Category: Corporate Media

Biden Continues US Imperialism in the Middle East

A few days ago I wrote here about the hypocrisy of US (and Israeli) military exploits in the Middle East. It was titled “A Tale of Two Missile Attacks.”

Today we learned that president Biden approved several new attacks in Syria. The ABC news headline reads, “US carries out airstrike against Iranian-backed militia in Syria.”

As I was preparing another post on this unfolding situation, I discovered Caitlin Johnstone’s article covering the same ground, in fine form. Her piece is titled “US Bombs Syria and Ridiculously Claims Self Defense.”

I remain ashamed to be an American today.

I have excerpted her article below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:

On orders of President Biden, the United States has launched an airstrike on a facility in Syria. As of this writing the exact number of killed and injured is unknown, with early reports claiming “a handful” of people were killed.

Rather than doing anything remotely resembling journalism, the western mass media have opted instead to uncritically repeat what they’ve been told about the airstrike by US officials, which is the same as just publishing Pentagon press releases. . . 

So we are being told that the United States launched an airstrike on Syria, a nation it invaded and is illegally occupying, because of attacks on “US locations” in Iraq, another nation the US invaded and is illegally occupying. This attack is justified on the basis that the Iraqi fighters were “Iranian-linked”, a claim that is both entirely without evidence and irrelevant to the justification of deadly military force (emphasis mine). And this is somehow being framed in mainstream news publications as a defensive operation.

This is Defense Department stenography. The US military is an invading force in both Syria and Iraq; it is impossible for its actions in either of those countries to be defensive. It is always necessarily the aggressor. It’s the people trying to eject them who are acting defensively. The deaths of US troops and contractors in those countries can only be blamed on the powerful people who sent them there.

The US is just taking it as a given that it has de facto jurisdiction over the nations of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and that any attempt to interfere in its authority in the region is an unprovoked attack which must be defended against. This is completely backwards and illegitimate. Only through the most perversely warped American supremacist reality tunnels can it look valid to dictate the affairs of sovereign nations on the other side of the planet and respond with violence if anyone in those nations tries to eject them.

 

It’s illegitimate for the US to be in the Middle East at all. It’s illegitimate for the US to claim to be acting defensively in nations it invaded. It’s illegitimate for the US to act like Iranian-backed fighters aren’t allowed to be in Syria, where they are fighting alongside the Syrian government against ISIS and other extremist militias with the permission of Damascus. It is illegitimate for the US to claim the fighters attacking US personnel in Iraq are controlled by Iran when Iraqis have every reason to want the US out of their country themselves.

Even the official narrative reveals itself as illegitimate from within its own worldview. CNN reports that the site of the airstrike “was not specifically tied to the rocket attacks” in Iraq, and a Reuters/AP report says “Biden administration officials condemned the February 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out.”

This is all so very typical of the American supremacist worldview that is being aggressively shoved down our throats by all western mainstream news media. The US can bomb who it likes, whenever it likes, and when it does it is only ever doing so in self defense, because the entire planet is the property of Washington, DC. It can seize control of entire clusters of nations, and if any of those nations resist in any way they are invading America’s sovereignty. . . 

. . . This sort of nonsense is why it’s so important to prioritize opposition to western imperialism. World warmongering and domination is the front upon which all the most egregious evils inflicted by the powerful take place, and it plays such a crucial role in upholding the power structures we are up against. Without endless war, the oligarchic empire which is the cause of so much of our suffering cannot function, and must give way to something else. If you’re looking to throw sand in the gears of the machine, anti-imperialism is your most efficacious path toward that end, and should therefore be your priority.

Privatization + Deregulation = Texas Nightmare

I am sure that you have already heard or seen examples of the conservative misinformation machine’s attempts to blame the Texas power outages on the inadequacies of wind turbines, solar power, and the Green New Deal.

Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, gave the game away, however,

Texas governor Greg Abbott

when he made two different TV appearances on the same day to discuss the problems Texas is facing.

Chris Hayes of MSNBC broadcast the clips back-to-back, highlighting both the conservative, Republican lies about green energy, but also Gov. Abbott’s close kinship to Pinocchio. You can almost see his nose grow in the clip below.

First, Abbott spoke on local, Texas television. When talking only to Texans, he explained the power outages accurately, like a reasonable person. The primary issue was a lack of winterized equipment, especially for the natural gas facilities and pipelines. The gas tanks and supply lines were frozen solid.

Then Abbott spoke to a national audience on the Fox network. In this interview, he spewed his conservative hogwash about the failures of wind farms and solar panels, though (strangely enough) he did mention that these sources only supply about 10% of Texas’ power. (He, obviously, was counting on his conservative coconspirators to be so busy cheering his lies that they wouldn’t stop to reflect on the obvious incongruity of his statement.)

Gov. Abbott’s two-faced appearances demonstrate that he is a sock puppet for America’s fossil fuel industry, as are all the other conservatives spewing the same rubbish. They are exploiting the poor people of Texas by balancing their corporate lies about what went wrong on the frozen backsides of suffering people who have no heat or clean water.

But, hey. That’s what selling your soul to corporate power will do to you.

According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Greg Abbott has taken over $28 million from fossil fuel corporations over his political career, including $11 million alone in his most recent election campaign.

No wonder he can only criticize the Green New Deal.

The real problem in Texas – aside from unscrupulous politicians – is the inhumane economics of deregulated privatization. Neoliberalism strikes again, but his time it’s the conservative fan base of anti-government, pro-laissez faire capitalism that is paying the price. (As opposed to the South American working class and other species of human cannon fodder typically exploited by US corporations around the world.)

Federal regulators warned Texas officials a decade ago (!) that its power grid was not prepared for extreme winter conditions, the very conditions that struck Texas this week. (Check out this good overview of the issues by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Thanks to my friend Suzanne McDonald for bringing this report to my attention.)

Texas had been warned. The CEOs and politicians chose to do nothing.

It’s not hard to figure out what happened. First, the majority of Texas is not connected to the national power grid. Texans pride themselves on their independence. So, they decided to go it alone.

Furthermore, Texan “power independence” is motivated by the conservative hatred of federal regulation. By keeping Texas power separated from the rest of the nation, Texas power companies remained free of regulatory oversight.

Ahem……Sooooo…when federal regulators told Texan power company officials that they were woefully unprepared for future blizzard conditions, Texan politicians remained warm and cozy with their corporate overlords and told the feds to stuff it. No one could force them to do otherwise.

It’s not hard to imagine the decision-making process.

The CEOs and board members of Texas power companies got together and decided that preparing for a “once in a century” winter storm front was not cost effective.

Cost effectiveness is the cold, hard, bottom-line reality that the sycophants of unfettered, global capitalism love to ignore – and what too many of their followers rarely think about. (The economics at play are also known as neoliberalism – check out this good discussion at Jacobin magazine.)

It is ALWAYS a bad idea to hand over control of public services/utilities to private corporations. Private corporations do not work in the public interest, regardless of what the PR department tells you.

Yes, yes, neoliberal propagandists like to talk about the superior services that will supposedly arrive with privatization, and the lower prices made possible by glorious deregulation.

Except, this predictable PR palaver is all smoke and mirrors.

The truth of the matter is that the #1 priority of any corporation is PROFIT, making as much money as possible for its shareholders. Cost effectiveness is judged according to increasing profit margins.

Winterizing Texas was not economically feasible if these corporations were to continue raking in the dough.

Predictably, then, the rich made more money while the majority of Texans were set up to suffer. But, hey, it’s only once a century, right?

This, folks, is neoliberal chicanery writ large.

A Tale of Two Missile Attacks

This past Monday evening, the Iraqi city of Erbil was hit by a rocket attack that

A rocket explodes in the streets of Erbil, Iraq

killed one US contractor and injured eight others, as well as one US service member.

Naturally, US spokespersons are up in arms threatening retaliation “at a time of our own choosing,” to quote the president. This has been a leading news story in the American press (see here, here, here, etc.)

The issue right now is that US officials have yet to identify the perpetrators.

Of course, their ignorance does not stop those same officials from pointing fingers at Iran (read the articles highlighted above). Naturally, no one in the American press has the courage to push back or ask questions like:

If you have evidence of Iran’s guilt show it to us. You have yet to produce anything.

It seems far too convenient for you to accuse Iran while you are also pressuring them to accept your unreasonable terms for reentering the JCPOA nuclear treaty.

Of course, Iran might be responsible. Or it might not. If it is responsible, the fact that president Trump assassinated Iran’s Commander of Iranian military

Iranians mourn Qassim Suleimani

forces, Qassim Suleimani, certainly gives them good reason to strike back at the US.

Imagine how the US would respond if Iran launched a drone strike and assassinated the the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the leader of all US armed forces, on American soil. I don’t think I need to elaborate, except to point out that Iran has remained amazingly restrained.

On the other hand, the rocket may also have been launched by any one of a number of Iraqi militias.

The vast majority of the Iraqi people are Shia Muslims, as are the majority of Iranians. Most Iraqis have more reason to identify with Iranian opposition against the United States than they do to sympathize with America.

After all, the Iraqi government has repeatedly told US officials that they want American forces OUT of their country. Yet, the US continues to ignore these demands.

While there have been Iraqi protests against Iranian actions in Iraq, there have been far more popular protests against the American presence in Iraq. The people want the US out of their country just as much as the government does.

So, perhaps the recent rocket attack was the work of an Iraqi militia showing their displeasure with American forces remaining in their country?

This is an equally valid conjecture, perhaps even more so, yet American’s will

Iraqi crowds demand US withdrawal from their country

never hear about this possibility in US news coverage. No, Iran is the current US whipping boy. So, whether with evidence or without, Iran will continue to be demonized in the American press.

But that is only half of the story.

Another rocket attack occurred in Syria only a few days prior, but this attack received minimal coverage by the US press. More than that, US officials have not offered a word of condemnation because these missiles were launched from Israel.

Israeli sources report that nine pro-Syrian government personnel were killed. Syrian sources report that three Syrians and four Iranians were killed in the attack. And we must remember that whatever Iranian forces are fighting on the ground in Syria, they are in Syria at the government’s invitation to help Syria combat US aggression.

Actually, this was the third Israeli missile attack in ten days. How much US coverage did Israel’s offensive actions receive? Very little.

Attacking its neighbors is standard Israeli operating procedure.

Israel has bombed Syria for years, with impunity. Israel even boasts about its

Israeli rockets hit Syrian forces near Damascus

bombing sprees. In fact the Chief of Staff of the Israeli forces, Aviv Kochabi, proudly admits, “We have struck over 500 targets this year (2021!) , on all fronts, in addition to multiple clandestine missions.”

The US never objects to these attacks because Israel shares the US goals of overthrowing the Syrian government. And both nations have black-balled Syria and Iran as dangerous enemies.

So, let me get this straight.

Israel can attack whomever it wants whenever it wants, with US support (and media silence).

The United States can continue forcefully to occupy whatever nation it wants for as long as it wants, despite the fact that both the national government and the majority of the population repeatedly demand that the US withdraw its forces.

However, Iran and Syria remain the “bad guys” who deserve to be punished — primarily for refusing to accept US/Israeli unilateral demands.

Meanwhile, any attack, no matter how small and ineffectual, against US (or Israeli) forces is decried as a horrible crime deserving the harshest punishment.

This is the Tale of Two Missile Attacks. One by Israel. The other by who knows who.

It is the story of American (and Israeli) Empire. It is ugly and unjust. It is a wicked abuse of power that ought to be condemned by every follower of Jesus Christ around the world.

Yet, the majority of America’s evangelical Christians will faithfully cheer on the  bloodshed.

President Biden Continues Trump’s Unmerited Hostility Towards Iran

Caitlin Johnstone has written another good article explaining the ridiculous

Caitlin Johnstone

nature of president Biden’s current policy towards Iran.

The article is entitled, “Biden’s Iran Policy is Just Trump’s Iran Policy with a Rainbow Flag Emoji.”

Tragically, Biden is continuing to pursue standard, irrational bullying tactics that have long characterized US foreign policy.

And, of course, no one but no one in the mainstream media pushes back or dares to question the fundamental injustice, not to mention the militaristic dangers, now posed by this administration’s behavior.

I have excerpted a part of the article below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:

In a new interview with CBS Evening News, President Biden confirmed that his administration will not be lifting sanctions imposed upon Iran in order to bring Tehran to the negotiating table for the restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal.

“Will the U.S. lift sanctions first in order to get Iran back to the negotiating table?” Biden was asked by CBS’s Norah O’Donnell.

“No,” the president replied.

“They have to stop enriching uranium first,” asked O’Donnell.

Biden nodded in response.

There are a few things that are ridiculous about this, the first being that the JCPOA does not require that Iran “stop enriching uranium” at all. As explained by Al-Monitor‘s Arash Karami, the deal only calls for Iran to “keep its level of uranium enrichment at up to 3.67 %”, a level it only began exceeding when the Trump administration backed out of the deal and imposed sanctions. The administration later clarified that Biden meant Iran would have to return to its JCPOA levels before negotiations could begin, but the fact that neither the United States president nor the high-profile reporter interviewing him appear to have been clear on this says a lot about the vapid nature of America’s political/media class.

More importantly, this is confirmation from the horse’s mouth that Biden is in effect continuing Trump’s Iran policy. Trump began strangling Iran with crushing sanctions in an effort to force it to obey US dictates, and Biden is continuing that exact same strangulation while continuing to demand compliance with its dictates. The demands might be a little different, but the effect is identical since Tehran would never bow to either of them.

The Iranian government has repeatedly made it abundantly clear that it will not be rejoining the JCPOA until the United States comes back into compliance, since it was the US who first abandoned it. It claims, correctly, that it was in full compliance with the agreement when the Trump administration unilaterally backed out in May 2018. The argument that it is therefore Washington’s responsibility to come back into compliance first is indisputable. Why would it re-enter a deal with a government that is clearly acting in bad faith and could just back out and impose civilian-killing sanctions on the nation again?

“Biden is Already Breaking His Promises.” So What Else is New?

Patrick Lawrence has been a journalist, foreign correspondent, author, and lecturer for over 30 years. He recently published a piece at Consortium News entitled, “Biden is Already Breaking Promises.”

He gives special attention to the Senate confirmation hearing for Biden’s nominee as Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.

Naturally, it is not the least bit surprising to see the Biden presidency kick -off another business-as-usual Democratic administration. After all, every presidential candidate lies. Remember how Trump promised that Mexico would pay for his border wall?

But Mr. Lawrence reminds us that despite the corporate media’s (excepting Fox) decision to applaud Biden as America’s post-Trump savior (though, we ought not forget how much money president Trump brought to these

Antony Blinken with President Biden

outlets with their wall-to-wall coverage of his every faux pas — and there were many) he is essentially an old-style, moderate Republican at heart, who will continue to shovel coal into the gaping furnaces of neo-liberal economics, corporate control over US politics, and American imperialism around the world.

Welcome to the new Democratic administration.

Here is an excerpt:

It was inevitable that President Joe Biden would betray numerous of his campaign promises — and those that mattered most to wide-eyed voters who put him in office. The speed at which he and his people have revealed their treachery is nonetheless stunning.

No, there will be no comprehensive stimulus plan until at least the spring, if then. No, relief checks are not “going out the door immediately,” and no, they will not be for the $2,000 to which Biden committed his administration. As to Biden’s health care reforms, one can hardly believe one’s eyes and ears.

As Andrew Perez and Julia Rock reported in Jacobin last week, Biden’s plans are literally lifted from a letter health-insurance lobbyists recently sent Capitol Hill legislators. The promised public option is out the window. Health care “secure for all?” These people do have bridges they intend to sell you.

All this within a few days of Biden’s ascendancy.  It’s not much different on the foreign policy side, so let’s draw the old lesson. You can have democracy at home or empire abroad, but you can’t have both. We will continue to suffer the latter under Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Those drawn into thinking the Biden regime would conduct America’s affairs abroad decently and humanely and in principled fashion will now discover they have been savagely sucker-punched. Those who understood from the outset that Biden’s people would go nowhere near the essential, determining questions of exceptionalism, universalism, and our consequent dedication to empire will be repelled but not surprised as the policy framework is revealed.

In this case, the moment of truth came even before Biden’s inauguration. His saccharine inauguration speech last Wednesday, with its Hallmark-card calls for unity, was quite secondary to the confirmation hearings the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held the previous day. . . 

. . . Among Blinken’s many rather sad-to-witness “Yes sirs,” two standout: his finely chiseled endorsement of Pompeo’s reckless assassination a year ago of Qassem  Soleimani, Iran’s revered military commander (“Taking him out was the right thing to do”), and his approval of the Trump administration’s decision to send lethal arms to the manically corrupt regime in Kiev (“Senator, I support providing that lethal defensive assistance to Ukraine,” when the Obama administration, from which he comes, did not.)

Late last year, Blinken appeared on “Intelligence Matters,” the podcast run by Michael Morrell, the coup-mongering former deputy director at the Central Intelligence Agency and now — of course — a regular commentator on the televisions news networks. In their exchange, the two took up the question of our “forever wars” and Biden’s well-advertised commitment to ending them. Here is a snippet from Blinken’s remarks:

“As for ending the forever wars, large-scale deployment of large, standing U.S. forces in conflict zones with no clear strategy should and will end under his [Biden’s] watch. But we also need to distinguish between, for example, these endless wars with large-scale, open-ended deployment of U.S. forces with [sic], for example, discreet, small-scale sustainable operations, maybe led by special forces to support local actors. In ending the endless wars we have to be careful not to paint with too broad a brushstroke.”

This is what we are in for these coming years, the hyper-rational irrationality of the middling technocrat. There will be adjustments at the margin, reconsiderations of method. There will be no consideration whatsoever of America’s hegemonic objectives—of the imperial project.

“Unity” is Not a Magic Word

Many politicians, including president Biden, are calling for our nation to unify. Biden says that he won’t be the president of red states or blue states — Trump frequently emphasized that he was president primarily for red states — but for the United States.

The question, however, is how will this happen?

During Mitch McConnell’s reign as senate majority leader, the Republican party has shown about as much interest in unity as a harlot has in chastity.

Historically, Republicans establish unity by ignoring Democratic complaints and proceeding full steam ahead. (The last two Supreme Court appointments were text book examples of this tactic.)

Democrats, on the other hand, are congenitally spineless, establishing unity by rolling over and giving Republicans most of what they want. (In a great many ways, the Obama administration was one long give away to Republican demands.)

Politics is adversarial by definition.

How do rivals ever find unity, especially when one side or the other is not particularly interested in burying the hatchet (except in an opponent’s back)?

Watch and behold the wonders of bipartisanship as Republican commentators glory in heart-warming calls for “unity.”

The video is titled “How Conservative Media is Covering Biden.” Watch it and weep.

Matt Taibbi: “We Need a New Media System”

“If you sell culture war all day, don’t be surprised by the real-world consequences”

Exactly.

The despicable figure of anchor and journalists (so-called) at Fox and CBN (especially!) now condemning the violence in DC last Wednesday pushes the limits of professional hypocrisy.

These “reporters” have faithfully pushed the Trump narrative of a stolen election from day-one. Hyping the hysteria to increase their ratings.

To now condemn the actions of those true believers (sadly misguided as they are) who were willing to put their money where their mouths are; believers the incorrigible right wing echo chamber helped to create by promoting Trump’s lies and misinformation about the November election, is really beyond the pale.

One thing such people will never do is take responsibility.

Matt Taibbi is one of my favorite investigative journalists.

Journalist, Matt Taibbi

His books Griftopia, The Divide, and I Can’t Breathe (among others) are well worth your time.

Today he offers a good analysis, largely drawn from his excellent book, Hate, Inc., explaining the role of America’s broken system of “news” coverage in fostering the turbulence we see in today’s political climate.

I have posted an excerpt below, or you can read the entire piece (by subscribing here).

The cover of Taibbi’s latest book, Hate Inc.

The moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that long ago became standard in American media.

Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize.

It’s why Fox News uses the term, “Pro-Trump protesters,” while New York and The Atlantic use “Insurrectionists.” It’s why conservative media today is stressing how Apple, Google, and Amazon shut down the “Free Speech” platform Parler over the weekend, while mainstream outlets are emphasizing a new round of potentially armed protests reportedly planned for January 19th or 20th.

What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.

News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections. . . 

. . . The flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies now operate under the assumption that at least half their potential audience isn’t listening. This leads to all sorts of problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep your own demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only the most obvious. On all sides, we now lean into inflammatory caricatures, because the financial incentives encourage it.

Everyone monetized Trump. The Fox wing surrendered to the Trump phenomenon from the start, abandoning its supposed fealty to “family values” from the Megyn Kelly incident on. Without a thought, Rupert Murdoch sacrificed the paper-thin veneer of pseudo-respectability Fox had always maintained up to a point (that point being the moment advertisers started to bail in horror, as they did with Glenn Beck). He reinvented Fox as a platform for Trump’s conspiratorial brand of cartoon populism, rather than let some more-Fox-than-Fox imitator like OAN sell the ads to Trump’s voters for four years. . .

. . . The rival media ecosystem chose cash over truth also. It could have responded to the last election by looking harder at the tensions they didn’t see coming in Trump’s America, which might have meant a more intense examination of the problems that gave Trump his opening: the jobs that never came back after bankers and retailers decided to move them to unfree labor zones in places like China, the severe debt and addiction crises, the ridiculous contradiction of an expanding international military garrison manned by a population fast losing belief in the mission, etc., etc.

Instead, outlets like CNN and MSNBC took a Fox-like approach, downplaying issues in favor of shoving Trump’s agitating personality in the faces of audiences over and over, to the point where many people could no longer think about anything else. To juice ratings, the Trump story — which didn’t need the slightest exaggeration to be fantastic — was more or less constantly distorted. . . 

. . . Media companies need to get out of the audience-stroking business, and by extension the politics business. They’d then be more likely to be believed when making pronouncements about elections or masks or anything else, for that matter. Creating that kind of outlet also has a much better shot of restoring sanity to the country than the current strategy, which seems based on stamping out access to “wrong” information.

What we’ve been watching for four years, and what we saw explode last week, is a paradox: a political and informational system that profits from division and conflict, and uses a factory-style process to stimulate it, but professes shock and horror when real conflict happens. It’s time to admit this is a failed system. You can’t sell hatred and seriously expect it to end.

The Strange Nature of the Current Conversation About Censorship

Since the attack on the Congressional building last week, talk about censorship has increased markedly.

The most notable example has been the Parler app which became the conservative alternative to Twitter after that site began to moderate, and sometimes censor, political postings.

After Wednesday’s Trump rally/demonstration, several support platforms (such as Google) that make programs like Twitter and Parler available online, have refused to support the Parler app any longer.

Congress has been calling the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram into its chambers for months to give lengthy testimony before comically ill-informed congressional people. Representatives and Senators primarily scold these men and women for not implementing the particular species of censorship that they happen to believe is needed.

The CEOs bow and scrap appropriately and then go home to do as they please.

Now conservatives are whipping themselves into a panic over targeted, corporate censorship directed specifically against them and their movements.

In fact, Joe Biden has already begun to discuss the need for new laws to clamp down on “domestic terrorism,” which will certainly include additional provisions for warrantless surveillance, wiretapping, and censorship for “inappropriate” political speech.

But there is a deep irony in these conservative complaints about corporate giants like Facebook monopolizing online communications, and the growth of government censorship.

Oddly enough, politicians, journalists, and the public commonly discuss these issues as if Facebook and Twitter were public service providers!

They are not.

They are private companies that can do anything they darn well please in the area of content control. Their only real obligation is to make more money for their shareholders.

It’s called capitalism, remember?

And conservatives have always insisted that markets should not be regulated, unless of course it somehow improves the bottom line for the corporations we are now complaining about.

As a result, the American people face a barren, public communications landscape dominated by a few behemoth-sized corporations that have consumed and destroyed all competition.

It’s called unregulated capitalism. The kind conservatives adore.

People forget that all of these companies became the giant monopolies they are today because of government DE-regulation policies going back to the Reagan presidency — deregulation policies dear to the heart of conservatives.

Now everyone gets to reap what “they” have sown.

Chris Hedges on “The Collective Suicide of the Liberal Class”

As American democracy continues to circle the drain, the future of our body politic looks increasingly grim.

Chris Hedges

I had planned on writing a post about the long-term social effects of “Trumpism” and the president’s faux-legal efforts to overturn a democratic presidential election, but then I received Chris Hedges’ latest editorial in my inbox.

Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who wrote for many years for the New York Times.

Reflecting on his years as a foreign war correspondent, he also wrote an important book describing the addictive qualities of war-making entitled, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. If you haven’t read it, you really should.

Hedges is one of my favorite journalists and political writers who offers a cogent analysis of America’s unhappy future in words far more eloquent than anything I would have written.

So, here is an excerpt of Hedges’ very insightful and very bleak forecast. Or you can read the entire article here:

Liberals who express dismay, or more bizarrely a fevered hope, about the corporatists and imperialists selected to fill the positions in the Biden administration are the court jesters of our political burlesque. They long ago sold their soul and abandoned their most basic principles to line up behind a bankrupt Democratic Party. They chant, with every election cycle, the mantra of the least worst and sit placidly on the sidelines as a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama and the Democratic Party leadership betray every issue they claim to support.

The only thing that mattered to liberals in the presidential race, once again, was removing a Republican, this time Donald Trump, from office. This, the liberals achieved. But their Faustian bargain, in election after election, has shredded their credibility. They are ridiculed, not only among right-wing Trump supporters but by the hierarchy of the Democratic Party that has been captured by corporate power. No one can, or should, take liberals seriously. They stand for nothing. They fight for nothing. The cost is too onerous. And so, the liberals do what they always do, chatter endlessly about political and moral positions they refuse to make any sacrifices to achieve.          

Liberals, largely comprised of the professional managerial-class that dutifully recycles and shops for organic produce and is concentrated on the two coasts, have profited from the ravages of neoliberalism. They seek to endow it with a patina of civility. But their routine and public humiliation has ominous consequences. It not only exposes the liberal class as hollow and empty, it discredits the liberal democratic values they claim to uphold. Liberals should have abandoned the Democratic Party when Bill Clinton and political hacks such as Biden transformed the Democratic Party into the Republican Party and launched a war on traditional liberal values and left-wing populism. They should have defected by the millions to support Ralph Nader and other Green Party candidates. . . 

. . . The Biden administration resembles the ineffectual German government formed by Franz von Papen in 1932 that sought to recreate the ancien régime, a utopian conservatism that ensured Germany’s drift into fascism. Biden, bereft like von Papen of new ideas and programs, will eventually be forced to employ the brutal tools Biden as a senator was so prominent in creating to maintain social control – wholesale surveillance, a corrupt judicial system, the world’s largest prison system and police that have been transformed into lethal paramilitary units of internal occupation. Those that resist as social unrest mounts will be attacked as agents of a foreign power and censored, as many already are being censored, including through algorithms and deplatforming on social media. The most ardent and successful dissidents, such as Julian Assange, will be criminalized.

The shock troops of the state, already ideologically bonded with the neofascists on the right, will hunt down and wipe out an enfeebled and often phantom left, as we saw in the chilling state assassination by U.S. Marshals of the antifa activist Michael Reinoehl, who was unarmed and standing outside an apartment complex in Lacey, Washington, in September when he was shot multiple times. I witnessed this kind of routine state terror during the war in El Salvador. Reinoehl allegedly killed Aaron Danielson, a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer during a pro-Trump rally in Portland, Oregon in August.

Compare the gunning down of Reinoehl by federal agents to the coddling of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old accused of killing two protesters and injuring a third on August 25 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Police officers, moments before the shooting, are seen on video thanking Rittenhouse and other armed right-wing militia member for coming to the city and handing them bottles of water. Rittenhouse is also seen in a video walking toward police with his hands up after his shooting spree as protesters yell that he had shot several people. Police, nevertheless, allow him to leave. Rittenhouse’s killings have been defended by the right, including Trump. Rittenhouse, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for his legal fees, has been released on $2 million bail.

All the pieces are in place for our own descent into what I suspect will be a militarized Christianized fascism. Political dysfunction, a bankrupt and discredited liberal class, massive and growing social inequality, a grotesquely rich and tone-deaf oligarchic elite, the fragmentation of the public into warring tribes, widespread food insecurity and hunger, chronic underemployment and unemployment and misery, all exacerbated by the failure of the state to cope with the crisis of the pandemic, combine with the rot of civil and political life to create a familiar cocktail leading to authoritarianism and fascism.

Trump and the Republican Party, along with the shrill incendiary voices on right-wing media, play the role the antisemitic parties played in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th century. The infusion of anti-Semitism into the political debate in Europe destroyed the political decorum and civility that is vital to maintaining a democracy. Racist tropes and hate speech, as in Weimar Germany, now poison our political discourse. Ridicule and cruel taunts are hurled back and forth. Lies are interchangeable with fact. Those who oppose us are demonized as human embodiments of evil.

This poisonous discourse is only going to get worse, especially with millions of Trump supporters convinced the election was rigged and stolen. . .

. . .The constant barrage of vitriol and fabulist conspiracy theories will, I fear, embolden extremists to carry out political murder, not only of mainstream Democrats, Republicans Trump has accused of betrayal such as Georgia governor Brian Kemp and those targeted as part of the deep state, but also those at media outlets such as CNN or The New York Times that serve as propaganda arms of the Democratic Party. Once the Pandora’s box of violence is opened it is almost impossible to close. Martyrs on one side of the divide demand martyrs on the other side. Violence becomes the primary form of communication. And, as Sabastian Haffner wrote, “once the violence and readiness to kill that lies beneath the surface of human nature has been awakened and turned against other humans, and even made into a duty, it is a simple matter to change the target.”

This, I suspect, is what is coming. The blame lies not only with the goons and racists on the right, the corporatists who pillage the country and the corrupt ruling elite that does their bidding, but a feckless liberal class that found standing up for its beliefs too costly. The liberals will pay for their timidity and cowardice, but so will we. 

The Washington Post: “Trump and his allies are approaching nearly 50 losses in four week”s

The Washington Post has a good article today summarizing the current state of Trump’s numerous legal challenges to overturn the election results in 6 states. Again and again, judges continue to dismiss these cases as frivolous and without warrant.

Yes, the Right Wing propaganda machine continues to work overtime. But it is important to remember that bare assertions (like those repeated by Rudy Giuliani) are not arguments, nor are they evidence. Convincing arguments require evidence — especially in court. And that is what Trump’s lawyer continually fail to provide.

Listening to people who repeat the things we want to hear is not the way to LEARN anything. Nor is it the way to craft public policy. 

However, rote repetition IS a pivotal tool for political propaganda. It can convince people of almost anything, evidence free. Just repeat it over and over again…

Sadly, this is the nature of “public discourse” in our country for the foreseeable future. All information is now “stove-piped.” The stovepipes consists of the individual’s political ideology.

Conservatives watch Fox, OAN, and Newsmax. Democrats watch MSNBC or CNN. Each group is fed tailored information conveniently packaged in the way they each prefer to consume information.

Ideological preferences determine what pieces of select information, often distorted and manipulated, viewers/readers receive. People pay attention to the information outlet that tells them what they already believe and want to hear.

As long as these patterns of media and personal, social behavior continue, the American people will remain hopelessly divided. There is no way around it, and our political, regulatory powers are too ineffective, feckless, and greedy to do anything about it.

Since The Washington Post article is hidden behind a subscription wall, I will post the entire article here. Or you can read it here. It is written by Anna Brugmann, Keith Newell, Tobi Raji, Aaron Schaffer and Maya Smith:

President Trump and his allies faced a crush of defeats in post-election litigation Friday, a further sign of their ongoing failure to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory through the courts and to gain traction through baseless claims of widespread fraud.

Just over a month after the Nov. 3 election, the Trump campaign and other Republicans suing over Biden’s win were dealt court losses across six states where they have tried to contest the results of the presidential race — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Judges ruled decisively that Trump’s side has not proved the election was fraudulent, with some offering painstaking analyses of why such claims lack merit and pointed opinions about the risks the legal claims pose to American democracy.

“It can be easy to blithely move on to the next case with a petition so obviously lacking, but this is sobering,” wrote Justice Brian Hagedorn of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, agreeing with the court’s decision not to hear a lawsuit filed by a conservative group that sought to invalidate the election in that state.

“The relief being sought by the petitioners is the most dramatic invocation of judicial power I have ever seen,” added Hagedorn, who is part of the court’s conservative wing. “Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election. . . . This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread.”

Two of the biggest defeats took place in Arizona and Nevada, where judges tossed full-scale challenges to the states’ election results filed by the Republican Party and the Trump campaign, respectively. Both judges noted in their opinions that the plaintiffs did not prove their claims of fraud.

In a detailed, 35-page decision, Judge James T. Russell of the Nevada District Court in Carson City vetted each claim of fraud and wrongdoing made by the Trump campaign in the state and found that none was supported by convincing proof. The judge dismissed the challenge with prejudice, ruling that the campaign failed to offer any basis for annulling more than 1.3 million votes cast in the state’s presidential race.

The campaign “did not prove under any standard of proof that illegal votes were cast and counted, or legal votes were not counted at all, due to voter fraud, nor in an amount equal to or greater than” Biden’s margin of victory, which was about 33,600 votes, Russell wrote.

During a court hearing Thursday afternoon, Trump campaign lawyer Jesse R. Binnall said the Nevada election had been “stolen” from Trump and claimed a “robust body of evidence” supported his conclusion.

Among its allegations, the campaign claimed that more than 61,000 people voted twice or from out-of-state.

In his ruling, Russell concurred with election officials and academic experts that there is no evidence for this, and specifically dismissed witness declarations that had been touted by the campaign, calling them “self-serving statements of little or no evidentiary value.”

The judge added that the campaign’s so-called expert testimony “was of little to no value,” and called a claim of ballot-stuffing in broad daylight — made by one anonymous person and not corroborated by anyone else — “not credible.”

In a statement, the Nevada Republican Party said it intended to immediately appeal the ruling to the state’s highest court.

For his part, Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford, a Democrat, cheered the decision and called on members of Trump’s team to submit a formal complaint of voter fraud to his office — accompanied by details and evidence.

“Absent such a complaint and supporting evidence, these claims of widespread voter fraud remain baseless,” Ford said in a statement.

“This election is over,” he added. “President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris won Nevada, and Nevadans can remain confident that their voices have been heard.”

The Trump campaign’s strategy of using the courts to change the result of the presidential election — which has involved dozens of lawsuits in six states — has so far been a complete failure, as lawyers for the president and his allies repeatedly failed to present credible evidence of wrongdoing that would justify invalidating millions of votes in swing states. Trump and his allies are approaching nearly 50 losses in four weeks, according to a tally by Democratic attorney Marc Elias.

In an interview with Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs on Friday, Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani dismissed the Nevada loss, saying the campaign would appeal but that “Nevada’s not critical to us.” Instead, he said the campaign was pinning its hopes on efforts in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and, “boy, on Wisconsin.”

However, the Trump campaign already suffered defeat at the Wisconsin Supreme Court this week. And in federal court, District Judge Brett H. Ludwig expressed skepticism Friday about Trump’s arguments as he held an initial status hearing in a suit seeking to overturn Biden’s victory there.

While the hearing largely dealt only with setting a rapid schedule of filings and hearings next week, Ludwig — a Trump nominee who took the bench only in September — noted that the president has requested “extraordinary” relief.

He added that he had a “very, very hard time” seeing why Trump brought the action in federal court. Ludwig also termed a Trump request to “remand” the election back to the state legislature “bizarre.”

Meanwhile, in Arizona, Judge Randall Warner of the Maricopa County Superior Court ruled Friday that he found “no misconduct, no fraud and no effect on the outcome of the election” in a suit brought by the Arizona Republican Party and its chairwoman, Kelli Ward.

Warner found that GOP lawyers had identified nine mistakes during an inspection of 1,626 ballots that had been duplicated because the originals were damaged or could not be scanned. But those few errors did not amount to a widespread problem that cast doubt on Biden’s winning margin of more than 10,000 votes — or demand the “extraordinary act” of annulling the more than 3.3 million votes cast by Arizonans, he ruled.