Amazon CEO Bezos makes $1.4 billion Thursday morning, briefly becoming world’s richest person

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

NOTE: Among the regular, non-royal, world billionaires Bezos is certainly a prominent player, as is Bill Gates and others. But their fortunes, exorbitant and obscene as they are, pale when compared to that of Gulf royals, for example. The Sauds' wealth—a family mafia that literally owns Saudi Arabia— is in the trillions of dollars. The world is still very much awash in the most appalling inequality, and the US is the main watchdog for this corrupt status quo.

By Evan Blake, wsws.org

Around the time Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos woke up Thursday, he became the richest person in the world after making roughly $1.4 billion shortly following the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange. With an estimated net worth of $90.9 billion, Bezos briefly surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who had been the world’s richest person since May 2013.

Jeff Bezos: Human vermin and master of Amazon, he's now also the new boss of The Washington Post. His flacks are busy propagandizing for war and further gains for the 0.00001% that already owns just about everything.

Bezos’s fortune stems almost entirely from being the largest shareholder of Amazon stock, of which he owns roughly 17 percent. With the company slated to report strong earnings and growth in its quarterly earnings report released Thursday evening, its stock surged 1.6 percent shortly after the NASDAQ opened Thursday morning, reaching a high of $1,083.31 per share at mid-day.

The released earnings report, however, differed from what analysts had predicted and caused Amazon’s stock price to fall 3 percent to $1,012.68 in after-hours trading Thursday evening. The company reported earnings per share of only $0.40 cents per share, far below the predicted $1.42 per share. Bezos finished the day as the second richest person, trailing Gates by just $1.1 billion.

[dropcap]U[/dropcap]nder capitalism, the daily fluctuations of the market cause figures such as Bezos and Gates to win or lose hundreds of millions—or even billions—of dollars on an hourly basis, while the vast majority of the population struggles to survive.

The obscene amounts of money that Bezos accrued early Thursday and in recent years contrasts sharply with the low wages earned by Amazon’s global workforce. While Bezos netted $1.4 billion in his sleep, it would take 54,280 years for a graveyard shift worker in one of Amazon’s warehouses in the US to earn the same amount.

As the International Amazon Workers Voice (IAWV) reported last month, super-exploited Amazon warehouse workers in India make just $233 per month. Thus, it would take an Indian Amazon warehouse worker 500,715 years to earn the same amount that Bezos did overnight.

Coinciding with the rise of the stock market, Amazon’s stock value has skyrocketed over 40 percent this year alone. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Bezos has cashed in with $24.5 billion since January. In the past five years, a period of almost uninterrupted stock market boom, Bezos has made an astounding $70.4 billion.

Bezos’s wealth is so vast that it would be enough to end homelessness in the US and provide access to water and sanitation for the entire global population, according to figures from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

After a summer of skyrocketing share value, the company’s market capitalization surpassed $500 billion for the first time on Wednesday, joining the exclusive set of fellow tech giants Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Earlier this summer, Amazon began acquisition negotiations with Whole Foods, which also propelled Amazon stock and netted Bezos another $2.88 billion in a single day. The deal portends a massive shift in the grocery industry, as Amazon aims to introduce technology to make superfluous jobs that currently employ millions of people, including cashier positions.

On July 11, Amazon held its annual Prime Day event, a sales bonanza in which numerous items were discounted, including Amazon-produced technology like the Echo Dot. The company afterwards announced that the sales event was their “biggest day ever” in terms of overall sales—a 60 percent increase over Prime Day 2016. In the 30-hour time frame of the event, they surpassed their combined sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2016 and added more Prime members than ever before.

The rise of Amazon and the billions accumulated by Bezos have been built upon the exploitation of its workforce worldwide, which faces brutal working conditions. Over the past few weeks, building up to and after Prime Day, workers at Amazon’s immense distribution warehouses have been under intense pressure to meet productivity requirements. Thousands of workers have been forced to work mandatory overtime, often at least 60 hours per week.

At most “fulfillment centers” across the US, inbound workers are already stocking up for the “peak” holiday shopping season and have continued to work mandatory overtime. Inbound workers have told the IAWV that they come home so stressed out from the thought of having to go back to work overtime the next day that they cannot fall asleep, creating a grueling feedback loop of overwork, stress and sleep deprivation.

Inside the facilities, workers are forced to labor under the intense summer heat. Workers frequently collapse from heat exhaustion, at which point they are simply advised to take a break and then get back to work.

This brutal exploitation is the real source of Amazon’s climbing stock value and Bezos’s soaring wealth. Without the labor of Amazon workers, there would be no profits. The wealth that Bezos has extracted from Amazon workers must be seized and redirected to meet social needs, not hoarded away in his private bank accounts and stock portfolio.

The way forward for Amazon workers requires that they form links with their coworkers internationally and fight to build independent rank-and-file committees, which will be used to unite with the international working class more broadly.

About the Author

The author is a sociopolitivcal analyst with wsws.org, a socialist organization.

Among the regular, non-royal, world billionaires Bezos is certainly a prominent player, as is Bill Gates and others. But their fortunes, exorbitant and obscene as they are, pale when compared to that of Gulf royals, for example. The Sauds’ wealth—a family mafia that literally owns Saudi Arabia— is in the trillions of dollars. The world is still very much awash in the most appalling inequality, and the US is the main watchdog for this corrupt status quo.

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

“The Ocean is Dying”: Marine and Animal Life Die Offs, California Coast

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

by Mac Slavo / The SHTF Plan

This article was also published by fraternal site Global Research in May 2015. This is s repost due to global climate crisis.

It was the dying cry of Charlton Heston in the creepy 1973 film Soylent Green… and it could resemble our desperate near future.

The ocean is dying, by all accounts – and if so, the food supply along with it. The causes are numerous, and overlapping. And massive numbers of wild animal populations are dying as a result of it.

Natural causes in the environment are partly to blame; so too are the corporations of man; the effects of Fukushima, unleashing untold levels of radiation into the ocean and onto Pacific shores; the cumulative effect of modern chemicals and agricultural waste tainting the water and disrupting reproduction.

A startling new report says in no uncertain terms that the Pacific Ocean off the California coast is turning into a desert. Once full of life, it is now becoming barren, and marine mammals, seabirds and fish are starving as a result. According to Ocean Health:

The waters of the Pacific off the coast of California are a clear, shimmering blue today, so transparent it’s possible to see the sandy bottom below […] clear water is a sign that the ocean is turning into a desert, and the chain reaction that causes that bitter clarity is perhaps most obvious on the beaches of the Golden State, where thousands of emaciated sea lion pups are stranded.

[…]

Over the last three years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has noticed a growing number of strandings on the beaches of California and up into the Pacific north-west. In 2013, 1,171 sea lions were stranded, and 2,700 have already stranded in 2015 – a sign that something is seriously wrong, as pups don’t normally wind up on their own until later in the spring and early summer.

“[An unusually large number of sea lions stranding in 2013 was a red flag] there was a food availability problem even before the ocean got warm.”Johnson: This has never happened before… It’s incredible. It’s so unusual, and there’s no really good explanation for it. There’s also a good chance that the problem will continue, said a NOAA research scientist in climatology, Nate Mantua.

Experts blame a lack of food due to unusually warm ocean waters. NOAA declared an El Nino, the weather pattern that warms the Pacific, a few weeks ago. The water is three and a half to six degrees warmer than the average, according to Mantua, because of a lack of north wind on the West Coast. Ordinarily, the north wind drives the current, creating upwelling that brings forth the nutrients that feed the sardines, anchovies and other fish that adult sea lions feed on.

Fox News added:

The warm water is likely pushing prime sea lion foods — market squid, sardines and anchovies — further north, forcing the mothers to abandon their pups for up to eight days at a time in search of sustenance.

The pups, scientists believe, are weaning themselves early out of desperation and setting out on their own despite being underweight and ill-prepared to hunt.

[…]

“These animals are coming in really desperate. They’re at the end of life. They’re in a crisis … and not all animals are going to make it,” said Keith A. Matassa, executive director at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, which is currently rehabilitating 115 sea lion pups.

The same is true of seabirds on the Washington State coast:

In the storm debris littering a Washington State shoreline, Bonnie Wood saw something grisly: the mangled bodies of dozens of scraggly young seabirds. Walking half a mile along the beach at Twin Harbors State Park on Wednesday, Wood spotted more than 130 carcasses of juvenile Cassin’s auklets—the blue-footed, palm-size victims of what is becoming one of the largest mass die-offs of seabirds ever recorded. “It was so distressing,” recalled Wood, a volunteer who patrols Pacific Northwest beaches looking for dead or stranded birds. “They were just everywhere. Every ten yards we’d find another ten bodies of these sweet little things.”

“This is just massive, massive, unprecedented,” said Julia Parrish, a University of Washington seabird ecologist who oversees the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST), a program that has tracked West Coast seabird deaths for almost 20 years. “We may be talking about 50,000 to 100,000 deaths. So far.” (source)

100,000 doesn’t necessarily sound large, statistically speaking, but precedent in the history of recorded animal deaths suggests that it is, in fact massive. Even National Geographic is noting that these die off events are “unprecedented.” Warmer water is indicated for much of the starvation faced by many of the dead animals.

Last year, scientists sounded the alarm over the death of millions of star fish, blamed on warmer waters and ‘mystery virus’:

Starfish are dying by the millions up and down the West Coast, leading scientists to warn of the possibility of localized extinction of some species. As the disease spreads, researchers may be zeroing in on a link between warming waters and the rising starfish body count. (source)

[…]

The epidemic, which threatens to reshape the coastal food web and change the makeup of tide pools for years to come, appears to be driven by a previously unidentified virus, a team of more than a dozen researchers from Cornell University, UC Santa Cruz, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and other institutions reported Monday. (source)

Changing temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, driven by the natural cycle of gyres over decades, shifts wildlife populations, decimating the populations of species throughout the food chain, proving how fragile the balance of life in the ocean really is.

Recently, the collapse of the sardine population has created a crisis for fisheries and marine wildlife alike on the West Coast:

Commercial fishing for sardines off of Canada’s West Coast is worth an estimated $32 million – but now they are suddenly gone. Back in October, fisherman reported that they came back empty-handed without a single fish after 12 hours of trolling and some $1000 spent on fuel.

Sandy Mazza, for the Daily Breeze, reported a similar phenomenon in central California: “[T]he fickle sardines have been so abundant for so many years – sometimes holding court as the most plentiful fish in coastal waters – that it was a shock when he couldn’t find one of the shiny silver-blue coastal fish all summer, even though this isn’t the first time they’ve vanished.” [emphasis added]

[…]
“Is it El Nino? Pacific Decadal Oscillation? [La] Nina? Long-term climate change? More marine mammals eating sardines? Did they all go to Mexico or farther offshore? We don’t know. We’re pretty sure the overall population has declined. We manage them pretty conservatively because we don’t want to end up with another Cannery Row so, as the population declines, we curb fishing.” said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) official Kerry Griffin. (source)

According to a report in the Daily Mail, the worst events have wiped out 90% of animal populations, falling short of extinction, but creating a rupture in food chains and ecosystems.

And environmental factors are known to be a factor, with pollution from chemicals dumped by factories clearly tied to at least 20% of the mass die off events of wildlife populations that have been investigated, and many die offs implicated by a number of overlapping factors. The Daily Mail reported:

Mass die-offs of certain animals has increased in frequency every year for seven decades, according to a new study.

Researchers found that such events, which can kill more than 90 per cent of a population, are increasing among birds, fish and marine invertebrates.

The reasons for the die-offs are diverse, with effects tied to humans such as environmental contamination accounting for about a fifth of them.

Farm runoff from Big Agra introduces high levels of fertilizers and pesticides which createoxygen-starved dead zones which fish and aquatic live is killed off. Also preset in agriculture waste are gender bending chemicals like those found in Atrazine, used in staple crop production, and antibiotics and hormones, used in livestock production, which creates hazardous runoff for fish populations:

Livestock excrete natural hormones – estrogens and testosterones – as well as synthetic ones used to bolster their growth. Depending on concentrations and fish sensitivity, these hormones and hormone mimics might impair wild fish reproduction or skew their sex ratios. (source)

Pharmaceutical contaminants are also to blame for changing the sex of fish and disrupting population numbers, while a study found that the chemicals in Prozac changed the behavior of marine life, and made shrimp many times more likely to “commit suicide” and swim towards the light where they became easy prey.

Fish farms also introduce a large volume of antibiotic and chemical pollution into oceans and waterways:

The close quarters where farmed fish are raised (combined with their unnatural diets) means disease occurs often and can spread quickly. On fish farms, which are basically “CAFOs of the sea,” antibiotics are dispersed into the water, and sometimes injected directly into the fish.

Unfortunately, farmed fish are often raised in pens in the ocean, which means not only that pathogens can spread like wildfire and contaminate any wild fish swimming past – but the antibiotics can also spread to wild fish (via aquaculture and wastewater runoff) – and that’s exactly what recent research revealed. (source)

Mass die offs of fish on the Brazilian coastline have linked to pollution from the dumping of raw sewage and garbage.

In the last few days it was reported that a massive die off of bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico was connected by researchers to BP’s Deep Water Horizon oil spill. Evidence was found in a third of the cases of lesions in the adrenal gland, an otherwise rare condition linked with petroleum exposure. More than a fifth of the dolphins also suffered bacterial pneumonia, causing deadly lung infection that is likewise rarely seen in dolphin populations.

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article.

About the Author

Mac Slavo [send him mail] is a small business owner and independent investor. A frequent author at LewRockwell.com (anti-state•anti-war•pro-market) he comments on world events from a generally rightwing libertarian perspective, which makes him a critic of many US foreign policy adventures. As well, and perhaps oblivious to the contradiction, although he is a believer in capitalism, he is sufficiently concerned about the environment to file this report.

In the last few days it was reported that a massive die off of bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico was connected by researchers to BP’s Deep Water Horizon oil spill. Evidence was found in a third of the cases of lesions in the adrenal gland, an otherwise rare condition linked with petroleum exposure. More than a fifth of the dolphins also suffered bacterial pneumonia, causing deadly lung infection that is likewise rarely seen in dolphin populations.

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

We Don’t Need No “Moderates”

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Editor's Note: We are not interested in discussing any tactic or strategy that could revive the Democratic party nor re-energize the legitimacy of the corporatist duopoly of which it remains its most powerful wing. The repugnantly unprincipled and hypocritical Democratic party, by definition (US political parties are essentially flaccid in their ideology and internal discipline except fierce support for capitalism), has long been the grave of progressive movements. Many have tried to cleverly "bore from within," and the whole thing has crashed, failed, miserably, time and time again. Second, we do not believe that Americans should continue to go into the political electoral arena on the basis of "expert" or "smart" calculations, triangulations, and so forth (nor go on thinking that this country will change primarily on the basis of casting ballots within the permissible rules of the plutocracy). Spin doctors epitomize the rottenness of the current system. Banish them from the new temple. Their pricey lucubrations are a waste of time, and the whole exercise is simply immoral, concentrating on the algebra of winning instead of on the principles and visions we need to embrace to heal society. Genuine candidates of the people should state their platform—one of peace, equality, and robust economic and social justice for all—and fight for that, period. With that clear caveat, read the below post. —P. Greanville

BY BEN SPIELBERG, 34justice.com

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has apparently decided that embracing the “Blue Dog Democrats” – a group of politicians who proudly tout their commitment “to pursuing fiscally-responsible policies, ensuring a strong national defense, and transcending party lines” – is the prudent electoral strategy for the Democratic Party in 2018. Daily Beast contributor Michael Tomasky agrees, writingthat the “reality, which many liberals refuse to accept[, is that to win a majority in the House of Representatives], Democrats have to win in 20 to 25 purple districts. And that means electing some moderates.”

Pelosi and fellow poseurs. The Democrats are a cruel, costly and dangerous farce, but the will and organization is still lacking to sweep them from the stage.

If you’re in favor of Democrats joining with Republicans to enact tax cuts that go mostly to the rich, reductions in government spending on support for low- and middle-income people, and more legislation authorizing perpetual war, this strategy isn’t totally crazy. But if you’re in favor of “single-payer health care, a much higher minimum wage, a massive infrastructure program, a top marginal…tax rate around 50 percent, a much higher payroll tax cap, and more,” which Tomasky says he is, this strategy couldn’t be more wrong. Even if it led to a Democratic House, it would stymie your agenda. In New York, for example, while the Blue-Dog-esque Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) gives Democrats a nominal majority in the state Senate, the IDC consistently partners with Republicans to undermine economic and social justice. A Democratic majority doesn’t help you very much if the Democrats who get you there don’t share your values.

Importantly, there’s also no reason to believe Tomasky’s assertion that “moderate” candidates will improve Democrats’ electoral prospects. In fact, evidence suggests an alternate strategy holds more promise in contested (or even heavily Republican) districts in 2018.

Consider recent special elections to replace Trump appointees Mick Mulvaney (South Carolina’s 5^th District), Mike Pompeo (Kansas’ 4^th District), Tom Price (Georgia’s 6^thDistrict), and Ryan Zinke (Montana’s At-Large seat) in the House. Democrats pursued the Tomasky strategy (or, as former Hillary Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon seems to call it, the “Panera Breads of America” strategy) in Georgia, spending a historical record $30 million on a candidate, Jon Ossoff, who stressed deficit reduction and actively opposed both single-payer health care and taxing the rich. The national party apparatus mostly stayed out of the other three races, but the Democratic candidates in Kansas (James Thompson) and Montana (Rob Quist) secured progressive endorsements with a platform closer to the one Tomasky theoretically supports. Nobody paid much attention to Archie Parnell, the Democratic candidate in South Carolina, who, like Ossoff, would fit in pretty well with the Blue Dogs.

The Democrats lost all four races. But based on how Democrats had fared in each of those districts historically, they also significantly outperformed expectations. All of them except for Ossoff, that is, who did far better than the practically nonexistent candidate Democrats ran in the prior congressional election in Georgia’s 6^th District but worse than Hillary Clinton performed there against Donald Trump. Note also that Georgia’s 6^th District is more affluent than most and thus, according to Tomasky, a place in which “the Democrat should definitely talk more about growth than fairness but can probably get away with somewhat more liberal social positions,” which basically describes how Ossoff ran his campaign. In other words, the Democratic Party invested the most resources and got the least return on one of the “moderate” special election candidates in a district tailor-made for the Tomasky strategy.

Dennis Kucinich: Why did progressive Democrats totally abandoned him despite his record?

Advocacy for single-payer health care didn’t put Thompson and Quist over the top in their races, of course, and Parnell, a “moderate” who both the party and grassroots organizers more or less ignored, came the closest to victory. These special elections certainly don’t prove that endorsing economic justice more will win. But they do show it can play better than a Republican-lite economic platform in heavily Republican areas, a fact also underscored by the recent results of state special elections. In New York’s 9^thAssembly District, for instance, which Trump won with 60 percent of the vote, bold progressive Christine Pellegrino just trounced her Republican challenger en route to a seat on the state assembly.

Then there’s the recent international evidence. Jeremy Corbyn just helped the United Kingdom’s Labour Party pull off its biggest electoral swing in seventy years, defying pundit predictions of Labour’s imminent trampling from a few months before. Some of Labour’s surge was likely due to the Conservative Party’s mistakes, but some of it was also likely due to a bold set of economic ideas Labour outlined in a new manifesto, ideas that couldn’t be more different from those the Blue Dog Democrats embrace. Labour’s showing underscored what evidence had indicated since at least February of 2016, when I first pointed it out: Bernie Sanders was much more likely than Hillary Clinton to win a head-to-head matchup against a Republican presidential candidate that November. That evidence only got stronger as the primary season continued; many Democrats likely wish they had taken it more seriously. Today, Sanders – a politician about as far from the Blue Dogs as you can get in the Senate – remains the most popular politician in America. The claim that Sanders-style economic and social justice advocacy is unworkable in the critical purple districts Tomasky references doesn’t square with the absence of moderate Democrats more popular than Sanders in those districts.

And let’s not forget that the Democratic Party has been decimated in recent years. Not only have they lost control of the executive branch of the federal government and both chambers of Congress, they now also hold only 18 state houses, 16 governorships, and 13 state senates. They’ve been running moderate candidates in purple districts, and that strategy doesn’t seem to be working very well.

That doesn’t mean we can be certain about what will get Democrats elected. A candidate’s general election viability is ultimately unknowable. It may depend on her or her opponent’s platform, debating skill, fundraising prowess, personality, or field operation. It may hinge on the quirks of the community she’s running for office in or how much the media likes her. It may come down to random chance. Electability is also often a self-fulfilling prophecy; people commenting on electability and making decisions based on their perceptions of it can actually influence it and do so all the time.

The only thing we can be certain of in the electability space is political strategists’ and pundits’ poor track records. Many of the people who claim to know what is and isn’t possible in future elections thought Bernie Sanders would barely get 15 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary. Many of them were sure that Republicans would never nominate Donald Trump, and once that prediction turned out to be wrong, were still absolutely positive that Trump would never become president. It’s long past time we viewed their claims with skepticism, especially when there’s evidence that points the other way.

Good policy can sell. Voters can be persuaded. Political reality is not something that gets handed to us, but something we help create. Candidates with economic and social justice platforms can win in purple districts, and they’ll be even more likely to do so if Democratic pundits stop assuming they can’t and start getting behind them.

About the Author

Ben Spielberg majored in Mathematical and Computational Sciences at Stanford, but political and ethical discussions are his biggest passion. His high school elected Dennis Kucinich as the Democratic nominee for President in a landslide in 2004, so he knows progressive candidates can win elections if they message effectively. Josh Spielberg (his dad), Mike Levy, Jack Schneider, and Glenn Greenwald have had the biggest impact on his worldview, though he sometimes disagrees with all four of them.

The only thing we can be certain of in the electability space is political strategists’ and pundits’ poor track records. Many of the people who claim to know what is and isn’t possible in future elections thought Bernie Sanders would barely get 15 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary. Many of them were sure that Republicans would never nominate Donald Trump, and once that prediction turned out to be wrong, were still absolutely positive that Trump would never become president. It’s long past time we viewed their claims with skepticism, especially when there’s evidence that points the other way.

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

Freedom Rider: Democrats Smear Jill Stein

Green Party presidential candidate

The Democratic Party’s Grand Inquisition has move leftward, targeting 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, whose political crime was to attend an RT dinner in Russia, the year before. The Democrats are trying to yoke her into their fake “Russiagate” conspiracy. Stein is “the perfect foil. She can simultaneously be blamed for Clinton’s loss while feeding the anti-Russia frenzy.”

“The Democrats have shamefully praised the intelligence apparatus, shown love for an FBI director and joined the chorus for war and American intervention around the world.”

Democrats hate the left more than they hate the right. Democrats are allegedly the counter weight to the right wing in America when in reality their goal is to replicate the same policies. The subterfuge inherent in the political duopoly allows them to live off the pretense of defending the people from the neo-liberal forces they in fact support.

Their hatred is most evident when people who are truly on the left dare to make the case for political change. When Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost presidential races in the Electoral College, Democratic Party scorn was directed solely at the Green Party and their voters.

In both elections there were far more instances of registered Democrats voting for George W. Bush and Donald Trump respectively. One would think that they would be marked for condemnation. Instead the Democrats show their true colors, excusing and placating the turncoats in order to make the case for “lesser evil” neo-liberalism and imperialism.

“The subterfuge inherent in the political duopoly allows them to live off the pretense of defending the people from the neo-liberal forces they in fact support.”

The Russiagate phenomenon makes Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein an even bigger target. Stein visited Russia in 2015 and attended the RT network’s anniversary dinner. She was seated at the same table with Vladimir Putin, although the two never spoke.

This simple act is now being included among the flimsy so-called evidence that the Russian government interfered in the election. The war party is an important part of the duopoly and leading Democrats are reveling in their opportunity to make political hay.

Congressman Adam Schiff is ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee and a leader in the charge against Russia and now Stein. “Jill Stein was also in Russia attending the RT function, so we’re going to need to look at any efforts the Russians made through whatever means to influence our elections.” It isn’t clear how Stein’s presence in Moscow impacted the election but truth isn’t the point.

“We have a right to visit any nation and interact with anyone we choose and to question presidents, congress and elite punditry.”

The Democrats’ urge to destabilize the entire system in order to do the work of the war party is dangerous for many reasons. It now gives them an even bigger out. They can continue their attack on the rights of nations and people all over the world and simultaneously blame the Russian government for their own abject political failures.

Donald Trump Jr. and others involved in his father’s campaign are now targets of investigation because of their amateurish contacts with Russian citizens. The Senate Judiciary Committee demanded that Trump the younger provide them with any communication he had with 41 individuals and entities and they included Jill Stein’s name among them. The list also includes Putin, his foreign secretary, the ambassador to the United States, the Ritz Carlton hotel and the oligarch who bankrolled Trump’s Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.

“There is no legitimate reason for Stein’s name to be on this list.”

Every other person, business or organization on the list is a Russian government official, played some role on the Trump campaign, or are or are mentioned in stories about election hacking. There is no legitimate reason for Stein’s name to be on this list. She makes clear that she has had no contact with the Trump family or campaign. She is being thrown under the bus in a classic smear tactic.

Rank and file Democrats have lost all sense of logic and common sense in their post-election trauma. They are always predisposed to attack anyone who points out the obvious deficiencies in the party they cling to with such devotion. The years of anti-Russian propaganda and willingness to censure anyone daring to do what they will not has primed them for this moment.

Ever since Election Day they have shamefully praised the intelligence apparatus, shown love for an FBI director and joined the chorus for war and American intervention around the world. Jill Stein is now the perfect foil. She can simultaneously be blamed for Clinton’s loss while feeding the anti-Russia frenzy.

“Stein is being thrown under the bus in a classic smear tactic.”

It is important for the left to defend Stein at this moment. She and all Americans have a right to disagree with their government’s foreign policy. We have a right to visit any nation and interact with anyone we choose and to question presidents, congress and elite punditry. We should be able to do so without fear of harassment or legal jeopardy.

American provocations against Russia go back to the collapse of the Soviet Union and are responsible for the possibility of a hot war. It is important to say so and to act in solidarity with those who become targets when they act on their right to freedom of movement and speech.

The notion that Russia is a hostile power is a concoction of the corporate media and the war loving members of the duopoly. If they attempt to silence or smear Stein or anyone else they must be met with staunch opposition.

About the author

Black Agenda report's Senior Editor and Columnist Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly at the Black Agenda Report. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley (at) BlackAgendaReport.com.

Excerpt

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

Media Misdirection at Heart of Imperial Strategy

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. BREAKING THE EMPIRE'S MEDIA STRANGLEHOLD IS ESSENTIAL.

The cycle of conquest requires a clever disguise

In the Chinese compendium of wisdom called the Analects, the philosopher Confucius argued that any reconstruction of the state should begin with an effort to “rectify names,” or educate people to call things what they are. Good advice, studiously ignored for twenty-five centuries in our beloved hemisphere. In fact, the West has pioneered precisely the opposite of the rectification of names, beginning, at least nominally, with the Propaganda Fide of the Catholic Church in 1622 at the height of the Counter-Reformation. The idea was to evangelize the ‘truth’ of the gospels rather than the scurrilous piffle being spread by the likes of Martin Luther and John Calvin.

Of course, the recognition of the value of nuanced language in propagating a particular narrative is nothing new, as the biddable sophists of the Golden Age surely knew. But it has been pursued in the West with renewed vigor in the last century, as America embraced its new faith of exceptionalism, entered world wars and aggressively expanded its global footprint, the important tasks of genocide and slave-driven nation building having been largely completed. Which leads us to the present moment. A cursory glance at the media landscape should be enough to induce fear and trembling in the congregatio. The signs of linguistic apocalypse are all around us. There is little in the mainstream media that is not a euphemism for something darker, deadlier, or simply antithetical. And not only is this state of affairs chronic, but it is being elevated into a more central function in the corporate state, which in its democratic guise must to some degree rely on the manufacture of consent rather than coercion to have its way. So much so now that the production of propaganda appears to be a core competency of the ruling class and the professional classes that serve them.

While many voices worthy of being heard remain in limbo, career disinformers for the empire like WaPo's David Ignatius are given august lecterns and media platforms to bloviate on themes agreeable to their comfortable sponsors.

The web and print are rife with examples of this. For instance, President Trump finally does something good on the foreign policy front--ends CIA support for terrorists in Syria--and the Democrats and their media fronts accuse him of ‘surrendering’ to Vladimir Putin, implying that since he did something the Russians approve of, it is further evidence of collusion between the mighty Kremlin and the effete White House. This should, by the way, convince whatever Doubting Thomases that remain of the complete and total moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party. Those that have been led astray by a party that deliberately took on corporate vassal status but kept churning out the ‘feel your pain’ bombast that plays so well on the campaign trail.

"A cursory glance at the media landscape should be enough to induce fear and trembling in the congregatio. The signs of linguistic apocalypse are all around us. There is little in the mainstream media that is not a euphemism for something darker, deadlier, or simply antithetical..."

face of the evidence, hacked our democracy. A democracy, to be sure, that exists in name only.

WaPo Misinformation

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]f course, these facts have long been consigned to the fact-shredding machine that sits inside the esteemed offices of The Washington Post, owned by junk-shipping mogul and CIA contractor Jeff Bezos. And so, as The Donald did his deed, the Post clocks in with an article entitled, “Trump’s breathtaking surrender to Russia.” Another promotes the lie, “Obama stood up to Russian interference. Now Trump must follow through.” (How much unpacking will it take to explain that Obama’s own party manufactured the fiction of Kremlin hacking and itself attacked Russia in every capacity but militarily?) Nor could the Post resist undermining the president’s actions in its initial reporting with, “Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow.” One hears a cigarette-wielding David Niven adding that final phrase under his breath.

Thiessen: Sociopathically faithful to his master's voice.

Its engines of imposture now firing on all cylinders, the Post then shotgunned a grossly confused op-ed into the ether, sure to be uncritically absorbed by our lapdog public. The article counterintuitively asked, “Why is the Trump administration empowering al-Qaeda in Syria?” Writer Marc Thiessen makes an impressively convoluted argument that amounts to a vote to reactivate the program to arm al-Qaeda fighters that the president just ended. Thiessen continues the ruse that those fighting Assad are significantly different from al-Qaeda and ISIS and are not de facto terrorists. Thiessen also criticizes U.S. support for the YPG--the foreign arm of the Kurdish PKK in Turkey--in carving up Syrian borders, which he blames on Trump, even though this policy emerged under Obama.

But most cleverly, Thiessen ignores the global context of the war, which would preempt any and all of his bootless whining. The global context always includes a look at international law, which is what mainstream journalists perpetually ignore--which is the chief method by which they build alternative narratives. For instance, according to Thiessen, we are in Syria to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda. This view is drawn from Barack Obama’s numberless press conferences in which he perpetuated the lie that we were solely concerned with the disease of ISIS. He never once mentioned the historical imperial objective of overthrowing a secular Arab nationalist government--a goal that supersedes all others. Thiessen ignores this, as his job description insists, and courageously rails against what he sees as mistaken strategy, sidestepping the overriding fact that the West invaded a sovereign state for imperial aims. Note how Thiessen assumes the right to do what we want in Syria; all imperialists maintain the assumption of the empire’s global sovereignty at the expense of national sovereignty.

Too Little, Too Late

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Post’s resident CIA fluffer, promoting. Still, Ignatius sees this result as “bizarrely” unpredictable.

Also note that Ignatius happily repeats the now threadbare and ingratiating flummery of ‘good intentions.’ He says such ‘arm-the-terrorist-proxy’ programs began with “the worthy objective of giving presidents policy options short of all-out war.” This is the kind of mind-numbing statement that induces apoplexy in certain leftist circles. It once again elides crucial context. Why should the president of a phenomenally aggressive, supremely armed empire ever be faced with all-out war as his only policy option? Who would ever attack it? Generally speaking, the answer is, no one. The underlying truth here is that Washington frequently launches wars of aggression against defiant states, and when popular support for interminable conflict wanes, covert options are needed. Ending or even pausing the perennial march of empire can never be countenanced as a policy option.

Ignatius says these policies often end up an “untidy mess.” This is what passes for serious criticism in the mainstream, the closest thing to dissidence you will find there. He says the program was “too late, too limited, and too dependent on dubious partners” to succeed and was finally “not strong enough to prevail.” To prevail at what? At destroying the last remnants of Arab socialism in the Middle East. Again, the larger goals are whitewashed out of the picture.

Finally, Ignatius rehabs the myth of the ‘moderate rebel,’ as though we were pouring millions of dollars into the coffers of principled Sunnis desperate to establish democratic institutions in a totalitarian state. In other words, a heroic effort we simply had to support. Instead, we were supporting terrorists that killed gays, brutally suppressed women, slaughtered thousands of takfiri and non-Muslims when the opportunity presented itself, and hoped to subject everyone that fell under their rule to Sharia law. We did this all for the previously stated and single overarching objective of imperial conquest.

New Tools of Media Repression

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he tactical nous of elision and misrepresentation is not likely to change. We shouldn’t forget that the authorities in Washington and Brussels have recently moved to expand the reach of our own Propaganda Fide. In a breathtaking instance of an entire government swallowing its own doctrinal absurdities, the EU Parliament passed a ridiculous “resolution” to combat the nonexistent worldwide Muscovite conspiracy. This parchment ought to be pasted to the tombstone of the European Union (and the corpse itself buried with a pair of Euros over its eyes and a copy of Don Quixote under its arm).

Not to be outdone, the bill that funds the 17 intelligence agencies, called the Intelligence Authorization Act, is now being hotly debated in Congress. The bill includes a domestic propaganda provision, and would create a committee within the executive “to counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence over peoples and governments.”

This on top of Obama’s revision of the Smith-Mundt Act as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which overturned decades of legal restraint of government propagandizing to domestic audiences. (The NDAA funds the Department of Defense.) But these efforts were simply not enough. Before he left office, Obama signed off on the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act (CDPA), a funded program of domestic activity explicitly created to “counter…” foreign propaganda. This was also added as part of the 2017 NDAA.

Thus we have a mainstream media manufacturing consent on a daily basis, enthralled by power, inured to criticism, and soon to be seconded by government agencies for whom the production of domestic groupthink is now a legitimate aim. So much for the rectification of names. But there is doubtless great insight to be gained from the attempt. From the effort to redefine, reshape, recontextualize, and reveal the soft underbelly of exceptionalism, which lurks beneath the surface story of paternalistic western powers administering tough love to their prodigal sons in dysfunctional backwaters abroad. By paying attention to the names, we can deflate this fairy tale fiction and lay bare the cold lexicon of recolonization, debt bondage, military carnage, investor rights, and petro-imperialism that festers beneath the polished prose of the latest byline. Exposing the imperial shills and discomfiting their complacent profiles as respectable intellectuals is a first step, if not a last resort.

About the Author

Imperial Fictions: How the West Markets Imperialism. He lives in New York City and can be reached at jasonhirthler@gmail.com.

It should also convince those that continue to cling to the sinking ideological raft of tepid reforms that dismantling the entire two-party system, and the capitalist system behind it, is the only way to transform this country. A country, by the way, that has nothing to fear from Russia, whose economy is a tenth of the United States’, and which has not, on the face of the evidence, hacked our democracy. A democracy, to be sure, that exists in name only.

[premium_newsticker id=”154171″]

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report