Worldwide Nightmare Theatre, Empire of Chaos Enhanced and Expanded

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

I mentioned that quote here 'way back in June...

Always bears repeating.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Methinks the next edition of the DSM needs a new entry for "Trump Derangement Syndrome".

Sorry, the full and proper name of the psychiatric disorder in question is Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome [PTDS]. Symptoms include:

o Eager and uncritical ingestion and social-media regurgitation of even the most patently absurd MSM propaganda. For example, the meme that releasing factual information about actual election-meddling (as Wikileaks did about the Dem-establishment's rigging of its own nomination process in 2016) is a grave threat to American Democracy™;

o Recent-onset veneration of the intelligence agencies, whose stock in trade is spying on and lying to the American people, spreading disinformation, election rigging, torture and assassination and its agents, such as liar and perjurer Clapper and torturer Brennan;

o Rehabilitation of horrid unindicted GOP war criminals like G.W. Bush as alleged examples of "norms-respecting Republican patriots";

o Smearing of anyone who dares question the MSM-stoked hysteria as an America-hating Russian stooge.

If you think I'm merely being sarcastic, well, here's an article about the front-line specialists dealing with what the article describes as "Trump Anxiety Disorder". Naked Capitalism's Lambert Strether has been documenting the various symptoms and notable victims of full-blown PTDS in the "The Liberal Democrats Have Lost Their Minds" subsection of his daily-but-for-Sunday 2pm Water Cooler posts, for example 30 July.

It’s Time For A Little Perspective on Russia | Current Affairs

I was trained at NSA headquarters as a signals intelligence officer in the Marines. This was about a decade ago, and I was by no means an area specialist. That said, I was privy to relevant briefs. At the time I learned that U.S. cyber operations in Russia, across Russia’s periphery, and around the world already dwarfed Russian operations in size, capability, and frequency. It wasn’t even close, and the expectation was that the gap was about to grow a whole lot wider.

This should hardly come as a surprise. Just compare the defense budgets of the United States and Russia. The president recently signed a gargantuan $700 billion gift to the Pentagon, with marginal dissent from either party or their affiliated media outlets. The budget increase alone ($61 billion) exceeds Russia’s entire annual expenditure ($46). The U.S. military budget now equals more than the combined budgets of China, Russia, Britain, Japan, Saudi Arabia, India, and France. As Vice concluded, “it’s 14 times larger than the Kremlin’s budget.”

Furthermore, covert American operations are deeply invested in interrupting democratic processes not only in Russia, but everywhere else. This includes the heart of Europe, where corporate media is now pretending the United States has always respected happy norms and decorum. It is as if the Snowden leaks never happened. The Defense Department’s tapping of Angela Merkel’s phone never happened. The Obama administration’s spying on the German press, including Der Spiegel, never happened. The same administration’s outing of German government whistle-blowers never happened.

Electoral meddling in particular happens all the time, both to us and by us. The U.S. government rigged the Russian election for Yeltsin in 1996, and then they bragged about it in a cover story for Time. (You can still find the cover online.) This followed the disastrous capitalist “shock therapy” of the early nineties and preceded the rise of the Russian oligarchs. Putin’s brand of nationalist resentment grew out of this moment of extreme collective humiliation. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is happily on record pushing for the tampering of Palestinian elections in 2006.

As the political scientist Dov H. Levin has shown, between 1946 and 2000, the United States government conducted at least 81 electoral interventions in other countries, while Russia conducted at least 36. This does not include the U.S. government’s violent overthrow of dozens of governments during this same period, including democratic governments in places like Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), and Chile (1973). As recent as 2009, Hillary Clinton’s State Department played a complicit role in the brutal deposition of democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya’s government in Honduras. No other country, including Russia, even approaches this level of wanton disregard for the norms of sovereignty.

o The Bizarre Facebook Path to Corporate Fascism | Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report

Facebook has assumed additional political police powers, disrupting a planned counter-demonstration against white supremacists, set for August 12th in Washington, on the grounds that it was initiated and inspired by “Russians” as part of a Kremlin campaign to “sow dissention” in the U.S. The Facebook intervention is a qualitative escalation of the McCarthyite offensive launched by the Democrat Party and elements of the national security state, and backed by most of the corporate media, initially to blame Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat on “collusion” between Wikileaks, “the Russians” and the Trump campaign to steal and publicize embarrassing Clinton campaign emails.

After failing to produce one shred of hard evidence to support their conspiracy theory, the anti-Russia hysteria mongers switched gears, focusing on the alleged purchase of about $100,000 in Facebook ads by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a St. Petersburg-based Russian company, over a multi-year period. The problem was, most of the ads had no direct connection to the presidential contest, or were posted after the election was over, and many had no political content, at all. The messages were all over the place, politically, with the alleged Russian operatives posing as Christian activists, pro- and anti-immigration activists, and supporters of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller was forced to flip the script, indicting 13 Russians for promoting general “discord” and undermining “public confidence in democracy” in the United States – thus creating a political crime that has not previously been codified in the United States.

In doubling down on an unraveling conspiracy tale, the Mueller probe empowered itself to tar and feather all controversial speech that can be associated with utterances by “Russians,” even if the alleged “Russians” are, in fact, mimicking the normal speech of left- or right-wing Americans -- a descent, not into Orwell’s world, but that of Kafka (Beyond the Law) and Heller (Catch-22).

o Manafort trial to focus on lavish lifestyle, not collusion | Associated Press

The trial of President Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman will open this week with tales of lavish spending, secret shell companies and millions of dollars of Ukrainian money flowing through offshore bank accounts and into the political consultant’s pocket. What’s likely to be missing: answers about whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential election, or really any mention of Russia at all.

So after over 18 months' worth of Muellerian fishing expedition and frothing-at-the-mouth reports of how Manafort was gonna spill the beans on the Putin/Trump decades-long collusion to undermine American Democracy™ (and their secret gay-sex love child, to borrow the execrable hah-hah-those-guys-are-butt-humping-queers trope being gleefully embraced by many of the deranged, PTDS-afflicted libdem goodthinkers, including those at none other than the NYT), what we get is ho-hum "Manafort is an elite beltway grifter"-dom. Even the "unregistered agent of a foreign government!" thing is not far from SOP in DC for this ilk - look no farther than Tony Podesta, lobbyist brother of Team HRC's John, for another exemplar of this offense.

The hype-vs-reality disappointment level here recalls this post-Helsinki-summit-hysteria-fest-describing article by Counterpunch's C.J. Hopkins:

It has become a sadistic ritual at this point … like a twisted, pseudo-Tantric exercise where the media get liberals all lathered up over whatever fresh horror Trump has just perpetrated (or some non-story story they have invented out of whole cloth), build the tension for several days, until liberals are moaning and begging for impeachment, or a full-blown CIA-sponsored coup, then pull out abruptly and leave the poor bastards writhing in agony until the next time … which is pretty much exactly what just happened.

More linky goodness:

o Debunking the Putin Panic with Stephen F. Cohen | naked capitalism

o Legendary journalist Seymour Hersh on the truth behind novichok, the Russian hacking and 9/11 | Independent

o How Dangerous Is Putin’s Russia? | The National Interest

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by wombatman

Can we at least agree that Trump's deference to Putin (and other dictators like Erdogan, Duterte, and Kim Jong Un) is more than a little strange, especially when contrasted with how he acts toward our allies? His obsequious behavior is more than a little off-putting, in my opinion.

Do you really need me to produce a list of examples of US presidents who have cozied up to some of the vilest (and in a proven-beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt fashion, not the Putin-is-the-new-Hitler-because-... wild-unproven allegation kind) human beings imaginable in order to provide historical context for your statement?

Also re. your post on the latest Mueller indictments, the Black Agenda Report piece I link to in my long post above provides some perspective on Mueller's indictments-for-nonexistent crimes. And indicting people he knows damn well will never be extradited to stand trial in US court is a cheap political stunt: Mueller never has to prove anything, never has to have his 'evidence' subjected to discovery by the defense. I urge you to dig up the story about the fairly-recent Russia-hacks indictment by Mueller where to his great surprise someone actually showed up on the defense side and demanded to do discovery, as is their legal right.

[wombatman]

Surprisingly enough, I'm quite well aware of the US government's tendency to cozy up to whoever suits purposes at the time. That doesn't change the fact that Trump's brash and undeserved bravado vanishes around Putin and he starts parroting Russia's stances. I'm also well aware that vast majority of the Russians indicted will never actually go to court and that it's a stunt more than anything. I'm far more interested in the US citizens who have been (and presumably will be) charged. The Manafort trial is potentially interesting, but we'll see if Manafort sticks it out or ends up flipping.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by wombatman

The Manafort trial is potentially interesting, but we'll see if Manafort sticks it out or ends up flipping.

Apparently Manafort still believes Il Duce will pardon him. And who knows, he might.

OTOH, Il Duce has, for a long time now, been marginalizing his erstwhile campaign chairman's contribution to Il Duce's advancement. Perhaps Manafort should use his time in jail during his trial, to read up on the history of what happens to once-useful creatures. Just to maintain a Russian connection, the names Kamenev and Zinoviev come to mind...

[ewmayer]

Couple posts from Pat Lang at Sic Semper Tyrannis about the judge for the trial:

Sic Semper Tyrannis : IMO TS Ellis will surprise ...

Sic Semper Tyrannis : "Judge cautions Mueller team on high bar for Manafort conviction": Foxnews

Also, if Manafort were going to 'flip on Trump' (and that he actually had something substantive to flip over), methinks he would've done it before the case went to trial, but we shall see soon enough.

[kladner]

The stuff we USians pay for whether we like it or not,,,,,unless we are super-wealthy and make money off the war business. Then, "we" get subsidies, tax breaks, "Special Exemptions", and vast quantities of other payola, in return for our bribes Constitutionally Protected Financial Free Speech donations, for which we expect nothing more than a "Thank You" card, (and some yuuuge tax deductions to reimburse us.)

The Legacy of Infinite War
Special Ops, Generational Struggle, and the Cooperstown of Commandos
By Nick Turse
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1764...m_inheritance/

Raids by U.S. commandos in Afghanistan. (I could be talking about 2001 or 2018.)

A U.S. drone strike in Yemen. (I could be talking about 2002 or 2018.)

Missions by Green Berets in Iraq. (I could be talking about 2003 or 2018.)

While so much about the War on Terror turned Global War on Terrorism turned World War IV turned the Long War turned “generational struggle” turned “infinite war” seems repetitious, the troops most associated with this conflict -- the U.S. Special Operations forces -- have seen changes galore. As Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ), chairman of the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, pointed out in 2006, referring to Special Operations Command by its acronym: “For almost five years now, SOCOM has been leading the way in the war on terrorism: defeating the Taliban and eliminating a terrorist safe haven in Afghanistan, removing a truly vicious Iraqi dictator, and combating the terrorists who seek to destabilize the new, democratic Iraq.”

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by kladner

The stuff we USians pay for whether we like it or not,,,,,unless we are super-wealthy and make money off the war business. Then, "we" get subsidies, tax breaks, "Special Exemptions", and vast quantities of other payola, in return for our bribes Constitutionally Protected Financial Free Speech donations, for which we expect nothing more than a "Thank You" card, (and some yuuuge tax deductions to reimburse us.)

The Legacy of Infinite War
Special Ops, Generational Struggle, and the Cooperstown of Commandos
By Nick Turse
Tomgram: Nick Turse, A Grim Inheritance

Note: I fiddled the description of the link.

The following passage got my attention:

It looks like TomDispatch may have a few less readers from now on. Perhaps it will surprise you, but judging by the mail I get, some members of the U.S. military do read TomDispatch -- partially to check out the range of military and ex-military critics of America’s wars that this site publishes. Or rather they did read TomDispatch. No longer, it seems, if their computers are operating via Department of Defense (DoD) networks. The DoD, I’ve heard, has blocked the site. You now get this message, I’m told, when you try to go to it: “You have attempted to access a blocked website. Access to this website has been blocked for operational reasons by the DOD Enterprise-Level Protection System.” Oh, and the category that accounts for it being blocked? “Hate and racism.” Mind you, you can evidently still read both Breitbart and Infowars in a beautifully unblocked state via the same networks.

EDIT: I suddenly remembered, Alex Jones's Infowars has been having its own problems, outside of the DOD network. Some of his major platforms have said, "Get the hook!"

I will also mention, the irony of Rep. Saxton's rosy assessment of GWOT being 12 years old is not lost on Yours Truly. It is reminiscent of similarly upbeat assessments of our victorious campaign in Southeast Asia. WRT which, we just had an important anniversary: August 7, 1964 was the day that Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

[kladner]

I am glad you picked up on the message from Tom about blocking. His sardonic () comment on Hate and Racism, for which the site is said to be blocked, is also worth reading:

On consideration, however, I’ve concluded that the Department of Defense might have a point. Since this site was launched as a no-name listserv in October 2001 soon after the Afghan War started -- you know, the war that the DoD is still pursuing so successfully almost 17 years later with its 17th commander now in the field, 15,000 American troops still fighting and advising there (and still dying there as well), and the enemy, the Taliban in particular, in control of yet more territory in that country -- TomDispatch has always hated America’s never-ending, ever-spreading, refugee- and terror-producing wars that now extend from South Asia across the Middle East and deep into Africa. So perhaps this site is, after all, a must-block “hate” site.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by kladner

I am glad you picked up on the message from Tom about blocking. His sardonic () comment on Hate and Racism, for which the site is said to be blocked, is also worth reading:

Yes, I read it. Meanwhile, Alex Jones (Il Duce's primary source for news) still has Twitter and Apple's App Store.

It would appear that once Apple finally booted Jones from iTunes, other platforms decided it was OK to boot him as well. Why Apple didn't boot him from the App Store is a question I can't answer. Why the other folks didn't boot him months or years ago is more than I can say.

Last I heard, he was howling that the platforms that had booted him would pay. Reminded me of his bravado when Chobani sued him. Jones backed down soon after, though, and apologized for his false and defamatory material about Chobani. His legal counsel had very likely advised him that if the suit was tried and went to verdict, he would be financially ruined.

Amusingly, Jone's own Infowars web site has a "censorship" policy similar to those of the sites he's now whining about -- violate our terms, and the stuff you post is gone.

CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

[kladner]

I was torn as to where to post the following. I considered Things that make you go "Hmmmm..." and "Dumb Jokes". Really. I came out of reading this feeling cross-eyed mind-bent. I found it hard to sort out which story lines, from which sources, Stockman is playing on. It is quite the whirlwind of Hot Button issues for various folks.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50215.htm

“Cry For Help” My Eye! It’s Sabotage By A Deep State Handmaid -David Stockman

This cabal of self-described "adults" in the figurative Cabinet Room, who claim to be thwarting, frustrating, containing, insulating and walking-back the Donald’s actions, are not heroes: They are Deep State Handmaids attempting to nullify the 2016 election.

The tip-off is their description of the late Senator John S. McWar as a "lodestar" of honor. We are supposed to "revere" him because he spent 56 years on Uncle Sam’s payroll, stalking the planet in search of nations to bomb, drone, invade, occupy and destroy whenever they failed to toe the Empire’s writ.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example – a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

Actually, there is no real mystery about the identify of Anonymous. The text may have come from a single keyboard, but the substance bespeaks of a "they".

That is, the composite sentiment of the entire Washington-based GOP establishment which gives lip service to free markets and low taxes, but really cares about one thing above all else: Ruling the world from their self-perpetuating sinecures in the Imperial City.

Folks, that’s what John McCain was all about. He spent decades cavorting around Washington as a foreign policy expert and purported "war hero" by virtue of being shot-down when flying too low over a light bulb factory he was attempting to bomb in Hanoi.