The main whistleblower during this terrible, silent period was Denis Halliday. Then Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and the senior UN official in Iraq, Halliday resigned rather than implement policies he described as genocidal. He estimates that sanctions killed more than a million Iraqis.
What then happened to Halliday was instructive. He was airbrushed. Or he was vilified. On the BBC’s Newsnight programme, the presenter Jeremy Paxman shouted at him: “Aren’t you just an apologist for Saddam Hussein?”
.. Evidence that contradicts propaganda that Russia was responsible for the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner is blacked out.
.. the madness that has enveloped virtually the entire US political/media structure over Ukraine where a false narrative of white hats versus black hats took hold early
.. this divine right is far more violent and dangerous than anything the Muslim world throws up, though perhaps its greatest triumph is the illusion of free and open information.
.. only three mentioned any of the positive policies introduced by the government of Hugo Chavez. The greatest literacy programme in human history received barely a passing reference.
.. In Europe and the United States, millions of readers and viewers know next to nothing about the remarkable, life-giving changes implemented in Latin America, many of them inspired by Chavez.
.. Like the BBC, the reports of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and the rest of the respectable western media were notoriously in bad faith.
.. Following the economic crash in 2008, a rotten system was exposed.
.. The economic crisis is pure propaganda.
.. In 1977, Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, revealed that more than 400 journalists and news executives worked for the CIA. They included journalists from the New York Times, Time and the TV networks.
.. WikiLeaks tore down the facade of a corrupt political elite held aloft by journalists.
.. No one spoke up for the man who pioneered digital whistleblowing and handed the Guardian one of the greatest scoops in history. Moreover, it was Assange and his WikiLeaks team who effectively – and brilliantly – rescued Edward Snowden in Hong Kong and sped him to safety. Not a word.
Obama Lied About Removing All Chemical Weapons from Syria
I mean, the way they did this story was Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. We went to war and people died!
.. There are people who think that this attack in Syria using chemical weapons on Syrian citizens is a setup designed to draw President Trump into military action in Syria, just as Bush was drawn into action in Iraq.
.. But the upshot is that there are people now thinking that these intelligence people…
There were many Clinton holdovers just like there are now Obama holdovers, and that many people ran a scam on Bush. They knew that there were not mass quantities of weapons of mass destruction, and they let Bush go in there on purpose to embarrass himself. And there are people who think, “Look, that happened once, it can happen again. Mr. President,” they’re saying to Trump, “please being very careful before you make a move on Syria, ’cause you could be in the process of being entrapped again, just like Bush was.”
.. the British media think got sucked into a trick. There weren’t weapons of mass destruction and he was lied to and he bought the lie, and so people are afraid. People who support Trump are afraid that he may be falling prey to the same kind of trick
.. The Democrats want you to believe that Putin helped Trump win the election by somehow screwing Hillary and the whole Democrat effort. They colluded. They don’t have any evidence for it, but they’re convinced it happened, right? So Trump and Putin are buddy-buddy. Trump doesn’t ever criticize Putin.
What in the world, then, would Trump be talking about going into Syria for?
.. Trump attacking Syria undercuts the entire narrative that Trump and Putin are buddies
The Economic Anxieties That Motivate Donald Trump Loyalists
The president’s backers often cite the trade imbalance, federal debt and the cost of foreign wars—not health insurance or immigrants
Yet there is a solid cadre of Trump supporters who aren’t turned off by the turmoil, but rather see it as a sign that something is happening. They remain loyal; for them, the Trump message is more important than the messenger.
.. an estimate of the total cumulative cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere over the last 15 years, which runs north of $1.5 trillion.
.. In a January Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, for example, addressing trade unfairness and keeping jobs from going abroad far outranked deporting illegal immigrants or building a border wall as top priorities among Trump voters... the fact that Mr. Trump has effectively tapped into these sentiments doesn’t necessarily mean his policies will resolve the underlying problems. In fact, they actually could make them worse.His desire for a big tax cut, his defense buildup and his reluctance to trim Medicare or roll back Medicaid growth may grow the debt further. His pledge to wipe Islamic State “from the face of the earth” could add to the costs of overseas adventures. His trade policies could set off trade wars that would undermine the economy without ending that trade deficit... They are told, for example, that budget deficits and debt don’t undermine the economy, but don’t buy it.
How conservatism is changing in the Trump era
The 1970s saw the proliferation of single-issue interest groups that constituted the New Right. The first Conservative Political Action Conference was held in 1973. In 1977, a year after losing the Republican nomination to incumbent Gerald Ford, Reagan addressed the conference. “The new Republican party I am speaking about,” he said, “is going to have room for the man and the woman in the factories, for the farmer, for the cop on the beat, and the millions of Americans who may never have thought of joining our party before, but whose interests coincide with those represented by principled Republicanism.”
.. American Affairs got its start as a blog, the Journal of American Greatness, whose objective was to provide, in the words of its most famous contributor, “a sensible, coherent Trumpism.”
.. It is not Trumpism but this larger concept that needs to be made sensible and coherent. I am speaking of nationalism.
.. It is not Trumpism but this larger concept that needs to be made sensible and coherent. I am speaking of nationalism.
.. When the Cold War ended, Mitchell writes, victorious elites in Washington, London, and Brussels began constructing a world where attachments to national identity would be attenuated or even severed. One would belong to a group above the nation — be a “citizen of the world,” an employee of a multinational corporation or NGO, a partisan of Davos, a subject of the EU — or to a hyphenated group below it.
.. Increasingly, power is shifted away from individuals elected to represent the political community toward unelected officials qualified to hold the positions responsible for administering the government — that is, providing for consumption. Like all managers, they derive their power from the administrative expertise and credentials that qualify them for office rather than from democratic legitimacy. They are accountable, that is, not to the political community but to the other managers that define their qualifications.
.. This lack of accountability has been highlighted again and again over the last 16 years. First 9/11 happened and no one was fired. Then Saddam turned out not to have had WMD and no one was fired. The economy came close to collapse — and the banks were bailed out.
.. This lack of accountability has been highlighted again and again over the last 16 years. First 9/11 happened and no one was fired. Then Saddam turned out not to have had WMD and no one was fired. The economy came close to collapse — and the banks were bailed out.