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[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t seems unlikely – as it defies 73 years of ongoing aggression, warfare, the near-warfare of constant tap dancing on the border, starvation-creating sanctions, false promises, broken promises, racist caricaturing, hysterical knee-jerk anti-socialism, and more besides – but what if Washington finally allows North Korea to reintegrate into the multinational world?

North Korea has been so politically oppressed from without that they are less integrated into global affairs, regional affairs, and even local & national affairs (their country was forcibly divided, after all) than any nation. They are even less integrated than the other few nations which have sustained modern (and thus socialist-inspired) popular revolutions, such as Cuba, Iran, Eritrea, mighty China and their fighting Vietnamese comrades.

We are told that we don’t really know anything about North Korea! We are also told to believe nothing from Pyongyang, and that the “Hermit Kingdom” is the most inscrutable of all those very-inscrutable East Asians. But I reported from Seoul and the DMZ border in 2013 and learned some interesting things (5 of them are here).

If I had to give the two most important ideas, they would be: no People have lived with more meddling exterior menaces since the year 1945 -North Koreans are bordered by and/or threatened by the US, South Korea, Russia, China and Japan); and the second point would be that the reunification of an $8 trillion mineral-rich, well-educated  (darn those socialist countries with their not-for-profit education programs) North Korea with South Korea would almost IMMEDIATELY create the world’s 5th-largest economy, trailing only the US, China, Japan and Germany. I hold these truths to be self-evident, and move on to the point of this article….

Let’s conjecture that Korea is still not allowed to reunite but that North Korea is allowed a global reinstatement on the level of China and Vietnam, leapfrogging poor Cuba and lonely Iran (but who is lonely when they have God?): How would that affect socialism on a global-historical scale?

What do I mean by that? I mean: socialism is a historical-political movement which covers 200 years, which is nearly as faith-based as Islam or Christendom, and which is nearly as economically influential as the era of industrialisation (an era which has lasted 250 years because many colonized countries have never even finished the First Industrial Revolution) and reinstatement for North Korea means a North Korean victory…and a victory for North Korea HAS TO impact the “narrative of socialism”, no?

Right now the narrative since 1992 is that “History is over”, per Francis Fukuyama, and capitalism has defeated socialism until the end of time…except that Fukuyama himself just backtracked on that with a recent interview: “At this juncture, it seems to me that certain things Karl Marx said are turning out to be true.” Ah, really Frank? By “juncture” you mean roughly 1848, right?

It’s 2018 and we’re talking North Korean reintegration, old F.F. is having doubts and Donald Trump is in the White House – what is the world coming to?!

Trump, God bless his Nobel Peace Prize-deserving soul (hey, Obama re-set the bar, right?) seems willing to do what the smartphone-loving world demands: end the Cold War on North Korea…in order to start exploiting the Jongju superdeposit, the world’s largest rare earth metals cache, and which may contain double the world’s known rare earth element resources. Money talks with capitalists, not ideology/morality/history….

So what does it mean for socialism if North Korea is allowed to allow people in?

Here’s what I’m picturing: Much like Iran, foreigners come visit and realize: this place is far more modern and put together than often ignorantly assumed. After all, North Korea seems to have the ideological cohesion of Cuba combined with a high-tech skillset & wealth volume closer to Iran (Cuba’s “wealth volume” is limited by population size, containing only sugar and nickel, and by being an island (blockade-busting is thus harder)). With reinstatement the world will slowly realize and accept that North Korea is indeed a socialist success – just like China and Vietnam. Unlike Iran, there is no Islamophobia for the Christian-Atheist West to use as a deflection.

Reinstatement means Asians run socialism like Westerners run capitalism

A North Korean victory means we are talking about the four biggest socialist success stories, certainly from an economic standpoint, being from Asia.

Concurrently, European socialism is not even close to being revived: it’s hard to shock back into life someone who has drunk hemlock (events of 1989-1991) and also asked to be shot (the Eurozone & European Union). Asia turns to its left, sees Iran, mumbles (but not disapprovingly), stands on its tiptoes and shakes its head while discussing “revisionism” and “the lack of a Cultural Revolution”.

Here is the fundamental question at the heart of this article: The West writes the history of socialism because they are the “victors” and history is written by the victors.

The West is the “victor” in every way possible, of course – one can never question that. They are the “victors” in what “socialism” is, means and should be…which is paradoxical, because they have undoubtedly always been the “victors” in capitalism-imperialism and are the current victors in neo-imperialism.

Western paradoxes are there only to be ignored, so I’ll continue: They are also the “victors” in which rights are “human” and which are not; they are the “victors” in what is “freedom” and what is not; they are the “victors” in which economics are successful and which are not. All of these are absolutely without a defensible factual foundation – especially the more-mathematical last one – but I contend that the West believes, and much of the rest of the world is also persuaded, that the West are the “victors” in achieving the greatest amount of “socialist victory”. (For the record, I do not believe nor am persuaded by any of these claims.)

Again, socialism is a movement which is so long and so enduring that it forces us to extend our viewpoint: If North Korea is added to the list of socialist victories…what does and what should the world do?

Save a few Latin American countries, only one of which is stable (Cuba); save a few African countries, only two of which are stable (Algeria, Eritrea); it must be admitted that Asian socialism is currently victorious in the “global-regional competition”.

Therefore, I insist an integration of North Korea allows me to declare the “end of history”: Asian socialism is the only acceptable model, and all must follow Asia henceforth.

LOL, but such a declaration is not “socialism” at all because socialism (like Islam) cannot be forced: it would then cease to be democratic, and socialism is the most class- and citizen-inclusive sociopolitical model ever created in human history. This type of a declaration can only be made by capitalists, who impose by force the ideas of one person (or of an oligarchical few).

Obviously, the actual ramifications of a North Korean success on the “narrative of socialism” is multi-faceted, complicated and boring to many, but the ramifications are real, impactful, undeniable and unavoidable.

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What do Western socialists ‘learn’ from a North Korean success?

Is the West capable of learning from a North Korean success?

Past behaviour is the best indicator of future behaviour, so my answer is “no”: The West will make it a point to remain the “victors” (in their view) and thus learn nothing from North Korea’s success, just as they have learned nothing from the successes of China, Iran, Cuba, etc.

The West will try to co-opt North Korean success by the same lie – that North Korea is an anti-democratic mullah-ocracy…no wait, a one-family dictatorship like Cuba – that works better.

They will deny the existence of North Korea’s undeniably socialist rules, laws, history and martyrs. They will also deny the words and experiences of actual North Koreans because the Western “victors” can and should speak for everyone: The Western tongue is the “one, true” tongue.

Above all they will assert – on the Western left and the Western right – that North Korea never was socialist at all, or that it could possibly be “socialist” now. Sadly, Western socialists often do the work of the imperialist-capitalists for them; they, paradoxically are “socialists” despite espousing the exact same (nonsensical, uninformed, self-referencing, self-centered, self-interested) views on North Korea in 2018 as right-wingers.

But for the true socialists living in the Western countries – and I am talking about perhaps as many as 14 people – a North Korean success should be applauded loudly. After all – no other socialist nation has endured more to win sovereignty, freedom and their own form of socialism. Of course, this public applauding will make us even more socially-isolated in Western society to the point where we will have even greater trouble finding that elusive 15th comrade….

It’s undeniable, at least to me, that socialism can be divided into 3 distinct eras: West European dominance (Marx, Paris Commune), East European/Slavic dominance (USSR, Eastern Bloc) and Asian dominance (China, Vietnam, Iran…North Korea?). A North Korean integration means that we are STILL living in this mostly-unappreciated 3rd historical era of Asian dominance in socialist thought and practice. Reinstatement also implies that the long-awaited “Latin American dominance era”, to be led by Cuba, remains unmaterialized (due to the continued domination of the “Monroe Doctrine era”).

Of course, most Western leftists don’t want to hear any analysis which relegates the West to 2nd fiddle, as they are still the “victors”…and they are: in living in a tired, nostalgic, decidedly un-revolutionary fashion.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]rump has certainly said and done crazy things but the re-integration of North Korea follows as much capitalist logic as the re-integration of China (consumer demand, loans/bond buying, formerly low- but now mid-cost labor (providing mid-cost labor is the function Eastern Europe currently serves for the German neo-imperialism of the Eurozone) and Vietnam (low-cost labor):

Without access to North Korea’s rare earth metals China will have perhaps as great a chokepoint on the modern global economy as any OPEC nation save Arabia (which I refuse to call “Saudi”, as only Western governments believe/want the house of Saud to be synonymous with the People of Arabia). Furthermore, due to their educational advancements, North Korea can obviously serve the same function for South Korea as East Germany did for West Germany upon their reunification: cheap but smart labor.

(Iran might have oil instead of rare earth metals, but how can they serve this capitalist labor function when they are (due to imperialist throttling) the most populous, most advanced economy in the Middle East? Even if a counter-revolution happened in Iran, who would make them their mid-cost labor hub – Russia, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt? None of those will work. This is why toppling Iran (combined with their anti-imperialist & anti-Zionist stances) is Washington’s continued project, in contrast to this floated reinstatement of North Korea. The US, being capitalist, runs on lobbies and money – somebody is obviously greasing the policy wheels (exercising their “free speech”) in favor of Pyongyang, and to hell with Korean War veterans groups or anyone else.

But that last is a bold statement – North Korean reinstatement…seriously? Sounds great – Koreans are certainly all for that, and they deserve Korean socialism…or at least to be #5 instead of pawns in a four-way game.

What does “socialism do” if North Korea becomes a success story – acknowledge it or ignore it? It seems like the answer depends on what part of the world you live in, but that is certainly a response which is “bad socialism”.

Socialism’s recent past and its present remains centered in the East, but socialism’s future remains open to anyone with common sense, a disposition for equality, and the courage to speak out.

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On September 22nd there was a terrible terrorist attack in the Iranian city of Ahvaz which killed 25 innocent people and wounded 70 other people. This was universally reported in the West as having occurred at a “military parade”, when it was actually a parade to commemorate the 1980 start of the Western-backed, Western-funded, Western-armed invasion which used Iraq to try to destroy the democratic 1979 Iranian Revolution.

But none of those accurate adjectives can be said in the West…no, no, no - it was just a no-reason-needed military parade, as if Iran was a warmongering nation prepping its fanatical people for imperialist adventures. (Iran has not invaded a country in well-over 200 years.)

The timing of the attack was obviously (though not primarily) a way to divert the world’s attention from the deadliest conflict of the last quarter of the 20th century. Instead of talking about what disaster and death was heaped on Iran from 1980-1988, it was Iranian “militarism” which was discussed and not anyone else’s.

But ho-hum, more misreporting on Iran. In other news: the sun rose this morning. This is just life for all socialist-inspired democratic revolutions - Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, China, etc., have all had their sufferings ignored, their mistakes amplified and their successes denied. To even raise this point makes one an unthinking “apologist”, an Islamofascist, a totalitarian commie, blah blah blah.

The tragic event, and the subsequent false histories of the Western media, makes this an appropriate time to bring up what has become the most important literary reference for Iranians regarding the war - a book called Da. “Da” means mother in Kurdish, and not in Farsi. The book was written by a woman whose Iraqi Kurdish family had emigrated to Iran when she was a child.

How could the definitive account on the Iranian view of the Iran-Iraq War have been written by an Iraqi Kurd, and a female to boot?!

You would think Iranians hate Iraqis; you are certain that Iran hates women; and you assume that Iran has a war against the Kurds, just like Iraq, Turkey and Syria. If you assume everyone follows the dictates of capitalism’s identity politics, you likely would predict that this book is a litany of accusations and compiled hatreds towards Iran.

If you assume all these things it’s because you fail to realize that Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution was inspired by socialism, which demands a citizen and a government loudly banish racism from the public sphere. Much like this stoned surfer-dude American idiot who wrote an article titled Whoa. The Soviet Union Got Racial Equality Right Before America?, you are way, way, WAY off. (And when did America get racial equality “right”?) 

For a comparison: Can anyone imagine that France’s definitive account on the Algerian War for Independence would come from a non-White? Their most famous work on Algeria is The Stranger by Albert Camus, who was an isolated-from-Algerians pied noir whose refusal to condemn French oppression was selfishly defined by the fact that he cared more for his mother’s comfort than a million dead Algerians. Heaven forbid that Madame Camus would have to relocate back to France, even if that meant ending a war and a 132-year occupation.… Camus’ view of morality is 100% rooted in Western capitalism individualism, after all, which is the reason its popularity still endures today.

But Iran had no problem making Da a huge best-seller despite the author’s Iraqi Kurdish roots; and, somehow, Iranian men took time out of their daily oppression of women to find out their thoughts and feelings on past experiences. The 700-page account of the war was read by everyone, including President Rohani.

The book is a memoir of Seyyedeh (indicating lineage from Prophet Mohammad) Zahra Hoseyni, a teenager who was living with her extremely poor but tight-knit family on the border city of Khorramshahr. The city was the first to be sneak-attacked by the Iraqis, and the massacres and devastation wrought there would be reflected by a Farsi pun on the city’s name: “City of Blood”.

A memoir of the last, worst traditional war in our modern times

The book is not an easy read, as Hoseyni recounts one tragedy after another.

In short, for those attacked by Iraq the war was one day from hell after another, with each one worse than the next. Hunger, thirst, physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, the nightmares of screaming planes, repeatedly watching people go insane with the pain of mourning, every weary pause only giving rise to recent tragic memories, the constant filth and lack of clean water a bombarded people must deal with, actual nightmares when sleep does come, the perpetual sound of war which then makes silent pauses totally strange, and the constant, constant guilt of being alive combined with the knowledge that death from a shell could come at any moment.

So much of the book is something like a horror hallucination of the first few weeks of an unexpected, undeserved war, combined with a recounting of the vast citizen efforts to fight back.

Each according to their abilities, of course: Hoseyni is an young lioness fighting for the cubs of the Iranian nation and Khorramshahr. She accepts responsibility after responsibility, and even refuses to back down to proud & protective Iranian men in her insistence on going to the front to help amid the bullets and bombs. She volunteers as a corpse-washer, which turned out to be a never-ending job, and which is certainly a job few would want. Her beloved father and brother die at the front, but still she endures and gives, gives, gives. Everyone is looking at her and seeing a person with an iron sense of justice, duty and faith.

What I suggest makes this memoir so compelling and successful is that, in Hoseyni’s retelling, she remembers not only that every day was a living hell but that every moment within every day was a living hell. Hoseyni repeatedly talks about the constant abyss of mourning and horror opening up inside her at every moment; seemingly dozens of times a day she is assaulted by an event/tragedy/memory/feeling which could send a normal person to a hospital for weeks of recovery and therapy. It is unlikely that a memoir by a male would admit the incredibly sad emotions which any human would go through in Hoseyni’s situation.

And yet Hoseyni appeared to all as indomitable (even after she is wounded at the front). She simply said a prayer of “Ya Hossain” and rushed towards another difficult task nobody else wanted. She was the model defender of the nation - indeed, Iran’s war “Mother” is not even a “true” Iranian, in non-socialist logic — but the book reveals that she was able to live this ideal even though her feelings were the absolute opposite of proud glory.

Saying a prayer before a difficult task can go a very long way, but it’s this juxtaposition of a public persona of revolutionary steel combined with total inner crumbling which makes the book so compelling. How she could do what she did - when she could not even bring herself to eat, nor sleep, nor mourn day after day after day - is astounding and an inspiration to anyone sanctioned by injustice.

For those who are not just uninterested in religion but who also actively detest religion, I’m sorry to objectively report that a huge part of her strength came from her religious faith - she and her family were pious people who took their title of “Seyed” as a serious injunction to be moral examples. However, the family was also extremely politically aware and active - these were true revolutionaries; they were also so poor as to come from the “correct” class to qualify as a revolutionary, although such prejudices represent antiquated notions about who can or cannot be a socialist.

There is much to learn from the war memoirs from World War I, II, or the Holocaust, but Da is exceptional in that it is from our modern times. When she recounts her rage and disbelief at BBC Radio’s totally misguided coverage of the war, we in 2018 share her shock at “fake news”.

Da should be essential reading to any war hawk advocating invasion in any foreign country which has had a socialist-inspired revolution, because you will be facing a very unique type of people. Whether it be the USSR, China, Vietnam, Korea or Iran, these are societies which cannot be divided into tribes or identities, as they have achieved socialist cultural unity:

“I saw myself as a tree with deep roots, resisting being pulled from the ground. How could I allow myself to be uprooted? Although born in Basra, I felt no attachment to the place. I loved Iran…my love for Khorramshahr overwhelmed all reason and logic.”

The Western capitalist and anti-multicultural societies of continental Europe cannot imagine that an immigrant is capable of ever feeling this way, and thus many there want immigrants expelled or at least segregated.

But the old tricks of divide and conquer, Balkanisation or the political segregation of Lebanonization will not work in socialist-inspired nations. The author recounts how Saddam Hussein tried exactly that - telling Iranian Arabs to join their Arab brother - but only the most reactionary fell for such a stupid worldview.

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]oseyni talks about the MKO/MEK terrorist group (and I am only talking about them because Western nations and their propaganda outlets keep pushing them back into the spotlight): stealing corpses to inflate their body counts for propaganda purposes, attacking people who disagreed with them at public debates, working as spies for Iraq and giving them coordinates of places to bomb, attacking ardent revolutionaries and then literally rubbing salt or pepper in their wounds out of sadism. The idea that the MKO isn’t detested by 100% of Iranians, and that they have a zero percent chance of ever being rehabilitated - much less being democratically elected into power - is totally, totally absurd to Iranians. Again, why would anyone even talk about them anymore? Oh yes, because they are propped by the West, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

She also talks about what an exceptionally politically-open society Iran was in the early days of the Revolution, and few non-Iranians know that much of this remains true today. Parliament was open to anyone to come observe and even shout disruptions, Khomeini held public audiences for two hours twice a week and received anyone and everyone, elected representatives were easily accessible and lived the common, poor lives of a nation under war. All of this is in stark contrast to the leaders of seemingly every Arab nation not named “Algeria”, and it also shows the democratic bonafides, the more-than-majority support, of the Iranian Islamic Revolution: you can shudder at the word “Islamic” all you want, but the revolution was democratic in the truest sense of the word and no matter in what country that word is uttered.

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Western culture is full of ‘war porn’, but Iran is not titillated by such things

“The fall of Khorramshahr and the things I had experienced in the past weeks had made me more aware of how people suffered.”

Such are the types of wisdoms Hoseyni tosses off, but there is no doubt that they are not false cliches for her, nor for millions of other Iranians.

It reminds me of a major problem with America and the West: they are so war-crazy, and yet everything they know about it - to anyone under 85 - is totally fictitious, video-game-like nonsense.

The American view of war is truly one constant cliche, where glory appears to be a feeling to run after but which Hoseyni proves it is actually the result of living through unwanted horrors and tragedies.

It’s true that the younger generation of Iranians has little memory of the sacrifices, bombardments and war rationing, but the way Iran and the US remember their war martyrs is so very different. Can you name one famous American solider who died in Iraq or Afghanistan? All I can think of is Pat Tillman, and that’s only because he was also an American football player (and who was killed by friendly fire). However, Iran is full of portraits and memorials to dead soldiers and even dead teenagers…one cannot even make a comparison of the psychological/emotional/human gravity of war in the minds of the average Iranian versus the average American.

My point is that, for all their fighting, ever since Vietnam Americans have essentially been hero-worshipping an empty solider’s uniform. Unless we are talking about rural Americans from their lower class, most Americans really have no personal/psychological connection to actual war, unlike Iranians.

Such people, like the 4-F Trump, grow enraged at taking anyone knee during the National Anthem to protest the undeniable mass incarceration/mass murder/mass oppression of an ethnic minority, but there is no truly human element present - their honouring is phony and faceless.

Say what you will about Iran, but you cannot say that.

Furthermore, Iranian martyrdom - where death is assured - is far, far different from the power-trip fantasies and motivations of the American solider and the American chickenhawk playing Call of Duty video games.

For Iran war is not a glory, but a horror, and whatever sacrifices the nation must make due to the Western Cold war…at least it is better than the Hot War. Befuddled Western “analysts” of Iran cannot imagine this type of logic playing such a large part in Iranian policymaking because they have zero experiences and comprehension of any war which is not just on a two-dimensional screen.

Iran fights in places like Syria, Iraq an Afghanistan because their allies, cousins and cultural-cousins are being attacked, and also because justice itself is being attacked; America fights wars because it seems like fun, because they have such neat toys to play with, and they fight without gallantry and without esteem from the locals they claim to be “fighting with”. America massacres and plunders; Iran’s forces are far closer to Mao’s Long March injunction that soldiers should not take even a pin from locals they were trying to liberate from fascism.

Thirty years after the end of Iran’s “War of Sacred Defense” Iran’s “military parades” are attacked, but the world still doesn’t really comprehend exactly what the West is attacking in Iran. Da is an unsparing account of a civilian Islamic socialist revolutionary in wartime - reading this memoir would certainly help Westerners understand what they remain up against as they keep trying to implode Iran’s socialist-inspired democracy.

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One would think that if economic austerity had ended, it would be trumpeted loudly?

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter all, it has been going on for so long, is so hugely despised, is such an economic failure, and has been the source of so many protests, arrests, tear-gassings, water cannoning, police violence and - certainly - deaths due to the lack of adequate health care, suicides due to debt, etc. This is not a situation unique to France, the Eurozone’s 2nd-biggest economic driver, which has endured two years of Great Recession catastrophe and then seven consecutive years of austerity budgets.

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I was practically all alone in January in pointing out the fact that the Eurozone officially achieved a “Lost Decade”: its average annual growth rate from 2008 to 2017 was just 0.6%. LOL, should we really fear that that socialist economic policies could possibly do worse? Certainly Vietnam, China, Cuba, Iran and the few others achieved far better rates in the past 10 years and often despite a so very unfree-market Cold War against them.

But apparently Lost Decades are only for non-Whites, such as in Japan, which is always reported to have had not one but two Lost Decades: 1.4% growth rate from 1991-2000, and 0.7% growth rate from 2001-2010 - the EU’s lost decade was even worse.

But Western mainstream journalists either don’t understand basic economics, simply cannot do basic arithmetic in which a variable like “x” is totally absent, or they are too willing to accept the propaganda of those who do understand economics but who are also dishonest/fanatical supporters of capitalism.

Those are the only options, because either France has ended austerity - which is big news for the Eurozone, which remains the weak macroeconomic link in the global economy - or it is continuing austerity in 2019 despite its total failure, which is also big news.

And yet, for the first time in seven years, France’s annual economic budget is out and the word “austerity” is nowhere to be found! Amazingly, this is not just English-language but even French-language reporting - the only exception I found was in an editorial by SudRadio. They aren’t conventional media, but I note that France’s most left union, Force Ouvrier, was the only one to use the French translation of austerity - politique de rigueur.

What gives? Is the entire concept of austerity passé? Am I just plain gauche (a French word which means “left”, but which in English has been class-twisted to mean “unsophisticated and socially awkward”) to bring it up?

The short answer is: journalists were so impressed that Macron swept a few tax cut-crumbs to the middle-class floor that they are ignoring the feast on the table enjoyed by the rich.

Imperialism, Zionism, fascism…add ‘austerity’ to the list of words Western media can’t properly define

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]et’s start by defining terms, in order to avoid confusion. “Economic austerity” can be boiled down to three essential ideas: cutting of social services (in practice, this means passing the costs onto households for what used to be provided by the government), refusing to invest taxes in or sell bonds for infrastructure programs which benefit the nation regardless of economic class, and increasing tax burdens on households in order to finance cutting taxes for the rich and/or corporations & businesses in the idea they will good-shepherd the economy back to strong growth (of course, there can be no strings attached to such tax cuts, in the form of promises to hire, invest, etc., as that would make it not capitalist austerity but more like socialism with Chinese characteristics).

This set of policies is on the far-right of the spectrum of economic thought, is often called “neoliberalism”, and is a 21st-century re-naming of what used to be called “trickle-down” economics, because the root of “neoliberalism” is that by placating/encouraging/protecting/promoting/aiding the rich, corporations and businesses they will then willingly engage in economic practices which benefit the nation and which also will create economic growth (crucially, this growth rate will be superior to that which is suggested by those on the left of the spectrum of economic thought - economic socialism).

There can be no dispute that these last two paragraphs are entirely true, easily verifiable and agreed upon.

What I dispute in this article is that Western mainstream media is totally unable, incapable or unwilling to report on France’s 2019 budget from this economically honest, open, scientifically-based and non-judgmental point of view.

I can sum up the key measures: €19 billion in no-strings attached tax cuts to businesses, €6 billion in tax cuts for households, combined with caps to senior pensions, regressive tax increases on consumer goods, and cuts to thousands of government jobs.

The headlines and angle of English-language mainstream media parrots Macron’s own analysis in a totally uncritical manner, as if the a journalist is only in public relations. Reuters: France's 2019 budget to ease tax burden on households, firms; AFP - French budget 2019: Government unveils major tax cuts as growth flags; Financial Times: France plans budget to cut taxes and rein in spending; Radio France Internationale - French government to put money in people's pockets through tax cuts.

We see that they are referring to the tax cuts for businesses and households. Ok, I get that. What I object to is their overarching spin, which is: the 2019 budget mainly contains tax cuts which are being spread evenly and equally - this is completely false. And completely obvious: Even we take the government’s figures at their word (and we shouldn’t, as I will demonstrate), granting three times more tax cuts to businesses than to households is certainly the maintenance of austerity policies!

But by focusing on the tax cuts what English-language media has done is to say, essentially: “No need to discuss ‘austerity’ because there are tax cuts here.” For them the equality of these tax cuts is a very small consideration.

I wonder…how few tax cuts to households would Macron have to give in order to lose this servile and slavish reporting? My guess: under €3 billion. Why did I choose that number? I don’t know - it just feels right; you can’t ask me to apply logic to reporting which is totally illogical, eh?

The initial French-language media parroted the pro-government line, but then the good ones had to actually dig deeper, as they actually live in France.

The reality, per fine media sources like Mediapart, is that it’s not €19 billion euros in tax cuts for business but more like €46 billion.

These cuts are all with no strings attached, but are made to support (I quote the government here) “investment and thus job creation”…which is the same old austerity logic: if you cut taxes for the rich, corporations and businesses, then good long-term investments, more jobs and higher wages will magically appear.

Plenty of French media, such as the appallingly fake-leftist Liberation, openly accused the government of lying about the €6 billion in cuts for households. They are correct, because all of those €6 billion in savings are already going to be levied in other ways, and every French media admitted this: the budget also contains regressive tax measures, in the form of tax increases on diesel gas and tobacco.

(These are “regressive” because they fall on everyone equally, even though they take a greater proportion of the incomes of the middle- and lower-classes. “Progressive” taxes, properly associated with the left wing of the economic spectrum, penalise those who can more easily afford it. )

And by increasing senior citizen pensions next year by only 0.3% when inflation is predicted for 1.4%, that is essentially another tax on the nation’s 16 million pensioners, as it reduces their income and represents a savings to the state of €3 billion euros.

To quote Mediapart, in case I am not believed: “But all of this ultimately resembles a zero-sum game for households. As is often the case with this government (see the poverty plan, for example), you give with one hand what you take from the other.”

So, no, France is NOT ending austerity with tax cuts for households, and only idiot/intern-level reporting would report that as fact.

It’s too bad the unsaid reality in journalism is: middle-aged journalists with guts and experience get pushed out the door in favor of 23-year old know-nothings who will work for half the price just to get their foot in the door.

No more fairies, no more ‘it’s Brussels’…no more fake justifications at all

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]h, but France’s overall fiscal deficit is actually rising, from 2.8% to 2.6%, and that is what makes this a “not austerity” budget right?

Just a bit of necessary background: the initial reason for austerity was to win the good graces of the “confidence fairy” of high finance, but for far longer it has been to satisfy the EU’s rule that fiscal deficits cannot exceed 3% (this number is totally arbitrary from an economic standpoint, and was repeatedly by broken by Germany and France anytime they so desired).

But the €46 billion in no-strings attached tax cuts to businesses represents a whopping 0.9% of France’s entire GDP. Therefore, if these fiscal gifts were not given France’s fiscal deficit would actually be all the way down to a Eurozone honor-student level of 1.9% in 2019.

It is just terrible reporting to act as though France SIMPLY MUST give these no-burden tax cuts - they represent a huge societal and economic cost. Of course, for leftist reporting this is the first issue to tackle and debate.

That’s why we can always turn to Anglo-Canadian Reuters anytime we need some economic doublespeak. Economic publications, you see, are compelled to do a good job covering the economy, but that doesn’t mean that aren’t a perpetual motion-machine which justifies right-wing economics. They dismiss giving away this huge chunk of GDP with the impression that they are inevitable (under austerity) and somehow a novelty, too: “That would lift the budget shortfall close to the EU cap, although it would stand at 1.9 percent excluding the long-expected, one-off effect of plans to transform a corporate payroll tax credit scheme into a permanent tax cut.”

Therefore, we must make no mistake: France is not raising its fiscal deficit slightly, as is being repeatedly reported, it is significantly raising its fiscal deficit solely in order to transfer wealth to businesses. That, too, is perfectly in keeping with austerity policies.

So…just as I asked about the Eurozone’s Lost Decade: did I miss the meeting where we journalists we instructed to not talk about austerity anymore?

Of course not, but let’s go back to the “novelty” angle of Reuters, because this is something of an intellectual conspiracy which often goes unnoticed.

Imagine there’s no definitions & no history - you may say I’m a dreamer

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] crucial paradox of capitalism must be remembered: capitalism, it is widely accepted, lurches from crisis to crisis, and yet each crisis is always reported as if it was a novelty. The Japanese Lost Decade, were are supposed to believe, is drastically different from the Eurozone Lost Decade, despite their innumerable similarities in both causes and alleged policy “remedies”. And what preceded the Japanese crisis? The Asian Tiger boom and bust, which was as much a creation of unscrupulous bankers as was the European Sovereign Debt crisis - again, no relation can be admitted. These are concepts which have been explored by must-read economists - yet “must-ignore”, for the Mainstream Media - such as Richard Werner (who wrote Princes of The Yen)and Michael Hudson (author of many superb critiques of neoliberal & 21st century capitalism).

I discussed their ideas last year in a 7-part series based around what will happen when the Eurozone’s Quantitative Easing ends, and which also debunked the fake-leftism in the 2016 book by former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. Following a decade of reporting from France, my analysis of their policies (and of others) is summed up in Part 7’s title: Forced recession as a tool of social war against the 99%

Crisis is - and no one should know this better than the French, who only recently exited living under a State of Emergency for two years (and only because Macron made nearly all the extraordinary police powers common practice) - a means of governance in capitalism, whereas socialism is the steady avoidance of economic crisis via long-term central planning.

France’s 2019 budget is perfectly in keeping with the neoliberal plan to suck the Eurozone People’s wealth into the pockets of the 1% worldwide (with the 1% in the US being the greatest beneficiaries, proportionally) and this is an obvious repeat of what they did to Japan. This is why we should assume there will be a second Lost Decade in the Eurozone, too - it is the same playbook. Certainly, there is absolutely no indication they are remotely close to changing their neoliberal policies, and the supremely neoliberal, post-1989 structure of the Eurozone itself makes that impossible.

Turn to the back of the neoliberal playbook and we find that austerity does not end until all the social gains made from 1917-1977 are reversed.

This is why the French government openly admitted their goal with this budget is to achieve another neoliberal aim: to encourage the jobless back to work…even though their wages have been reduced (because they have not kept pace with inflation for many decades) and even though job security and working conditions have been gutted by so-called labor “reforms”.

The other half of reducing “welfare dependency” is what is next on Macron’s political agenda, despite his record-low popularity - more “deforms” to unemployment insurance, i.e. make unemployment “benefits” even lower than the worst wages. This also explains why jobs at government unemployment centre are included among the 2019 budget’s announced 5,000 government job cuts - they want your experience at job centres to be as bad as possible to discourage you from seeking “benefits”. Neoliberal-God forbid that we don’t make life as miserable as possible for those who prefer unemployment to being treated like a dog and for wages which don’t even house and feed a dog.

France is behind Germany in US-UK-Anglo-Saxon aping, of course. What does the neoliberal playbook instruct when you have already had labor “reforms”, like in Germany? You let in 1 million highly-educated Syrians in order to create even more capitalist competition among workers and thus lower standards for accepting a job. This has the added side effect of fuelling that sentiment which creates plenty of headlines that can divert from your Lost Decade but which only makes its practitioners feel badly and angry - nationalism (as opposed to “patriotism”, which is not racist or Islamophobic).

What do we get when we give no-strings attached fiscal gifts to the rich? When we simply hope that they will invest in job creation? When we trust them without imposing any supervision, guidelines or even vague suggestions? Per Mediapart, we get €600,000 (taxpayer euros) per every job created. That money could provide around 20 decent government jobs (where people are actually doing things for your children, your grandparents, your society), or 40 (unwanted) unemployment cases (the virtue in this alternative scenario is: at least they are spending that welfare back into the real economy via buying luxuries such as food and housing, unlike the stock buybacks of businesses and the rich). But hey, it’s socialism and their big governments which are inefficient, right? Ugh…and I thought journalists didn’t understand economics.

I stand by my contention that the logic of capitalism dictates that the end of Quantitive Easing in the Eurozone, which was pushed back (again) to December, will trigger a massive rise in bond rates for countries like Spain and Italy and thus take us back to the Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2012. Why would international high finance - which cares not for country but only for profit - not go back to squeezing the nations which are vulnerable?

And QE, due to the concurrent implementation of neoliberal capitalist austerity instead of socialist-based investment policies, has been much worse than useless in terms of strengthening the shaky economic fundamentals of the Eurozone - it has instead re-fuelled unsustainable bubbles in stock and real estate markets and only been directed to the 1%. The Eurozone is weaker than it was in 2012: any shock to France’s economy and those €46 billion euros will not be annulled, but will only be much, much more expensive for the average citizen.

I’m quite sorry that I can’t report the end of austerity, but others are quite happy to, mistakenly, do so.

Western media have all of a sudden forgotten what “austerity” is, but I’m sure the French will realize that Macron has tried to pull the wool over their eyes.

Austerity is certainly not an empty slogan, but should be hurled with force; I refuse to accept that its use can be discontinued so easily.

Austerity remains a battle cry within capitalist-imperialist societies and a reminder to socialist-inspired countries of why they endure “sanctions”, that totally false phrase which tries to impart a legal veneer to murderous, law-breaking acts of economic war on innocent societies.

sakalklskalklsaksalklas

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[dropcap]I[/dropcap] had a summer vacation this year, and I got so incredibly bored I started to dabble in masochism.

By that I mean that I decided to tune into The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast by MSNBC from the US.

I haven’t watched her for years (or ever, really) but since the election of Donald Trump Rachel Maddow has become the figurehead of a rather sadistic and certainly reactionary movement in US mainstream media: employing Russophobia to distract attention from the sins, failures, lawbreaking and cheating of the US Democratic Party during the 2016 presidential campaign.

It’s been two years and there is still no proof of Russian involvement, LOL! I “LOL” because it stopped being serious on around December 31, 2016, and has been purely comedic ever since.  And yet Maddow - patron saint of the deluded Democrat - has been laser-focused on Russia for five nights a week ever since. Or so I have read - why on earth would I watch that junk?

Because I was on vacation, I was in a great mood - I was certain that I would return to my regular life with a new, recharged way of thinking which would make me immune from previous routines, habits and sources of aggravation. I felt bullet proof. So I flipped on her program on August 28, 2018.

Here is what I found, and I hope the reader will learn from my hubris.

The Rachel Maddow Show - MSNBC
Date: August 28, 2018
Transcript here
YouTube version here

0:00 - The program will review today’s court transcript from on the pre-trial arguing of ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s 2nd felony trial.

Oh wow, what did I get into…that sounds way, way more boring than I expected. We aren’t even going to watch a program about Manafort’s trial, but merely his pre-trial! We are a LONG way from resolution - i.e. “real news”. But, fool that I am, I always finish what I start - take us away into the glory and fascination of pre-trial logistics Rachel!

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Below, the Aug. 28th 2018 show critiqued by the author.

And, Maddow's "bulldog" quality on display: more programs on the same topic, with further charges and innuendoes.

This one ran on Aug. 14th, 2018.

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The one below ran on Aug. 27th 2018.

0:01 - Manafort is calling for a change of venue from Washington DC. Ok, that’s like a 2-line news brief in a newspaper - they can’t make an hour-long show about that…can they? Determined, plucky, ever-smiling Maddow looks like she’s going to try.

0:03 Maddow tells us that the list of evidence against Manafort has recently been increased to 1,500 pieces. The Manafort defense team - four people - told the judge they need more time to go through all that. Seems reasonable - 1,500 is one more than 1,499, after all, and 1,499 pieces of evidence is a lot. Maddow does not agree, and denigrates the intelligence of the Manafort defense team – they “cannot get it together”.

0:04 - Rachel insists that the she can read between the lines of the transcript, and that the judge is displeased at the certain incompetence of the Manafort defense team.

0:06 - The next 2.5 minutes is her reading the court transcript – it’s a one-person re-enactment of selected pre-trail minutiae.

Has anyone ever met a gadfly? I mean a real gadfly: the type who attend obscure county board meetings hoping to catch local officials off-guard? They ask hyper-detailed questions which officials don’t even bother trying to answer, but neither can they stop him or her from asking. Gadflies usually have major personal hygiene issues, but what is more off-putting is: why on earth do they spend so much time mastering such obscure issues, and why do they care about this almost useless subject so passionately? All the rest of are getting paid to organize/observe the public proceedings taking place. Oh yeah, Maddow gets $7 million a year to do this - she may be the world’s richest gadfly. Besides poor hygiene, gadflies are always smugly convinced that they had the last laugh, so that’s another reason nobody likes to talk to them.

0:09 - We finally got somewhere! “It’s clear from this transcript today she (the judge) does not appear to be inclined towards Paul Manafort’s motion that they want to move this second case out of Washington DC.”

That’s the first bit of real news of the day, and…we waited 9 minutes for that? Terrible writing, Rachel: It’s “clear” that she “does not appear” that she is “inclined” to changing the venue? Waitaminut…there was no news to report today - nothing was decided!

This happens in daily life as well as in trials - nothing of note. Most of us don’t spend 9 minutes to announce that conclusion - those that do perhaps fail to realize that the people they are talking with have long ago tuned them out.

0:10 But wait, there is some news, and it’s not good for the MSNBC home team: “On this issue of Paul Manafort’s not being able to handle the requirements of preparing for his second trial - just not being able to get it together - well, the judge today - in D.C. - gave them a very hard time on that. But in the end - it’s interesting - she did actually give them a little bit of an extension.”

After admitting that Manafort’s team was indeed capable of getting exactly what it asked for Rachel has difficulty swallowing; Maddow’s conscience is having difficulty eating all that crow she now has to swallow. All that talk about Manafort’s team being incapable - all the snide looks, gestures and smug tones and the judge did not agree with Queen Rachel. Do I get my 10 minutes back?

So, why did she spend 10 minutes setting up a false premise of incompetence? After all, she was not surprised by the Manafort team’s legal victory - she knew of that decision before she went on the air.

I’d say the reason is clear: “incompetence” is the narrative she and other Democrats and mainstream journalists take no matter what the facts are when it comes to Trump and his allies. Repeatedly they have been declared incompetent and unqualified for office and thus must be eventually impeached. Somebody should have told the judge to play along with her script for today…most journalists would have just changed their script, of course.

0:11 - I start to feel bad for Maddow: She has been thinking about Donald Trump 24 hours per day, 5 days per week, for 2 whole years. Who would wish such a life on a person?

She must wake up, and the first person she thinks about is Trump. She goes to work, where she’s all Trump, all the time. She does the show - all about Trump, of course. Then she goes home, and she’s probably kicking around some ideas for work while still trying to relax - that means more Trump. Not even Trump’s wife thinks about Donald that much, nor should she! Not even Mother Trump when she had Baby Donald thought so much about him! And yet Maddow chooses to live like this…odd.

My question is: would she do it for MY yearly paycheck? I wonder if she would…. If you combined my yearly wages for well-over 100 years of work, I wouldn’t make Even though I’ll never make $7 million in my entire life combined – I’d need not quite two centuries, but well over one century - I’m not complaining about my life and journalistic choices.

0:11 More bad news for Maddow. Given that the US government has dumped 1,500 pieces of evidence on Paul Manafort, the judge grants Manafort’s team what they request - a delay. They get an extra week. Again - looking rather competent.

0:14 – “The second felony trial Maddow wraps up the previous 14 minutes with “The news about this minor delay in Paul Manafort’s next trial is set today. There’s a new trial date in terms of when opening arguments are going to start.” (Maddow took 14 minutes to say what should have taken 10 seconds.) Here, Maddow has that difficulty swallowing thing happen again.

I hope she’s ok, health wise. But I can see why she’d feel a bit constricted - she has stretched 14 minutes out of a week’s delay in Manafort’s trial. Because this is TV, she has had to physically appear that this is actually serious news for 14 minutes - lying is hard on a body.

You know I’m on TV occasionally. Yeah that’s right - Iranian state television. That makes me a pretty big deal, I know. But I’m pretty terrible on camera – I evince zero charisma. Hey, I studied newspaper journalism, not TV journalism! Maddow, on the other hand, is pretty impressively professional: she has gone 14 straight minutes talking. What’s more, she has been able to maintain a smile which is on the verge of hilarious laughter for much of the time - I assume it’s because she finds Trump and his allies so incompetent and stupid.

I don’t think I could maintain smugness for 14 minutes straight. That’s why I’m glad I can just look serious and unpleased when I’m reporting the news - hard news is usually bad news, after all, and I have zero interest in trying to appear otherwise. This is also part of why I don’t get $7 million a year….

0:15 - Been all Manafort so far, Rachel must be going through Trump withdrawal. So should many of her viewers.

Speaking of normal people: It’s not possible that Maddow’s viewers are giving this their rapt attention. They must be folding laundry, or on the internet or drinking heavily. As I said, it has been 15 minutes about nothing. I know this for certain: Anyone who has told someone else “Shhhhh!” during the last 15 minutes must be unbearable to be around.
The next topic’s lead-in is being delivered and…it’s Trump! “The president himself continues to be basically losing his mind over the Russia scandal writ large….”

Frankly, I think Trump has remained “Trump” for 2 years - I haven’t seen any change in his behaviour. No way he’s lost his mind. He’s one of those types who has not changed since puberty, regardless of pleas to do so. But, of course, this is just how crazy, tense, angry Democrats like to talk. I’m no psychologist, but they seem to be projecting their own fears onto the Donald, no matter how immature and lacking in facts.

I wonder…what was Maddow like as a youngster? Was she one of those girls who would say anything to get attention or to be popular? Was she one of those girls who would hound, harass and psychologically torture another young girl into bulimia or anorexia or something? That’s how girls get that stuff in many cases, right? From female bullies. I was always playing sports as a kid, so I never knew what they were doing standing around and talking during recess every day - now I know: they were giving each other eating disorders via passive-aggressive conversation. I bet that if Maddow met that girl now - who went on to have a history of anxiety, depression and medication as a result of bullying - she’d tell her, “I had the biggest crush you in school! But you were elected student council president instead of me, so I had to take you down.”

One thing is absolutely clear from this digression: We must demand taxpayer funds to investigate my unfounded allegations of mental cruelty on the part of Rachel Maddow in 1986, when she was in the 8th grade.

0:16 Back to the show. How could I get so distracted after that riveting first 15 minutes?

Part 2 starts with the background is of the FBI and the headline “the Next Target”. The target must be an ally of Trump’s, right?

Wrong. It’s the target of the Trump administration to stop the Russia investigation. Rachel has headed down the rabbit hole of conspiracy.

Rachel goes into a long digression revisiting The New York Times coverage of the conviction of Jose “El Feo” Reyes, a drug kingpin from decades ago. This is sensational, exciting stuff - but what on earth does this have to do with Trump? Now she’s talking about the prosecutor of El Feo, and what a great guy he is, what a great bureaucrat for the justice department, a real public servant/hero, who would later be a part of a federal team which indicted - wait for it - ”the Godfather of the Russian mafia”. Groan…3 minutes about “El Feo” to get to this?!

0:19 - Maddow spends a minute talking about and showing how broadcasters have trouble saying the Russia mafioso’s name “Semion Mogilevich.”

This is pretty Russophobic, no? Maddox hugely grinning because “nobody could pronounce the name”, and laughing at it, as well as indirectly making fun of it via “awkward” humour …this is all designed to dehumanise Russians by showing how “different from us” they are, right? If the person in question was an African-American named LaShawnedro Tyreekolio Jefferson…would Maddow be laughing at his names? Would she laugh at Schlomo Hershlag Rabinowitz? Of course not. I am not being overly sensitive, as my point here is: if she is doing these little Russophobia / Russian-insulting things night after night, month after month - that’s bigotry.

0:20 Back to the program…but I cannot keep track and thus cannot relate her conspiracy properly: Maddow cites unproven allegations of Russian ex-cons to Trump and Manafort, thus meaning they have possible ties to Mogilevich (which is terrible journalism). Now she’s talking about Oleg Derapaska, who no American could care less about but who is described as a “Putin ally”. Ok, whatever, just move on.

Back to the great federal prosecutor, the “Harvard braniac”, who Maddow praises to the high heavens: “that same official, ‘was part of a group of government officials who revoked the visa of Oleg Deripaska. Officials were concerned that Mr. Deripaska would try to come to the United States to try and launder illicit profits through real estate, a former law enforcement official said.” Yeah, ok, big deal for John Q. Public - another money launderer, and it seems like he was stopped. He should have applied for an LLC in Delaware. All I know is: This has taken up 8 minutes of my life!

0:23 – But this is what that all lead up to, and it really is shocking:

“The Russia scandal around this president - and particularly the part of it which has led up to these two federal trials against the president’s campaign chairman - (she says this part with feeling) it has an organised crime element to it. It has a Russian organised crime element to it.”

Wow, that was totally not proven at all….

This is terrible journalism, because it is opinion presented as fact. It seems like slander - I wait for her to walk it back, but she doesn’t. I get the impression this is not the first time she has made this allegation - only regular viewers of Maddow could answer that. What’s certain is that if you repeat something enough people will believe it.

I am now emphatically reminded: The Rachel Maddow Show is not “news” - it is “fake news”.

0:24 Finally, after another huge build-up of his qualities and virtues, she gives us the name of the world’s greatest Justice Department official, who eventually went from “El Feo” to became the “Justice Department’s expert on Russian organized crime”, per Maddow. His name is Bruce Ohr and he was called to testify to Congress- in private, to avoid public spectacle - about the whole Russia investigation.

Maddox reads the headline from yesterday’s New York Times: “Bruce Ohr Fought Russian Organized Crime. Now He’s a Target of Trump.”

LOL, that is rich…after two years of witch-hunting Trump, Putin and all Russians (and I say that as an objective journalist - there has been 2 years with no evidence produced!) and what does The New York Times and MSNBC do? They follow Goebbels’ playbook - “accuse the other side of that which you are guilty”.

0:25 - And she said it again like it’s a fact! “There is a Russian organised crime element to the Trump-Russia scandal.”

Man, that is an incredibly broad, sensationalistic and totally unproven allegation. As a journalist you can’t make an unproven claim just because you hope the future proves you right. Well, the truth is that The Rachel Maddow Show is editorial news, not hard news - there are different standards, but not for slanderous claims presented as fact.

Here’s the problem: If countless Americans take the news satire The Daily Show as “news”, how many people don’t realize The Rachel Maddow Show is just as big a joke?
Ugh, this is why I don’t watch this garbage - not only have I not learned nothing, I have had someone try to replace facts and integrity with lies and false propaganda. However, I can see why many do - there hasn’t been one commercial! What kind of show in the US goes 30 minutes without the mental rape of advertising these days? They have turned the “news” into a movie. After all, history is way more interesting than fiction, and what is journalism but the history of today?

0:26 - “In going after Bruce Ohr today they are trying to take out one of America’s top experts on Russian organised crime.”

Well if he’s such a top expert who has been so very involved with Russia (Justice Department’s expert on Russian organized crime”, per Maddow), isn’t he rather compelled to testify to public servants if asked, and to defend and explain his work? Or course he is Ramin – that’s balance of power between the executive and legislative branch. That’s why it cannot be called a witch-hunt against Ohr: he isn’t accused of anything - he’s just testifying about what he’s done on the taxpayer’s dime.

But Maddow continues: by “going after” Ohr they are weakening America’s ability to stop Russian money-laundering, Russian intelligence operations, Russian organised crime, etc.

And now the news/cinema is at its end and climax - that’s how you do drama, whereas in journalism the climax is in the lede sentence. It’s a pretty good cinematic moment:

“But you can imagine how satisfying a day like today must have been for Semion Mogilevich, to see Bruce Ohr get his turn in the barrel like this, right? You can imagine how delightful that was for the Russian mafia. You can imagine what a nice turn of events today must have been when viewed from the perspective…(dramatic pause) of the Kremlin. We’ll be right back.”

Well, that’s all pretty shameless, manipulative and terrible, isn’t it?

She’s working her self-proclaimed “there IS a Russian organised crime element” by linking a democratically-elected Putin to the Russian mafia; she has implied that Republicans are working on their behalf; she has said that having legislative branch officials question executive branch officials is not balance of powers but actually weakening the ability of the US to defend itself from foreign criminals.

I think it’s all right there, eh? Fear-mongering, Russophobia, anti-democratic attitudes, unfounded allegations, sensationalism, etc. You can’t present these links and then cut to commercial - not if you are a real journalist or if you have any integrity - but that’s what she just did.

However, Maddow is obviously a fanatic: she has an end in mind and everything which exists must be bent towards achieving that end, regardless of truth or any other consideration.

She is a great actor – puts plenty of feeling in what she’s saying. I can’t tell if she’s acting or if she believes it. I’m not sure which is worse.

I don’t even have the space to get into this, as I had planned, but there was ACTUAL NEWS which occurred on August 28, 2018! I mean the stories which actually impact the average person’s life, unlike this conspiratorial, fear-mongering nonsense which is nothing but a diversion from the misdeeds of Maddow’s Democratic friends. Maddow totally ignored such stories, but true leftists do not.

0:27 - I’ve had enough. I’m on vacation. There is one-third of the show left, and I couldn’t care less about the results of the Democratic primary in Florida.

This was supposed to be a funny article, but when you diagram it out…I rather feel like I just watched Joseph McCarthy at work.

I am not trying to exaggerate nor do I think I need to: wild allegations, targeted xenophobia, reading a fact and then declaring it to be something else, unfounded charges of conspiracy, repeating dramatic but unproven claims which spread fear and anger, etc.

American TV journalism, man…it’s bad stuff. I don’t work for it.

What kind of summer vacation is this? How much of a journalist nerd am I that I thought this was a good way to spend my vacation? Do I really have nothing to better to do? Didn’t I just confirm what I already knew (that The Rachel Maddow Show is dangerous Democratic & 1%-er propaganda). How did my life get to his point, and what can I do to change? Am I capable of change?

I hope everyone sees just how bad the effects are of just 30 minutes of The Rachel Maddow Show. Imagine the inner life of a regular viewer.

Wow! That thought was enough to scare me straight! I can happily report that I did not watch any more Maddow for the rest of my vacation.

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Addendum
Ramin's dissection is corroborated by Jimmy Dore, a fine critic of the empire who posted this back on Aug 5, 2018

Rachel Maddow: All Russia. All The Time.