[Peace-discuss] anti-neoliberal notes

Tue Mar 26 00:12:23 UTC 2019

Some notes to spur discussion for News from Neptune.

I'll post these a little earlier than I normally do just in case I don't 
get a chance to post again later.

It's hard to separate Russiagate into anti-neoliberal and 
anti-neoconservative notes as it spans both. But this time I'll lump them 
all here and leave it to you to sort things out.

Russiagate: What we know so far of Mueller's report -- Barr's summary

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/24/politics/read-mueller-key-findings-doj/index.html 
-- text and links to Barr's PDF summarizing Mueller's report.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5779684/AG-March-24-2019-Letter-to-House-and-Senate.pdf

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5779684/AG-March-24-2019-Letter-to-House-and-Senate.txt

Russiagate: Russiagate makes supporters look irrational, incapable of 
serious analysis, or biased for partisan (possibly corporatist) ends.

Robert Scheer's podcast "Scheer Intelligence"

RSS feed: https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/scheer-intelligence/rss.xml

Episode: "Liberals Are Digging Their Own Grave With Russiagate"
Audio: 
https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/podcast-download.kcrw.com/kcrw/audio/podcast/etc/si/KCRW-scheer_intelligence-liberals_are_digging_their_own_grave_with_russiagate_2019_03_08-190308.mp3
Transcript: 
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/liberals-are-digging-their-own-grave-with-russiagate/

Redacted Tonight segment on this episode: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krV0wKwAdt0

> Robert Scheer: So my last question to you is when I look at this
> situation, the reason I say it’s so nutty, Professor Cohen, it seems to
> me Putin is the guy who got screwed over whatever he was hoped to be
> gained by Trump winning. Russia still has sanctions; NATO’s still moving
> very close to their heartland. Arms control agreements are being torn
> asunder. And so as opposed to, for instance, Israel, which got Trump’s
> foreign policy vis-a-vis Iran, for example, is Netanyahu’s policy, what
> did Putin get from this?
> 
> Stephen Cohen: Well, and he’s criticized for that. I mean, first of all,
> the Kremlin did not do anything to help put Trump in the White House.
> There’s zero evidence. Moreover, there are maybe a half a dozen major
> newspapers in Russia that are close to the Kremlin. So if you want to
> know what the debates are inside the Kremlin, inside the 30 or 40
> people, “the collective Putin” as he’s called in Russia, you read these
> newspapers. And during the electoral presidential campaign in 2016, in
> these Russian newspapers was a grave uncertainty of which candidate
> would be better for Russia, Trump or Clinton.
> 
> Robert Scheer: And this whole Russiagate, this whole hysteria is a way
> of avoiding a serious inquiry into what ails us. The clarity of the
> moment requires recognizing this rot at the core.

Russiagate: Caitlin Johnstone nails it.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-mueller-report-is-in-they-were-wrong-we-were-right-a915d23a6d82 
-- Caitlin Johnstone gets Russiagate fall in one.

> The Robert Mueller investigation which monopolized political discourse
> for two years has finally concluded, and his anxiously awaited report
> has been submitted to Attorney General William Barr. The results are in
> and the debate is over: those advancing the conspiracy theory that the
> Kremlin has infiltrated the highest levels of the US government were
> wrong, and those of us voicing skepticism of this were right.
> 
> The contents of the report are still secret, but CNN’s Justice
> Department reporter Laura Jarrett has told us all we need to know,
> tweeting, “Special Counsel Mueller is not recommending ANY further
> indictments am told.” On top of that, William Barr said in a letter to
> congressional leaders that there has been no obstruction of Mueller’s
> investigation by Justice Department officials.

and rightly ends with:

> We must never let them forget what they did or what they cost us all. We
> must never let mainstream Democrats forget how crazy they got, how much
> time and energy they wasted, how very, very wrong they were and how
> very, very right we were.
> 
> Never stop reminding them of this. Never stop mocking them for it. Never
> stop mocking their idiotic Rachel Maddow worship. Never stop mocking the
> Robert Mueller prayer candles. Never stop making fun of the way they
> blamed all their problems on Susan Sarandon. Never stop reminding them
> of those stupid pink vagina hats. Never stop mocking them for elevating
> Louise Mensch and Eric Garland. Never stop mocking them for creating the
> fucking Krassenstein brothers.
> 
> Every politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit and everyone
> who swallowed this moronic load of bull spunk has officially discredited
> themselves for life. Going forward, authority and credibility rests
> solely with those who kept clear eyes and clear heads during the mass
> media propaganda blitzkrieg, not with those who were stupid enough to
> believe what they were told about the behaviors of a noncompliant
> government in a post-Iraq invasion world. The people who steered us into
> two years of Russiavape insanity are the very last people anyone should
> ever listen to ever again when determining the future direction of our
> world.

The whole article is worth reading, but it's Schaudenfreude for those who 
exposed Russiagate for what it always was.

Russiagate: Matt Taibbi nails it.

His whole article is worth reading. It's a great summary and conclusion, 
there's simply too much there to quote.

There's no part of this conspiracy theory that makes the media look good. 
Russiagate has been debunked since it started, the Russiagate promoters 
championed the CIA & FBI (suddenly these organizations are good!) and 
essentially hoisted themselves by their own petard when Mueller's report 
didn't result in recommending indicting any Americans. William Barr's 
summary is enough to let us know that more people will now have to admit 
the fraudulence of Russiagate.

https://archive.fo/rQlsx
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million -- 
Corporate and corporate-compatible media can't be taken seriously...again. 
And for more good reasons. The WMDs Mueller lied to Congress and the world 
about was bad enough, that helped get an illegal and unethical invasion and 
occupation going. Now the Russiagate conspiracy theory piles on the 
evidence against the media.

https://theintercept.com/2019/03/25/watch-a-contentious-constructive-debate-on-the-media-and-political-humiliation-from-the-mueller-report/ 
-- Glenn Greenwald's article not only points to Taibbi's article above as 
required reading (a well-deserved recommendation) but points to Greenwald's 
patient debunking of David Cay Johnston's distracting and dissembling 
attempt to avoid admitting he stopped engaging his critical thinking skills 
on Russiagate. It's nothing but embarrassment for Johnston who (like some 
other Russiagators) had done good journalism in the past (Marcy Wheeler and 
Rachel Maddow weren't always nutty and desperate sycophants).

> [W]hat prevented me from writing anything is that Matt Taibbi
> brilliantly wrote everything I wanted to say in this definitive article
> on the debacle, one that I urge everyone to read. It lays out in
> indisputable, horrific detail the media’s indescribably and relentlessly
> reckless behavior over the last three years, whereby they abused and
> exploited valid fears of Trump to sell – for their own profit and
> benefit – completely false and baseless conspiracy theories that have
> now been completely debunked by their own anointed authority. I won’t
> excerpt any parts of it because it should be read in full by as many
> people as possible.
> 
> As Taibbi says, while the Iraq War was far worse in terms of impact (at
> least thus far), the media’s endless series of deceitful and
> manipulative behavior and spreading of blatantly false conspiracy
> theories since 2016 was far worse. In sum, Rachel Maddow is the Judy
> Miller of the Trump/Russia story, except that unlike Miller – who was
> scapegoated for behavior that many of her male colleagues also engaged
> in to the point where her career and reputation was destroyed – Maddow,
> who makes $10 million a year from NBC, is too valuable a corporate brand
> and too much of a liberal celebrity for any consequences or
> accountability to be permitted. Another difference is that Maddow was so
> far more frequently off the deep end – way off the deep end, in another
> universe totally devoid of basically rationality – than Miller ever
> was.

Also read 
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/25/as_mueller_finds_no_collusion_did -- 
Greenwald's debate with David Cay Johnston on DN. Although Greenwald is too 
kind to admit it, Amy Goodman is also a Russiagator who has some explaining 
to do. Goodman passed along unchallenged Russiagate narrative in her 
headlines (the exact opposite of what she did for pro-Iraq invasion 
headlines from the New York Times before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq). 
Johnston isn't the only one in this interview making most media coverage 
look showstoppingly bad here. Greenwald continues to debunk and not let 
Johnston's repeated attempt at distraction take over the debate.

Russiagate: Aaron Maté nails it.

A critical mind with good reasoning skill is worth more than millions in 
media coverage if your goal is to reach a defensible understanding of 
current events.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjPgO57AzjQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP6oG2mpWlY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qe7A58TEms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lC8tx9lN0E -- Jimmy Dore and Aaron Maté 
take an earned "victory lap" (as Dore called it) basking in the glow that 
they were right on Russiagate from the start and Dore's small-time 
operation run out of his garage is bringing better views on Russiagate to 
the public than organizations that have millions of dollars to spend and 
huge full-time staff to do research.

One important point few bring up: There's strong evidence to back the idea 
that Democrats are more interested in stopping progressives than they are 
losing the presidency to Trump again. Democrats are chasing the same 
sources of money as the Republicans and therefore have the same masters 
with the same goals. This is why the corporate duopoly can be so effective 
in deceive the public into believing they're oppositional parties. On all 
of the biggest issues of the day, war chief among them, they're not opposed.

Economics: Italy & China

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4fLH034Ll8 -- Italy signs up with Chinese 
"Belt & Road" initiative. Is this the start of a trend?

Economics: Venezuela does oil deal -- two huge buyers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc1fbI2AgLc -- Venezuelan oil deal with 
China & India. This is said to replace oil deals with US and others the US 
can convince to help starve Venezuela.

-J