USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!!

[Peter Lemkin]

[FONT=&amp]JFK Murder Records Analysis[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Future of Freedom Foundation, The JFK Cover-Up Continues, Jacob G. Hornberger (shown at right), Oct. 27, 2017. While the mainstream media was announcing for the past two weeks that President Trump was going to release the CIA's long-secret records on the JFK assassination, I took a different position. On Monday of this week, I predicted that Trump would make a deal with the CIA that would enable the CIA to continue its cover-up of the JFK assassination. (See I Predict Trump Will Continue the CIA's JFK Assassination Cover-Up and No Smoking Guns in the JFK Records?)[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]On Thursday, the day of the deadline established by law for releasing the records, Trump granted the CIA's request for continued secrecy, on grounds of "national security," more than 50 years after the Kennedy assassination.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Please, don't start calling me Nostradamus. A blind man could see what was happening. Donald "Art of the Deal" Trump was obviously negotiating all week with the CIA, and he was obviously pushing to get what he wanted all the way up to the very last day. On Thursday, the deadline established by law for releasing the records, the CIA undoubtedly blinked and Trump presumably got what he wanted in return for granting CIA request for continued secrecy.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Some mainstream media commentators are criticizing the CIA for waiting until the very last day to make its case for continued secrecy. Displaying their naivete, they demonstrate their lack of understanding about how things work in Washington, D.C. As I indicated in my Monday article, when someone in the federal government needs a favor from someone else, the someone else is going to ask for something in return.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]The fact is that the CIA put in its request to Trump for continued secrecy of its JFK records long before yesterday. But "Art of the Deal" Trump obviously sat on the request, undoubtedly hoping that he could get what he wanted in return if he just continued holding out and conveying that he was ready to release the records.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]In the end, the CIA blinked, just as Trump knew it would. Contrary to what the mainstream press is asserting, the records undoubtedly contain more incriminating circumstantial evidence that fills in the mosaic of a U.S. national-security regime-change operation on November 22, 1963. That's what the mainstream media, forever wedded to the official story no matter how ridiculous and illogical it is, simply cannot bring themselves to confront.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Trump knew that he had the CIA over a barrel. As I indicated in my two articles this week, the CIA was between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, it could refuse to grant Trump what he wanted and let the records be released, which it knew would point to the CIA's guilt in the assassination. On the other hand, it could give Trump what he wanted and have to suffer the obvious inference that people would draw that the CIA was continuing to cover up incriminatory evidence.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]What did the CIA give Trump in return for Trump's extending the CIA's 50-year-plus secrecy? We don't know, but my hunch is that it pertains to Russia....[/FONT]

[Ken Garretson]

[FONT=&amp]JFK Murder Records Analysis[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Future of Freedom Foundation, The JFK Cover-Up Continues, Jacob G. Hornberger (shown at right), Oct. 27, 2017. While the mainstream media was announcing for the past two weeks that President Trump was going to release the CIA's long-secret records on the JFK assassination, I took a different position. On Monday of this week, I predicted that Trump would make a deal with the CIA that would enable the CIA to continue its cover-up of the JFK assassination. (See I Predict Trump Will Continue the CIA's JFK Assassination Cover-Up and No Smoking Guns in the JFK Records?)[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]On Thursday, the day of the deadline established by law for releasing the records, Trump granted the CIA's request for continued secrecy, on grounds of "national security," more than 50 years after the Kennedy assassination.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Please, don't start calling me Nostradamus. A blind man could see what was happening. Donald "Art of the Deal" Trump was obviously negotiating all week with the CIA, and he was obviously pushing to get what he wanted all the way up to the very last day. On Thursday, the deadline established by law for releasing the records, the CIA undoubtedly blinked and Trump presumably got what he wanted in return for granting CIA request for continued secrecy.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Some mainstream media commentators are criticizing the CIA for waiting until the very last day to make its case for continued secrecy. Displaying their naivete, they demonstrate their lack of understanding about how things work in Washington, D.C. As I indicated in my Monday article, when someone in the federal government needs a favor from someone else, the someone else is going to ask for something in return.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]The fact is that the CIA put in its request to Trump for continued secrecy of its JFK records long before yesterday. But "Art of the Deal" Trump obviously sat on the request, undoubtedly hoping that he could get what he wanted in return if he just continued holding out and conveying that he was ready to release the records.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]In the end, the CIA blinked, just as Trump knew it would. Contrary to what the mainstream press is asserting, the records undoubtedly contain more incriminating circumstantial evidence that fills in the mosaic of a U.S. national-security regime-change operation on November 22, 1963. That's what the mainstream media, forever wedded to the official story no matter how ridiculous and illogical it is, simply cannot bring themselves to confront.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Trump knew that he had the CIA over a barrel. As I indicated in my two articles this week, the CIA was between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, it could refuse to grant Trump what he wanted and let the records be released, which it knew would point to the CIA's guilt in the assassination. On the other hand, it could give Trump what he wanted and have to suffer the obvious inference that people would draw that the CIA was continuing to cover up incriminatory evidence.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]What did the CIA give Trump in return for Trump's extending the CIA's 50-year-plus secrecy? We don't know, but my hunch is that it pertains to Russia....[/FONT]

Interesting theory, may be correct. But it occurs to me that the exact opposite may be true. That is, Trump blinked. It has always been assumed that presidents enter office with great promises of openness and directness with the American people. Then the realities of the power of the intelligence community sinks in.

I think an equally likely reading of the events this week could be that Trump fully intended to release the records in full. But the powers that be let him know that's not how things work. After all wasn't that the result if the 63 coup?

[Peter Lemkin]

You can't play in the mud without getting dirty.
Photo credit: DonkeyHotey / WhoWhatWhy (CC BY-SA 2.0) See complete attribution below.
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."
Originally, this quote from 20th-century Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw meant that one shouldn't wrestle against a pig. Nowadays, it could be interpreted to mean that if you are fighting on the side of Donald Trump, you will inevitably be dragged in the mud.
The latest case in point is White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. The retired Marine Corps general had previously enjoyed a stellar reputation in Washington, DC, and he is one of the "adults in the room" who are supposed to be a positive influence on an erratic president.
That's clearly not happening, because when Trump picked yet another (!!!) fight with a gold-star family, Kelly dutifully followed his boss into the gutter.
It all began when the president, falsely and needlessly, claimed that Barack Obama and other former presidents had not called the families of soldiers killed in action. That verifiable falsehood prompted Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) to go public with the details of a call from the president to one of her constituents the wife of Army Sgt. La David Johnson.
During that conversation, which Wilson heard on speakerphone while sitting beside Mrs. Johnson, Trump upset the widow by saying her slain husband "knew what he signed up for."
Instead of simply issuing a statement that the president greatly regrets that his words, which were meant to be comforting, were misconstrued, the White House doubled down and began attacking Wilson. That's when Kelly, whose son was also killed in action, got involved.
At a press conference, the chief of staff told the story of how Wilson, during the dedication ceremony of an FBI building that he attended, stood in front of the audience and talked about how she had secured the funding for the building.
"We were stunned," Kelly told the assembled reporters. "Stunned that she had done it. Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned. But none of us went to the press and criticized."
As we now know, Kelly had made it all up. A video of the speech showed that Wilson said none of the things that the chief of staff, falsely and needlessly (you may recognize a pattern here), attributed to her.
Still, this falsehood also could have been fixed with a simple apology. After all, this speech happened a couple of years ago and people misremember things. Kelly, supposedly one of those cooler heads that will prevail when the president goes "full Trump," could then have urged all sides to calm down and keep in mind that the most important thing is to allow a grieving family to begin the process of healing. That didn't happen and next thing you know, Trump was basically (and counter-factually) accusing the widow of lying.
And just like that, an illustrious 47-year career that began when Kelly signed up for the Marine Corps in 1970 got stained and his integrity was undermined. And all of it was completely unnecessary.
But Trump likes to brawl in the mud and he expects his staff to get dirty with him. Just ask Sean Spicer, who lost his credibility on his very first day on the job. Or Kellyanne Conway, who makes up alternate facts as she goes along. Or any number of others who are doing the president's bidding and are soiling their own reputations in the process.
And don't expect any of this to stop because, as George Bernard Shaw would tell you, it is quite clear that the president likes it.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

File this under too weird to classify. I generally like Binney for his stances and whistleblowing. I'm sorry to hear he voted for Trump, even if he is correct that Clinton is a warmonger. However, that is not the weird part - the CIA HATED Binney and all the whistleblowers, but is calling him in for a talk with head of CIA supposedly at Trump's request....now that is weird. Obviously, they see advantage against possible charges by Muller in Binney's analysis, which to me seems sound - that someone in the DNC released some of the 'hacked' emails. However, that doesn't get to the main allegations against Team Trump one way or the other. I think a LOT of the claims of the Democrats against Team Trump are wrong no matter how much I hate Trump. The truth is apparently much murkier on the leaked emails - but they IMO are not very important compared with other actions by Team Trump. The Democrats and some independents try to make a big thing about Trump being friendly with Russia - in that I see nothing wrong. What is possibly wrong was the dirty money connection between Trump and a few of his minions and people who happened to be Russian or Russian bankers or Russian corporations - but no more or less so were they dirty money connections to some other country perceived as more friendly. Russia is NOT our enemy and is no threat to the USA - nor do I think they want to be. They'd really like to become club members in the corrupt groupings of Western groups - but are excluded because the US Military and IC need enemies and Russia is a convenient one. Russia is by NO means operating on the up and up financially or democratically - but NEITHER is the USA. I think they are about equally corrupt if in different ways. NSA must be having a fit that CIA is talking to Binney. Where this will lead is unknown, but obviously Team Trump is looking for ammo to shoot down whatever Mueller comes up with. Personally, I don't think Muller is going to disagree with Binney and thus not pursue that angle anyway. What a circus this time in political history is...neither the Republicans nor the Democrats look good or clean. I'd like to see both gone ASAP an be replaced by a multitude of third parties representing the People and not the special interests of the Oligarchy - which back both the Republicans and Democrats for the most part.

NSA Whistleblower Binney Says Trump Pushed Meeting With Pompeo



by Tyler Durden
Nov 8, 2017 6:05 PM

As we reported yesterday, President Donald Trump is receiving flack from hysterical liberals for reportedly advising CIA Director Mike Pompeo to meet with former senior NSA official Bill Binney, whom the media has labeled a conspiracy theorist for his belief that Russia wasn't responsible for hacking the DNC - or at least, if it was, it was the work of a deep-cover agent - because the files, according to Binney, were manually loaded onto a thumb drive, meaning the theft was likely the work of a disgruntled insider.

Binney discussed the meeting during an appearance on NBC, where he confirmed that Trump was probably made aware of his theory by watching one of his appearances on Fox News.
"He's trying to find some factual evidence," said Bill Binney, a former code-breaker at the National Security Agency.
Binney, a widely respected NSA whistleblower, left the agency in 2000 and has made claims that the NSA is capturing and storing nearly every US communication.
Binney told NBC News that Pompeo informed him that the CIA director took the meeting at the urging of the president.

Mike Pompeo
In a statement, a CIA spokeswoman did not dispute that, but declined to comment.
"The Director stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment," on Russian election interference, spokeswoman Nicole de Haay said.
She added, "The director has been adamant that CIA officers have the time, space and resources to make sound and unbiased assessments that are delivered to policy makers without fear or favor."
The intelligence community released a multilateral report in January 2017 concluding that Russia had sought to interfere in the 2016 election, which was won by Trump in a historic upset. One of the tactics, the intelligence community alleged, was the hack of the DNC, which was a massive public relations embarrassment for Clinton and eventually led to the resignation of former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the intelligence community and claimed its conclusion is unfounded. And Pompeo, a former Army officer and Harvard Law School graduate who gives Trump his intelligence briefing nearly every day, is suspected of kowtowing to Trump in his tepid approach to the issue.
Last month, the CIA had to correct Pompeo's erroneous statement that the intelligence assessment found that the Russian interference campaign did not alter the outcome of the election. No such conclusion was made.

NBC pointed out that it is extremely unusual for a CIA director to meet with someone like Binney, who for years has accused US intelligence agencies of subverting the constitution and violating the civil rights of Americans. However, Binney - while a controversial figure in the US - has been praised abroad as a whistle blower and truth teller.
However, the meeting to discuss the narrative that directly contravenes the findings of the US intelligence community was so productive that Pompeo is already arranging further meetings between NSA and FBI officials and Binney to discuss his analysis. Binney said two unnamed CIA analysts accompanied Pompeo during the meeting at CIA headquarters.
Binney reportedly also raised the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich as a suspicious, given its proximity to the release of the hacked documents. There has been speculation that Rich was the one who leaked the emails.
Binney said he did not discuss with Pompeo his longstanding allegations that U.S. intelligence agencies have been acting illegally. Binney said he voted for Trump, because he considered Democrat Hillary Clinton "a war monger.

[Peter Lemkin]

NOVEMBER 21, 2017 | CELIA WEXLER

FORGET ABOUT PARDONING A TURKEY: GRANT THIS JOURNALIST ASYLUM

Mexican journalist Emilio Gutierrez faces deportation from US. Photo credit: Noel St. John / National Press Club.
In 2008, Emilio Gutierrez fled Mexico because of serious death threats. Ten years later, he faces imminent deportation.
You would think that President Donald Trump would understand the plight of Mexican journalists whose reporting on drug traffickers and government corruption have led them to flee for their lives. After all, he appears to understand that Mexico often can be a very dangerous place.
Yet neither the Trump nor the Obama White House seems to have understood the danger these reporters are in. Instead, immigration officials have been largely deaf to legitimate requests for asylum, even when journalists' stories make it very clear which side they are on and why they must flee.
Consider the case of journalist Emilio Gutierrez. After living in limbo in the US for a decade, Gutierrez may be sent back to Mexico as soon as this week.
On November 16, Gutierrez was summoned to a meeting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. Officials threatened to deport him that day. On Friday, November 17, an immigration judge refused a request from his lawyer to stay the deportation order.
The rush to judgement on the Mexican journalist, after he's spent a decade in immigration limbo, seems suspicious.

[URL="https://twitter.com/NPCPresident/status/931940228125818887"]
[/URL]
[URL="https://twitter.com/NPCPresident"]NPC President
@NPCPresident[/URL]


@PressClubDC & @NPCInstitute are fighting to keep in the U.S.&alive our 2017 Aubuchon press freedom award winner Emilio Gutierrez Soto http://bit.ly/2zf9jqp
6:40 PM - Nov 18, 2017
[URL="https://t.co/MZhm0Jqlaz"]

Mexican journalist, son on verge of deportation after asylum request denied

ICE officials informed Emilio Gutiérrez-Soto they planned to deport him and his son after his asylum petition was denied.
elpasotimes.com

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Just six weeks ago, Gutierrez was honored by the National Press Club with its Press Freedom Award, an honor he accepted for all Mexican journalists who are now, as he put it, "immersed in a great darkness." Gutierrez also spoke out against the way US immigration authorities have treated him and his Mexican colleagues.
Mexican journalists have been held hostage by a violent drug war south of the border, as well as corruption in the Mexican military given the power to stop it a state of affairs the Mexican government has seemed unable to address.
Gutierrez was working for a newspaper in the Mexican state of Chihuahua when he and his teenage son fled the country in 2008 after learning that an officer in the Mexican military had ordered his murder, and after 50 soldiers had raided his home. The reprisals followed his reports that Mexican soldiers had robbed people trying to flee the country and cross into the US.
You would think that a respected journalist with credible evidence, including press clippings, would be able to make his case for asylum pretty rapidly. But that has not been the case. After turning himself in, Gutierrez spent more than seven months in detention in the US. (His son was able to leave detention sooner and stay with relatives.)
His requests for an asylum hearing were met with Kafkaesque delay from US immigration officials. National Press Club President Jeff Ballou charged that the journalist had been a victim of "bureaucratic indifference."
Unable to work as a journalist in the US, Gutierrez sold his house in Mexico, and even operated a food truck for a time to get by. His requests for asylum hearings faced repeated delays, lasting years.
It took him eight years to get a hearing, and then he learned that his documentation was not sufficiently persuasive. That was last year, and now, the US seems to have decided to order deportation before Gutierrez's appeals have been exhausted.
Given how sensitive this White House is to criticism, it seems likely that Gutierrez's remarks angered somebody at the Department of Homeland Security. But denying him asylum an almost certain death sentence seems a bit over the top, even for Trump and his cabinet.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls Mexico the Western Hemisphere's "deadliest country for the media. When journalists cover subjects linked to organized crime or political corruption (especially at the local level), they immediately become targets and are often executed in cold blood." In 2017 alone, 11 journalists have been killed.
Gutierrez has done nothing wrong. He poses no threat to the US. Indeed, he would be an asset to this country, having demonstrated both courage and integrity as a dogged reporter. All of this nation's major journalism groups are standing with this journalist, whose deportation, they assert, "not only puts an individual reporter in danger, but also would have a chilling effect on truth-telling everywhere."
If the president wants to earn the media's praise, he could start by giving this one Mexican reporter the asylum he so richly deserves.

[Peter Lemkin]

NOVEMBER 20, 2017 | PETER DALE SCOTT

PETER DALE SCOTT ON ENLIGHTENMENT VALUES IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

Apotheosis of Washington: Science. Photo credit: US Capitol / Flickr
On a panel at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Peter Dale Scott expressed concern about the decay of the US commitment to global peace and collective security, as shown in the recent expansion of unilateral lethal US strikes against terrorists, sometimes with no legal authority. But he also voiced words of encouragement for those troubled by this, recalling the successes of the Civil Rights Movement and the people who later helped end the Vietnam War.
Peter Dale Scott is a former Canadian diplomat, Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, co-founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies program at Berkeley, poet, and 2002 recipient of the Lannan Poetry Award.

---

I want to thank the Commonwealth Club and George Hammond for devising this most timely conversation. America has indeed veered from Enlightenment when our president denies global warming and rejects international cooperation to address it. But I do not believe that such militant anti-scientism can prevail.1
I am much more concerned for those enlightenment values enunciated by Immanuel Kant, in his essay "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch." Kant's visionary ambition "the end of all hostilities" contained important instrumental ideas. One was: "Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished." Another: "No state shall by force interfere with the constitution or government of another state."2
America honored the first principle for only a few years, but it honored the second as recently as that great American-inspired achievement, the 1945 UN Charter. Charter Article 2(4), to which the US is treaty-bound, requires states to "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force." For 60 years America's observance of this rule has eroded; until under Trump it is virtually ignored.3 But America's global unilateralism cannot be blamed on Trump; its roots are very deep and very old.4
The American Constitution marks the first major political implementation of Enlightenment values: an outstanding and enduring achievement. Of necessity, it was also very imperfect, doing much for liberty, but nothing to end slavery.5 This contradiction led to the Civil War and emancipation. These divisions, still with us, underlie much of our intemperate public discourse. The slow processes of emancipation and adjustment are still unfinished.
As a non-violent radical conservative, I am ambivalent about Lincoln's Civil War. Slavery was an infamy that had to go. But the war accelerated America on a long process, still with us, of interventionism and imposing social change through military violence.6 (That too has its source in an Enlightenment idea Rousseau's unfortunate notion of forcing men to be free.) The Civil War also converted the United States from a plural noun to a singular one. As the southern historian Shelby Foote noted, "Before the war, it was said the United States are' … And after the war it was always the United States is.'"7
This change from an "are" to an "is" was important. Washington, paralyzed for years over the slavery issue, now became an active agency for vigorous intervention: in the South (Reconstruction), in the West (the escalation of Indian Wars),8 and later overseas (Cuba and the Philippines). Most Americans are unaware of the continuity from the Indian Wars of the 1860s and 70s, to the Philippine interventions of the 1900s and 1950s, to the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.9
Cartoon: Uncle Sam offering on one hand a soldier and on the other a "School Teacher" to a group of reluctant Filipinos, telling them that the choice is theirs. Photo credit: Puck / Library of Congress

One source of our present discontent can be found in this evolution. Intervention in the south produced a political reaction, and in 1876 militarized Reconstruction America's first exercise in "nation-building" largely ended in failure. The subsequent interventions elsewhere, predictably, have aroused reactions no less intense. But those infuriated elsewhere cannot vote. Instead many become terrorists.
Experts repeatedly advise that the Global War Against Terrorism is counterproductive: "If the terrorist group can recruit five new members for every terrorist killed or captured, the battle against the terrorist organization is lost."10As a result of such a campaign we see terrorist counterattacks against the countries that target them; and these in turn encourage public support for heightened revenge. We are currently mired in this avoidable dialectic.11
We, and our politicians, are very divided about intervention at home. But most politicians, along with our ruling elites and media, are so united in their support of interventions abroad that the underlying principle of UN collective security has been forgotten.
War has become an immensely lucrative activity, generating many lobbies, from the military-industrial complex,12 to others like the nation-building business oligopoly.13 Thus Congress was silent when Trump "cleared the way … for offensive strikes in Somalia,"14 and started "paving the way for lethal strikes against terrorists in Niger,"15 with no legal authority.16
Citing the Soviet Union, it has become fashionable to mock the folly of those who would seek to implement visionary ideas in the real world. A key example of renounced idealism is the Kellogg-Briand Treaty of 1928, which outlawed war as an instrument of national policy. Recently Henry Kissinger called it "meaningless"; George Kennan called it "childish." They could hardly have spoken otherwise. Both men were only too aware that they were violating a treaty (and a Charter) that America had not only signed but inspired and brought into being: Kissinger in Cambodia, Kennan by underwriting a guerrilla army in the Ukraine.17
Measured by the events that led up to World War Two, the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, lacking sanctions, can be assessed as a failure. But by creating the notion of a crime against peace, it was the legal foundation for the Nuremberg trials, following which the interdiction of aggressive war was confirmed and broadened by the United Nations Charter. A recent book argues compellingly that in this way the Kellogg-Briand idea has slowly acquired its needed sanctions.18
Prosecutors interrogating witnesses during Nuremberg trials. Photo credit: National Archives / Wikimedia

Visionary Enlightenment ideas, such as "the end of all hostilities," can only be implemented very slowly.19 Nevertheless, they can.20
What can we in this small room do to encourage American public politics back towards enlightenment decorum, in the service of a more peaceful future? The obvious first step is to eschew all hatred in ourselves when defending reason. We should also condemn it in others, from Antifa and Nazis in the streets, to sneering commentators in the media, to educators who condescend toward those undereducated in our society who may be truly suffering.
America is still to be both believed in, and questioned. We in this room can begin by questioning our own enlightenment values which so alienate the supporters of Trump. Trump is on sure ground when he says over and over to cheering crowds, "this is a nation of believers." We who are also questioners should recognize that enlightenment values are not an absolute, but part of an ongoing dialectical process between faith and reason, which is as old as Plato's Euthyphro and the Book of Job.
There is a timeless tension between belief and enlightenment. Humanity is both a condition (a form of being) and a process (a becoming). The good life is a harmonious reconciliation of both. Let me say as a Canadian, despite all else I have said tonight, that I regard America as one of the world's best examples of this harmony. Even under Trump.
Enlightenment values, historically, have concerned process, not being. The word itself implies change. The 18th century enlightenment (there have been others), was a polemical effort to replace dogmas with ideas: it never fully escaped the shadow of Voltaire's écrasez l'infame.21 The Enlightenment inspired the American Constitution and the separation of church and state (a very good idea). It also inspired Marx's idea that religion was "the opium of the masses" a false notion that contributed to the failure of the Russian revolution.
Just as we in this room need equanimity, so the nation outside needs equilibrium. Good ideas unchecked can produce their violent opposite, accelerating the natural dialectic of history.22 The dream of liberté and égalité, unrestrained, produced in rapid order the French Revolution, Napoleon, the Metternichian reaction. Similarly, the spread of these ideas to the Middle East, most recently in the Arab Spring, has produced violence in many countries, and also militant reactionary Salafism, underwritten by the nervous monarchies of the Persian Gulf. The consequent dislocation of masses of refugees now threatens the equilibrium of Europe, encouraging racist xenophobia.
US Army Soldiers from Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division in Kirkuk, Iraq, Feb. 28, 2008. Photo credit: The US Army / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

We have seen the same xenophobic reaction in America after 9/11, but to a far smaller degree. There are no easy formulas for returning America in the direction of tolerance and compassion. But I am old enough to remember the nightmare in America of McCarthyism, and how McCarthy's own excesses brought that nightmare to a dramatic end.
America today is gripped by another nightmare, of hysterical over-reaction to terrorism.23 A state of emergency, and an Act authorizing America's longest war, were proclaimed after 9/11 to deal with al-Qaeda; they are still in force, resulting in suspensions of parts of the American Constitution.24 None of this is by accident. The emergency allows US armies in Asia to protect US investments in Kazakhstan, and a US Brigade in Ohio to protect against any resurgence of a successful anti-war movement in America.25
Thus I argue in my book The American Deep State that, as a first step, Congress should end the state of emergency and restore the Constitution.26 That will not happen soon. All power corrupts, all imperial power intoxicates, and all great previous empires have ended in idiocy. The British-French Suez Canal folly in 1956, for example, was idiotic.27 So was the Soviet folly that year in Hungary, contributing not only to Moscow's eventual loss of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, but the final demise of the once global Communist dream.
American folly became flagrant in the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars. It is linked to today's White House folly of anti-scientism: Both arise from a US political economy based on the petrodollar, and both are promoted by petrodollar interests.28 We clearly need to wean our economy from its dependence on petroleum, for the sake of both peace and climate stability.
Surely the American people, who inspired the successful Civil Rights Movement and who later helped end the Vietnam War, can successfully mobilize to demand a more reasonable, and realistic, foreign policy for a multipolar world.
To this end, we can all work to embody and promote among ourselves America's historic spirit of comity among differences, achieved through widely dispersed checks and balances.

Endnotes

.

1. From 2008 to 2015, under Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, 2000 environmental scientists were fired, and decades of governmental research were discarded, sometimes in landfill. It was a nightmare of anti-scientific reaction, possibly funded by the American Koch brothers. But it ended.

2. Immanuel Kant, "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch," in Andrew J. Williams, Amelia Hadfield, J. Simon Rofe, International History and International Relations (New York: Routledge, 2012), 73.

3. See e.g. Marty Lederman, "Why the strikes against Syria probably violate the U.N. Charter and (therefore) the U.S. Constitution," JustSecurity, April 6, 2017, https://www.justsecurity.org/39674/syria...stitution/.

4. See Brian Bogart, "US Conflicts Abroad Since World War II: America Declassified Chronicling the Official History of US Conflict Dependence," Institute for Policy Research and Development.

5. The Constitution actually made arrangements to perpetuate slavery, which is why William Lloyd Garrison detested and publicly burned it, calling it as "a Covenant with Death, an Agreement with Hell."

6. There were of course examples of military intervention before the early Indian wars, the Mexican-American War but the scale and intensity radically increased.

7. Shelby Foote, Interviewed in the documentary series The Civil War (PBS): "…. And that sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an is'." The change was noticed in 1887 by the Washington Post:
There was a time a few years ago when the United States was spoken of in the plural number. Men said "the United States are" "the United States have" "the United States were." But the war changed all that. Along the line of fire from the Chesapeake to Sabine Pass was settled forever the question of grammar. Not Wells, or Green, or Lindley Murray decided it, but the sabers of Sheridan, the muskets of Sherman, the artillery of Grant. … The surrender of Mr. Davis and Gen. Lee meant a transition from the plural to the singular. (Washington Post, April 24, 1887, 4)

8. Before the Civil War the largest and longest Indian War was the Second Seminole War (18351842), with estimated casualties of 3,000 Seminoles (John K. Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War [Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 1967]. 321). In 1894, the US Census Bureau estimated that 30,000 Indian corpses had been "found by the whites" in all the wars between 1789 and 1891, adding that the actual number of deaths "must be very much higher." Its confirmed estimate for the wars between 1846 and 1891 was that 11,000 Indians had been killed (Bureau of the Census Report on Indians taxed and Indians not taxed in the United States (except Alaska) at the Eleventh Census: 1890 [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1894], 63740).

9. Peter Dale Scott, "Atrocity and its Discontents: U.S. Double-Mindedness About Massacre;" in Adam Jones, ed. Genocide, War Crimes and the West: Ending the Culture of Impunity (London: Zed Press, 2004).

10. Graeme C. S. Steven and Rohan Gunaratna, Counterterrorism: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004), 31. For other examples of expertise weighing in against current U.S. counterterrorism strategies, see The American Deep State, 174-75.

11. Cf. Peter Dale Scott, "Why Americans Must End America's Self-Generating Wars," Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, April 22, 2015, http://apjjf.org/2012/10/36/Peter-Dale-S...ticle.html.

12. Retired Army Colonel Lawrence B. "Larry" Wilkerson, former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, has concluded from his insider experience that "We have become a national security state, that means our reason for existing is war and defense contractors are the merchants of death" (Speech at Code Pink Conference: Divest from the War Machine, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFJIBU-YBsY). Wilkerson reports that 40 percent of US army recruits now come from just seven states, such as Alabama and West Virginia, increasingly because of poverty. (Officers can look forward in retirement to good jobs in the defense industries, the raw recruits to PTSD and opioids.)

13. In 2015, just one company, Chemonics International, "received a contract of $9.5bn over eight years from USAid the largest contract ever from the government agency Devex reports. Only one other contractor receives more USAid awards, the Partnership for Supply Chain Management, which is a conglomerate of 13 companies" ("Top US government aid partner to pay $500k damages to African American job applicants," Guardian, November 21, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/global-devel...CMP=twt_gu).

14. Eric Schmitt, "U.S. Carries Out Drone Strike Against Shabab Militants in Somalia,"

15. Ken Dilanian, Courtney Kube, William M. Arkin, Hans Nichols And Cynthia Mcfadden.

16. Witness the action of the House just now: "The House has just approved a nearly 700 billion dollar Military Spending Bill. That is almost 100 billion dollars more than President Trump had asked for….. The House vote was an overwhelming 356 to 70 with 127 Democrats voting in favor. A similar measure is expected to pass the Senate, although lawmakers will have to agree on raising the budget cap first." ("Divided Congress Unites to Spend $700B on Military and War," The Real News, November 18, 2017,http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20484:Di...ry-and-War).

17. Mario del Pero, "The Role of Covert Operations in US Cold War Foreign Policy," in Heike Bungert, Jan G. Heitmann, Michael Wala, eds., Secret Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (London; Frank Cass, 2003), 71-73.

18. Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017): "As its effects reverberated across the globe, it reshaped the world map, catalyzed the human rights revolution, enabled the use of economic sanctions as a tool of law enforcement, and ignited the explosion in the number of international organizations that regulate so many aspects of our daily lives." The book may be ahead of its time: the New York Times chose a prominent interventionist, Max Boot, to review it. His predictable judgment: "'There are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them,' George Orwell wrote. The notion that the Kellogg-Briand Pact was a raging success is one of them" (Max Boot, "When the Governments of the World Agreed to Banish War," New York Times, September 21, 2017).

19. Another such idea was Young Europe's dream of a united Europe, frustrated in 1848, but implemented a century later (with help from America).

20. This is, I believe, what I call the "prevailable" direction in history. Cf. Peter Dale Scott, The American Deep State (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 179, 181. I define my term "prevailable will of the people" in Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 270.

21. Consider, for example, Kant's essay "What Is Enlightenment?": "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage…. It is more nearly possible, however, for the public to enlighten itself; indeed, if it is only given freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable…. This enlightenment requires nothing but freedomand the most innocent of all that may be called freedom': freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters. Now I hear the cry from all sides: Do not argue!' The officer says: Do not arguedrill!' The tax collector: Do not arguepay!' The pastor: "Do not arguebelieve!'" (Immanuel Kant, ""What Is Enlightenment?" http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html).

22. We can include in these unchecked ideas America's naïve faith that you can improve what we think of as the "third world" with vast sums of money, in so-called "nation-building" or modernization programs. Although much good has been achieved on a small scale, major projects have always led to major corruption. Yet as Bradley Simpson has observed, "modernization … was part of a larger, widely dispersed fabric of thinking about the process of becoming modern, the origins of which stretch back to the Enlightenment" (Bradley R. Simpson, Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968 [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008], 8).

23. From my book The American Deep State, 139-40:
I call our new hysteria the "Doomsday Mania," after the Doomsday Project that (as we saw in chapter 7) was the Pentagon's name for the twenty years of COG planning to suspend parts of the U.S. Constitution. The Doomsday Project was escalated under Reagan in 1982 as emergency planning "to keep the White House and Pentagon running during and after a nuclear war or some other major crisis." Expanded by the end of the Reagan presidency to cover planning for any emergency, the planning was entrusted to a secret committee including Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, even when both men were no longer in the U.S. government.24 Composed mostly of fellow Republicans, even under Clinton, at least one section of the committee became what a former Pentagon official described as in effect "a secret government-in-waiting." From its outset in 1982 to its implantation on 9/11, the Doomsday Project was indeed apocalyptic in its baseless determination that America faced a terrorist crisis so dire that the Constitution needed to be partly set aside. A decade before 9/11, its far-reaching arrangements were expanding the groundwork of Oliver North, to create what CNN in 1991 already described as a "shadow government . . . about which you know nothing."

24. Scott, The American Deep State, 31-34.

25. Scott, The American Deep State, 9, 68, 89. "The United States has been at war continuously since the attacks of 9/11 and now has just over 240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories" ("America's Forever Wars," editorial, New York Times, October 22, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/opini...html?_r=0). (3) An international Gallup Poll confirmed in 2014 that "The rest of world believes that the United States is the country that poses the greatest threat to world peace, beating out all challengers by a wide margin" (Meredith Bennett-Smith, "Womp! This Country Was Named The Greatest Threat To World Peace," Huffington Post, January 2, 2014, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/0...1824.html). The New York Times reported this finding in their online International Business Times, but not their domestic print edition. See Eric Brown, "Leading Threat to World Peace is…America?" Cf. Paul Street, ZMagazine, February 24, 2014.

26. Scott, The American Deep State, 179-82.

27. Before that, there were the idiotic conditions both countries imposed on Germany at Versailles in 1919, and their consequence the Second World War. I should mention also the "Jameson raid" of 1895, as part of a process which "provoked, predictably, a responsive buildup from other powers, particularly France and Germany; and this ultimately made World War I (and its sequel, World War II) all but inevitable" (Scott, The American Deep State, 170).

28. How do we enjoy more than our share of the world's resources? Partly from financial management and control of petromarkets, which leads to dominance also in the arms market. Here I am telescoping quite lengthy arguments in The American Deep State; also David E. Spiro, The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999).

[Peter Lemkin]

F.C.C. Plans Net Neutrality Repeal in a Victory for Telecoms

By CECILIA KANG NOV. 21, 2017

The F.C.C. is set to dismantle net neutrality rules that require internet providers to give consumers equal access to all content online.
The Federal Communications Commission released a plan on Tuesday to dismantle landmark regulations that ensure equal access to the internet, clearing the way for internet service companies to charge users more to see certain content and to curb access to some websites.
The proposal, made by the F.C.C. chairman, Ajit Pai, is a sweeping repeal of rules put in place by the Obama administration. The rules prohibit high-speed internet service providers, or I.S.P.s, from stopping or slowing down the delivery of websites. They also prevent the companies from charging customers extra fees for high-quality streaming and other services.
The announcement set off a fight over free speech and the control of the internet, pitting telecom titans like AT&T and Verizon against internet giants like Google and Amazon. The internet companies warned that rolling back the rules could make the telecom companies powerful gatekeepers to information and entertainment. The telecom companies say that the existing rules prevent them from offering customers a wider selection of services at higher and lower price points.
"Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet," Mr. Pai said in a statement. "Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that's best for them."
Mr. Pai, a Republican who has pursued an aggressive deregulation agenda, was widely expected to have his plan approved during a meeting on Dec. 14. The two other Republicans on the commission generally vote with Mr. Pai, giving them a majority over the two Democrats.
Telecom and internet companies are expected to lobby hard in Washington and directly to the public as they did when the current rules were adopted.
Some internet companies were expected to put up a fight to prevent the proposal from taking hold. The Internet Association, an industry group, joined a legal effort in 2015 to protect the existing rules. The agency has already received 20 million public comments, many of them in opposition of changing the rules, since Mr. Pai announced the broad outlines of his thinking early this year.
The big companies that provide internet access to phones and computers have fought for years against broadband regulations. Under the new plan, broadband providers will be able to block access, slow down or speed up service for its business partners in some cases as long as they notify customers.
"This action will return broadband in the U.S. to a regulatory regime that emphasizes private investment and innovation over lumbering government intervention," said Joan Marsh, a vice president at AT&T.
Big online companies like Google and Facebook say the repeal proposal would allow telecom companies to play favorites by charging customers for accessing some sites or by slowing speeds to others. The existing rules were written to prevent such arrangements, adopting a policy often called net neutrality.
"We are disappointed that the proposal announced today by the F.C.C. fails to maintain the strong net neutrality protections that will ensure the internet remains open for everyone," Erin Egan, a vice president at Facebook, said in a statement. "We will work with all stakeholders committed to this principle."
Small online companies believe the proposal would hurt innovation, because telecom companies could force them to pay more for the faster connections. Only the largest companies, they say, would be able to afford the expense of making sure their sites received preferred treatment. Companies like Etsy and Pinterest, for example, credit their start to the promise of free and open access on the internet.
And consumers, the online companies say, may see their costs go up if, for example, they want high-quality access to popular websites like Netflix, a company that depends on fast connections for its streaming videos. Netflix said on Tuesday that it opposed Mr. Pai's proposal.


Ajit Pai, the Federal Communications Commission chairman. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times The action "represents the end of net neutrality as we know it and defies the will of millions of Americans," said Michael Beckerman, chief executive of the Internet Association, a lobbying group that represents Google, Facebook, Amazon and other tech companies.
Mr. Pai said the current rules had been adopted to stop only theoretical harm. He said the rules limit consumer choice because telecom companies cannot offer different tiers of service, for example. As a result, he said, internet service companies cannot experiment with new business models that could help them compete with online businesses like Netflix, Google and Facebook.
"It's depressed investment in building and expanding broadband networks and deterred innovation," Mr. Pai said Tuesday.
Comcast, one of the country's biggest broadband companies, said it would not slow websites that contain legally permitted material.
"We do not and will not block, throttle, or discriminate against lawful content and we will be transparent with our customers about these policies," the company said.
In a call with reporters, F.C.C. officials said the blocking and slowing of some content could be seen as anticompetitive. Those practices, they said, would be policed by the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department.
The plan to repeal the existing rules, passed in 2015, would reverse a hallmark decision by the agency to consider broadband a public utility, as essential as phones and electricity. The earlier decision created the legal foundation for the current rules and underscored the importance of high-speed internet service. It was put in place by Tom Wheeler, an F.C.C. chairman under President Obama.
Mr. Pai, who was appointed chairman by President Trump in January, has eliminated numerous regulations during his first year.
The agency has stripped down rules governing television broadcasters, newspapers and telecom companies that were meant to protect the public interest. On Tuesday, in addition to the net neutrality rollback, Mr. Pai announced a plan to eliminate a rule limiting any corporation from controlling broadcasts that can reach more than 39 percent of American homes.
The fight over net neutrality could end up being one of his biggest and most fraught decisions. For more than a decade, the agency has struggled with how to regulate internet service, leading to extended legal battles. The rules adopted under Mr. Wheeler were upheld in 2016 by a federal appeals court in Washington.
The proposal released on Tuesday will probably make its way to court as well. And companies like Google and Facebook are expected to push the public to speak out against the plan. They coordinated a huge online protest against the possible changes in July.
Some of the lobbying could take place in Congress, even though it may change little because Republicans control both houses. Nevertheless, Democrats have vowed to try to reconstruct the strict rules adopted by the F.C.C. in 2015.
The next three weeks promise to hold intense lobbying from both sides, but that might not be the end of it. The regulation of internet providers has already swung once on a change in the Oval Office.

Net Neutrality

Network neutralitythe idea that Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, without improper discrimination in favor of particular apps, sites or servicesis a principle that must be upheld to protect the future of our open Internet. It's a principle that's faced many threats over the years, such as ISPs forging packets to tamper with certain kinds of traffic or slowing down or even outright blocking protocols or applications.
In 2010, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) attempted to combat these threats with a set of Open Internet rules. But its efforts were full of legal and practical holes. In 2014, after a legal challenge from Verizon, those rules were overturned, and the FCC set about drafting a new set of rules better suited to the challenge.
It was clear that the FCC was going to need some help from the Internet. And that's exactly what happened. Millions of users weighed in, demanding that the FCC finally get net neutrality right, and issue rules that made sense and would actually hold up in court. EFF alone drove hundreds of thousands of comments through our online portal DearFCC.
As a direct result of that intense public activism and scrutiny, the FCC produced rules that we could supportin part because, in addition to the bright line rules against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization of Internet traffic, they include strict "forbearance" restrictions on what the FCC can do without holding another rulemaking.
There's no silver bullet for net neutrality. The FCC order plays a role by forbidding ISPs from meddling with traffic in certain ways. But transparency is also key: ISPs must be open about how traffic is managed over their networks in order for both users and the FCC to know when there's a problem. Local governments can also play a crucial role by supporting competitive municipal and community networks. When users can vote with their feet, service providers have a strong incentive not to act in non-neutral ways.
We want the Internet to live up to its promise, fostering innovation, creativity, and freedom. We don't want regulations that will turn ISPs into gatekeepers, making special deals with a few companies and inhibiting new competition, innovation and expression.

[Peter Lemkin]

Todayand Every DayWe Fight to Defend the Open Internet

BY CORYNNE MCSHERRY
NOVEMBER 21, 2017




Today, we heard from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about its plans to devastate Network Neutrality. Instead of responding to the millions of Americans who want to protect the free and open Internet, the FCC instead is ceding to the demands of a handful of massive ISPs, like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.
EFF will be analyzing the full plan when it is released. But based on what we know so far, it's clear that Chairman Pai is seeking to reverse the 2015 Open Internet Order that established clear but light touch protections for Internet users and Internet innovation. The FCC's new approach invites a future where only the largest Internet, cable, and telephone companies survive, while every start-up, small business, and new innovator is crowded outand the voices of nonprofits and ordinary individuals are suppressed. Costs will go up, as ISPs take advantage of monopoly power to raise rates on edge providers and consumers alike. And the FCC's proposed plan adds salt to the wound by interfering with state efforts to protect consumer privacy and competition.
The FCC today abdicates a fundamental responsibilitybut Internet users won't. Today, and every day, we will fight to defend net neutrality. Tell Congress that lawmakers must act to defend our open Internet.