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wvParticipantHedges sums up his thots on impeachment at the 63 minute mark. I agree with him, basically.
wvParticipantLotsa good questions, as usual, WV. As well as food for thought.
I’m fine with your term, corporotocracy. But, as you know, I think we need to drill down at least one more level. I sincerely believe that the capitalist system itself, its very “nature,” its internal logic, leads inevitably to corporate control, monopolies and oligarchies..
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I basically agree, but I like to use the terms “CORPORATE-capitalism” or corporotocracy, for ‘strategic’ reasons. Same reasons i never use the term ‘NeoLiberal.’
I just figure that the bewildered-herd has been dummed down and propagandized so much that to criticize “capitalism” is just asking them to go where they cant go. Ya know. But they tend to mistrust Big-Corporations. So I always toss out the term Corporate-capitalism. Instead of Capitalism. I figure they ‘might’ not totally slam their brains shut if I use the CC term instead of the C term.
I could be wrong. Itz just somethin i do.
On ‘this’ board people ‘get it’ so it dont really matter, but out there in the Vast Wasteland…..
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vwvParticipantE.D. tells a story:
wvParticipantWell Jalen equals one of those first round picks. So they are basically flushing a First and a Fourth for an allpro CB.
Interesting.
I’m glad Peters is gone. I never took to him. Didnt seem like an allpro to me.
The storyline of this season is still all about the OLine and Gurley, in my view.
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vOctober 15, 2019 at 12:37 pm in reply to: so what happened to the 2019 Rams (so far ie at 3-3) #106712wvParticipantMcVay is a figurehead. I said it from day one.
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vwvParticipantIMO, the constant is money equals power. Power is for sale. But that also means short memories and temporary alliances, not blood-memory endurance through time.
Boiled down: We have a top-down dynamic in America, and it’s arguably the most volatile and contingent one in the “developed” world. Money talks. Not blood lines and clan groupings.
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Agreed. Money and Power and Ideology. The three dynamics intersect and those are always the crux of it.
But in a ‘corporotacracy’ or modern plutocracy or modern oligarchy or modern ‘whatever, those 3 things manifest in certain shapes or ways.
One of the ways they exist is in the structures of the secret-government. The Lying-government. The part that ‘fights commies.’ By murder, torture, coups, pysops, disinformation, misinformation, bribes, drug-dealing, killing socialists-by-any-means-necessary. And telling and selling lies upon lies upon lies.
The CIA/Pentagon/NSA and the private sector tentacles (Arms Corpse, CIA-‘journalists’ etc, etc)I name that whole, hard-to-describe, shadowy shebang, the ‘deep state’ sometimes. Sometimes i just call it ‘part of the corporotacracy’. Thats just how i name it.
Unless I’m mistaken you and zn, just use terms like “CIA” and “NSA” etc. I kinda gob them together into a ‘thing’ of sorts. Not monolithic of course. (I mean the Nazis werent monolithic. I’m sure there were Nazi’s who opposed hitler and did what they could etc. But they were still Nazis, and we dont go around saying “there were good Nazis”. No big org is monolithic.)
Anyway ‘deep state’ works for me. Doesnt work for you. No prob.
ZN has never taken to term ‘corporotacracy’ — what about you?
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vwvParticipantHedges at 38 minute mark : “as a species we are completely fucked”
wvParticipantBack to the discussion of the term, “deep state.” Unless I misread Zooey, and I probably have, it doesn’t sound like he thinks there are enough people involved to constitute one, even if we’re just talking about per department or agency.
Same caveat with WV, but it sounds like he does think there are enough.
My own view is closer to ZN’s, and his contention of various factions. Though I would add that “desire for power” tends not to show up very often in career employees. The dynamic of power seeking is a highly selective process. As in, if someone seeks it out, and the “conspiracies” and machinations that generally go with it, they’re not likely to take the career civil servant route in the first place. Exceptions, of course, exist. Still, they’re far more likely to take shorter, more lucrative routes, which may end up with someone like a Gordon Sondland, who gave a million dollars to the Trump campaign and was handed an ambassadorship as a result. That’s a far more common practice for those who seek some form of state power.
Power both pre-selects and is selected. This is why a “deep state” is unlikely in America. In more “traditional” societies, where kin and kith and long memories are much more important, there are far better grounds for it. American society is too ephemeral, too “get yours now!”, too opposed to the long view. It’s far too “dynamic” to keep such a thing in place, beyond the built-in power that resides with wealth. This is why, I think, C. Wright Mills’ “Power Elite” idea makes much more sense for us.
Also, until we can dump capitalism for good, which is the necessary stage before we dump centralized state power, we better hope there are serious professional/career civil servants in place, who can counter venal leaders like Trump. Rather than view this as some sinister, coordinated plot . . . I think it’s one of those rare bright spots in a truly ugly time.
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Well just as a thot-experiment. Do you think Hoover’s FBI was or had parts of it that could be analogous to a ‘deep state’ ? Do you think he had the power, knowledge, will, to create and nurture something akin to a ‘deep state.’ ? The ‘deep state’ aspect of course is not the same as saying the FBI was ‘monolithic’ etc.
Just curious as to what you would label the Hoover thingy.
Btw, just so you know, the Hoover analogy is more of a RIGTHWING version of ‘the deep state.’
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vwvParticipantDeep State to me is a term that refers to career government people, with the Intelligence and Security arms being the most powerful. It is people who work for the government, but don’t face elections, many of whom have long careers, and therefore have long, institutional memories. They think much longer term in their strategies than elected officials, who are more short-term thinkers and planners, and more focused on themselves, rather than on institutional goals.
There is a deep state. I mean…there just is.
The fact that the right wing lunatics think that the Deep State is a monolithic, anti-American, liberal, hellhole bureaucracy is about as important to me as the Flat Earth Society.
I think in most of the deep state, the actors basically do what their missions tells them to do…study and inspect agricultural issues, serve environmental needs, produce reports on diseases and auto accidents, examine educational practices and outcomes, and so on.
The CIA and NSA, and to some degree other agencies like DoD, TSA, ICE, FBI, etc., serve the long term interests of the rich and powerful – amorphous financial interests.
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I agree Z. Hard for me to believe people ‘dont’ believe in what you just described. Its not a ‘dark fantasy’ or whatever. Its just how things work.
No big thing. Just disagreement among leftists on some stuff.
For me it will always be a term very similar to ‘corporotacracy.’ I never use that term in a precise, scientific way. Just a useful term with some meaning. Same with Deep State. Its not a ‘precise’ term to me, but it has meaning. I tend to think of it as a powerful subsystem of the Corporotacracy, consisting of the CIA/Pentagon/NSA and the various Private Sector tentacles (Some of the Media, some of the Arms Industries, some of the Privatized Special Ops, Some of the Billionaires, etc) that feed into it, etc.
D.S. is just a way of recognizing that there are parts of the Imperialist project that are behind the curtain, beyond democracy.
The Rightwing uses the term differently than I do, or Bill Moyers does, but there is overlap.
I also assume France has a ‘deep state,’ Germany, the UK, etc, etc.
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vOctober 14, 2019 at 9:29 pm in reply to: Talib on IR, Noteboom out for year, & other injury updates #106694wvParticipantLordy.
I am reminded of Mad Max for some reason.
wvParticipantI only just saw the highlights. Interesting. Looks like it was a close, ugly game, with lots of mistakes and the usual OLine problems.
They are not a Super Bowl challenger anymore this season. So that expectation is gone.
But what are they, and what can they be this year? Whats their ceiling?
Well, without Talib, they are not going to excel in the secondary are they. The Oline’s a mess, but can it get better? Henderson looks like another Hakim to me — exciting in both good and bad ways.
Let’s see what they’re made of.
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vOctober 9, 2019 at 7:15 pm in reply to: Jacobin, on abandoning the Kurds and the annihilation of Rojava #106472wvParticipantTurkey starts the bombing:https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49983357
“Turkey has launched a ground offensive in northern Syria, hours after its warplanes and artillery began hitting territory held by Kurdish-led forces.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the operation was to create a “safe zone” cleared of Kurdish militias which will also house Syrian refugees.
The unilateral decision has been widely condemned, with the European Union urging Turkey to end its offensive.
Kurdish-led forces who were key US allies vowed to resist….see link
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vwvParticipantWV,
IMNSHO . . . I think the folks you cite err by starting out with that premise, which just so happens to coincide with Trump’s own public stance. That the deep state is out to get him.
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You really think Trump and the CIA have been getting along, BT? I dont. Some of us have been talking about his feud with a faction of the CIA from the very beginning of his term. Its been written about a lot.
“….Wash Post, Trump is feuding with the CIA, but he could end up making it stronger,
January 20, 2017
During the transition period from November through January, Donald Trump developed perhaps the most publicly antagonistic relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies of any incoming president in decades. He compared the agencies to Nazis, disdained their reports as fake and dismissed their assessments of foreign interference in the 2016 election. In an interview published in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, outgoing CIA director John Brennan called Trump’s allegations “repugnant.” Other intelligence officials have expressed a sense of dread about what’s to come…..” WashPost:https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/20/soldier-spies/October 9, 2019 at 6:52 pm in reply to: Jacobin, on abandoning the Kurds and the annihilation of Rojava #106470wvParticipantWell the Kurds had to be expecting this.
I mean, its Chinatown, and all…
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vWV,
Can you flesh out that reference? I love the movie, but I’m missing something.
If you had said Lucy and the football, I would have gotten it right away. Of course, the life and death events in the balance probably make references to comics a bit too much at the moment.
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The US Imperialist-Corporate/Government is ‘chinatown.’
How could the Kurds not expect this. Again.
I mean, I was expecting it 🙂
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vwvParticipantI think the Seahawks, Rams and 49ers are all purty close. And injury here, a bad bounce there is all that separates em, in my view. Whoever gets home-field will of course have an advantage.
I think a lot of us thot SF would be good ‘last’ year, but they had Fisher-level injuries. Lotta bad luck last year.
I dont see any juggernaut in the NFC. Just a lot of good teams. Coupla good teams wont make the playoffs.
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vOctober 9, 2019 at 5:09 pm in reply to: Jacobin, on abandoning the Kurds and the annihilation of Rojava #106463wvParticipantWell the Kurds had to be expecting this.
I mean, its Chinatown, and all…
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vwvParticipantBilly, I agree.
I have to split with Taibbi on this one.
The bottom line is the whistleblower was correct. His information was good. This is no sort of set-up.
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Well, I cant speak for Taibbi but i ‘think’ i know what he and hedges and C.Johnstone and Lee Camp and some others mean. I dont think they are saying the CIA-guy is ‘wrong’. I dont think they are saying he made anything up to get trump. His information is probly ‘good’. But that doesnt mean its not what you called ‘a set-up’. By that I just mean that the CIA could bring down any president (Just my opinion). They could ‘go after’ almost anybody and find stuff on them. Its purty clear to ‘me’ (and others) that major-factions of the deep-state (CIA) dont like Trump AT ALL. And for reasons we will never know, they probly ‘are’ indeed ‘going after’ Donald Trump. That IN NO WAY means the info is false. It just means if it were their Darling Hillary, or Obama or one of their faves, they’d probly never have come forward with this.
None of that means I’m proTrump. Trump is Satan. But so is the CIA. Can we impeach them both?
I’ve decided I am in favor of the Dem-Demons impeaching one of the Rep-Demons, fwiw. Sure, impeach Trump.
But i just look at it like…oh…if Goebbels or Mengele managed to impeach Hitler. Would it be a good thing? I dunno, i suppose. 🙂w
vwvParticipantOk, now do Titanic.
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vwvParticipantWell, I think that was a good post. You put it in ‘context.’ Anytime i see that kind of context in somethin, i smile.
As far as ‘impeachment,’ i can only drone on about my dark, boring, mantra — the system itself is a LIE. The entire system is a lie. So for me, my life is a never-ending series of decisions about how to live inside a big fat LIE. Do i vote? The system is a lie, so by participating by voting is participating in a lie. But maybe i can help real people who are suffering, by voting for the Least-disgusting candidate. Should i work in the criminal injustice system? Do i participate it? Its a big fat lie. But what are the alternatives…
And on and on and on, for the rest of my life. Impeachment is just one more of those situations. Do i play the game, and pretend to take it seriously. Or do i just continue to drone on about the ‘context’ you just laid out….Cause that context makes the whole ‘impeachment’ issue a sick joke.
How does one live and what decisions does one make, in the midst of a gigantic LIE. Well, i have no idea.
Sure, Impeach him. Why not? 🙂
Might be good strategy for the Dems. Might backfire. But the system is a LIE.
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vwvParticipantCaitlin:https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/msm-defends-cias-whistleblower-ignores-actual-whistleblowers-5fbe577d988d
MSM Defends CIA’s “Whistleblower”, Ignores Actual Whistleblowers
Caitlin JohnstoneThe word “whistleblower” has been trending in news headlines lately, but not for the reasons that any sane person might hope for.
“Read the whistleblower complaint regarding President Trump’s communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky”, says The Washington Post. “Trump responds to hearing on whistleblower complaint”, says MSNBC. “Trump-Ukraine scandal: what did the whistleblower say and how serious is it?”, writes The Guardian. “Whistleblower complaint says White House tried to ‘lock down’ Ukraine call records” announces CBS. “Whistleblower’s complaint is a devastating report from a savvy official”, declares CNN.
So who is this “savvy official”? Who is this courageous whistleblower who boldly shone the light of truth upon the mechanisms of power in the interests of the common man? Who is this brave, selfless individual who set off an impeachment inquiry by taking a stand and revealing the fact that the US president made a phone call in July urging Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to help investigate corruption allegations against Joe Biden and his son?
Well believe it or not, according to The New York Times this brave, noble whistleblower who the mainstream media are currently championing is an officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.
“The whistle-blower who revealed that President Trump sought foreign help for his re-election and that the White House sought to cover it up is a CIA officer who was detailed to work at the White House at one point, according to three people familiar with his identity,” The New York Times reports. “The man has since returned to the CIA, the people said. Little else is known about him.”
So there you have it. A mysterious stranger from the lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, assassinating, coup-staging, warmongering, psychopathic CIA was working in the White House, heroically provided the political/media class with politically powerful information out of the goodness of his heart, and then vanished off into the Langley sunset. Clearly there is nothing suspicious about this story at all.
In all seriousness, even to call this spook a “whistleblower” is ridiculous on its face. You don’t get to call someone from the US intelligence community a whistleblower unless they are actually whistleblowing on the US intelligence community. That’s not a thing. A CIA officer who exposes information about government officials is an operative performing an operation unless proven otherwise, because that’s what the CIA does; it liberally leaks information wherever it’s convenient for CIA agendas while withholding all other information behind a veil of government secrecy.
A CIA officer who exposes information about CIA wrongdoings without the CIA’s permission is a whistleblower. A CIA officer who exposes information about someone else is just a spook doing spook things. You can recognize the latter by the way the mass media supports, applauds and employs them. You can recognize the former by the way they have been persecuted, imprisoned, and/or died under mysterious circumstances.
But if you listen to the billionaire media, we should be calling this CIA officer a whistleblower, we should be enraged at The New York Times for exposing that CIA officer’s identity, and we should be raising a small fortune on GoFundMe for “legal aid” that this CIA officer will never need.
“The idea that the media needs to ‘protect’ a high-level CIA officer making explosive claims about the president, which have now been used as the basis for impeachment proceedings, is such an insane perversion of journalistic ethics,” journalist Michael Tracey tweeted today on this new development….see link
wvParticipantThe NFC is full of good-but-not-great teams at this point. Saints, Packers, 49ers, Seahawks, Rams, Cowboys, Eagles, Bears…
This is one of those years where ya just wanna get into the Dance, and then anything can happen.
But can anybody beat the Patriots this year?
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vwvParticipant
wvParticipantYeah, the Mountain-Range of ‘dis-information’ on Health Care can be eye-opening.
There’s certain topics the system is insisting on: Climate-Change-Denial, Universal-Health-Care-Denial…etc.
The system, grudgingly, allows a certain amount of tinkering. But ya aint allowed to do more than that.
Once in a while though, there can be a breakthru. Now and then. Slavery ended. 40 hour work week. Child labor. Etc.
Now and then.
But those gains were made before the modern corporotacracy had all its ‘manufacturing consent’ tools in place. I dunno whats possible now. I guess we’ll see.
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vwvParticipantIn my continuing and almost-futile search for ‘progressive fantasy’ in the West, (99 percent of English language fantasy stories might as well have been written by the CIA)
I began thinking the same thing when Gandalf waterboarded that Orc in Lord of the Rings…
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Yeah, F’ing centrist Wizards.
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vwvParticipantYeah, thats my view, basically. Hedges too. Lee Camp, Aaron Mate, etc.
I dont know how else one can explain the difference between how this ‘whistleblower’ is being treated by the Dem-Media/Deep-State, and the other whistleblowers have been treated.
How does one account for the difference? This guy is a ‘courageous hero who needs protected’. The others are ‘traitors who belong in prison’.
How does one account for that?
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vwvParticipantVincent Bonsignore@VinnyBonsignore
The last time the #Rams and #49ers met at the Coliseum with both teams having winning records was in 1976. Jim Plunkett was the QB of the 49ers and James Harris was the #Rams QB. Sunday is going to be fun.
==========================Thats hard to believe. Wow.
I guess one of them usually sucks.
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vOctober 7, 2019 at 6:07 pm in reply to: Millions march in Bolivia demanding democracy and an end to Amazon fires… #106350wvParticipantOctober 7, 2019 at 2:29 pm in reply to: around the league (+ some college) tweets… 9/23 thru ? #106337wvParticipantNo Daniel Snyder coach has ever had a cumulative winning record. And none ever will.
Yes. Thats because I’ve cursed them.
Buried some eagle feathers, sage, possum urine, and a picture of Snyder in a mini-washington helmet.
Carved a totem pole with images of an Eagle, a Cowboy and a Giant on top and the Washington Monument on the bottom.
Chanted some magic words.Until they change the racist-name, they shall not win.
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vOctober 7, 2019 at 1:44 pm in reply to: Millions march in Bolivia demanding democracy and an end to Amazon fires… #106335wvParticipant“..A million people on the streets.of Bolivia protesting the destruction of the Amazon and demanding action! Why is this not on the news? ..”
——-When i first read Manufacturing Consent back in the late 80’s, my NormanRockwell view of America was shattered. The MSM was bad back then. It was propaganda Back then.
But now, its beyond-words-bad. As the media corporate-consolidation has been running its course. Corpse eating Corpse. The natural trajectory of corporate-capitalism. Corpse eating Corpse.
Back in the 80’s there were leftist-books warning about the consequences of the American-Media in the hands of dozens of corpse.
Now, we are down to what?, about SIX. Six corpse tell the people ‘the news.’
Poor Biosphere. The Dolphins, Whales, Bears, Bees, Butterflies and Newts didnt deserve this….
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“The American press exists for one purpose only, and that is to convince Americans that they are living in the greatest and most envied country in the history of the world. The Press tells the American people how awful every other country is and how wonderful the United States is and how evil communism is and how happy they should be to have freedom to buy seven different sorts of detergent.”
― Gore VidalThe ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas,
i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.”
― Karl Marx, The German IdeologywvParticipantWell said-“imagination”. Neither you nor I have any facts to support the notion that Times ownership is dedicated to preventing universal healthcare-at least in the sense of medicare for all as visioned by either Warren or Sanders.
…I also find it interesting that the Times publishes many articles that argue in favor of a Sanders or Warren type of universal health care…
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Well i havent seen you post a single solitary article by the LA Times that was in favor of Sanders-Health-Care. I’d be pleased to see one of those articles by the LA Times.
As far as the effects of Ownership on reporters and coverage. I recommend the mountain of research on that subject.
At any rate, I usually stay out of the nuances and algebra of the Health Care debate. Its not my thing as I’ve said before. Cause it doesnt matter to me what the algebra sez. What matters is do we want to be a country where everyone gets adequate health care or not. Should the rich get great health care and the poor get none or inadequate health care? Should their be ‘classes’ of health care the same as when we fly on planes — first class, second class, third class, etc. Should we have a health care system equivalent to the airline bizness? Or shold health care be… different. In a class all its own. Special. Beyond profit and capitalism.
For me that answers to those questions dont require a complicated algebra.
You know, usually ‘you’ are the one saying ‘dont over-intellectualize things.’
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