Right To Left
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Posts posted by Right To Left
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16 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:
Canada routinely plays the soft power role because it helps the US and allies to massage their foreign policy around the world when the maple leaf is singing from the same song sheet. The problem for Canada is that without more hard power, the country loses credibility and often has to choose from the best larger power's foreign policy. Not always. Sometimes Canada takes a different course as she rightly did on Iraq. With Venezuela I'd agree that the situation is concerning. We've been pulled into US diplomatic wars as well, as in the case with China over the Huawei bank fraud business. Only strong leadership that understands wherein the power lies and how to wield it to serve the country's interests can change this. It means focusing on substance instead of showmanship and making hard choices around expenditures.
Right off the bat Canada needs to stop funding strange international projects and dubious equity schemes and focus on security in health, food, defence, energy, and commanding heights manufacturing (steel, planes, trains, automobiles, high tech agri, information technology, biotech, etc.), as well as STEM education and literacy (where we actually do shine). Stop the anti-Canadian rhetoric and identity politics which have defined the federal government since Trudeau took office.
First, it should be noted that Canada's opposition to the Iraq Invasion is the last time Canada has ever crossed US geopolitical objectives, and I would bet it will never happen again...even if an NDP Government manages to form a government somehow. At the time, Chretien had the backchannel briefings that showed it was almost certain that the WMD story was hoax, and the case for making it a case to support invasion was based all on one dubious witness - the infamous "Curveball," who was already a proven liar by that time. Bush 2 was learned to have said prior to getting elected that he had to 'finish the job his father started.' So, they were looking for crap to add up to support the case for invasion of Iraq.
They knew it would be costly, in terms of American lives (mostly National Guard recruits who never expect to actually be in a real shooting war) and it was a time when MSM narrative management was much less complete than today. Nevertheless, notice how old Georgie - who was portrayed as the 'Trump' of his time, ends up portrayed as a fatherly figure sharing chocolates with Michelle Obama (ain't that sweet) now that he has become accepted again as part of the elite club!
Anyway, I see Canada's real loss of independence as being when Mulroo signed us on to NAFTA, which at the time those of us who were working in industries where manufacturing could easily be shipped off to Mexico and other authoritarian regimes with lots of peasants who work for peanuts and are careful not to criticize their leaders. Of course it didn't take long for America to start losing jobs as well, and even Mexico couldn't bid equally for some labor-intensive work like textiles..which ended up in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia or wherever Walmart can find the cheapest costs for finished product.
But the worst aspects of Free Trade are:
1. The spiral into increasing inequality, which is still ongoing. And-
2. The loss of national sovereignty, as conservatives have to take their lumps for this one: Canada now has no effective control over our own economy. That's how we lost medical research and development that absent-minded conservatives are blaming on Trudeau Jr. now. But he's just a fashion model cutout of what a leader is supposed to be! The real damage was done 30 to 40 years ago, as the terms of NAFTA set in and destroyed automotive and removed our abilities to support our own industries.
*it's not just vaccine production! Look at what happened in Saskatchewan, when a few uninformed locals thought they could stop the sale of Saskatchewan Potash to an American buyer!
We're just America's northern province today, and Trudeau Junior is the Prime Minister we deserve and get, because a real leader gets kneecapped and removed from office in short order!
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2 hours ago, DogOnPorch said:
I agree with what you say...all of it...and that's rare here.
I'm on BitChute & Rumble...both seem like they're okay...but are tiny next to the YouTube behemoth. A beast that gets its power from the creativity of others...and then perversely abuses that power to stifle the same creativity. YouTube was built on bum fights, firework accidents and uncut war footage. Not on MSNBC being algorithmically forced to the top of everyone's feed.
We are in very dangerous territory...unlike I've ever seen...you too, no doubt. Does one fight back??? Or does one let the Brave New World/A Clockwork Orange/1984 vision these "leaders" wish to foist on society become a reality because...alone...you can't stop it? And they do seem to want us all very alone for all this...
I opened a Bitchute account just in case all of my favorite Youtube channels go down. But so far, Googleborg is just demonitizing them and unsubscribing members (including myself). I hate having to resubscribe to shows I've been a member of for years (like the Jimmy Dore Show), because some in positions of authority want to throw in a monkey wrench without shutting down the channel completely, like a number of rightwing channels....even if they platform the wrong guest- like recently blacklisted and CANCELLED RFK Jr. - because of his constant questioning of vaccine efficacy. That used to earn him consternation and even a few public debates with medical authorities. But, for some reason now (likely the money involved), the subject of vaccines is too dangerous to even be allowed up for debate! RFK Jr., by virtue of being a 2nd generation Kennedy, used to be looked upon as a member of the liberal intelligensia ...especially when adding in being regarded as a role model and advocate for disabled Americans. But you may have noticed that anyone who gets cancelled by the Liberal leadership takes away all of their 'woke' points for being a member of a favored category! And it's worth noting that Kennedy is not some absolute vaccine refusenik ..like some former Hollywood celebs. Rather than make a better argument, the new normal is just remove any critics from public consideration.
So, I expect anyone on the left or right who insists on speaking the truth on any subject and won't take money to repeat accepted wisdom, or in a growing number of cases of co-opted and bought off left, they will pose as leftist radicals on a few topics their funders allow, but not on subjects that will cross the $$$bosses narratives - like military spending, foreign wars, regime change ops etc..
I would add that if Bitchute becomes too popular as growing numbers of dissatisfied radicals move there from Youtube, then they'll find a way to end Bitchute's web hosts... reasons given could be like Parler ... which I never went on, but I was already aware that most of the organizing for the Capitol Hill rioters was done on Twitter and Facebook accounts, not Parler! But no chance that any of the FAANGS will be taken down.
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1 hour ago, OftenWrong said:
The Premier of Ontario, His Majesty the Right Honourable Doug Ford, wants to take a time out to tell Ontarians this important message:
Since arriving in Queens Park, a lot of people suspect that Ford and his Tories are being rewarded for the rate they are turning public lands over to developers in the GTA.
I would have assumed that Dougie is just trying to commune with the lower classes before, with his Tim Horton's references. But it is getting to the point where he must either be a stockholder or is getting some form of kickback for his advertising and promotional services.
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On 2/10/2021 at 4:20 PM, godzilla said:
but its the majority... and will be an interesting metric as Trump attempts to continue his influence. as since the jan 6 insurrection attempt he's incapable of being elected.
He is also incapable of using his Twitter account and other social media because of a lifetime ban. Some people who aren't thinking too carefully about this, because platforms like Twitter, have been turned into pseudo-public squares, where virtually everyone participates. It should not be up to bearded dweeb - Jack Dorsey or space boy Zuckerberg to decide who does and does not get to play on their playgrounds that they have turned into monopolies through a variety of legal and illegal tactics.
Same goes for the other FAANGS members. If a court or some civil action determines that Donald Trump has abused the public trust and should be shunned off the airwaves and social media, that's how it should be handled. When it's by the whims of corporate oligarchs and the minions who work in their interests, then we can expect......well, what has already been happening for a few years now: the worst, most egregious actors are allowed to keep their accounts humming along, while many are banned and silenced for no justifiable reasons, other than perhaps preaching the wrong politics, or the wrong information.
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believe that significant numbers of R's and D's still accept the propaganda narratives they are spoonfed from their trusted news sources, and fail to delve a little deeper into the story a little below the surface.
So, what jumps out at me is one that...in fact actually comes from a Washington Post source, but this one has facts and numbers to go with it:
QuoteBeyond the predilection for red hats and overwhelming whiteness of the Capitol rioters, little was known about the MAGA true-believers who stormed the seat of government on January 6. But a clearer picture of what type of person was present is starting to emerge. The Washington Post shared a new analysis saying more than half of those facing criminal charges for their role in the riots had suffered major financial setbacks such as bankruptcy, foreclosure or tax liens.
The paper found that nearly 60 percent of the 125 defendants for whom they could find significant financial information had gone through an economic shock of some sort in the recent past. Their histories were littered with evictions and unpaid tax debt, and their rate of bankruptcy was nearly twice the national average.
"I think what you’re finding is more than just economic insecurity but a deep-seated feeling of precarity about their personal situation,” American University political science professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss. “And that precarity — combined with a sense of betrayal or anger that someone is taking something away — mobilized a lot of people that day.”
The Post’s findings were bolstered by another study from the University of Chicago, which compared the defendants to right-wing extremists arrested by the FBI in recent years. They found the Capitol rioters were older and had more white-collar workers than the extremists.
Though the studies taken together paint a picture of aggrieved members of the upper middle-class, who are suffering unfamiliar setbacks along with most citizens of the United States in this uniquely inequal era, many people on social media were offended by the reporting. Operating on the idea that equality means moving over to make room under the boot, some people felt compelled to share the indignities they’ve suffered without rioting.
Quotehttps://news.yahoo.com/large-number-people-charged-capitol-224039552.html
What this all tells me is that the same motivations that are driving young blacks to join BLM and take to the streets as they hear about the next round of police shootings, while unemployed mostly-white college students join antifa groups to protest police, college loan debts, all seem to be joining together because of their personal feelings of despair about the future.
What all these groups are missing is that they are all on the down escalator to the bottom, while a small, entitled minority (less than 1%) and about 10% - professional support staff, are the only ones benefiting while the vast majority end up in grinding poverty.
And it shouldn't come as a surprise that their main goal is to keep the commoners divided and fighting amongst themselves, and especially not notice who is actually running the game and how much we're all being cheated by a tiny class of undeserving rich who've found the magic money machine, and keep using it to buy up more and more real estate and other real assets, and drive costs out of reach for average people who have to work to earn their money!
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On 2/7/2021 at 10:17 PM, Zeitgeist said:
Neither Biden nor Trump is a giant.
Nor Churchill! He was just the last of the line of British imperialists who was trying to maintain England's imperial primacy in the world as the new empire - America, was rising fast to take its place. Churchill as a political leader was a stubborn deadender, who caused unneeded death and suffering at home and especially in colonies like India, where his deliberate starvation strategies in East Bengal caused the deaths of millions!
I don't believe in the Great Man theory of history as a general rule. The leaders are not much different than coaches of winning teams getting credit because their names are associated with teams whose owners were willing to fork out more money than the other rich idiots who try to use their money to get in a photo with the championship team they otherwise, had no talent to join when they were young!
So, back before our economic system turned into a complete joke (a magical time before central banks were comfortable creating $Trillions of new dollars to spend in and leave as a burden for future generations), an unfortunate leader like James Callahan, who gets the top job in England just as high oil prices and no domestic production yet from the North Sea, presides over the UK's 'Winter of Discontent.' His replacement - Margaret Thatcher, is a subject of scorn early on with her radical destruction of the Social Contract and anti-labour laws. But as oil prices decline, along with domestic production starting during Thatcher's reign, she and her murderous economic advisers are declared heroes by enough of the British public to win re-election. Same scenario from Carter to Reagan in the US during the 80's.
And that aside, if it's about honoring the great hero who won the 2nd World War, then you need statues of Joseph Stalin to be put up in public squares! Because Russia and her Soviet allies had to sacrifice 27 million lives to defeat Hitler's armies on the Eastern Front.....where the bulk of the fighting was actually being done! And today, history is being erased as Soviets are being accused of "murdering" German troops who were trying to hold Poland, Ukraine and other East Bloc territories. In some of the concentration camps-like Auschwitz, the Germans and Nazi allies were still trying to liquidate Jewish and other prisoners when the first divisions of the Red Army overran the camps and ended their slaughter.
I would credit Churchill for being the lone voice among the western leaders to decide early on that Hitler needed to be stopped before guns could be turned on the Communist East. Roosevelt and US political and business leaders were trying to work out a deal with Hitler until Japan launched an attack on the US Pacific Fleet in Hawaii and changed their plans.
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On 2/5/2021 at 8:52 PM, DogOnPorch said:
I've repeatedly noted that "Q" seemed more a thing of the Trump opposition...they know far more about it that I ever will...or will ever BOTHER to know. As I've stated, my volunteer work with the Trump rallies let me have a good look at most of them. No weird shaman guys dressed as cows...just saying.
Sea of red hats?? By golly yes to that one...
But, Democrats having weird parties in the Hollywood Hills (et al) involving drugs, children and Satan worship? I'm supposed to be shocked and surprised? They call that Tuesday in that particular circle...
Q must have been someone working behind the scenes in one of the deep state agencies, in need of an anonymous position to manipulate people's thinking and develop a cult following among Republican Trump fans.
But again, those who seek wealth and power have long been the most depraved and evil members of the human race...narcissists, sociopaths..whatever you want to call them, people who were of sound mind should have been questioning the direction western capitalist civilization was moving in decades ago, instead of waiting until everything is teetering on the edge of collapse!
I doubt any honest, forensic investigation of the lives, habits and practices of the political class and their financiers would show much of a partisan difference in any western nation, let alone the US.
What is different now from 20 or 30 years ago, is that the promises of the internet revolution have turned from freedom into Orwellian surveillance and mind control! Sometimes the truth gets out, in MSM and social media platforms, but those who tell too much truth that authorities don't want circulated widely, get pushed down by so called faults of algorithms and have their video channels and web pages demonetized or banned outright with no explanation or recourse for appeal.
This is why so many on both the left and right edges of the political spectrum are abandoning Facebook and Google-owned Youtube for newer startups and trying to bring along as many of their subscribers and regular viewers as possible.
It's a matter of where the money is coming from! So, any left media that tells followers to stick with Biden and the Democrats is paid for/controlled opposition, no matter what they claim to believe in or stand for! Same on the right side. The right wing is in disarray over what to do about Trump's post-election meltdown. But from the beginning, the Lincoln Project and other 'moderate' Republicans who were trying to move to the glorified and mythical moderate center, are political actors just trying to move where the money is and tells them to go!
Unlike Democrat politicians, the GOP has been long averse to going against their activist base of supporters. But there seem to be enough in the Senate who are willing to take a dive, even if it means the end of their Senate careers! They have been assured that they will get paid and have new opportunities awaiting them after the consensus of oligarchy has completed their plans of kicking Trump down to a level where neither him or one of his offspring will be able to re-emerge as a candidate for future office. I wouldn't be surprised if part of the plan is to get a Republican version of "super-delegates" who perform such an invaluable service to the owners of the Democratic Party!
The only thing that can mangle their plans now is if a groundswell of disaffection on either left or right or both turns into a destabilizing force that finally ends these games!
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On 2/6/2021 at 12:12 AM, Zeitgeist said:
As always, Canada is the naive Boy Scout that gets sucker-punched. China stole key research from Canada's National Research Council before reneging on their vaccine deal. Vaccine nationalism? How about governments do their best to use their citizens' money to save their citizens' lives? That's fundamental and what Trudeau didn't expect from other countries. Well guess what? That's why countries exist.
So China STOLE Canada's vaccine research and development capabilities back when Mulroney got the bright idea of privatizing Connaught Labs (bought by American company)! Giving up this key advantage Canada once had in medical research, and exactly what has the NRC done to restore Canada's vaccine research since then, aside from saying they "are working in partnership" with a couple of US companies to try to develop Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.
https://nrc.canada.ca/en/covid-19-response-vaccines-therapeutics
And, we got to deep six this old time-honored Liberal theme of downtrodden, naive Canada struggling to do its best in the world. Even the US officials always end up saying 'we meant well' when their blown up military strategies fall apart and completely expose them...WMD's in Iraq was not that long ago actually!
In reality, Canadian governments, including our present wimpish-sounding Prime Minister who's always trying to sound concerned and self-effacing as he signs Canada on with US regime change ops like Venezuela for instance. All the trapclap about Trump aside, Canada was first in line to declare handpicked puppet - Juan Guido as the real president of Venezuela.
What's in it for Canada? Not heavy crude, no it's gold, diamonds and other minerals being discovered in Southern Venezuela's stretch of the Amazon River...already being coveted by our gold mining companies. Their bids will easily be approved by Rubberstamp Guido if the US is ever actually able to install him in power. The US will take the oil, Canada gets the gold, and other compliant allies of the "Lima Group" like US vassal - Colombia, will be in to carve out their share of the take. Guido and Venezuela's oligarchs will get their take, and the only ones left out will be the Venezuelan people.....especially the natives of Amazonia, which Venezuela has been the last nation left protecting their territories!
So, long story short, Canada's national myth and image is just a facade that hides the reality of a soc-dem nation that spends too much time celebrating its mythical character while avoiding and refusing to comment or criticizing the actions of US military and "soft" power exercised around the world that makes our overblown image and creature comforts possible!
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4 minutes ago, DogOnPorch said:
Thanks for your reply.
Tens of millions of Americans and untold numbers of non-US citizen say STOLEN. Unfortunately, your say-so is unlikely to change that.
No doubt! But the Republican politicians and media wags who acted as Trump enablers should have been a lot more careful instead of running off their mouths about Democrat Voter Fraud. Because they created a large, implacable Trump base of supporters with a vanguard made up of the most aggressive and unreasonable frontliners, all looking for action! And they got it.
To me, this is very similar to Q-Anon, which I think was a deliberately created and set up fraud, and likely not even made by those within conservative and rightwing groups, but instead created by opponents who support Democrats and institutional authorities in Washington. My suspicions are aroused by the very fact that a few independent investigators of Jeffrey Epstein's hobbies have noted that pedophilia and the sexual grooming of minors is a bipartisan affair among men of wealth and power.
As soon as Q-anon said Trump would lead the godly, rightwing forces in America against Democrat sexual predators and stop their preying upon children....well then the whole narrative should have been understood as idiotic propaganda...even without the added prophecies. And having actual elected officials join on and proclaim their belief in the Q-Anon cult that bad things would happen if they ever went to Washington after Trump refused to recognize the results!
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On 1/30/2021 at 10:32 PM, Zeitgeist said:
Well it's looking highly likely that the virus came from the Wuhan lab. I wouldn't put it past the Chinese to practice their pandemic response on their own people. They now have a more scientific excuse to control their population and force the hands of governments to control their respective populations. Want to prevent people from reproducing? Want to slash greenhouse gas emissions? Want to accelerate working and learning remotely to restrict movement? It's all right here wrapped in a bow.
Peoples are embracing restrictions out of legitimate fear. We are totally beholden to pharmaceutical tech. However, I won't be convinced that the restrictions will end until they do. Again, beware of new variants or mutations becoming the excuse to continue emergency measures, which are an extreme violation of human rights. Once all vulnerable people are vaccinated and 70% of the population is vaccinated, restrictions must be lifted unconditionally. If there are resistant strains at that point, we have to create a pathway for the vulnerable to stay home and live under protection while everyone else gets back to normal or else our economy and quality of life will be destroyed.
Here's some food for thought:
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On 2/3/2021 at 6:04 PM, Zeitgeist said:
You seem very pro China. Perhaps on the payroll? I won't hesitate to say that we have very radically shifted from a laissez-faire capitalist liberal democracy to Chinese-style totalitarian surveillance capitalism. I suspect that restrictions of one form or another will remain going forward. The virus has provided the sensible grounds to impose them and the game out of Chinese central planning may be hatching new justifications for greater government control. Constitutional protections and human rights are suspended. My fear is that they will continue to be suspended and any serious attempts to rally political opposition will be cast as a security threat. I hope I'm wrong, but I think we have reason to worry.
Right! Saying something "pro-China" means being on the Chinese Government payroll. Or another theory might be that anyone looking at the evidence would notice that China had to deal with this new coronavirus the earliest...which is the main reason why it's assumed by epidemiologists to have started in Northern China first, before it became widespread.
I'm not calling for a Communist Chinese takeover here, my point is that they acted quickly and succeeded to stop the spread of the virus early, using methods that are considered extreme over here.....but, maybe that's what you have to do if you don't want to be ravaged by a contagious, rapidly spreading new disease!
The problem in Canada, the US and EUtopia is that the keystone cops leading our governments can't bullshit their way around the fact that they have been trying to do as little as possible to stop Covid-19. Once we learned what the term "flattening the curve" meant, then it should have been plainly obvious that western politicians in every country are just paid spokesmodels for the monied elites fighting to see who gets to be richest and most powerful. The last thing the billionaire oligarchs will allow is any pandemic response that will threaten their profitability and earnings!
And speaking of serving the oligarchy, Big Pharma now runs vaccine creation and promotion...even though some of the companies (like Moderna) did NOTHING to fund the research for a Covid-19 vaccine! They just swoop in afterwards and take all of the free, publicly-funded research and slap a patent on it before sending it off to the marketing department to sell.
And after all the BS propaganda we have been deluged with over the past year, we learn that the Sputnik V vaccine developed in Russia has a higher success rate and very low frequency of reported side effects, compared with the ones being made by the billionaire drug companies. As for the vaccines created in China, I'm not sure if there have been any definitive conclusions drawn yet, but according to a recent report published in the Lancet, it is over 90% effective. So it's right up there with the claimed efficacy of Pfizer's and a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to distribute and use, since it doesn't have to be contained in special sub-zero freezers that will keep it as a product for the wealthy first world nations.
Vaccine nationalism is the worst development now of this renewed Cold War that's been ginned up to restart the wars, the arms race and ramping up missile and drone production now, because the whole point to mass inoculation of the population is to prevent and eradicate a dangerous disease. If large pockets of population groups are left without vaccination, or worse -- are deliberately prevented from receiving vaccines, along with other embargoes and sanctions of targeted nations, then if the west thinks the new coronavirus is gone and forgotten, it's continued spread allowed to denigrate living conditions in Yemen, Venezuela, Syria, and other extreme sanctions targets, will bring it right back again as new variants of Covid-19 rise up that are highly vaccine-resistant.
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9 hours ago, DogOnPorch said:
Joe Biden stealing the election made all this and more possible. Let's give him a hand...
Nonsense! In actual fact, electoral fraud is a bipartisan activity in the US! And the problem with Trump allies going at Democrats for dubious voting machines is that the same questions about voting machines with no audit trails can be asked about Republican districts where the GOP controls local government that's in charge of the vote.
The Bernie supporters who took his 2020 campaign seriously, were already informed about the DNC rigging the kickoff Iowa Caucus for Mayo Pete by using a brand new app for no reasons (other than hiding evidence of fraud) that just happened to have been created by a company created by Hillary2016 Campaign workers called Shadow Inc. (seriously, that's what they called their startup company....why not We Commit Fraud.com?...maybe it was already taken).
So, election fraud has been allowed and encouraged by both parties....besides tossing provisional ballots and poll rigging, the Republicans have started using a cross-referencing voter registration tactic called Cross-check-an interstate data-sharing system started by Kansas Sec. of State- Kris Kobach, based on his claims of widespread voter fraud, the system...which exposed many voters to hacking of personal information, compared names on voting lists of participating states. And most of what they found was people who moved and had to change addresses, as well as college students staying at dorms form part of the year.
As Cross-Check devolved and unraveled because of controversy surrounding this practice, it started becoming obvious that the intentions were dishonorable from the start, with Kobach and other Republican officials deciding to double down with their shrinking white, older, middle class voting base, rather than looking to add POC's who were wealthier and older, and would be more likely to be brought in to a more moderate Republican approach. Something that Dubya tried back in 2000.
Right now, things are looking so bad and so many non-rich people are facing such extreme hardships now, I think the likely outcome might be for both parties to split apart. Who knows, if there isn't some sort of authoritarian, militaristic takeover of the federal government, real democracy might break out in America...of all places!
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17 hours ago, godzilla said:
how is identity politics dangerous?
"Identity politics is a term that describes a political approach wherein people of a particular religion, race, social background, class or other identifying factor develop political agendas and organize based upon the interlocking systems of oppression that affect their lives and come from their various identities. Identity politics centers the lived experiences of those facing various systems of oppression to better understand the ways in which racial, economic, sex-based, gender-based, and other forms of oppression are linked and to ensure that political agendas and political actions arising out of identity politics leave no one behind."
Identity politics as commonly practiced today, does not include economic class among their concerns! If they do, they're not liberals anymore and have joined the political left somewhere after realizing that whites living in poverty zones are also 'oppressed' while women and POC's who've become millionaires and billionaires have reached the level where they can buy all of the 'freedom from oppression' they will ever need!
After all, how "oppressed" are Kanye or Oprah today?
And it needs to be noted also, that wealthy POC's start thinking like rich white folks and taking on more and more of their concerns after they move upscale and leave the ghetto and the people who live there, behind.
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4 hours ago, Petros said:
I should just stand back from the keyboard and observe. That way in one year, I can look back and laugh at these silly comments when Trump is in an orange suit being led to a correctional facility.
All it will prove is which side of the political aisle has the most power behind them!
I don't think the Dems and their media allies would have wasted four years fluffing up Russia conspiracy theories and trying to find ways to connect them with Trump, if they weren't worried that the examples of real crimes committed by Donald The Businessman could have been stuck to him without taking down Democrats and more important - financiers of both parties.
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8 hours ago, Boges said:
Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time. Biden had Senators over to discuss a compromise, they seem far off.
What the Democrats and, I suspect many Republicans, would want from a Convictions is to then have vote barring him from every holding federal office again.
The legal argument that he can't be impeached after leaving office is spurious. If it was true, any POTUS could commit any number of crimes on their last in office and face no consequences.
Seems like the US has had a string of presidents in modern times who could have been impeached for domestic and foreign crimes.
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22 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:
China is not there yet...its currency is not strong enough yet to displace U.S. dollar hegemony. 5,000 years and still counting....sooner or later they may figure it out.
I don't believe the global capitalist order has much longer on its shelf life anyway, but I can't foresee how long all this will last.
Anyway, the shift away from Bush's War On Terror to Obama's Pivot To Asia did not get much analysis when the policy shift was first announced....like what the hell does "pivot" to Asia mean in the first place?
But, when it was time to hand over to Trump and the Republicans, it turned out to mean 'try to squeeze China economically, militarily with regime change ops on Chinese business partners (Sudan), and politically, through continual barrages of charges of Chinese war crimes against every ethnicity inside China.
And now that we're in the new Joe Era, it doesn't look like much has changed, aside from a toning down of the rhetoric coming out of the White House. But aside from those superficial aspects, there are no signs yet that the Biden China policy will be any different than Trump's. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd suspect the managers within DOD, CIA and State Dept. carry on like little changes whenever there's a color change from blue to red and back again in the political administration.
But, whatever else happens, I want to stick a fork in this Epoch Times/Rebel News agenda now that is trying to convince us that we have to fear Chinese invasion....now that they've weakened us with their disease!
When the WHO issues their report from their limited visits and testing done in China, to find the source of the Sars-Cov-2 virus, then maybe, we'll have something factual to go on. Up till now, as soon as the gloating over the Covid-19 outbreak first hit the Wuhan district of China over a year ago, it quickly morphed into The Chinese Created A New Disease To Kill US as soon as the plague traveled to the west and has hit the US with a vengeance. And most of the rapid spread and no.1 death tolls can be blamed on the shear stupidity of your own countrymen and their political and thought leaders, especially the long worship of selfish capitalist principles, that react with hostility to any attempts to get people to work together for common purpose....like stopping the spread of a highly contagious and extremely dangerous new disease!
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On 1/31/2021 at 12:21 AM, bush_cheney2004 said:
Not very precise targeting....healthy and unhealthy people around the world were also impacted. The U.S. economy only shrank by 3.5% in 2020...less than Canada's estimated 5%.
China will need to come up with a better idea to kill America.
Well, for one thing, China's economy grew about 3%. And that's why it's becoming clear now that the US increased saber-rattling and military threats against China are not motivated by much else than being stuck in the ditch, while China takes the lead of the Capitalist World Order.
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1 hour ago, mowich said:
A San Francisco teacher has been ridiculed for her 'performative wokeness' after she claimed that viral Bernie Sanders wearing mittens at President Joe Biden's inauguration was a lesson in 'white privilege and male privilege.'
High school teacher Ingrid Seyer-Ochi penned the San Francisco Chronicle op-ed published on Sunday, nearly two weeks after Sanders and his mittens took the internet by storm.
In it, she criticized the 79-year-old senator for wrapping up against the cold in his mittens and winter coat, while she claimed that his female colleagues, and especially women of color such as Vice President Kamala Harris, did not have the same opportunity to dress down for such a prestigious event.
"Sen. Sanders is no white supremacist insurrectionist. But he manifests privilege, white privilege, male privilege and class privilege, in ways that my students could see and feel,' Seyer-Ochi, who earns six figures working for the San Francisco Unified School District, wrote.
Ingrid Seyer-Ochi, a high school teacher in San Franscisco, has received criticism after publishing an op-ed calling Bernie Sanders' mittens a lesson in 'white privilege'
The monied elites learned a long time ago that the easiest way for them to coopt leftists and leftwing movements is to put a laser-like focus on identity politics issues, to 'erase' class antagonisms between rich and working classes from being up for discussion.
The liberal billionaires and their millionaire servants discovered that they can get a lot of mileage and completely disarm any liberal-left critics by appointing a few token women and visible minorities in high places...CEO's of every major weapons-producer...like new Defense chief- Lloyd Austin, who received some...extremely limited consternation for needing a special waiver from the new prez to be accepted as Defense Secretary. The whole point of this cabinet position to start with, was to have the chief of what had previously been known as the War Department under civilian/not military control! Along with the power and influence of the makers of more and more expensive weapons and delivery systems coopting former generals and admirals, it's easy to see how the US Government has devolved into a permanent war state that can't allow peace to break out anywhere in the world! Not even someone like Trump was allowed to end US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan by House Democrats who overruled his late decisions to bring troops home!
So, I think we can expect that the actions of a centrist Democrat president will actually be to make the world an even more dangerous place than the most bellicose Republican ever could! Military budgets will increase and strip more and more from domestic priorities, and more saber-rattling and proxy wars will be engaged in to keep troops in their bases, carriers sailing the oceans, and the missiles flying and bombs dropping around the world. What could go wrong?
But none of these things....which used to be liberal priorities years ago, intrude on the thinking of present day liberals whose concerns are all grounded by identity politics. So that, as much as I see him as a great disappointment or potential fraud, Bernie is made a target because of his skin color and gender by liberal opinion shapers who as the SF Chronicle editorial displays, still have many brainwashed followers who don't have enough sense to focus and work first in their own economic interests!
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On 1/31/2021 at 3:56 PM, godzilla said:
what he said. and the "whataboutism" has to stop... its what keeps politicians able to continue to screw people over and make a mockery of democracy.
I don't think we have to look in the rearview mirror at Biden's long, long Senate career any longer, to figure out how he will act (or not) as a president.
So far, now that the flowery rhetoric has begun to lose its petals, the Biden Admin's early actions reveal he is the same amoral, do anything to curry favor with powerful interests type -- Wall Street, big pharma and military+security police state complex leaders, and dismiss or give symbolism more than substance to grassroots base support groups that the Democrats depend on for votes at election time.
So, among Biden's cabinet appointments are Janet Yellin who has been hopscotching between government and Wall Street bank and brokerage firms like every other finance appointment in recent decades....most noted for getting paid over $850,000 per speech by banking groups. Something that should be illegal on the face of it, but the obvious quid pro quo has to be overlooked, at least since the Dems ran Hillary Clinton for president! And among the rest, the most likely damaging appointment (for the American people) is Lloyd Austin, ret. Army general and until he was given a special deferment (another red flag) for being out of the military forces for less than the required 7 years, to become the new Defense Secretary. The whole point for that 7 year rule was to provide a buffer and maintain real civilian control of the Armed Forces....something US governments have given up on since JFK got himself accidentally shot!
But then there's all the 'little' things that most people will only pay a passing glance to, since all of their Democratic Party-allied media and social media will not mention such negative stories more than once.....like the Biden Administration's decision to carry over the Trump decision to remove Grey Wolves from protection from hunters, as endangered species in the lower 48.
This is one I did not expect! Now, it looks like the same environmental agencies and volunteer groups that fought Trump policies for four years, have to keep fighting the new Biden regime! What was that old line from "Who's Next?" - "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".................... https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/biden-backs-trump-decision-to-strip-gray-wolf-of-protections
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4 minutes ago, godzilla said:
so you think the trial will not come at all? do the Rs have some procedural out? will the Ds give up on it?
i wouldn't think the Ds would give up on it... just because the whole capitol fiasco was not popular and so they'd just get to remind/re-popularize the whole event over again... while the Rs claim its time to "move on".
I'm sure Democrats will want it...because they really need distractions now more than ever. But, according to what I've heard, if Mitch McConnell has pulled back, it means he can tell there are not enough Republican votes to prosecute Trump in the Senate.
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4 minutes ago, BeaverFever said:
‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy
The KGB ‘played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality’, Yuri Shvets, a key source for a new book, tells the Guardian
Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.
Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.
Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump,” Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.
Shvets, a KGB major, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.
Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.
Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.
According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called “spotter agent” who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.
Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics.
The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.
“This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day: it is people like him who could change the world. They fed him these so-called active measures soundbites and it happened. So it was a big achievement for the KGB active measures at the time.”
Soon after he returned to the US, Trump began exploring a run for the Republican nomination for president and even held a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On 1 September, he took out a full-page advert in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe headlined: “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”
The ad offered some highly unorthodox opinions in Ronald Reagan’s cold war America, accusing ally Japan of exploiting the US and expressing scepticism about US participation in Nato. It took the form of an open letter to the American people “on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves”.
The bizarre intervention was cause for astonishment and jubilation in Russia. A few days later Shvets, who had returned home by now, was at the headquarters of the KGB’s first chief directorate in Yasenevo when he received a cable celebrating the ad as a successful “active measure” executed by a new KGB asset.
“It was unprecedented. I am pretty well familiar with KGB active measures starting in the early 70s and 80s, and then afterwards with Russia active measures, and I haven’t heard anything like that or anything similar – until Trump became the president of this country – because it was just silly. It was hard to believe that somebody would publish it under his name and that it will impress real serious people in the west but it did and, finally, this guy became the president.”
Trump’s election win in 2016 was again welcomed by Moscow. Special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. But the Moscow Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, found the Trump campaign and transition team had at least 272 known contacts and at least 38 known meetings with Russia-linked operatives.
Shvets, who has carried out his own investigation, said: “For me, the Mueller report was a big disappointment because people expected that it will be a thorough investigation of all ties between Trump and Moscow, when in fact what we got was an investigation of just crime-related issues. There were no counterintelligence aspects of the relationship between Trump and Moscow.”
He added: “This is what basically we decided to correct. So I did my investigation and then got together with Craig. So we believe that his book will pick up where Mueller left off.”
Unger, the author of seven books and a former contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine, said of Trump: “He was an asset. It was not this grand, ingenious plan that we’re going to develop this guy and 40 years later he’ll be president. At the time it started, which was around 1980, the Russians were trying to recruit like crazy and going after dozens and dozens of people.”
“Trump was the perfect target in a lot of ways: his vanity, narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book
The only time I followed the Russiagate story close enough to try to figure out what the hell was going on was back when Robert Mueller was holding hearings and then turned out a report that was open-ended and used language that could be interpreted to mean everything from 'Trump is under control by Putin' to the whole thing has just been a scripted fraud! And I'm inclined to go with the latter explanation!
There were so many options to follow to try to set up an actual impeachment trial of Donald Trump, why did they follow this convoluted story that wasted four years and went nowhere. What's worse is that nuclear arms treaties between the US and Russia (like the INF) lapsed during this time, with war started right on Russia's borders with Ukraine, and nothing said or done about already ongoing wars and failed regime change operations.
So many Russian scandal narratives have fallen by the wayside (but never completely buried) and done nothing but provide careers for pseudo-journalists like Elliot Higgins, and likely everyone else at Bellingcat....which came out of nowhere to become the go to source for everything connected with the Russian government and the Syrian civil war...the other great opportunity for propaganda and misinformation.
The only thing all this has clearly done is to disarm and disable leftists who used to try to focus their attention on domestic policy that actually affects their lives.
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1 hour ago, godzilla said:
two more Proud boys going to jail.
two more Trump supporters... wining. not.
I don't know where I read it now, but it seems part of the reason why these homegrown proto-fascist terrorists have grown without gaining attention from the police state is because all of the attention has continued to be focused on Muslims and Arab names, with the Trump officials demanding resources put in place to surveil BLM and antifa groups that if anything, present a much less of a threat to society and governing authorities than fascist wannabes.
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1 minute ago, BeaverFever said:
As I said he’s the least worst option in a system that can only produce bad options. Bernie and the true left will never be viable contenders for the throne. The only viable candidates for most important offices are corporate puppets in the corrupt US political system. Characters like Bernie and AOC are just for show but don’t ever stand a chance
My beef is that I don't think that 'least worst option' is anywhere near acceptable to most working Americans during these times....which were already getting bad in the US before Covid-19 struck! They were already heading into a recession....so they would have taken us with them, but along came a global pandemic to distract everyone from money and economics for a little while, but after a year of this with no end in sight, nobody here or in the US is willing to accept the usual bullshit claptrap from politicians!
As for Bernie....he started as a radical, who tried in the 70's to start a real leftwing party .... but then gave up! His "independent socialist" label has been a fraud for decades because it's been predicated on the unspoken contract he has with the Democratic Party: he refrains from criticizing the Party, while they refrain from selecting primary opponents to run against him for his senate seat. Every so often he proposes leftwing legislation....which almost immediately get shot down or watered down so much that it's unrecognizable. I even think there was collusion with his 2016 presidential run! The Dems' experts informed them that preselected candidate - Hillary, had huge...almost Trump level negative ratings and just did not appeal to most typical voters. The Dems often want a pseudo-left progressive to run on the left of the main candidate to prevent left third parties from rising up and taking away votes....and that was Bernie's job in 2016. BUT, he became too popular, because Clinton was so goddawful horrible and had no real reasons for running for president...other than feeling "it's my turn." By convention time, Bernie endorsed the hag who stole the nomination from him (revealing this is why Wikileaks and Assange became the targets of liberal persecution), and still keeps his mouth shut, even though the Bitch rags on about him ruining her chance to sit in the Oval Office in that slimy documentary they did for her a year ago.
And oh yeah, AOC! I don't know what to make of her now, but when she burst on to the scene in New York, she was a definite outsider who knocked off one of the Party oligarchs, and the rest of the kleptocracy will never forgive her for that, so I don't know why she is even bothering. They have tried and will continue to try to take away her seat in every congressional election and refuse to give her any committee appointments....which her fans have told us is why she supported Octogenarian Nancy...so, someone else will have to figure it out!
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54 minutes ago, godzilla said:
because its coming... and its going to be fun!
first up, two weeks to go and Trumps legal team quit!
Trump’s top impeachment lawyer has left his team
all reports are that Trump just wants to go over the rigged election claims again.
will we see Giuliani and Powell take the stand to claim that election machines were rigged? while they are being sued for $1.5 billion dollars from those machine makers? hahahaha! will they even agree to be witnesses? i could see the first question out of a Ds mouth for them... "did the election machine makers rig the election results?" Giuliani's response "um...".
NO it's not coming! There will be no Trump Senate Impeachment trial to celebrate, because Mitch knows how to count, and has already calculated that he doesn't have the Republican votes needed, and so has already stepped out too far and pissed off too many Trump deadenders, who other GOP Senators and House members will not cross!
Doug Ford and Covid 19
in Provincial Politics in Canada
Posted
You mean just for him? Or can the rest of us get in on this one?