How The Elites Are Divorcing From Reality: The Economist's "What If"

Via GEFIRA,

The Western globalist elites have not digested Trump’s victory or Brexit yet. They are having a hard time dealing with their ideological failures, and when the reality dares not to comply with their day dreaming, they go online and create a parallel world, where their “expert” predictions always turn right and their failures cannot be questioned.  

The Economist‘s portal named “what if”, a neo-liberal, wishful thinking echo chamber, is the point in case.

Its latest piece attributes magical powers to the new hero of the elites, Emmanuel Macron, who soundly defeated “evil” Marine Le Pen in May. For The Economist, Macron is nothing short of Jesus as he was correspondingly depicted on the monthly’s cover walking on water:

The hypothetical scenario of Macron’s success is based on magical reforms that will somehow create enormous numbers of jobs after an initial friction and fix the out-of-control state budget. The text provides no answer how exactly all this is going to be done. The happy predictions do not stop there. Macron’s miracle, would turn France into another Silicon Valley, a paradise for start-ups. Does it not make us think back to the internet bubble of the 90s? After “making France great again” and defeating Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, Marine’s niece (who for the record has already retired from politics, but don’t tell The Economist, it’d break their narrative, they need an evil antagonist), Macron’s magic would next make Europe great again. Academic papers on the “French Renaissance” are beginning to appear, says the article’s author, an intellectual liberal himself and Macron’s flunky. He speaks of “EU-funded military operations in the Sahel”, because clearly that’s what Europe needs most. Why, destabilizing surrounding countries has worked very well so far, hasn’t it? Islamic terrorism isn’t even touched in the article, so we gather it will magically disappear as will the problems of the banlieu which do not deserve much mention either. Here, too, no solution is offered, just pure magic.

Another article,”If borders were open“, tackles immigration.According to the article, the world would suddenly become richer by 78$ trillion because “Mexicans in the US could make 150% more, Nigerians 1000% more”. Never mind the fact that basic economic logic says the infinite increase in labour supply sends wages crashing down to zero. It also claims that “a Nigerian in the United States cannot be enslaved by the Islamists of Boko Haram” because, clearly, mass migration to the West so far has not resulted in events related to Islamic terrorism nor separated communities. All our concerns about low wages and terrorism are are dismissed as “little besides conjecture and [have] anecdotal evidence to support it”. Reality is anecdotal evidence. The entire article is a massive exercise in intellectual dishonesty, ignoring or downplaying contrary evidence while highlighting potential and rather illusory benefits. Although it covers briefly the possibility that an ethnic group of a radically different culture could numerically overwhelm that of the host country and abolish democracy, no conclusion is drawn. And yet a “what if” scenario is important because a failure in creating a brave new world might result in an ethnic conflict the likes of which we are seeing in Syria now. But that’s not a politically correct answer and thus must be ignored. What matters is the alleged 78$ trillion, which for the record would never happen if ethnic conflicts and societal collapses erupted. The first line of the article says: “the potential gains are so vast that objectors could be bribed to let it happen” and that answers the pertinent question, who would get those 78$ trillion? The elites, and next they will bribe academics and intellectuals to post articles like that one. Indeed The Economist is owned by the world’s most elitist family, the Rothschilds. Very much like their puppet, Macron, who by the way worked for a Rothschild bank. Is this love a coincidence?

We surveyed The Economist‘s past articles. None of them actually predicted today’s world even remotely accurately. For 2015 there was a Russia break-up potential scenario a fantasy that resembles those spun by the late ideologist Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. Then there’s “The first 100 days” of President Hillary Clinton.

The prediction of Trump’s victory is the only accurate thing in the article. The conclusions drawn are all false. The subtitle hints that Trump’s inexperience would cause “real-world crises”. Once again, clearly, Hillary Clinton’s “we came, we saw, he died” about Libya did not cause a civil war, a collapsed society and an immigration crisis in the Central Mediterranean, very much like Obama and Hollande’s “Assad must go” approach towards Syria did. To say something like this would be dismissed as “anecdotal evidence”. There’s a claim that his first international visit would be to Russia; it turned out it was to Poland.

Hillary was supposedly toppled by “Russian hackers”, which only confirms that the fantasy was always present in the minds of her supporters. Too bad. The narrative has now shifted to “Russian collusion”. Russia would also be “shooting Estonian helicopters” because Russians are evil. The Russophobic narrative is The Economist‘s recurring leitmotif.

The other claims include Mexico, which would be now a “humanitarian” superpower because it won’t deport “unaccompanied minors”, also known as illegal immigrants to Central American countries, thus teaching Trump a lesson in morality. Oh no, wait, Mexico is actually considering building a wall along the border with Guatemala. What else did they predict?

Trump won’t pass his “Muslim ban”; the travel ban has actually been passed. There will be a trade war with China; there is none as yet. Deportations of illegal immigrants won’t happen; arrests are actually up 40%.

In short, none of The Economist‘s predictions have come true. It must be Russia’s fault or anecdotal evidence.

Liberal intellectuals are too busy living in a parallel world to notice their miscalculations. Are they then worth listening to?

"F**k Zuck 2020" Posters Appear In California As Facebook CEO Hires Hillary Strategist

After news broke of the hiring of Joel Benenson, a former top adviser to President Barack Obama and the chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, as a consultant, we noted that the odds of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg running for President in 2020 surged and bookies positioned him as more likely to win than current establishment favorite Kamale Harris.

While many of Silicon Valley"s technorati quietly applaud the move, it seems that not everyone "likes" the idea of him being president...

As AmericanMirror.com reports, Los Angeles street artist Sabo recently posted several Facebook photos showing his latest work: “F*ck Zuck 2020” street art in Pasadena.

The poster features the familiar Facebook hand with the blue cuff, except Sabo modified it with a middle finger:

The signs even appeared over the traffic lights...

As Liberty Blitzkrieg"s Mike Krieger recently concluded, it’s not just Benenson that Zuck is hiring as we saw in the Politico article earlier. He’s hiring a smattering of corporate Democratic strategists and consultants (and even a George W. Bush alum). This tells you so much about who this guy really is and what he believes. He wanders around the country claiming to want to understand “the people” and then he shuffles right over to Clinton/Obama people for wisdom. He doesn’t really want to hear from the rabble or promote genuine populist change, he just wants to be the technocratic leader of another firmly neoliberal American government. That’s all this is.

Much of how Zuckerberg operates focuses on image instead of substance, as we saw throughout his cross-country narcissism tour. Not that this should be a surprise coming from the creator of Facebook, a platform designed so that people can carefully craft a fake public image of themselves for their “friends” to admire.

All of this proves that Mark Zuckerberg has absolutely no creativity or genuine insight when it comes to political thinking. He runs straight to the same neoliberal strategists and corporate Democrats that Americans are sick and tired of, and offers nothing new other than a technocratic face on a failed and expired political class. Ten million cross country road trips to Iowa will never alter this reality.

UK Election Proved the Death of Neoliberalism Is Finally Here

(ANTIMEDIA) — Just last week, prominent U.K. newspaper the Telegraph ran an article entitled “Jeremy Corbyn the mime artist: Don’t vote for the man with no answers.” The opening line – the one line most likely to be read beyond its overly biased title – reads “Jeremy Corbyn is one of the most radical prospective Prime Ministers this country has ever seen.”

The same day, this same newspaper ran another article entitled “Jeremy Corbyn is a danger to this nation. At MI6, which I once led, he wouldn’t clear the security vetting.”

A day later, the Telegraph declared that a victory for Corbyn would mean a “hard Brexit and doom for the economy.”

Taken together, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that Corbyn has suffered a barrage of attacks courtesy of the mainstream media. Honorable mentions go to the Daily Mail, whose front page had a picture of Jeremy Corbyn with the massive headline “apologists for terror,” and the Sun, whose front page had an enormous headline that read “Jezza’s [a childish nickname for Jeremy Corbyn] Jihadi Comrades.” (You can see these headlines and others here.)

Following Corbyn’s surge in the general elections, the Telegraph ran another article, this time entitled “To the millions of people who voted for Jeremy Corbyn: you scare me.”

The attacks keep on coming, even though the recent elections indicate that the people are no longer buying the propaganda. Another leading U.K. newspaper, the Guardian, spent years bashing Corbyn even though they knew approximately 78 percent of their readers backed Corbyn in the first place.

Learning their lessons from their coverage of Brexit and Trump’s election bid, the Guardian is now changing their tactic and giving generous media coverage to Corbyn’s position as the leader of the opposition party. This is clearly not a genuine and sincere move but a calculated response to their dying status as an international newspaper (at the end of every article, the Guardian begs for donations).

We have seen this all too often before: the mainstream media rams a particular candidate down our throats and ignores the fact that the people no longer want that type of person or their ideology running the show. In the case of the 2016 U.S. elections, the U.K. general elections have again given rise to the idea that Bernie Sanders could have won the elections last year, but that the people were denied this opportunity.

The fact that someone as vile and dangerous as Donald Trump won last year instead of Hillary Clinton tells us one important thing: it didn’t really matter who the alternative to Clinton was because the people are fed up with the status quo. When people see a failing economy, a wave of terror attacks, or a refugee crisis, for example – they are hardly going to be so naive as to accept the candidate who runs on a simple platform of “We need to keep doing the same things we have been doing for decades.” As long as the candidate can distance themselves from these failing policies, it ultimately won’t matter how racist, authoritarian, or unpredictable they are.

Similarly, Corbyn may have operated on the complete opposite end of the political spectrum (for 30 years, one might add), but he ran on a platform of opposing the status quo, particularly when it comes to matters of war and terrorism. A recent poll found the U.K. public agrees with Corbyn’s view on the causes of terrorism.

After a number of attacks in which people see their own dying before them, the dialogue ceases to be incessant obsession about who their government should bomb in response (given they have been doing that incessantly since 2001 with no tangible results), but a rational discussion regarding how we can effectively stop innocent people from dying on their own soil.

The people aren’t stupid, but the mainstream media will most likely continue to find this out the hard way. While Corbyn didn’t outright win the election in the U.K., technically, the loss of confidence requires the incumbent, Theresa May, to resign. The power should instead cede to Corbyn’s side.

Unsurprisingly, May is refusing to budge and still wants to press forward with her plans to regulate the conversation on the internet. How else will she be able to stay in power, especially considering the internet is how we have learned of her deep and dark secrets regarding the role she played in fostering known terrorists?

However, the most important lesson to learn is that Corbyn achieved this partial victory (note that almost two-thirds of May’s own party want her to resign) in the face of an obsessive media onslaught that sought to completely undermine him at every turn. Despite this one-sidedness, a new poll has found that Corbyn would most likely win a second general election and become the country’s prime minister, further cementing the idea that the corporate media is once again on the wrong side of history.

Imagine who would really be in power in the United States and the United Kingdom if members of the mainstream media did their jobs and reported accurately instead of advancing an outdated and dangerous neoliberal, neoconservative agenda.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

Corbyn Stuns UK: “Most Incredible Amazing Political Upset in British History”

“UK to humanity – we just killed neoliberalism,” says one Labour supporter as progressive leader’s bold vision credited with delivery crushing blow to Tory rule.

(COMMONDREAMS) — As it looked as though U.K. election might be heading towards shocking results and a hung Parliament, Labour leady Jeremy Corbyn called on Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May to resign while declaring his party’s campaign “has changed the face of British politics.”

Based on exit polling and early returns, indications of the shocking outcome were being widely viewed as a rejection of May’s Conservative Party rule and a win for the bold, progressive vision Corbyn asserted—despite internal party tensions—as the Labour leader. If the trend holds, said journalist and Labour supporter Owen Jones, “then this is the most incredible amazing political upset in British history.”

U.K. to humanity – we just killed neoliberalism

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) June 9, 2017

Labour"s change is now permanent. A party committed to radically transforming Britain in the interests of the many, not the few. https://t.co/ph3s485mGj

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) June 9, 2017

The British right wing press led a vicious campaign of lies, smears, hatred and bigotry. And millions told them where to stick it

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) June 9, 2017

Though final results have yet to be determined, British politics were nonetheless turned upside as it appeared that May and the Tories failed expectations and would likely be unable to claim a majority in Parliament. Even if the Tory’s retain the most seats overall, the ability of other parties to form a coalition with Labour would put her political future in severe jeopardy and make Corbyn the “odds on favorite” to become the nation’s next Prime Minister.

Politics is on its head. Anything could happen. Would never have believed it, but I"m pleased. Change is possible. #GE2017

— Nick Dearden (@nickdearden75) June 9, 2017

The Independent explains:

Many polls predicted a crushing defeat for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, with the Conservatives gaining a considerable majority. Others were less generous towards May, and showed a dramatic narrowing between the two parties as their campaigns progressed. But even then, when the numbers were relatively favourable for Labour, the Conservatives were still out in front.

If you cast your mind back before the snap election was called, you may remember the double-digit leads the Tories held over Labour, and the huge advantage in popularity May had over Corbyn. With these in mind, many Labour supporters were resigned to the fact they were never going to win, and had their eyes on simply reducing Theresa May’s majority.

But as the tallies continue to come in, the newspaper added, “the future of [May’s] premiership, party and legacy could all be in doubt.”

If May is ousted from leadership, explained columnist Laurie Penny writing at Salon, that would tell a tale of deep dissatisfaction in the U.K., especially among younger voters and those who have suffered most directly at the hands of Tory policies:

The Tories haven’t just fucked up this election. They’ve fucked up the country, mercilessly and for eight long years, and people are sick of them. In less than two terms, they have destroyed the welfare state; almost bankrupted our health service and school system; plunged millions of children into poverty; presided over an enormous uptick in racism, social division and terrorist violence; almost lost Scotland; utterly failed to balance the nation’s finances; and sent us spinning out of the European Union into the maw of decades of uncertainty, recession and fear. Racists are running brave in the streets. Food banks are the new normal. Millions of people are languishing in exhausting, low-paid work. People with disabilities are dying in their homes. School buildings are rotting. The mental health system is close to collapse. Young people have given up hope of starting families. People are poor, angry and scared.

In a speech accepting victory for his own seat in North Islington, Corbyn also said the elections results show that the British people have had enough of May and the Tories’ economic policies. He said people were inspired by the “For the Many, Not the Few Manifesto” that Labour put forth during the campaign and that he was proud people from across the country were “voting for hope for the future, and turning their backs on austerity.”

He added: “If there is a message from tonight’s result is this: the Prime Minister called the election because she wanted a mandate and lost votes, lost support and lost confidence. I would have thought that is enough to go, actually, and make way for a government which will be representative of all of the people!”

Watch:

By Joe Queally / Creative Commons / Common Dreams / Report a typo

Why The Left Refuses To Talk About Venezuela

During the 2016 presidential election, Bernie Sanders refused to answer questions about Venezuela during an interview with Univision. He claimed to not want to talk about it because he"s "focused on my campaign." Many suggested a more plausible reason: Venezuela"s present economy is an example of what happens when a state implements Bernie Sanders-style social democracy. 

Similarly, Pope Francis — who has taken the time to denounce pro-market ideologies for allegedly driving millions into poverty — seems uninterested in talking about the untrammeled impoverishment of Venezuela in recent years. Samuel Gregg writes in yesterday"s Catholic World Report: 

Pope Francis isn’t known as someone who holds back in the face of what he regards as gross injustices. On issues like refugees, immigration, poverty and the environment, Francis speaks forcibly and uses vivid language in doing so.

Yet despite the daily violence being inflicted on protestors in Venezuela, a steadily increasing death-toll, an explosion of crime, rampant corruption, galloping inflation, the naked politicization of the judiciary, and the disappearance of basic food and medical supplies, the first Latin American pope’s comments about the crisis tearing apart an overwhelming Catholic Latin American country have been curiously restrained.

This virtual silence comes in spite of the fact that the Catholic bishops who actually live in Venezuela have denounced the regime as yet another illustration of the "utter failure" of "socialism in every country in which this regime has been installed."

Thus, for many Venezuelans, the question is: "Where is Pope Francis?"

As with Sanders, it may very well be that Francis has nothing to say about Venezuela precisely because the Venezuelan regime has pursued exactly the sorts of policies favored by Bernie Sanders, Pope Francis, and the usual opponents of market economics.

It"s an economic program marked by price controls, government expropriation of private property, an enormous welfare state, central planning, and endless rhetoric about equality, poverty relief, and fighting the so-called "neoliberals." 

And, as Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has helpfully explained, "There are two models, the neoliberal model which destroys everything, and the Chavista model which is centered around people.”

The Chavista model is simply a mixture of social democracy and environmentalism which is easily recognizable as the Venezuelan version of the hard-left ideology espoused by a great many global political elites both in the United States and Europe. Neoliberalism, on the other hand — as I"ve noted before — is a vague term that most of the time really just means a system of relatively free markets and moderate laissez-faire. 

Indeed, no other regimes in the world, save Cuba and North Korea, have been as explicit in fighting the alleged menace that is neoliberalism. 

For this reason, as Venezuela descends into chaos, we are hearing a deafening silence from most of the left, as even some principled leftists have noticed. 

In an article at Counterpunch, for example, Pedro Lange-Churion points out: 

Venezuela was news while it was good news and while Chávez could be used as a banner for the left and his antics provided comic relief. But as soon as the country began to spiral towards ruination and Chavismo began to resemble another Latin American authoritarian regime, better to turn a blind eye.

Nevertheless, as a dedicated leftist, Lange-Chrion unfortunately still mistakenly thinks that the Venezuelan problem is political and not economic. For him, it"s merely an unfortunate coincidence that the implementation of the Chavismo economic agenda just happened to coincide with the destruction of the nation"s political and economic institutions. 

But here"s the thing: it"s not a coincidence. 

In fact, it"s a textbook case of a country electing a leftwing populist who undoes years of pro-market reforms, and ends up destroying the economy. 

This has been going on for decades in Latin America where, as explained by Rudiger Dornbusch and Sebastián Edwards, the cycle repeats itself again and again. 

It"s happened in Argentina and in Brazil most recently, and it goes something like this: first, a relatively neoliberal regime comes to power, moderately reduces government spending, somewhat restrains government power, and ushers in a period of growth. But, even with growth, middle-income countries like those of Latin America remain poor compared to the rich countries of the world, and large inequalities remain. Then, populist social democrats convince the voters that if only the regime would redistribute more wealth, punish greedy capitalists, and regulate markets to make them more "humane," then everyone would get richer even faster. And even better, the evil capitalists would be punished for exploiting the poor. Eventually, the economy collapses under the weight of the new social democratic regime, and a neoliberal regime is again elected to clean up the mess. 

Venezuela is in the midst of this cycle right now. After decades of relatively restrained government intervention, Venezuela became one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America. During the most recent twenty years, though, the Chavistas were able to take that wealth and redistristribute it, regulate it, and expropriate it for the sake of "equality" and undermining capitalist evil. But, you can only redistribute, tax, regulate, and expropriate so much before the productive classes give up and the wealth runs out. 

To the leftwing mind, the explosion of poverty that results can"t possibly be the result of bad economic policy. After all, the Chavismo regime got everything it wanted. It redistributed wealth at will. It "guaranteed" a living wage, health care, and plentiful food to everyone. "Equality" was imposed by fiat over the cries of the "neoliberal" opposition. 

The only possible answer, the left assumes, must be sabotage by capitalists or — as the Pope reminds us — too much "individualism." 

The problem the global left has in this case, though, is that this narrative simply isn"t plausible. Does Colombia have fewer capitalists and individualists than Venezeuala? It almost certainly has more. So why do Venezuelans wait hours in line to cross the Colombian border to buy basic food items not available in the social-democratic paradise of Venezuela? Has Chile renounced neoliberal-style trade and markets? Obviously not. So why has Chile"s economy grown by 150 percent over the past 25 years while Venezuela"s economy has gotten smaller? 

The response consists largely of silence. 

This isn"t to say that what the left calls call "neoliberal" is without its faults. Some aspects of neoliberalism — such as free trade and relatively free markets — are the reason that global poverty and child mortality are falling, while literacy and sanitation are rising.

Other aspects of neoliberalism are odious, particularly in the areas of central banking and crony capitalism. But the free-market answer to this was already long-ago voiced by Ludwig von Mises, who, in his own fight against the neoliberals, advocated for consistent laissez-faire, sound money, and far greater freedom in international trade. 

For an illustration of the left"s answer to neo-liberalism, however, we need look no further than Venezuela where people are literally starving and will wait hours in line to buy a roll of toilet paper. 

And if this is what the the left"s victory against neoliberalism looks like, it"s not surprising the left seems to have little to say.

Manufacturing Resistance – The American Public Is Being Manipulated Into Irrelevance

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

No honest person could accuse me of being a Trump fan or supporter. I refused to back his candidacy despite my total disdain for Hillary Clinton and pretty much everything she stands for. More importantly, I’ve written a multitude of articles since he was inaugurated severely taking him to task on a wide variety of subjects. I’ve tirelessly discussed how he’s outsourced his economic policy to Goldman Sachs, and condemned his burgeoning neocon foreign policy, evidenced by his disturbing coziness with the autocratic barbarians of Saudi Arabia.

Nevertheless, the most incredible aspect of the past four months is not how much of a fake populist Trump’s proven to be, but how the corporate media’s managed to disgust me even more. I’m happy to become outraged at Trump, because I find many things about Trump outrageous. That said, I find it telling that the stuff about Trump that outrages me, is never the same stuff which outrages the corporate media. Why is that?

The reason is the corporate media doesn’t mind Goldman Sachs running U.S. economic policy. It also doesn’t mind a close alliance with the terrorist state of Saudi Arabia, or our government’s endless string of disastrous neocon wars abroad. In fact, when it comes to the latter, the corporate media is reliably the primary cheerleader for unprovoked militarism.

Following the election of Trump, an axis of evil in U.S. politics has formed consisting of the corporate media, neoliberal Democrats (Hillary cultists) and neocons. This alliance has one primary objective, which revolves around obsessing incessantly on a conspiracy theory that deflects attention away from the crimes of our very own domestic plutocrats, war mongers and rent-seekers (you know, the forces that are actually wrecking the country). Russia is the perfect outside enemy to rally ignorant rubes around in order to prevent any real progressive or centrist populism from ever gaining a foothold in U.S. politics. Unfortunately, thanks to the gullibility of the average American, their plan seems to be succeeding.

As I noted earlier today on Twitter:

The reason the "elites" are elites is because they know how to corral and manipulate the sheep.
2017 is the perfect manifestation of it

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) May 16, 2017

The current environment is fertile ground for real populist movements to fight for an improvement in the lives of average Americans, but the public is being fooled into focusing all its energy on an unproven Russia collusion theory which hasn’t caused any of our very real national suffering. Our very own homegrown racketeers and thieves are to blame for that, but we’re being told to focus our attention on Russia. This isn’t an accident people, you’re being played, and played quite easily at that.

Ironically, “the resistance” is actually sucking all the air out of what should be real resistance. After spending a few months in the woods, Hillary is now actively moving to co-opt the entire movement. Why’s she doing that? I think she still covets the throne, and I think she’s power hungry and delusional enough to go for it.

Hillary’s positioning to run again, and there’s still no viable new third party. Even worse, there’s the naive and gullible Bernie Sanders still trying to “change Democrats from within,” a laughable and useless exercise. It’s unbelievably pathetic and disempowering, but it could get a lot worse. Brace yourselves for a few years of Hillary running around in leather jackets talking like a “populist” as she desperately attempts to reinvent herself. Our national nightmare is far from over.

Meanwhile, to all of you yapping incessantly about Russia, don’t complain in 2020 when you get a horrible corporate Democratic candidate and Trump wins. Even if you dodge the Hillary bullet, don’t expect for a second to get anyone decent nominated. The “resistance” is clueless and Trump has much better odds of a second term than ever being impeached. The Russia nonsense is all a carefully crafted distraction narrative to keep you stuck on the debt serf plantation and away from organizing genuine resistance. Keep it up, the plutocrats are laughing uncontrollably.

This is precisely why I reserve my most intense contempt for the corporate media. It’s quite intentionally focusing people’s attention on a still unproven theory that marginally affects their lives, compared to very real issues of economic misery and the neo-feudal world being institutionalized all around them. This is straight up evil. The corporate press is deliberately not focusing on things that really matter to people, and diverting mass attention to what is still just a conspiracy theory. If you have proof Trump is a Russian stooge, let’s see it. If not, then focus on the very serious issues that matter and helped elect Trump in the first place. The corporate media, neoliberal Dems and neocons are successfully diverting genuine angst and energy away from pressing economic concerns and toward a imperial geopolitical agenda that benefits the plutocrats and their ambitions. They are manufacturing resistance.

Yesterday’s Washington Post article accusing Trump of divulging classified intel to Russian officials is a perfect example of this. It’s been blown up as the biggest story in decades, yet I read it and basically shrugged. Imagine if the corporate press rallied this strongly against plutocracy, Wall Street and militarism? Imagine that. We might actually be able to help our fellow citizens who are struggling.

But no, the corporate press isn’t interested in doing that. It’s interested in keeping you stuck right where you are. Oppressed under a pile of debt and an absence of opportunity. It’s sad to watch people get manipulated so easily, but until people wake up and say enough, it’s only going to get worse.

Do The Roots Of Rising Inequality Go All The Way Back To The 1980s?

Authored by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Unless we change the fundamental structure of the economy so that actually producing goods and services and hiring people is more profitable than playing financial games with phantom assets, the end-game of financialization is financial collapse.

I presented this chart of rising wealth inequality a number of times over the past year. Do you notice something peculiar about the inflection points in the 1980s?

Correspondent W.S. noted that the inflection point for the top .1% (late 1970s) preceded the inflection point of the bottom 90% (around 1986): both increased their share of household wealth from 1978 to 1986, and then the share of the top .1% took off, essentially tripling from 8% to over 22%, while the share of the bottom fell precipitously from 36% to 23%.

(Note that the data stops at 2012; if we extend the trends to the present, the lines have certainly crossed and the share of the .1% now exceeds that of the bottom 90%.)

So what happened between 1978 and 1986? The first phase of the financialization of the U.S. economy. What is financialization? In a financialized economy, speculating with highly leveraged debt and exotic financial instruments is far more profitable than producing goods and services.

Financialization hollows out the productive assets of an economy by incentivizing leverage, debt, opacity, speculation, financial fraud, collusion and the perfection of crony capitalism, i.e. financial Elites" ownership of the government"s regulatory and legislative bodies.

Here is another less pungent description via Wikipedia: "Financial leverage overrides capital (equity) and financial markets dominate traditional industrial economy and agricultural economics."

Here is my more formal definition:

Financialization is the mass commodification of debt and debt-based financial instruments collaterized by previously low-risk assets, a pyramiding of risk and speculative gains that is only possible in a massive expansion of low-cost credit and leverage.

Another way to describe the same dynamics is: financialization results when leverage and information asymmetry replace innovation and productive investment as the source of wealth creation.

I describe the dynamics in What"s the Primary Cause of Wealth Inequality? Financialization (March 24, 2014)

Correspondent W.S. submitted commentary and references this 2005 book Financialization and the World Economy:

In the US "total credit market debt divided by GDP was about 1.5 from 1961 to 1981. It accelerated rapidly in the decade of the 1980s - from 1.6 in 1981 to 2.3 in 1989 - as the federal budget deficit soared, hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts loaded corporations with debt, and household borrowing increased. Corporate and household borrowing raised indebtedness further in the 1990s; by 2001 the debt to GDP ratio was 2.8, almost double the ratio in the Golden Age. Moreover, average real interest rates have been much higher in the neoliberal era than they were in the three decades that preceeded it.

W.S. Also referenced FINANCIALIZATION OF THE ECONOMY and added this commentary:

While “bloated” conglomerates were linked by some to the sluggish performance of the American economy in the 1970s, for corporate raiders they presented a get rich quick opportunity via the “market for corporate control” (Manne 1965). Outsiders could buy the firm from its existing shareholders, fire its managers, and sell off the parts for a quick profit.

After the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, this became possible on a grand scale due to relaxed antitrust guidelines, changes in state antitakeover laws, and financial innovations that enabled raiders to get relatively short-term financing on a large scale (Davis & Stout 1992). Within a decade, nearly one-third of the Fortune 500 largest industrial firms had been acquired or merged, often resulting in spinoffs of unrelated parts, and by 1990 American corporations were far less diversified than they had been a decade before (Davis et al 1994).

The other thing that happened in the mid-1980s was computer technology became cheap enough and powerful enough to start replacing human labor on a wider scale. Spreadsheets such as Excel became accessible to small business, and the desktop publishing combo of the Apple Macintosh and laserprinters revolutionized the cost structure of marketing.

The rise of the Internet (coupled with cheap memory and processing power) further fueled the productive expansion of digital technologies. As I describe in my book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy, these tools-- which are now ubiquitous and inexpensive--enable one person today to equal the output of what once took four people to produce in the late 1980s.

In effect, labor entered an era of dynamic over-supply just as healthcare costs began to rise, making it more costly to hire workers. Some skills and trades remain scarce and thus well-paid, but as a generalization it became cheaper and more efficient to replace increasingly expensive human labor with increasingly inexpensive and powerful software and digital tools.

Unless we change the fundamental structure of the economy so that actually producing goods and services and maximizing opportunities for people is more profitable than playing financial games with phantom assets, the end-game of financialization is financial collapse.

Recent podcasts/video programs:

Deep State Fractures Under Populist Revolution (TruNews, 37:27)

‘Stop Operation Soros’ – Massive Movement to Overthrow Soros Takes Off in Macedonia

Macedonia – Only a week after Hungary announced plans to purge all NGO groups funded by globalist progressive mega-donor George Soros, a new global initiative – Stop Operation Soros (SOS) – dedicated to the countering the influential political/social engineering the billionaire activist is now engaged in across the globe through his Open Society Foundations, was announced in Macedonia.

During a press conference last week, SOS founders called on all “free-minded citizens,” regardless of race, ethnicity or religion, to “fight against one-mindedness in the civil sector, which is devised and led by George Soros,” the Vecer newspaper reported.

This move comes on the heels of the Hungarian government announcing that it will use “all the tools at its disposal” to target and “sweep out” all non-governmental organizations funded by Soros, a Hungarian-born financier who has become one of the U.S. Democratic Party’s major sources of funding, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling party.

Co-founder of the movement, Nikola Srbov, called out Soros for hijacking civil society, in an effort force his own personal ideology upon others by monopolizing civil discourse through strategically funding certain organizations via his group Open Society Foundations.

At the press conference, the group announced that their first step would be to work at uncovering ‘subversive’ activities by Soros-funded NGOs.

“We’ve witnessed the takeover of the entire civil sector and its abuse and instrumentalization to meet the goals of one political party. That is unacceptable and goes beyond the principles of civic organizing,” Srbov said at the press conference.

“The Open Society Foundation, operating under the Soros umbrella, used its funding and personnel to support violent processes in Macedonia. It has monopolized the civil society sector, pushing outside any organization which disagrees with the Soros ideology,” he stated.

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Co-founder, Cvetin Cilimanov, editor-in-chief of the state-run MIA news agency, noted that Soros worked to undermine Macedonian sovereignty by colluding with the opposition center-left SDSM party and outside globalist interests. By cooperating with foreign embassies and organizations such as USAID, Cilimanov believes Soros-backed groups have interfered in the political process of Macedonia.

“This is unacceptable and has largely contributed to a feeling in the public that the traditional relations of partnership Macedonia enjoyed with some countries are being undermined,” Cilimanov told journalists.

These complaints are par for the course with the Soros’ Open Society Foundations, as Russia has banned a progressive charity founded by globalist hedge fund billionaire George Soros in 2015 – noting that the organization posed a threat to both state security and the Russian constitution.

In a statement, Russia’s General Prosecutor’s Office said two branches of Soros’ charity network — the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the Open Society Institute (OSI) — would be placed on a “stop list” of foreign non-governmental organizations whose activities have been deemed “undesirable” by the Russian state.

The Open Society Foundation (OSF) was created by the Hungarian-born billionaire with the stated aim of helping former Eastern bloc countries transition from communism. However, instead, it operates as a lever in the domestic politics of states by funding subversive political activities. For example, Soros publicly supported the violent overthrow of the legitimately-elected government in Ukraine during the ‘Euromaidan’ revolution.

Subsequently, leaked memos, appearing on DC Leaks, exposed Soros’ plan to destabilize and overthrow Putin – the ultimate prize for Soros.

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The document details in an extensive bullet point list, “what must be done” to destabilize Russia, focusing on many recurrent neo-liberal themes that Soros uses to infect host nations and overturn governments.

Essentially, Soros works to install his political will on states, under the guise of promoting a free and open society. In reality, he looks to capitalize on the installation of puppet governments that are largely beholden to him and his OSF in an attempt to increase his massive fortune and create a globalist system of governance that supersedes national sovereignty.

The Protected, Privileged Establishment Versus The Working Class

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Meanwhile, back in reality, household income for the bottom 95% has declined while the owners of capital and their privileged, protected servants in the Establishment have gorged themselves on private wealth.

As noted yesterday in The Collapse of the Left, the working class has finally awakened to the Left"s betrayal and abandonment of labor in favor of the protected privileges of the elitist Establishment. I also described the Left"s Great Con:

To mask the collapse of the Left"s economic defense of labor, the Left has substituted social justice movements for economic opportunities and security. This has succeeded brilliantly, as tens of millions of self-described "progressives" now parrot the Great Con that "social justice" campaigns on behalf of marginalized social groups are now the defining feature of Progressive Social Democratic movements.

This diversionary sleight-of-hand embrace of economically neutered "social justice" campaigns masked the fact that social democratic parties everywhere have thrown labor into the churning propellers of globalization, open immigration and neoliberal financial policies--all of which benefit mobile capital, which has engorged itself on the abandonment of labor by the Left.

Meanwhile, the fat-cats of the Left have engorged themselves on capital"s largesse in exchange for their treachery. Bill and Hillary Clinton"s $200 million in "earnings" come to mind, as do countless other examples of personal aggrandizement by self-proclaimed "defenders" of labor.

But it isn"t just the Left"s fat-cats who have feathered their own nests while denigrating the Working Class with arrogantly contemptuous scorn: the entire protected, privileged "liberal" elitist Establishment has responded with a very illiberal outrage that their protected, privileged skims and scams might be endangered by an uprising of the loathed and ridiculed Working Class that they reckoned would remain safely cowed and conned.

As noted yesterday, the only moment in recent history in which the Wall Street-cartel-state strongholds of privilege, wealth and power (i.e. owners of capital) felt threatened by political insurrection by disenfranchised labor was The Great Depression of the 1930s.

With the first iteration of global debt-based capitalism in near-collapse (systemic bad debt was not written off, lest the big banks" insolvency be recognized), owners of capital and the political class reluctantly swallowed modest social-democratic reforms that gave labor enough of the pie to stave off revolt / revolution (as noted by Arshad A. on my Facebook thread).

Just as Marx had predicted, this crisis of global-debt-cartel-state capitalism was the result of internal contradictions built into all forms capitalism dominated by capital and the state that protects and serves capital.

Now we face another crisis of the current iteration of global-debt-cartel-state capitalism, also the result of internal contradictions--not just financial, but cultural, energy-based and political contradictions.

The privileged, protected elitist Establishment reckoned the social-welfare programs of the 1930s and the Left"s Great Cons would keep the disenfranchised Working Class permanently cowed and conned. If welfare (now called "disability," "crazy money", etc.) and the distractions of "social justice" campaigns didn"t keep the Working Class fragmented and powerless, then the ceaseless drumbeat of arrogant dismissal and disdain aimed at any Working Class resistance would do the trick.

Any Working Class individual who recognized that globalization, open immigration and neoliberal financial policies were the propellers dismembering the Working Class economically and disenfranchising the Working Class politically was immediately labeled with the worst that "liberal" privileged, protected elites could spew: you"re racist, Luddite, backward, etc.--in other words, you"re not a rootless Cosmopolitan who loves your servitude to capital and the state like us.

Since the Left has masked its abandonment and betrayal of the Working Class with "social justice" speech acts, the worst insults the Left can dish out are those that suggest opposition to the Left"s social justice campaigns.

Self-identified "Progressives" are fine with the destruction and disenfranchisement of the Working Class, as long as the politically correct speech acts praising the Left"s Great Con are being uttered.

The self-serving, privileged, protected "liberal" Establishment is enraged that the Working Class is no longer following the script, i.e. remaining cowed, conned and fragmented. Like every other disenfranchised group, the Working Class has essentially zero choice of representational leadership, as the machinery of governance, finance and the mainstream media are all controlled by the privileged, protected elites of the Establishment.

So it boiled down to: choose more disenfranchisement and cowed servitude to "liberal" Elites, or vote for Trump. There was no other choice, so the Working Class voted for Trump as their only option other than surrender and servitude.

This rejection of their "betters" script has enraged their "betters," who now demand the destruction of their proxy voice (Trump) and their rebellion. The Establishment"s war on Trump is beneath the surface also a war against a Working Class that has finally had enough of its arrogant, hubris-soaked, self-serving, privileged, elitist "betters" of the Establishment.

If the Establishment had deigned to offer a radical-Left leader who correctly called out the American carnage that is the Working Class experience of the globalized, open-immigration neoliberalism that has so enriched the owners of capital and their "liberal" apparatchiks, then the Working Class may well have voted for the radical-Left truth-teller.

Alas, the Left ground down any opposition to "we "earned" $200 million" Hillary Clinton and her corrupt coterie of self-serving elites. Having beaten down, stripmined, insulted, denigrated, scorned and exploited the Working Class (whose "proper role" is to provide cannon fodder for the Elites" neocon Permanent War), the privileged, protected Establishment (like every other elite that suddenly finds its entitled dominance challenged) is in a full-blown fury: how dare the Working Class not accept our self-serving rule! We are entitled to rule! How dare they!

Meanwhile, back in reality, household income for the bottom 95% has declined while the owners of capital and their privileged, protected servants in the Establishment have gorged themselves on private wealth.

Here"s what"s happened as the Left and its armies of privileged fake-Progressives threw the Working Class overboard in favor of serving capital on the First Class deck:

What will it take to shift the balance of power decisively in favor of labor? My guess is the downward mobility of another 10 or 20 million people who currently reckon themselves "middle class" into the unprotected, disenfranchised ranks of the Working Class will do it.

Hungary Moves to Eliminate All NGO’s Funded by Globalist George Soros

Budapest, Hungary – In a move indicative of a major push back against the dominant western-led neoliberal global order, Hungary has announced plans to purge all groups funded by globalist mega-donor George Soros.

The European Union member will use “all the tools at its disposal” to target and “sweep out” all non-governmental organizations funded by Soros, a Hungarian-born financier who has become one of the U.S. Democratic Party’s major sources of funding, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling party.

Soros’s web of organizations “serve global capitalists and back political correctness over national governments,” Szilard Nemeth, a vice president of the ruling Fidesz party, told reporters Tuesday, referring to the Soros’s primary operator, the Open Source Institute.

“These organizations must be pushed back with all available tools, and I think they must be swept out, and now I believe the international conditions are right for this with the election of the new president (in the U.S.),” Nemeth said, according to a video posted on HirTV’s website.

Previously, Trump accused the 86-year-old billionaire of being part of “a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities” in a campaign ad, although Trump’s current thinking on Soros is unknown.

And while many NGO’s perform vital functions and deliver much-needed services, they are also often used as imperialist vessels by the dominant neoliberal order to attempt to influence the internal politics of sovereign nation-states.

Keep in mind that Soros-affiliated organizations across the world have been deeply connected to numerous color revolutions, the Arab Spring, and a number of other political uprisings across the globe. Although democracy promotion is the stated mission, in reality, the many Soros-linked organizations operate to forward the Western globalist agenda – often working to foment dissent and revolution.

According to a report in New Eastern Outlook, Soros has done exactly that in Ukraine:

The totality of what is revealed in the three hacked documents show that Soros is effectively the puppet-master pulling most of the strings in Kiev. Soros Foundation’s Ukraine branch, International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) has been involved in Ukraine since 1989. His IRF doled out more than $100 million to Ukrainian NGOs two years before the fall of the Soviet Union, creating the preconditions for Ukraine’s independence from Russia in 1991. Soros also admitted to financing the 2013-2014 Maidan Square protests that brought the current government into power.

Soros’ foundations were also deeply involved in the 2004 Orange Revolution that brought the corrupt but pro-NATO Viktor Yushchenko into power with his American wife who had been in the US State Department. In 2004 just weeks after Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation had succeeded in getting Viktor Yushchenko as President of Ukraine, Michael McFaul wrote an OpEd for the Washington Post. McFaul, a specialist in organizing color revolutions, who later became US Ambassador to Russia, revealed:

Did Americans meddle in the internal affairs of Ukraine? Yes. The American agents of influence would prefer different language to describe their activities — democratic assistance, democracy promotion, civil society support, etc. — but their work, however labeled, seeks to influence political change in Ukraine.

Anyone familiar with the history of the Soros Open Society Foundations in Eastern Europe, and around the world, since the late 1980’s, will know that his supposedly philanthropic “democracy-building” projects in Poland, Russia, or Ukraine in the 1990’s allowed Soros the businessman to literally plunder the former communist countries’ wealth, according to the New Eastern Outlook.

During the 2016 presidential cycle, Soros committed $25 million dollars to the unsuccessful 2016 campaign of Hillary Clinton. Per standard Clinton operating procedure, this was indicative of the symbiotic relationship of favors between the billionaire and his array of political puppets across the globe.

Essentially, Soros uses his billions to attempt to socially engineer countries into a position favorable to his investments and worldview. The financier uses his web of connected global projects to forward his progressive agenda. Even in the U.S., the hidden hand of Soros can be seen clearly as the driver behind the Democratic agenda.

Hungary’s Orban was the first EU head to publicly support Trump’s election campaign, and was reportedly invited by Trump to visit the US.

According to a report by Zero Hedge:

In 2014, Orban personally ordered the state audit agency to probe foundations financed by Norway and said that civil society groups financed from abroad were covers for “paid political activists.” As a result of Trump’s victory, Orban has felt empowered to further last out against Europe’s established structures, and its core supporters.

As Bloomberg notes, Orban and his administration have repeatedly singled out NGOs supported by Soros, a prominent Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party supporter, with a wide network of organizations that promote democracy in formerly communist eastern Europe.

The use of NGO’s to attempt to undermine states not beholden to the current Western neoliberal order has been an ongoing point of contention, which saw Russia kick USAID out of the country in 2012 amid accusations of attempting to incite protests and influence the Russian presidential elections.

And while Soros is no a James Bond villain, the billionaire financier’s efforts to control the direction of global politics, though the use of his vast fortune, cannot be disregarded, or understated, as it has a major effect on the manifestation and direction of global politics. When one person leverages such massive amounts of wealth into influencing global political discourse, it’s the average person’s voice that is drowned out by the sea of cash.

Are You A Deplorable?

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Regardless of your ethnicity, class or religion, if you perceive the institutions that govern American life as corrupted, riddled with favoritism and spin or as broken, you"re a Deplorable.

Are you a Deplorable? The answer might surprise you. Take this short quiz to find out.

1. If you agree with this characterization of American Elites: "The self-satisfied cosmopolitan culture that sprang up among the affluent 20% or so of the industrial world’s population, who became convinced that the temporary ascendancy of policies that favored their interests was not only permanent but self-evidently right and just." (The Fifth Side of the Triangle The Archdruid Report)

You"re a Deplorable.

2. If you question whether globalization is actually in the national interest: You"re a Deplorable.

3. If you question whether endless wars of choice, drone strikes and foreign interventions that cost the lives of countless civilians are actually in the national interest: You"re a Deplorable.

4. If you see the major institutions of American life as corrupt, ineffective, and blatantly favoring the financial/social elites: You"re a Deplorable.

5. If you think it"s wrong that some immigrants (the illegal ones) get to "jump the queue" ahead of the millions of legal immigrants who have waited patiently for years and paid the costs of following the rules: You"re a Deplorable.

6. If you see the concentration of media ownership as a threat to democracy:

You"re a Deplorable.

7. If you think the War on Drugs that"s imprisoned millions of young men is actually a War on the American People, a war that was prosecuted for the entire 24 long years of the presidencies of Bill Clinton, G.W. Bush and Barack Obama: You"re a Deplorable.

The US population has increased about 40% since the War on Drugs started in earnest in 1980, while the prison/Gulag population has increased over 400% since 1980.

8. If you see the informal quotas on Asian-American students in America"s Ivy League universities as wrong and blatantly racist: You"re a Deplorable.

9. If you favor kicking over the tables of the money-lenders at the temple--those wonderful money-lenders who fund the campaigns of our political elites-- You"re a Deplorable.

10. In summary: if you question the self-serving, self-congratulatory, hubris-soaked dominance of the neoliberal Elites, You"re a Deplorable.

If you think being Caucasian is a requirement to qualify as a Deplorable, think again: anyone can be a Deplorable. If you"re a Hispanic-American or African-American who has seen your community gutted by the War on Drugs, and you"re against the American gulag, then you"re questioning the status quo: Bingo, you"re a Deplorable.

If you"re an Asian-American who is tired of accepting blatantly racist limits on Asian students in top-tier U.S. universities--the same sort of insidiously informal quotas that limited Jewish-American students in the early 20th century--you"re a Deplorable.

Regardless of your ethnicity, class or religion, if you perceive the institutions that govern American life as corrupted, riddled with favoritism and spin or as broken, you"re a Deplorable. If you question or resist the dominance of self-serving neoliberal elites, you"re a Deplorable.

This isn"t the elites" definition, of course, because resistance to their dominance can"t be identified as the defining factor. If this truth were revealed, the various tribes of Deplorables might realize they have more in common than the corporate media will let on.

Though it was Hillary Clinton who made the Deplorables public, the elites of both parties share the same fear and loathing of anyone who questions or resists their control.

BONUS DEPLORABLE POINTS if you answer "yes": do you think being corralled into a remote holding pen reserved for "expressing free speech" (i.e. resisting the elites) is a mockery of the Bill of Rights? Bingo, you"re a Deplorable.