So let's ponder this arising cult of "Longtermism". Haven't heard of it? Well, I think we've been living with the consequences for some time now.
Apparently, "Longtermism" is a philosophical belief system, an ideology if you will, manifest widely among our overlords and their minions, particularly in Silicon Valley and its offshoots and in higher order academia. It's an ideology that posits human value in the Future, distant Future in many cases, and effectively devalues humanity in the present. One's vision, supposedly, should be on the Future, longterm benefit, wherein, it is thought/believed that there will be trillions of humans living all over the Universe, happy and wise, and descended from the Good People of today.
Those Good People, of course, are the few and favored oligarchs and their closest servants. They and only they are to be protected at all costs no matter what happens in the present and near future, because they and only they will be the progenitors of the Wonderful World of Tomorrow, filled with joy and ease and Happiness.
There are far too many people on the earth today and thus their cull through disease and war and the effects of climate change and so many other crises is meet and just and should not be effectively interfered with -- so long as the overclass is protected from the consequences of these crises.
Whatever happens in the political realm is irrelevant; the economy is irrelevant. What's relevant right now is holding on to power over the safety of the overlord class. So long as they -- and only they -- survive, Future Joy will be assured for their trillions of descendants.
Which is the sole point of "Longtermism."
Maintaining a polite distance from the rabble of today helps maintain the power of the overclass. This process was worked out long ago by royalty and the stars of the entertainment world. CEOs and such have a long history of rudeness toward the masses, but in the Brave New World of libertarian freaks who actually have power these days, polite indifference combines with exploitative interest to assure an unbroken continuation of power.
According to Longtermists, there won't be any rabble to contend with, exploit or oppress in the Wonderful World of Tomorrow. All the struggles we see today will be over. Everyone will be happy and content and will be as gods -- or would be in the context of today. In their own context, the very concept of "gods" would be unknown. Everyone would be a god, so no one would necessarily be better than any other.
We could go on all day filling out their fantasy, but let's instead focus on the consequences right now.
Why are we living in such bizarre, chaotic, and for many of us deadly times? What's going on? How did things get so badly out of whack?
The ideology of "Longtermism" provides at least a hint of an answer.
The question really is, "What can we do about it?"
Hm. As we were coming back from Santa Fe last night around midnight, we passed by Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch as we often do, and sure enough the "hacienda" on the mesa-edge was blazing with lights as if someone were there.
Epstein has been dead for a week or more not quite a week, so they say, and as far as we know he hasn't been at the ranch for years, but that's really hard to confirm because there is a secluded airstrip on the ranch that can't be seen from the road or anywhere the public might have access to. If he'd flown in, who would know? That's always a question with people like this. Who would actually know except his closest inner circle?
Despite reports of his death in custody in New York, there has been speculation that he's alive and all of the news reports are a distraction and a ruse. Supposedly -- if he is alive -- he's been spirited to Israel or Europe or somewhere. Maybe. I'm not buying it, but it's a thought. And why wouldn't he be spirited to the ranch for that matter? It might make more sense in some ways.
But we don't know, and we're not likely to know, the truth of what's going on here, in part because it doesn't concern us. Our Betters will take care of it as they always do. We should just let the show proceed, no?
[Not only that. Yesterday we saw a car patrolling the perimeter of the ranch, something I don't think we've ever seen before. It looked a lot like an unmarked police car, not the usual ranch vehicles we've seen quite often. Interesting...]
What a freaking mess. What have we done to deserve this? [I'm sure the many targeted peoples under the bombs raining down on them from the Empire Above wonder the same damn thing...]
Views from Damascus overnight resemble Baghdad on Shock n Awe night so many years ago. Remember? I don't know anymore whether people do. There's been so much misery, mayhem and bloodshed Over There, it's hard to keep track, isn't it?
The proximate cause of the latest "coalition" air strikes (primarily from off shore missile launches) of yet another Middle Eastern city is the supposed use of prohibited chemical weapons against a rebel stronghold in the suburbs of Damascus.
Whether it actually happened and who did it if it did is subject of some dispute. There are statements that it didn't happen at all. There are statements that it was staged. There are statements that it was done by outside forces. There are statements that it was done by the rebels themselves... Yadda, yadda.
None of us is in a position to know. Whether our military and civilian rulers know much more than we do is a mystery. All we can say with any certainty is that the protagonists of these wars and rebellions tend to be dissemblers.
The launching of retaliatory missiles is essentially de rigeur these days. It's what's done to show the non-compliant who's the boss. It hasn't worked very well with the Assad regime, and it doesn't seem to quell rebellions either. It's just a Thing. Blowing shit up is the way things are done by the Empire and by the Rebel Alliance. Sometimes I think they cause misery for the fun of it.
So they just blow things up. People are in the way, oh well!
Jeepus, I hate this. I was going round and round about the Stephon Clark Thing in Sacramento. My point was that I just want the killing to stop, and he didn't quite get it. Huh? Whut?
The killing. To. Stop.
We seem to be locked into this situation where killing is the number one option when things go sideways or there's a perception of a threat of some sort. When police kill, they're just taking their cue from our Dauntless Leaders. Killing is their Go To solution to practically everything. They're no too bright are they?
Meanwhile the White House (and many other prominent elements of society) are enveloped in one scandal after another. I don't think we've ever had a mobbed up gangster sitting on the throne, but we do now, and our institutions have no idea how to deal with it/him. He's been hamstrung in various ways, but that's not sufficient. He uses what powers he has remaining for making much mischief and propping up his frail ego. This is hardly presidential, but I don't think it much matters any more.
The presidency itself has long since been diminished by various unfortunate and unpleasant occupants and their scandals, deceptions, and military adventures. It's close to time for something else again.
The Ruling Class seems happy to have the Rabble wallowing in it. Distraction? Sure. Entertainment? Yep. A masque?
We've been hearing this for over a year now, ever since Trump ascended the throne and before.
"Existential Crisis!!!! Run and Hide!!!! Resist!!!!! The Republic is Doomed!!!!! Russia! Russia!!! Russia!!!!" Yadda, yadda.
And I've been thinking all this time that if the situation really is as described by the Doomsayers then surely there would be an intervention. Surely there would be.
Our government is quite adept at dealing with existential crises by any means necessary. And over the course of the current regime, we've seen plenty of instances in which this or that crisis or looming catastrophe brought on by Himself has been... handled... one way or another to mitigate the damage and effects that following the dictates from On High would have caused.
That's not to say things have been stabilized by any means. This has been a roller-coaster ride of unprecedented whipsawing and violent slides. It's wild, but I get the impression that the Overclass is so far fine with it.
If they felt any of the previous Existential Crises brought on by the regime were significant enough to do something about, they would have done it by now. That they haven't done it by now is the clearest sign I can think of that they're satisfied that Trump has been sufficiently limited in his ability to precipitate real Existential Crisis and that what he and his wrecking crew are allowed to do is essentially just what the Overclass wants done and would have done through any pretender to the throne.
Mrs Clinton would have gone about it somewhat differently, but the outcome would have been essentially the same. Maybe not so much Crisis and Chaos, but following the same path toward the same denouement.
But this time, what I see of the punditry (remember, no cable teevee in the Ché household --ever) seems to be saying "It's different." As if this were the Real Thing, we're reaching the end of the roller coaster ride, and it will be over sooner rather than later.
Skepticism is warranted. Too many people are profiting too much from keeping the ride going to shut it down now. Trump has shown that he can be rather easily hamstrung from doing what would jeopardize class and gang interests while he can be guided toward actions which enhance their interests.
The tax cut for the wealthy* was a step, not the end point, of an overall scheme to recreate "government" as the ham-fisted, jack-booted enforcer of Overclass interest. Of course, it's always had that aspect, but over the last generation or so (since Reagan), the purpose of government has been shifted almost entirely away from "public interest" toward private, pecuniary interest and enforcement of increasingly oppressive rules and laws over the Lesser People.
As has often been pointed out, the so-called tax cut actually increases tax liability for a significant percentage of the middle and lower classes. That's by design -- and it happened under Reagan, too. The Overclass simply doesn't believe it should be paying for government. Like medieval lords, they believe the Rabble should be paying them to lord it over all creation, and that all taxes should be extracted by any means necessary from the Rabble. That's the direction we've been headed for a very long time, and the tax cut is just another step.
When we examine what ICE and other agencies are actually doing we see the outline of what Our Rulers have in mind for all of us: No protection from social/political predators and despoilers at all. Unless you have the power (and money) to hire your own fixers and Guidos, tough luck, suckers.
Gangster rule.
Some people -- and it seems most People Who Matter -- are fine with it. It's what they've wanted all along. So now they're closer than ever to it. Calling it "The Crisis" may be accurate enough, but they're not planning to do anything about it. And even if there is a Dem Wave this fall, so what?
Apart from style, what would really change?
And even style may not be that different.
So despite all, I'm not seeing buy in from the Overclass that Trump has to go. He's proved his worth to them as entertainment for the masses over and over again. He's also a money-maker for them. Pence wouldn't be that. Not on a bet, and likely, if he rose to the presidency, he would have to be removed for cause. Not so much for Trump.
So let's say Trump does something really stupid and it has negative effects on the Overclass. The Crisis manifests in ways they don't like. What then? Remember, "Never let a crisis go to waste. Every crisis is an opportunity." In other words, "So what, let's make money."
And so it is likely to go.
The Crisis has been upon us for a very long time, hasn't it?
No matter what else happens, we'll still be in Crisis. Our Rulers like it like that.
And yet, all the signs say it is a show and the show is obscuring what's really going on. We see that behind the scenes our neoLibCon rulers are accelerating their plunder of the common rabble. Death and destruction beyond measure has filled their many war theaters with blood and ruin (rarely acknowledged let alone mourned unlike the relatively few drone murders of the Obama regime), and climate change is wreaking havoc while the ruling clique celebrates.
The world of hurt is growing and spreading, and they are laughing. "They" as in Our Rulers.
Something might have been done about it before the inauguration, but nothing was done. The Russia Thing is silly but it keeps attention away from the decisions and effects of the ruling clique. As long as that's the case, and as long as it works, so long will it continue. The spiral down becomes a slide, and there appears to be nothing We, the Rabble can do about it.
Interesting speculation I''m seeing in several places that the firing of James Comey from the FBI was intended -- at least in part -- to mollify grudge-holding Dems who were still smarting over Comey's interference in the 2016 election. Odd interference if you ask me, but what do I know about the machinations in DC these days? Not much.
The Outrage!!!™ (FFS are we back to that?) over it seems to be a bit overwrought, but that's how things are done among the political and media classes, for reasons that long ago escaped me. Until Trump actually did it, Dems, by and large, called for Comey's ouster. Now, of course, they are his greatest defenders in the whole wide world.
It's much like the near unanimity of praise for Trump when he picked up the Big Stick and blew some shit up in foreign lands. Despite the fact that he was still the ego-driven blowhard he'd always been, and just as ignorant too.
Of course the Comey Thing is turning out to be the reverse. According to reports, things have never been so chaotic in the White House. And that's saying something, I'd say.
Mollifying Dems seems like the least important thing to those people, the people in Power. Dems, at least in recent times, have been incapable of using Power. They don't like to. It's icky. (Unless, of course, it's pink-misting brown people overseas. With drones. Yay US! Odd, that.)
The Democrats have limited power, but they tend to be reluctant to use what little they have, no matter the provocations. They are often referred to as "feckless," which they are, "corrupt" -- yes, well, who in Washington isn't? -- and "incompetent."
Since the advent of the Republican sweep of government, however, it's clear that the Rs are incapable of governing in the public interest. They just can't do it. To me, this means that they need the expertise of the Ds in order to maintain even the appearance of competence, and getting rid of a "troublemaker" like Comey was expected to gain some Democratic support. Well, it did just the opposite.
The Rs and Trump are in a real pickle right now. I think the act of firing Comey was an unforced error, but it was also a power play. As if Gulliver were breaking free of the Lilliputian's bonds. Well, maybe so, but in the end, Gulliver becomes the best friend of the Lilliputians, doesn't he? Perhaps Trump thought he could pull off a similar trick.
Most of those of us who have been around for a while have had the notion of Peace on Earth hammered into us throughout our whole lives. This was, perhaps more than anything else, the Post War mantra repeated over and over again, "Let there be Peace on Earth."
Of course peace never came, not really. The mechanics of it were always the problem, weren't they? If there was to be world peace, a Pax Mundi as it were, just how was it to be accomplished? Scholars and mystics the world over struggled to figure it out, and their conclusion seemed to be that the ultimate peace of the world would only come when the Giant Asteroid wiped out humanity. Or some such. Or we blew everything up in a Nuclear Holocaust.
Nevertheless, many of us, we, the Rabble, haven't given up on something as elusive as Peace on Earth simply because it may be an unreachable ideal.
Unfortunately, our situation in the West -- as that part of the world where Anglo-American culture is dominant is still called -- has become so decadent and corrupt, "ideals" are considered a fool's game. Grab all you can before it all goes to shit seems to be the current ethic if you will, an End Times to end all End Times predilection, because I guess if you don't get yours now, you never will. Never ever.
There's just never enough to go around, and it's too bad for them that's got nothin'.
And of course things are going to shit at an accelerating pace. Make no mistake. The End is Nigh.
Many of Our Betters intend to survive no matter what, and I suspect too many of them will.
I was pondering Jeffrey Epstein's bolt hole up the road from our place. The Zorro Ranch is huge, XX,000 acres, I don't know how many exactly, on the border between the Estancia and Galisteo Basins in central New Mexico. An enormous mansion sits on a mesa overlooking both basins. A little western town, like a movie set, sits below on the Estancia Basin side, where apparently the ranching operations take place. They run some cattle, longhorns included, as well as a variety of artisinal breeds, but there are never very many of them, not like some of the other cattle ranches in the area.
There's some dispute over whether Epstein still owns the Zorro Ranch. Apparently the property records aren't clear about its current ownership. The only people we've ever seen entering or leaving through the ranch gate appear to be workers, mostly ranch hands. There's never been a motorcade of bullet proof SUVs and the like, and we've never seen squadrons of helicopters (black or otherwise) coming in for landings at the helipad up the hill.
This is the Google overhead view of the ranch house and helipad:
The mesa on which this spread sits is probably a couple of hundred feet high, and I expect that deluxe bunkers have been blasted into it to preserve, protect, and defend Epstein and whoever else can hie themselves hitherwards when the End comes. I don't doubt that a list has been made, and preparations for transport of selected VIPs have been made. Shuttles are no doubt on 24 hour call.
Epstein's place is one of many such retreats around the nation and around the world built in the past 20 years or so for the purpose of having "a place in the country" for the rich and powerful to shelter in -- just in case.
Our place is nothing like that at all, just a simple hand-built pioneer adobe ranch house, without a ranch any more, surrounded by a modest working class neighborhood, salt of the earth neighbors with whom we get along (mostly) --- even though we're from California. Heh.
But some of our thinking when we bought this place was not unlike that of the High and Mighty selecting their bolt holes for when the time comes.
When I mentioned to a friend in California that we'd bought this place out in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico, he sensed right away that a big part of the reason was to have a place to go "when it all goes to shit."
True enough, I suppose. True enough. Though I don't see actually how we would survive should the plug be pulled on "civilization." We, like most folks, depend on electricity and natural gas for light and heat. We don't have a generator or a fireplace or even a woodstove. We don't have our own well so we'd run out of water pretty quick. We haven't laid in supplies, though there is -- or would be -- room for a pretty extensive pantry should we want to have stuff on hand for the Apocalypse.
We're several miles from the Interstate, where most supplies originate in any case. But there are farms closer, farms and ranches, where produce is grown, livestock raised and so forth, and the ranchers and farmers are among our acquaintances if not actually friends. Some of them have made preparations of their own, though nothing as elaborate as Epstein's, and I would imagine that should everything go to shit, folks around here would pull together to hold on to some of the attributes of a positive and purposeful way of life.
That aside, however, once Ms. Ché and I are out of medications, I doubt either of us would last much longer as we both have conditions that are guaranteed to be fatal -- sooner without medications than later.
Oh well.
Not that we, personally, have any particular need to survive come what may. Whatever contribution we can make, we're making while we have the chance, while we're here, elders with some discretionary resources. It's not for us to hold on to; it's for us to give away while we can.
Many of us understand the nature of the crisis this year's presidential (s)election has precipitated. The installation of Trump and his cronies into power marks a clear and clean break from the nation's past. Nothing like this has happened before. And there is little or no likelihood that prior practice will be restored. This is the end of the Republic in all ways but name. Much like the Roman Republic, many of the aspects and attributes of the US republic will no doubt continue on as empty shells, meaningless rituals and practices, but the Republic established by the Founders and operated more or less competently for the past 230 years will be extinct, and something else, call it an Empire, will take its place.
I doubt that very many people will notice, as we've been on this path for a long, long time. Nixon in fact established the Imperial Presidency -- to much mockery and laughter -- and the precedent was set. But there was more to it than just the show. The underlying premise was that the USofA, as an Imperial power, had an obligation to establish and maintain a Pax Americana that would eventually encompass the globe, and that the US had an obligation to use any and all strategies and tactics to accomplish the goal.
In other words, the Empire, for all its faults, would one day come to rule the world. The US has never deviated from that path ever since the crises of the '70s that led to military defeat and withdrawal in Southeast Asia and the crisis of the Presidency that led to Nixon's resignation and the installation of the nation's first unelected president. That was the break in the nation's republican heritage that has never been repaired.
Precedent was set and here we are.
The precedent was that presidents (and vice presidents) can be removed and others installed without consultation or the assent of the People. Who accomplishes the transfer of power is still shadowy. Who is actually in charge at any given time is a mystery.
From my view, the power of the presidency is a matter of agreement between the contending factions of the permanent government and the Overclass. Until now, the Overclass had been content to rule indirectly through the agency of the permanent government. Now with the advent of Trump, the mediation of the permanent government will apparently be dispensed with and the Overclass will rule us directly.
The narrative among most of the Trump defenders and loyalists -- at least among those who can acknowledge the situation -- asserts that this is a good thing, and it's about time that our billionaire Overlords were openly in charge rather than corrupting the managerial class who have been in charge of the government for many generations. In effect, we're going back to the origins of the government itself when the very wealthy Founders were the ones who ran and in effect were the government.
One could therefore argue the advent of Trump "re-founds" the nation the way it was supposed to be.
An argument in favor of this New America is that Trump and his cronies are so rich they can't be corrupted -- the way today's Congress and the whole apparatus of government under a managerial class (oh, such as the Clintons, for example) could be and has been. It's a ridiculous argument, but it's one that has gained some currency, without the simultaneous recognition that putting the corrupters in charge means that there is no longer any mediation between their interests and demands and those of the People.
Without that mediation, the People get screwed harder and faster than ever before. Duh.
On the other hand, there seems to be no recognition that there are many things Our Betters could do -- rather than screwing the People harder and faster than ever before -- to secure their almost perpetual rule over us, and they could even engineer their longed-for Peace without resort to nuclear or other armed conflict.
No, it seems that nearly all Trump defenders and loyalists are determined to impose as harsh and destructive a rule as possible on everyone but themselves -- as revenge, apparently, for harm they believe they've suffered under the Republic. They're disappointed that their hero and champion is not entirely on board with them.
In reality, provided there is any sense of social conscience in and among the Trump-ists, to engineer both domestic and international peace and good will; there is no sign it will happen -- just the opposite in fact -- but you never know.
My wish has always been an end to war and violence.
We may or may not get there.
Signs are not looking good. On the other hand, stranger things have happened.
I don't expect them to do their Hamiltonian Duty and refuse to seat DJT on the Throne. It would be too much for them to handle in their fifty or fifty one separate meetings around the country, and the Electors would face unknown risks if they were to follow something like a conscience rather than rote. Na ga happen.
But I think I've made clear that I believe neither Trump nor anyone like him should ever become president of these United States, and that I favor nearly any means to thwart his ascension.
If that means a coup, oh well. It's not as if there haven't been coups in the past. Somehow we manage.
The notion that were he to be denied the presidency there would be a civil war is silly, but the fear of it is a brake on the efforts to undo the outcome of the election. The fear of civil war was part of the rationale for seating Bush Jr on the throne back in the day, and the signs of its possibility -- if not probability -- were clearer then than they are now. I witnessed the armed insurrectionists gathering in their thousands at California's state capitol demanding that Bush be seated forthwith -- "or else" -- and I saw the children crying and heard the bellowing of cowardly men with guns threatening the peace and order of the nation if they didn't get their way.
This was happening in many capitol cities, and it was part of the reason why the Supreme Court intervened as they did to stop the recounts in Florida and hand the presidency to Bush Jr and his bloodthirsty cabal.
But the message of that lawless intervention was that the actual vote and actually counting the votes doesn't matter. An intervention will take place -- call it a coup, cause that's what it is -- if the outcome is either in doubt or because the vote doesn't comport with the interests of the owners and sponsors of the government. And there is literally nothing we the Rabble can do about it. Period. End of discussion.
Our Rulers took that tack in 2000 and they were right. There was nothing we could do about it or at least nothing we could do to change it. The catastrophe could not be stopped, and in the end, it could not be delayed or mitigated.
We are still suffering from the consequences of that fateful decision of 16 years ago. And not just Americans are suffering. Millions upon millions are suffering around the world because of it, many in existential crisis. Americans are lucky in that regard; at least most are not yet as bad off as the millions of refugees attempting to survive the horrors and crises brought on by the Bush Jr regime and kept going by Mr. Obama. At least there aren't yet millions of dead Americans due to the horrors and crises precipitated by the Bush Jr regime and carried on with only slight mitigations by Mr. Obama and his bloodthirsty cabal. At least... well, you get the picture.
The mythology growing up around Mr. Trump is that he -- alone -- wouldn't do these things, that he -- alone -- will solve the insoluble by main force (cause he's such an Alpha Male), and he -- alone -- has prevented nuclear holocaust, because he did.
It's horseshit. Pure unadulterated horseshit.
But it's the kind of horseshit that is necessary to prop up yet another illegitimate and destructive occupier of the White House. It's full frontal propaganda.
Believe it at your own risk.
I'm not sure whether the Trump apologists and online defenders actually believe the horseshit they spread day in and day out, but whether they do or not really doesn't matter. It appears that there is a much stronger and more widespread nihilist component among the online critics of the status quo than I would have thought. Always before, they tended to caution against too abrupt change, generally claiming that the ship of state takes time to to turn, and that revolution or overthrow or violence of any kind is ill-advised as a political tool; best to go along with the rule of Our Betters while cogently criticizing their actions. It was better to engage in intellectual exercises than actually do anything against the Ruling Clique.
All that went out the window when it became clear that Trump and Hillary would contend for the White House. Everyone believed that Hillary would win in a walk, so attacking her and hailing Trump as a Savior was not seen as disruptive or destructive, it was seen as part and parcel of cogent criticism. Since the status quo was not actually expected to change, all sorts of hyperbolic hoo-hah was allowed and puffed up charges against the Hag and puffed up defenses of the Evil Clown became the standard of political discourse online and in the campaigns themselves.
The opposite was just as true among Hillary believers and Trump attackers.
The outcome was supposed to be a Hillary win, and she was supposed to be weakened by an R majority congress. It was all gamed out.
When that didn't happen, panic ensued. Panic especially among the faction of the Ruling Clique who had done their due diligence preparing for the continuation of the status quo. But there was also panic among a wide cross-section of the public who recognized the clear and present danger to them that the advent of Trumpian rule of an undivided government represented.
Trump defenders do not recognize the danger, or if they do, they insist the danger was greater with Clinton -- who everybody knows would have started WWIII with Russia -- and thus the casualty toll under Trump will be less in the end. This is an extraordinary level of foolishness and nihilism, but there you are.
One has to have that sense of disinterest in what happens to others in order to defend Trump and it is nearly universal among his defenders.
As I say, I don't expect the Electors to do their duty today, and I do expect them to elect Trump with somewhat less than the 306 Electoral votes he was credited with on election night.
The next proper step to thwart his ascension is at the initial meeting of Congress in January, when all it would take is one senator's and one house member's challenge to cause a "question" over his election. That will probably happen, as it should have happened with Bush Jr, but no senator stepped up, and so there was no question. This time is different.
We'll see.
The coup seems to have fizzled out for the moment. But you never know.
ADDING:
While the results of the EC vote are not surprising, there was an interesting twist in the whole affair. I'm not sure of the details, but from a quick skim of the news about it, apparently Hamilton Electors were not allowed in several states where Electors wanted to cast protest votes. They were "ordered" to cast votes for the state's popular vote "winner" -- we really can't say who actually won because of the opacity of voting and vote counting -- and when they refused, they were replaced with alternate Electors (that's a new piece of the puzzle.)
Who was in charge of this process is a mystery, but I imagine the information is out there. Some Electors were able to vote their conscience -- and not for Trump or Hillary -- but the majority of those who wanted to go Hamiltonian were prevented from doing so.
Things up at Standing Rock got pretty odd once the Veterans showed up.
Almost immediately, the ACoE denied the easement to drill under Lake Oahe/Missouri River; Dave Archambault II told everyone to go home; a fierce blizzard came up making it effectively impossible for anyone to go home; the camps split over the order; the police hid behind their barricades; Wes Clark, Jr. and a number of other Veterans knelt and apologized for the numerous atrocities and the genocide perpetrated against Natives by their predecessors; many, perhaps, most of the Veterans left the camps; thousands of other Water Protectors and allies also left the camps when the weather permitted; reports surfaced that the Standing Rock Tribal Council was hoarding supplies meant for the camps; Chad Iron Eyes took the opportunity in the chaos to look after the welfare of those remaining in the camps; it turned out that Dave Archambault's sister served in the Obama White House as an advisor on Indian Affairs; there are still reports that Energy Transfer Partners is drilling anyway; an incident in Bismark went viral when an Anglo confronted an Indian at the Mall and demanded that he explain himself, and within minutes, the Indian was assaulted -- as were several others who tried to protect him -- by a masked Anglo Indian hater (who has since they say been arrested).
Meanwhile the Morton County Sheriff continues to fabulate and lie about the Water Protectors.
Ah yes, the training.
Indeed. I've thought all along that the "law enforcement" operations against the Water Protectors -- which have always seemed to be way out of proportion to the needs thereof -- have been a training exercise for the eventual suppression of a more or less general popular uprising.
Why that might be necessary or desirable didn't become clear until the recent (s)election follies. Oh. Right.
Myself, I don't think there is likely to be a general uprising, whether or not Himself is allowed to ascend to the (no doubt by now gold-plated) Throne. No doubt there will be sporadic disturbances, as there always are, but a general uprising is about as likely as a general strike. Not very.
Nevertheless, prudence indicates that "law enforcement" should be ready come what may, and what better training for them than to go against anarchists and Indians in the wilds of North Dakota? I mean really.
So comes now what amounts to a FEMA training manual for the suppression of protest.
It was sent to the "authorities" in North Dakota in September, no doubt to give them courage and fortitude in the face of the raging savages.
When I get a chance today -- or maybe tomorrow -- I'll try to study it in detail.
Meanwhile, after the incident in Bismark, Chris Lemke and Shiye Bidziil got together at the Standing Rock Casino and posted a YouTube appeal to "both sides" to cool it.
It would appear that Pierre Omidyar has decided to pull the plug on his Grand Plan to Transform the Media at First Look and content himself with a blog or two that "experiment" with various means and methods of... what... exactly?
That's still something of a mystery, but the Grand Plan appears to be dead.
Some time back, Pierre put up a blog post that you wouldn't have known about unless you're following his twits or those of some of his stable of writers closely. I think I noticed it in passing through the comments on some post at The Intercept. It got little or no notice outside the world of the First Look at any rate, but it is an interesting walk back from all the promises announced and tub-thumped for so very long by the First Lookers and Interceptors -- without any discernible results for month after month, except one: the huge stable of writers Pierre had assembled essentially stopped writing once they signed with Pierre. Even the ever prolix and prolific Greenwald's output diminished to practically nothing for weeks at a time.
Reducing or eliminating output by formerly busy and sometimes power-questioning writers appeared to be the main purpose of First Look, as many observers pointed out, sometimes unkindly. Jeremy Scahill essentially disappeared; Matt Taibbi likewise. Oh they did their rounds for their book/movie tours, but that had nothing whatever to do with First Look or anything else that Pierre was involved in (so far as we know. He had his had in many ventures.) Laura Poitras has never contributed to The Intercept, nor has Liliana Segura. Marcy Wheeler bailed out months ago after contributing one piece. There were occasional pieces of generally "old news" by Ryan Gallagher and Ryan Devereaux, sometimes co-bylined by Greenwald, but likely not co-written by him. There were a few articles by Murtaza Hussain. But apart from that, practically nothing, month after month.
The lack of production and the frequency of excuses was striking, especially given all the other news startups going balls to the wall at around the same time, with special mention of Quartz, Vox, and Vice, but they are far from the only ones. They and many other online news sites have been running circles around Pierre's First Look (that was getting nowhere, with its one "magazine" that so rarely published and seemed quite flaccid when it did.) There was and is simply no comparison between First Look's practically absent content and the daily sometimes extraordinary content of a dozen or more online news ventures that were actually cranking out... erm... news.
So. John Cook appeared to order everyone to sit down and shut up and wait for however long it would take to get the operation up and running; it wasn't ready yet, and all the nay-sayers were poopy-pants. Greenwald would post when and if he wanted, and everyone else would be on hiatus until the site was "ready." So just shut up. Then he disappeared again, they said "on vacation". Who knew? Who cared? First Look was looking more and more like the Last Look Back as news was being broken all over the media long before anything would appear in the one faltering "magazine" that was essentially a group blog on a broken WordPress platform, a group blog that hardly ever published or updated.
First Look and The Intercept were a joke.
Pierre had to intervene because this month-after-month of nothing made him look ridiculous for devoting $50 million or $250 million to... nothing. Wags made mock, to say the least.
Pierre's primary claim is that the enterprise is still very much a "startup." Which means, essentially, that it doesn't actually exist as a going concern, and it may never.
It is a still experimental experiment that may never go anywhere at all (startups are like that you know) and it is no longer positioned to be this "transformative" media thing-a-ma-bob that it was promoted as, but just what it will be, nobody knows. There will be Greenwald's blog and the now re-conceived Taibbi Thing (to debut sometime, one day... maybe) and that's about it.
Pierre will continue to support something similar to an investigative journalism enterprise, by funding things like travel and accommodations and legal fees and whatnot, but what comes of it, if anything, may be published elsewhere in already extant outlets rather than at anything new and transformative that Pierre has created out of the air.
In other words, First Look, as it was conceived is dead.
It ain't gonna be that.
And it may never be anything.
Got that?
Good.
There's a message here somewhere...
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In the meantime, Telesur English is up and running. Those devilish Chavistas. Check it out.
The partnership between NBC News and Pierre Omidyar's First Look Media was briefly noted on NBC Evening News Tuesday, then was made quite explicit on tonight's news when a promo announced the impending "exclusive" interview of Edward Snowden by Brian Williams in Moscow.
The interview is sure to produce some memorable exchanges, but the
way that NBC News pulled off the coup is noteworthy as well. NBC News
has a “collaboration agreement” with the outfit that these days
publishes Greenwald’s work — First Look Media, the venture funded by
billionaire and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Greenwald is a staffer at the Intercept, First Look’s digital magazine on national security matters.
So did the Greenwald “collaboration agreement” snare the Snowden
interview for NBC News? For starters, Snowden is a strong-willed sort
unlikely to take interview orders from anyone, though his relationship
with Greenwald is airtight (he’s in a just-published selfie with Greenwald & Co. in Russia).
According to the network source, NBC News approached Snowden via
several avenues, one of them being through Greenwald. Though Greenwald
didn’t negotiate the terms of the agreement, the NBC News source
concedes that Greenwald is among a small number of people who can assist
in making contact with Snowden, who is living in Moscow.
The agreement between NBC News and First Look Media contains no
financial terms, says the NBC source. It’s merely what the network calls
a co-reporting arrangement, in which the two participating outlets
share resources in working on the almost always complicated surveillance
stories that spring from the Snowden document dump. Responding to an
e-mail inquiry, Greenwald himself says that the agreement “simply
provides that we will work together on selected NSA stories, on a
story-by-story basis, when it will help the reporting to do so.”
To complicate matters a bit, Greenwald worked as a freelancer for NBC
News in between his departure from the Guardian and the launch of the
Intercept. Together they produced four stories, with Greenwald receiving
$750 a pop. In this February investigation,
for instance, NBC News used Snowden documents to expose how British
intelligence waged war on hackers. Greenwald is credited as a “special
contributor” for the piece. In January, NBC News published a story
stemming from Snowden documents on how British intelligence spied on Facebook and YouTube. That one, too, listed Greenwald as a special contributor.
There is more at the link.
If anyone wants to look into it, there is most certainly a story to be found in the various arrangements that have been made with and by Omidyar, his employees, and the media enterprises they have partnered with, but I don't know who would ((dare)) find out the whole story and publish it.
We live in interesting times...
[Note: there have been previous indications of the partnership between NBC and Greenwald/First Look, though the first time I heard it mentioned explicitly was on Tuesday. If anyone has an earlier explicit reference, it would be interesting to put together a timeline...]
Been hearing and reading very brief dispatches about this all day, but only now have I been able to see the RT report that started it off:
There is no reason to assume anything about the report is inauthentic.
There is no reason to believe the snipers firing on the crowd and police in the Maidan in Kiev weren't what the speculation now suggest they were: snipers (mercs?) hired by the opposition as murderous provocateurs.
There is at this point no proof, however.
As far as I can recall the events of the day -- and they are a bit hazy as I only came upon reports after the fact -- the Yanukovych government's interior minister deployed armed internal security personnel for the first time on the date in question (February 19?) and authorized them to use deadly force. There were reports of dozens killed, upwards of 80 or 90, mostly demonstrators but some police as well. Many hundreds wounded. But something was odd about these reports. Something that reminded me...
Cairo, last year. When Muslim Brotherhood supporters rallied and protested against the coup which overthrew the Morsi government, snipers were deployed -- presumably by the government -- to dispatch the protesters by picking off individuals in the crowd one by one, shooting them in the head or heart, and terrifying the rest of the crowd. This happened day after day, and on some occasions, it seems that hundreds were killed.
The sniping in Kiev that day seemed an awful lot like what had happened in Cairo, and so it was natural to assume the Yanukovych government was behind it, but Yanukovych said no, he had never ordered any such thing. There were hints and suggestions that the snipers were not "government" snipers, but who they were, nobody could say. This leaked phone call turned up on Russia Today -- more than likely leaked by the Kremlin itself, though the story claims it came from Ukrainians loyal to Yanukovych -- and indications are that those European representatives who went to Kiev (for example, the Estonian foreign minister heard in this call) were made aware that something was not right about the news reports of government security personnel firing on the crowds, and they were told the snipers appeared to have been hired by "the coalition" -- ie: the anti-Yanukovych opposition.
It's pretty clear from the evidence -- as opposed to the propaganda -- that Ukrainian "ultra - nationalists," fascists and neo-Nazis were utilized as shock troops of a sort during the demonstrations in Kiev, committing acts of violence and sabotage on an ever growing scale, including firebombing police, destroying government buildings, and other acts that appeared to be intentional provocations. These acts were almost always blamed on the police in western media, and claims that the police were killing demonstrators were regularly made, but the police in Kiev were unarmed, at least officially, and how they were able to kill demonstrators was never entirely clear. It was simply asserted as fact in western media.
There was rarely any mention in the mainstream media of the violence committed by demonstrators in Kiev; but many alternative media carried shocking videos of mayhem against police and government buildings.
As the demonstrations became more intense, so did the violence until finally there was a kind of Day of Rage outburst which was met by sniper fire.
Come to find out now that the snipers may not have been government deployed forces at all.
I've been poring through the list of agencies and organizations that were under the umbrella of "New Citizen" -- a project of Center UA -- both funded by the Omidyar Network to the tune of over a million dollars (they got much more from USAID). It is a varied collection of opposition groups, but among them are some not nice people whose interests do not lie with the Ukrainian people. They represent, instead, an oligarchic dismantlement of Ukrainian society.
Would they, could they have made such a murderous and bloodthirsty move to overthrow the Yanukovych government?
Well, the golpistas had no trouble doing it in Cairo to secure the success of their coup.
None whatsoever.
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The leaked call:
