farm debuted a TV commercial that has become one of the most widely discussed ads in recent memory. It appeared to show footage from 1998 of an ESPN analyst making shockingly accurate predictions about the year 2020.

As it turned out, the clip was not genuine: it was generated using cutting-edge AI. The commercial surprised, amused and delighted viewers.

What viewers should have felt, though, was deep concern.

The State Farm ad was a benign example of an important and dangerous new phenomenon in AI: deepfakes. Deepfake technology enables anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to create realistic-looking photos and videos of people saying and doing things that they did not actually say or do.

A combination of the phrases “deep learning” and “fake”, deepfakes first emerged on the Internet in late 2017, powered by an innovative new deep learning method known as generative adversarial networks (GANs).

Several deepfake videos have gone viral recently, giving millions around the world their first taste of this new technology: President Obama using an expletive to describe President Trump, Mark Zuckerberg admitting that Facebook’s true goal is to manipulate and exploit its users, Bill Hader morphing into Al Pacino on a late-night talk show.

The amount of deepfake content online is growing at a rapid rate. At the beginning of 2019 there were 7,964 deepfake videos online, according to a report from startup Deeptrace; just nine months later, that figure had jumped to 14,678. It has no doubt continued to balloon since then.

While impressive, today’s deepfake technology is still not quite to parity with authentic video footage—by looking closely, it is typically possible to tell that a video is a deepfake. But the technology is improving at a breathtaking pace. Experts predict that deepfakes will be indistinguishable from real images before long.

“In January 2019, deep fakes were buggy and flickery,” said Hany Farid, a UC Berkeley professor and deepfake expert. “Nine months later, I’ve never seen anything like how fast they’re going. This is the tip of the iceberg.”

Today we stand at an inflection point. In the months and years ahead, deepfakes threaten to grow from an Internet oddity to a widely destructive political and social force. Society needs to act now to prepare itself.

When Seeing Is Not Believing

The first use case to which deepfake technology has been widely applied—as is often the case with new technologies—is pornography. As of September 2019, 96% of deepfake videos online were pornographic, according to the Deeptrace report.

A handful of websites dedicated specifically to deepfake pornography have emerged, collectively garnering hundreds of millions of views over the past two years. Deepfake pornography is almost always non-consensual, involving the artificial synthesis of explicit videos that feature famous celebrities or personal contacts.

From these dark corners of the web, the use of deepfakes has begun to spread to the political sphere, where the potential for mayhem is even greater.

It does not require much imagination to grasp the harm that could be done if entire populations can be shown fabricated videos that they believe are real. Imagine deepfake footage of a politician engaging in bribery or sexual assault right before an election; or of U.S. soldiers committing atrocities against civilians overseas; or of President Trump declaring the launch of nuclear weapons against North Korea. In a world where even some uncertainty exists as to whether such clips are authentic, the consequences could be catastrophic.

Because of the technology’s widespread accessibility, such footage could be created by anyone: state-sponsored actors, political groups, lone individuals.

In a recent report, The Brookings Institution grimly summed up the range of political and social dangers that deepfakes pose: “distorting democratic discourse; manipulating elections; eroding trust in institutions; weakening journalism; exacerbating social divisions; undermining public safety; and inflicting hard-to-repair damage on the reputation of prominent individuals, including elected officials and candidates for office.”

Given the stakes, U.S. lawmakers have begun to pay attention.

“In the old days, if you wanted to threaten the United States, you needed 10 aircraft carriers, and nuclear weapons, and long-range missiles,” U.S. Senator Marco Rubio said recently. “Today….all you need is the ability to produce a very realistic fake video that could undermine our elections, that could throw our country into tremendous crisis internally and weaken us deeply.”

Technologists agree. In the words of Hani Farid, one of the world’s leading experts on deepfakes: “If we can’t believe the videos, the audios, the image, the information that is gleaned from around the world, that is a serious national security risk.”

This risk is no longer just hypothetical: there are early examples of deepfakes influencing politics in the real world. Experts warn that these incidents are canaries in a coal mine.

Last month, a political group in Belgium released a deepfake video of the Belgian prime minister giving a speech that linked the COVID-19 outbreak to environmental damage and called for drastic action on climate change. At least some viewers believed the speech was real.

Even more insidiously, the mere possibility that a video could be a deepfake can stir confusion and facilitate political deception regardless of whether deepfake technology has actually been used. The most dramatic example of this comes from Gabon, a small country in central Africa.

In late 2018, Gabon’s president Ali Bongo had not been seen in public for months. Rumors were swirling that he was no longer healthy enough for office or even that he had died. In an attempt to allay these concerns and reassert Bongo’s leadership over the country, his administration announced that he would give a nationwide televised address on New Years Day.

In the video address (which is worth examining firsthand yourself), Bongo appears stiff and stilted, with unnatural speech and facial mannerisms. The video immediately inflamed suspicions that the government was concealing something from the public. Bongo’s political opponents declared that the footage was a deepfake and that the president was incapacitated or dead. Rumors of a deepfake conspiracy spread quickly on social media.

The political situation in Gabon rapidly destabilized. Within a week, the military had launched a coup—the first in the country since 1964—citing the New Years video as proof that something was amiss with the president.

To this day experts cannot definitively say whether the New Years video was authentic, though most believe that it was. (The coup proved unsuccessful; Bongo has since appeared in public and remains in office today).

But whether the video was real is almost beside the point. The larger lesson is that the emergence of deepfakes will make it increasingly difficult for the public to distinguish between what is real and what is fake, a situation that political actors will inevitably exploit—with potentially devastating consequences.

“People are already using the fact that deepfakes exist to discredit genuine video evidence,” said USC professor Hao Li. “Even though there’s footage of you doing or saying something, you can say it was a deepfake and it’s very hard to prove otherwise.”

In two recent incidents, politicians in Malaysia and in Brazil have sought to evade the consequences of compromising video footage by claiming that the videos were deepfakes. In both cases, no one has been able to definitively establish otherwise—and public opinion has remained divided.

Researcher Aviv Ovadya warns of what she terms “reality apathy”: “It’s too much effort to figure out what’s real and what’s not, so you’re more willing to just go with whatever your previous affiliations are.”

In a world in which seeing is no longer believing, the ability for a large community to agree on what is true—much less to engage in constructive dialogue about it—suddenly seems precarious.

A Game of Technological Cat-And-Mouse

Read the rest of this entry »

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Sports Were Better When…

Posted by M. C. on May 31, 2020

There were no corporate posers

Winners smoked

Records were set with a hangover instead of steroids

fake

Fake PC winner celebration in an empty stadium

smoke

James Hunt

mick

The “Mick”

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The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Posted by M. C. on May 31, 2020

We haven’t had any Ayn Rand in a while.

A new piece to me. Click the link.

https://courses.aynrand.org/works/the-anti-industrial-revolution/

by Ayn Rand, From Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Be seeing you

 

 

 

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