Ah Yes…, By Its Loud Squeal, We Know A Bad Piglet Got Caught Under The Gate

justsecurity |  Dear U.S. Attorney Durham:

On May 13, 2019, Attorney General William Barr appointed you to review the origins of the 2016 Justice Department investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. At some point, this review turned into a criminal investigation of the Justice Department’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to undermine our democracy.

The need for your appointment was hard to understand at the time it was made, since the Justice Department’s independent Inspector General was already conducting a similar investigation that began in March 2018 into the same issues.  On December 9, 2019, the Inspector General issued his report and concluded that the 2016 Russia investigation had had a legitimate purpose and that there was no evidence of political bias against President Trump in how the investigation had been initiated or undertaken.

We are now in the closing stages of the 2020 presidential campaign.

Longstanding Department policies issued by the past three Attorneys General who served during an election year make plain that Department actions should not be taken in an election year that could influence or affect an election.  George J. Terwilliger III, who served as deputy attorney general under Attorney General William Barr in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, said in 2016, “There’s a longstanding policy of not doing anything that could influence an election.”

I strongly urge you to follow this policy and not to issue any report, or bring any indictments, resulting from your investigation in these closing weeks of the 2020 presidential election.

Any public action by the Justice Department in this pre-election period that is associated with your investigation – which by its very nature involves actions taken during the Obama-Biden Administration – is bound to be used by President Trump for partisan political purposes to promote his re-election effort against Vice President Biden.

In testifying during his Senate confirmation hearings, Mr. Barr was asked whether there are “policies in place that try to insulate the investigations and the decisions of the Department of Justice and FBI from getting involved in elections?” Barr said yes and explained that the party in power has “their hands on the levers of the law enforcement apparatus of the country, and you do not want it used against the opposing political party.” But that is precisely what would occur here if a report is issued on your investigation of the Russia investigation or if indictments are brought at this critical stage of the presidential election.

You should not permit your long and distinguished career in the Justice Department to be permanently tainted, or your personal integrity to be irreparably impugned, by what would plainly be an effort to use your investigation to influence or affect the 2020 presidential election.

Russia! Russia! Russia! Still Evidently A Thing....,

NYTimes |  Russia continues to use a network of proxy websites to spread pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda in the United States and other parts of the West, according to a State Department report released on Wednesday.

The report is one of the most detailed explanations yet from the Trump administration on how Russia disseminates disinformation, but it largely avoids discussing how Moscow is trying to influence the current campaign. Even as Democrats on Capitol Hill have urged the American government to declassify more information on Russia’s efforts to interfere with the election, President Trump has repeatedly told officials such disclosures are unwelcome.

Most of the report focuses on an ecosystem of websites, many of them fringe or conspiracy minded, that Russia has used or directed to spread propaganda on a variety of topics. Those include an online journal called the Strategic Culture Foundation and other sites, like the Canada-based Global Research. The document builds on information disclosed last week by American officials about Russian intelligence’s control of various propaganda sites.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who announced the release of the report on Wednesday, said the State Department would offer rewards of up to $10 million for information to help identify any person who, acting at the direction of a foreign government, tries to hack into election or campaign infrastructure.

The report was prepared by the department’s Global Engagement Center, whose mandate is only to examine propaganda efforts outside the United States.

The report states that the Strategic Culture Foundation is directed by Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the S.V.R., and stands as “a prime example of longstanding Russian tactics to conceal direct state involvement in disinformation and propaganda outlets.” The organization publishes a wide variety of fringe voices and conspiracy theories in English, while trying to obscure its Russian government sponsorship.

Once You See The Deep State Government Criminal Enterprise You Cannot Unsee It

George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton go back a long way.  George H.W.Bush headed the CIA and Bill Clinton was Gov.of Arkansas when the drug smuggling operation with the Nicaraguan Contras occurred. Mena Airport in Arkansas was a valued node on that drug trafficking network.

• Foreign aid money laundering is part of the deal – it’s like a grub stake courtesy of the US tax payer.
• Congress appropriates money
• Money goes out as foreign aid
• Foreign aid dispersed to companies that employ family and friends (Hunter Biden)
• Family of Congress critters invested in companies that received the foreign aid.
• Biden and company pulled the scam in Ukraine, Clinton’s did it in Haiti, Panama Papers etc….

shadowproof |  According to documents filed by former NSA Director Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA was speculating in commodities linked to China and Russia while receiving asymmetric information on the countries as part of his job. The use of asymmetric or non-public information for financial gain is a crime known as insider trading.

The shares Alexander bought and sold while head of the NSA include those connected to the secretive and politically sensitive potash market. The potash market is largely controlled by Russia and Belarus and one of the largest consumers of potash is China. With Russia and China – two countries the NSA targets for intelligence – as major players it is not hard to see how information coming across Director Alexander’s desk could be useful in getting an information edge on other speculators. Did he use his edge to profit?

Alexander also bought and sold shares in other commodities where asymmetric information on Russia and China could have been beneficial.

On the same day he sold the potash company shares, Alexander also sold shares in the Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd., a state-owned company headquartered in Beijing and currently the world’s second-largest producer of aluminum. U.S. government investigators have indicated that the company, known as Chinalco, has received insider information about its American competitors from computer hackers working for the Chinese military. That hacker group has been under NSA surveillance for years, and the Justice Department in May indicted five of its members…
U.S. officials have long insisted that the information that intelligence agencies steal from foreign corporations and governments is only used to make political and strategic decisions and isn’t shared with U.S. companies. But whether that spying could benefit individual U.S. officials who are privy to the secrets being collected, and what mechanisms are in place to ensure officials don’t personally benefit from insider knowledge, haven’t been widely discussed.

And who knows if these were the only times Alexander was in a position to have non-public information while trading? The NSA comes across quite a bit of information that could be advantageous if someone was looking to make some financial trades. Did Alexander ever use that non-public information to trade in the financial markets?

Also troubling is former NSA Director Alexander’s attempts to seemingly privatize knowledge and relationships gleaned from his government service. Alexander has filed technology patents related to network intrusion and was recently forced to back off having an employee at his new company, IronNet Cybersecurity Inc, that still currently works for the NSA.

Alexander appears to be having some nice private benefits from his public service.

Talk About Q-Anon For Ten Minutes Without Mentioning L'Affaire Epstein Until The Final Minute?

 wbur | At least 14 Republican candidates with links to QAnon have made their way into runoffs or onto the ballot this November.

QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory and loosely organized network centered around the belief that the U.S. is controlled by a cabal of child sex trafficking, Democratic elites hell-bent on bringing down President Trump.

Q and others in the collective make it clear they believe the news media is false. Kaplan says they often use the phrase “we are the news now” and claim “they're identifying what's really going on as opposed to the media lying to you,” he says.

Similar to many evangelicals, QAnon supports seem to believe the world is on the cusp of a great awakening. Adrian Hon, a game designer, says QAnon reminds him of an immersive multiplayer game and he's worried people could recreate the playbook.

Kaplan says people have compared QAnon to larping — a real-life role-playing game — because the group “puts what's going on, in some ways, in your hands.”

“You can do the research, you can feel involved, you feel like you can explain and figure out what's really going on behind the scenes and can make sense of ... what seems like chaos going around the world,” he says.

Another Example Of Government Crony Self-Dealing And Insider Profiteering

My Name's Buck, And I Used To Like To F**k....,

justice.gov |  A federal grand jury today returned a superseding indictment charging Edward Buck with four additional felonies, including that he allegedly enticed victims – including a man who died at his West Hollywood apartment after he administered drugs to him – to travel interstate to engage in prostitution.

Buck, 65, was arrested in September 2019 after being charged in United States District Court with providing methamphetamine to a man who died after receiving the drug intravenously. Since that time, federal authorities have continued to investigate Buck for additional crimes.

The four additional counts charged today – bringing the total number of charges in this case to nine counts – include one count alleging that Buck knowingly enticed 26-year-old Gemmel Moore to travel to the Los Angeles area to engage in prostitution. Buck allegedly provided methamphetamine to Moore, who overdosed on the drug and died on July 27, 2017.

Buck also is charged with another count of enticing another man to travel with the intent of engaging in prostitution.

The superseding indictment also charges Buck with one count of knowingly and intentionally distributing methamphetamine, and one count of using his residence for the purpose of distributing narcotics such as methamphetamine, and the sedatives gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) and clonazepam.

Last year, a federal grand jury returned a five-count indictment charging that Buck “engaged in a pattern of soliciting men to consume drugs that Buck provided and perform sexual acts at Buck’s apartment,” which is a practice described as “party and play.” Buck allegedly solicited victims on social media platforms, including a gay dating website, and used a recruiter to scout and proposition men.

Once the men were at his apartment, Buck allegedly prepared syringes containing methamphetamine, sometimes personally injecting the victims with or without their consent, according to the indictment. Buck also allegedly injected victims with more narcotics than they expected and sometimes injected victims while they were unconscious.

I Had No Idea Peter Strzok's Wife Melissa Hodgman Was The SEC's Insider Trading Point Man....,

CTH |  Most people who are not in the securities industry would NOT understand how this works. But Trump certainly does and Mnuchin definitely does. Bannon for sure understands this.

If you are a big trader – like Soros, Gates, Goldman Sachs, or a major bank – having inside information is a freebie – no risk – goldmine.

If you are a greedy political family like Pelosi, Clinton, Bushes, Feinstein, Burr, McCain, Obama; Biden Family – inside information is a freebie no risk goldmine for the entire family.

I guess if you are John Brennan or a foreign intelligence service, and you want to finance a nefarious off the books black op operation FOR FREE, outside of your normal budget, you can use inside information and stock trades to finance your operations.

What kind of inside information can be freely gleened from the NSA database? Correspondence between PUBLIC COMPANY CEO’s who are looking to do a merger, acquisition or spinoff of another public company; confidential audits of a company that may be in discussions to be acquired by a public company; confidential emails, phonecalls, texts between CEO’s, their accountants, their lawyers, their bankers, their competitors; their R & D department; their patent department.

Once the secret NSA information is obtained, stock trades are placed (by the ELITES and their families/cohorts) to capitalize and monetize the information. On any stock exchange anywhere in the world.

It would be great to have a securities lawyer or an outstanding journalist – who is familiar with insider securities trading – write an ariticle on this topic. So far, I have not seen anything. Everyone is too focused on the big distractions: russia, impeachment, racism, covid, election.

But my instincts tell me this is a BIG DEAL COVER UP. per Hillary, “If revealed, they will all hang.” They’s why the elites want Trump out so badly. This is about money & theft on a GRAND GLOBAL SCALE.

We Will Coup Whoever We Want! Deal With It!!!

“Renewable” energy kingpin Elon Musk practically takes credit for the Bolivian lithium coup just months after planning a meeting with Bolsonaro ahead of a Tesla factory in lithium rich Brazil https://t.co/PcizH4pLfQ https://t.co/7kTrA7fPsV pic.twitter.com/zaVqte1KHW

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) July 25, 2020

 

strategic-culture |  A recent off-hand remark by one of America’s oligarchs points toward a new methodology for undermining what is left of international law and order. Speaking in earnest or in jest, nobody really knows, but smart money would certainly bet on the former, when admonished that the Bolivian coup that toppled President Evo Morales last year “wasn’t in the best interests of the Bolivian people,” Elon Musk, the Tesla electric car magnate, brazenly tweeted: “We will coup whoever we want. Deal with it!”

There is, of course, room for plausible deniability here because Musk was responding to another tweet calling the U.S. government, not Musk directly, to account for “organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk’s “we” response could theoretically be interpreted as not a personal confession of responsibility for the dastardly deed but, rather, a good citizen’s loyal expression of support for his country’s foreign policy. Charitably speaking such a reading is possible. But speaking more realistically Musk, although associated in the public mind with a pioneering electric car design, did in fact have a very vital interest in the Bolivian regime change operation. Electric cars, to put it very simply, run on lithium batteries, and Bolivia just happens to be a major supplier of that ore. No lithium, no Tesla or any other electric vehicles.

To fill in some more blanks, it also happens that just weeks before the coup in November of 2019, President Morales issued a decree essentially nationalizing Bolivia’s mineral wealth, including lithium deposits. Bolivia watchers, of course, could see it coming for some time. The politically artless President disclosed his audacious game-plan to empower the Bolivian people to enjoy the benefits of their country’s wealth two years before. Just read and weep at his naiveté: “Bolivian President Evo Morales sees a prosperous future for his currently impoverished South American nation, pinning his hopes on the rapid rise in the global price of this valuable resource. ‘We will develop a huge lithium industry, over $800 million have already been made available,’ Morales told the German DPA news agency.”

So the jackals were put on notice as early as 2017. Morales’ “sins” were numerous enough and he would have been targeted for removal anyway even if he had not antagonized the lithium cartel by announcing the ambitious project to extract a fair price from it. But now we have at least established that Elon Musk and his local agents “highly likely” were not neutral observers while preparations for the coup were being conducted. Musk may have made his “we can coup whoever we want” remark as a loyal citizen who supports his country’s hemispheric interests, but clearly he also had significant financial interests of his own in this controversy.

Indeed, the contest between the individual by the name of Elon Musk and the country of Bolivia was anything but the “level playing field” that noble U.S. diplomacy insisted on in Bosnia while their local team was losing. Musk’s personal worth of $68 billion contrasts rather conspicuously with Bolivia’s GNP of $40.58 billion in 2019. Quite simply, the American oligarch could buy Bolivia and have plenty of change left over. But why buy it if you can far more cheaply organize a coup, put your people in charge, and then own it, including the lithium? That is a much more sensible business plan.

Pablo Escobar Was Empowered By The U.S. And U.K.Militaries For Their Own Purposes

columbiareports |  The Medellin Police Department and Colombia’s 4th Army Brigade played a key role in the Medellin Cartel and the formation of what is now known as the Oficina de Envigado.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, when Colombian marijuana was in fashion in the United States, the so-called “gentlemen of drugs” as narcos like Pablo Escobar, were considered respectable businessmen who received support from the local police department and the 4th Brigade.

The gentlemen from Medellin provided the Caribbean mafia with pot from the surrounding Antioquia province and even as far south as Cauca.

Medellin’s current crime syndicate, the Oficina de Envigado, originates from the Security and Control Department (DSC) and the Civilian Order Department (DOC).

The DSC from Envigado and the DOC from Medellin were formed in 1968, and gained force under Escobar with the support of police and mayors in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

The ties between the narcos, the local gangs, the Medellin Police Department and the 4th Brigade got even stronger in 1981 when they found a common enemy, the M-19 guerrilla group.

After these guerrillas kidnapped Martha Ochoa, the sister of two founding members of the Medellin Cartel and a personal friend of Uribe, Escobar and his associates founded Death to Kidnappers (MAS), a paramilitary group that would later become the Medellin Cartel.

The “gentlemen” lost their social status in Bogota after Escobar got kicked out of Congress in 1983, the cartel assassinated Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara in 1984, and the US demanded their extradition.

The terrorism used in opposition to an extradition pact with the US government was mainly a problem for innocent civilians, politicians and the National Police in Bogota.

In Medellin, the cartel could still find loyal allies in the local elite, the Medellin Police Department and the 4th Brigade.

The cartel’s 1989 bombing of Avianca flight 203 that killed 107 people, for example, would not have been possible without former Army mayor Oscar Echandía and Medellin Cartel founder Gonzalo Rodriguez, a.k.a. “El Mexicano,” who in flew in 11 British mercenaries to give explosives lessons to cartel members and paramilitaries.

Why Did A Leading Member Of The Rockefeller Dynasty Devote His Last Few Decades To "UFO Truth?"

strategic-culture |  It was never a secret that the post-1971 globalized world order championed by the likes of Sir Henry Kissinger, David and Laurence Rockefeller and other Malthusians throughout the 20^th century was always designed to collapse. With the mass shock therapy that such a collapse would impose upon the world, it was believed that a deconstruction of the Abrahamic traditions that governed western society for 2000 years could be accomplished and a new society could be socially engineered in the image of the Brave New (depopulated) World that would live like happy sheep forever under the grip of a hereditary alpha class and their technocratic managers. The story of the Tavistock-led attack on scientific progress is told brilliantly in the 2010 Lpac film The Destruction of NASA.

The only problem these social engineers have encountered in recent years is the re-emergence of actual statesmen who are unwilling to sacrifice their people and traditions on the altar of a new global Gaia cult. Such defenders of humanity’s better traditions have launched the multipolar alliance and have driven a policy of long-term growth and advance scientific and technological progress which is embodied brilliantly by the New Silk Road, and its extensions to the Arctic. The most exciting aspect of this New Silk Road/Multipolar Paradigm is the leap into space exploration as the new frontier of human self-development which has not been seen since the days of President Kennedy.

With China and Russia signing a pact to jointly develop lunar bases and the NASA Artemis Accords calling for international cooperation on Lunar and Mars resource development/industrialization, the age of unlimited growth that was lost with the LSD-driven mass psychosis of 1968’s “live in the now” paradigm shift may finally be recaptured. Programs designed to put humanity’s focus on real objective threats like Asteroid collisions, and solar-induced new ice ages are seriously being discussed by leaders of Russia, China and the USA.

There are billions of suns and potentially billions of galaxies, and chances are there is indeed life on many of the planets orbiting some of the stars within our growing, creative universe… and there is also a fair chance that cognitive life has also emerged on some of those planets. The best way to find out is not to sit at home while the world economic system collapses under a controlled disintegration thinking about Rockefeller-funded conspiracy theories, but rather to fight to revive humanity’s open system destiny starting with a cooperative space program to extend human culture and economy to the Moon and Mars, and then onto other planetary bodies followed by missions to deep space.

If other civilizations exist, maybe it is our duty to take up the torch left to us by JFK and go find them.

Brookings Out'Chere Pushing Clever Together As Controlled Opposition To The Lockstep Scenario

brookings |  The coronavirus crisis will be over at some point in the next few years. Attention will turn to whether the international community can use this moment of shared pain to build a better future. Perhaps, but a necessary first step is to realize that world order has come to an end and is not coming back any time soon. 

World order is rare. It occurs only when there is a shared understanding among the major powers about what constitutes a legitimate action and how to enforce the rules when they break down. Such a moment occurred in 1648 when the European powers agreed to respect each other’s sovereignty, and again after the Napoleonic Wars when they agreed to resist revolution and consult with each other on international crises.

Most recently, signs of world order were evident in the 1990s and early 2000s. U.S. allies in Europe and Asia as well as future rivals like Russia and China and unaligned powers like Brazil and India largely acquiesced in the American-led international order. They went along with innovations like humanitarian intervention and they did not use force to thwart American plans, even if they disagreed with them as in the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the expansion of NATO. Many Americans believed that all major powers would eventually become responsible stakeholders in a shared liberal order.

Unfortunately, it was an illusion. The most important driver of this shared order was not that the rest of the world decided they were happy with American leadership. It was the indisputable fact that the United States was much more powerful than its adversaries.

This period is now over. Rivals like China and Russia took an even more authoritarian turn. They grew more powerful and acquired more strategic options. And they grew more ambitious, coveting their own spheres of influence.

This trend was well underway by 2016. It has accelerated since. China has become more repressive and totalitarian, using new technologies to advance this agenda. It challenges liberal norms internationally and seeks to bend smaller powers to its will using the tools of geoeconomic coercion. Russia has brazenly interfered in the domestic politics of the United States and the European Union and is at the vanguard of challenging the principles of the U.S.-led order.

Some Europeans Waking Up To The Absurd Destructivness Of The Lockstep Scenario

ronpaulinstitute |  Tens of thousands of Germans marched through Berlin on Saturday, proclaiming a “Day of Freedom” and demanding an end to government-mandated face masks and “social distancing.” The UK and Netherlands also saw large protests against their governments’ tyrannical actions in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

According to media accounts, the Berlin protesters held signs reading “We are being forced to wear a muzzle,” “Natural defense instead of vaccination,” and “We are making noise because you are stealing our freedom!”

Good for them!

The New York Times Tweeted that the masses of Berlin demonstrators were all “Nazis” and “conspiracy theorists.” Does the “paper of record” really want us to believe there were perhaps a million Nazis active in the streets of Berlin? Wouldn’t that be alarming?

The fact is, Europeans are realizing that their government-mandated lockdowns did little or nothing to protect them from the virus, while causing economic catastrophe and untold human suffering.

They likely looked around and noticed that Sweden, which never locked down its economy, rejected face masks, and kept its restaurants and other places of business open, did not fare any worse than the countries that have been turned into open air prisons for much of the year. In fact, Sweden had a lower death rate from the virus than strict lockdown states like the UK and France. No wonder people are starting to get angry.

Unfortunately, while the Europeans are waking up, Americans are still asleep as our freedoms continue to be trampled. While Europeans demand an end to government tyranny, here we see states with minuscule new deaths returning to lockdown. It is as if all the wannabe tyrants from mayors to governors are finally realizing their secret dreams of ruling by decree. Their dreams are our nightmares!

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy put citizens “on notice” that he will lock the state back down if people dare to go outside without a face mask or even to have guests inside their own homes! What kind of politician puts his own constituents “on notice”?

This "Feeling" Better Start Spreading Through The Herd A Lot Faster

brucewilds |  Just how unkind the recent Covid-economy has been to the middle-class has been masked by the helicopter money flowing from Washington. This has skewed income and spending across America but little attention has been paid to those taking it on the chin. This includes the owners of small businesses and those making substantially more than before the pandemic hit. The evidence of the pain and damage being inflicted on the Main Street economy is going beginning to become apparent. It can be seen as we drive down the street and see move empty windows and for lease signs which are sprouting up like weeds.

Even the appearance of a coin shortage due to our government being inept is causing people to claim this is all an intentional part of a larger plan. It means businesses are using the coin shortage to stop taking cash. This has left some people wondering if those wanting the demise of paper money are using the virus scam to eliminate cash altogether. The pandemic and warning germs can be transferred on the surface of money mean that suddenly "money" has now been deemed "unsafe." The rumor is out that Nancy Pelosi has already inserted in one stimulus bill the seeds of "taking our currency digital." 

This would force everyone into the banking system increasing the government's ability to tax, track, and control just about everything. The complete transformation to digital currency would mean if the government does not like your business or politics they could just lock you out of the system. They could even charge you to park your money while the bank would be allowed to lend it out and charge interest on it. Eliminating cash is the first step they must adopt for this to work. It would lock money into their system, they would eliminate or control all alternatives to money so it cannot be diverted from or moved out of the banking or financial system.

As events unfold I have witnessed a growing opinion being battered around that something sinister is happening beneath the surface. This includes the feeling we are no longer in control of our fate. More and more the idea that form follows function and the winners were picked before all this started is being injected into the mix. This theory embraces the proposition the bottom half of society is destitute and totally dependent on the government which means they have been removed from the battlefield. Now that these people are no longer a threat, corporate and government collaborators are consolidating power and control.

You Realize Panic-Demic Is ONLY The Tip Of The Livestock Management Iceberg - Right?

While you sleeping, that other cat was steady creeping. Tried to tell you sum'n was up with those funky multi-state drone swarms - nobody paid any heed - now a minute later - come to find out deeply disturbing incursions were taking place prior to, during, and subsequent to this mysterious and unexplained public interval. If you don't understand exactly how bad this is, then school is officieally adjourned for you. Suffice it to say, there are levers upon levers upon levers available to those intent on implementing the aims of the Great Reset. Bad as it is, the panic-demic is a cake-walk compared with what's provably and trivially feasible to those intent on the aims of the new economic and social order. Think Chernobyl, Fukashima - and like a basic but elite hacker incursion - totally devastating and completely untraceable.

Forbes |  Documents gained under the Freedom of Information Act show how a number of small drones flew around a restricted area at Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant on two successive nights last September. Security forces watched, but were apparently helpless to act as the drones carried out their incursions before disappearing into the night. Details of the event gives some clues as to just what they were doing, but who sent them remains a mystery.

Details of the events were obtained from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by Douglas D. Johnson on behalf of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The SCU’s main interest is in anomalous aerospace phenomena, what other people term UFOs. In this case though the flying objects were easily identifiable as drones, although their exact mission and origin are unknown. Johnson passed the information to The War Zone who give a detailed account.

Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant is the largest in the U.S., producing over three gigawatts, 35% of Arizona's total power capacity. It supplies electricity to Phoenix and Tucson, as well as San Diego and Los Angeles. It is a critical piece of strategic infrastructure; during the 2003 Iraq War, National Guard troops were deployed to Palo Verde to defend against a possible terrorist threat. In normal times, as with other nuclear installations, it is protected by armed security guards.

The armed guards, gates, fences and barriers were useless on the night of September 29^th. According to the official report:

“Officer noticed several drones (5 or 6) flying over the site. The drones are circling the 3 unit site inside and outside the Protected Area. The drones have flashing red and white rights [sic] and are estimated to be 200 to 300 hundred [sic] feet above the site. It was reported the drones had spotlights on while approaching the site that they turned off when they entered the Security Owner Controlled Area. Drones were first noticed at 20:50 MST and are still over the site as of 21:47 MST. Security Posture was normal, which was changed to elevated when the drones were noticed.”

The drones departed at 22:30, eighty minutes after they were first spotted. The security officers estimated that they were over two feet in diameter. This indicates that they were not simply consumer drones like the popular DJI Phantom, which have a flight endurance of about half an hour and is about a foot across, but something larger and more capable. The Lockheed Martin Indago, a military-grade quadcopter recently sold to the Swiss Army, has a flight endurance of about seventy minutes and is more than two feet across. At several thousand dollars apiece minimum, these are far less expendable than consumer drones costing a few hundred. All of which suggests this was not just a prank.

The Great Reset Is A Worldwide Technocratic Coup d'Etat

mises |  The basic idea of the Great Reset is the same principle that guided the radical transformations from the French to the Russian and Chinese Revolutions. It is the idea of constructivist rationalism incorporated in the state. But projects like the Great Reset leave unanswered the question of who rules the state. The state itself does not rule. It is an instrument of power. It is not the abstract state that decides, but the leaders of specific political parties and of certain social groups.

Earlier totalitarian regimes needed mass executions and concentration camps to maintain their power. Now, with the help of new technologies, it is believed, dissenters can easily be identified and marginalized. The nonconformists will be silenced by disqualifying divergent opinions as morally despicable.

The 2020 lockdowns possibly offer a preview of how this system works. The lockdown worked as if it had been orchestrated—and perhaps it was. As if following a single command, the leaders of big and small nations—and of different stages of economic development—implemented almost identical measures. Not only did many governments act in unison, they also applied these measures with little regard for the horrific consequences of a global lockdown.

Months of economic stillstand have destroyed the economic basis of millions of families. Together with social distancing, the lockdown has produced a mass of people unable to care for themselves. First, governments destroyed the livelihood, then the politicians showed up as the savior. The demand for social assistance is no longer limited to specific groups, but has become a need of the masses.

Once, war was the health of the state. Now it is fear of disease. What lies ahead is not the apparent coziness of a benevolent comprehensive welfare state with a guaranteed minimum income and healthcare and education for all. The lockdown and its consequences have brought a foretaste of what is to come: a permanent state of fear, strict behavioral control, massive loss of jobs, and growing dependence on the state.

With the measures taken in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, a big step to reset the global economy has been made. Without popular resistance, the end of the pandemic will not mean the end of the lockdown and social distancing. At the moment, however, the opponents of the new world order of digital tyranny still have access to the media and platforms to dissent. Yet the time is running out. The perpetrators of the new world order have smelled blood. Declaring the coronavirus a pandemic has come in handy to promote the agenda of their Great Reset. Only massive opposition can slow down and finally stop the extension of the power grip of the tyrannical technocracy that is on the rise.

When No Lives Matter Economic Stimulus Could Be Tied To Vaccination Compliance

theatlantic |  Other researchers with whom I spoke echoed many of the same concerns about people’s possible resistance to taking a vaccine, especially if its rollout is botched. To avoid such mistakes, Michele Andrasik and Chris Beyrer, who are among the leaders of the COVID-19 Prevention Network, an initiative by the National Institutes of Health, have already started to test different messages for communicating the benefits of immunization to the public. As Beyrer told me, early results indicate that an emphasis on the importance of the vaccine for revitalizing local communities will be crucial. “A lot of people are feeling very isolated,” he said, “so we are building a lot around solidarity: ‘We are all in this together!’”

Because of the influence of the anti-vaxxer movement, the vaccination rate for measles has dropped so low in certain areas of the country that children from Brooklyn to Santa Monica have contracted the potentially life-threatening disease. It is natural to fear that the same could happen with the coronavirus. But this ignores the fundamental differences between the two diseases. “You can’t just take the anti-vaxxer mentality you see with measles,” Flier told me, “and apply it to the situation we face with COVID.”

But will enough people get it? What happens if, as the CBS poll suggests, one in five Americans refuses to cooperate?

According to the experts I spoke with, the threshold for herd immunity for COVID-19 is likely to fall somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the population. Since about one in 20 Americans is likely to have suffered from COVID-19 by the time a vaccine becomes available, this means that somewhere between 45 and 65 percent of the American population will need to be vaccinated.

In the case of measles, herd immunity requires an almost total social consensus about the utility of vaccines. As some children have painfully learned, such near unanimity is difficult to sustain. But in the case of COVID-19, anti-vaxxers would have to convert a much larger proportion of Americans in order to have a similarly devastating impact on our collective health. Unless one in three—or even one in two—Americans refuses a vaccine that would allow them to go back out into the world without fear and protect their loved ones from a deadly pandemic, the U.S. is likely to reach herd immunity.

Again and again, the coronavirus has defied expectations about how it is likely to behave. We would therefore be well advised to reckon with the possibility that things could once again break against us. Perhaps this virus is not only uniquely suited to disrupting human civilization but also unexpectedly adept at beating our attempts to immunize people against it.

The Panic-Demic Has Entered Its No Lives Matter Phase

theintercept |  Our rulers did demonstrate a spasm of rationality with the passage of the CARES Act in March. It was partly a cash-grab by big business but did get lots of people a $1,200 check and provided an extra $600 per week in federal unemployment benefits on top of state benefits.

Without these benefits, the 30 million people who lost their jobs in March and April would have already plummeted into the void. And because everyone’s spending is someone else’s income, as they fell they would have grabbed onto tens of millions more and taken them down as well.

And in fact, this downward spiral began to happen in mid-March. As the danger of Covid-19 became clear, consumer spending dropped by an astonishing 30 percent in a matter of days. But as soon as the government cash started flowing, spending began to recover, and it’s now more than 90 percent of normal. In poorer zip codes, it’s returned to almost 100 percent.

This has kept the lives of tens of millions of Americans merely bad, rather than totally impossible. But the supplemental unemployment benefits expire at the end of July. The GOP opening bid is to extend them but to cut the amount from $600 to $200. The reason, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin explained in the Oval Office, is to prevent malingering: “We’re going to make sure that we don’t pay people more money to stay home than go to work.” In addition, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that the Republican “red line” in negotiations is making it essentially impossible for employees to sue employers on the grounds that their workplace is failing to protect them from Covid-19. Furthermore, under the proposed new rules, employers and even the Trump Justice Department would find it easy to countersue workers for bringing a coronavirus lawsuit.

Rationally, of course, this makes no sense. For most of the unemployed, there aren’t any jobs to go back to, and won’t be until the pandemic is under control. If their unemployment benefits are cut, people without jobs will desperately cut back on spending, leading to more unemployment, which will lead to less spending, and so on. The process will be accelerated as states and cities, which until now have attempted to avoid slashing payrolls in hopes that the federal government would rescue them, finally do so.

This may plausibly lead to basic material deprivation — true hunger and homelessness — on a scale few alive today have ever seen. According to the Census Bureau, the number of America’s 249 million households reporting that they sometimes or often do not have enough to eat has already jumped from 22.5 million earlier this year to 29.3 million in July. With Republicans opposing an expansion of food stamp funding, as well as the renewal of the CARES Act supplemental food program for children, that is likely just the beginning.

Then there’s housing. The CARES Act contained a federal ban on evictions that covered about 30 percent of U.S. rental units. That ban just ended, as have most state-level bans. Forty million people could potentially lose their homes in the next several months. In states like Florida, Texas, and New York, half of the tenants will shortly be unable to make the rent.

The Great Reset REALLY Starts Ripping And Tearing This Week

cnbc |  The coronavirus pandemic has pushed the jobless rate in New York, Los Angeles and other major urban areas to near or above 20%, nearly twice the national rate.

The unemployment rate is a barometer of financial hardship for American families, since losing a job typically leads to a significant drop in household income.

A rate of 20% means 1 in 5 Americans in the labor force can’t find work.

That’s double the national peak during the financial crisis of 2008-2009 and a level unseen since the 1930s, when the country was in the throes of its worst-ever economic downturn in the industrial era.

“It’s devastating, in terms of how high that unemployment rate is,” said Ioana Marinescu, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

The local business mix and policies around mandated business closures are likely partly responsible for elevated joblessness in some major urban areas, said Wayne Vroman, a labor economist at the Urban Institute. Cities are also generally areas of higher business concentration when compared with other regions, he said. 

New York’s unemployment rate rose to 20.4% last month, according to state-level data issued Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that detailed figures for some large metro areas. That’s up from 18.3% in May and 15% in April.

The ranks of unemployed New Yorkers have grown by 261,000 people since April, to more than 811,000, according to the Bureau.

The trend stands in contrast to the broader U.S. labor-market recovery in May and June.

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 11.1% last month from 14.7% in April, largely driven by furloughed workers being recalled to their jobs as states began reopening their economies.

New York, the hardest-hit area of the country early in the health crisis, has been cautious in lifting the economic shutdowns officials imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19.

"The Monster Is Everywhere" WaPo Brazenly Calls For Lockdown Dramatic Reset

WaPo |  The coronavirus is spreading at dangerous levels across much of the United States, and public health experts are demanding a dramatic reset in the national response, one that recognizes that the crisis is intensifying and that current piecemeal strategies aren’t working.

This is a new phase of the pandemic, one no longer built around local or regional clusters and hot spots. It comes at an unnerving moment in which the economy suffered its worst collapse since the Great Depression, schools are rapidly canceling plans for in-person instruction and Congress has failed to pass a new emergency relief package. President Trump continues to promote fringe science, the daily death toll keeps climbing and the human cost of the virus in America has just passed 150,000 lives.

“Unlike many countries in the world, the United States is not currently on course to get control of this epidemic. It’s time to reset,” declared a report released this week by Johns Hopkins University.

Another report from the Association of American Medical Colleges offered a similarly blunt message: “If the nation does not change its course — and soon — deaths in the United States could be well into the multiple hundreds of thousands.”

The country is exhausted, but the virus is not. It has shown a consistent pattern: It spreads opportunistically wherever people let down their guard and return to more familiar patterns of mobility and socializing. When communities tighten up, by closing bars or requiring masks in public, transmission drops.

That has happened in some Sun Belt states, including Arizona, Florida and Texas, which are still dealing with a surge of hospitalizations and deaths but are finally turning around the rate of new infections.

There are signs, however, that the virus is spreading freely in much of the country. Experts are focused on upticks in the percentage of positive coronavirus tests in the upper South and Midwest. It is a sign that the virus could soon surge anew in the heartland. Infectious-disease experts also see warning signs in East Coast cities hammered in the spring.

Thomas Frank Like Savoir Faire - He's Everywhere - Now On Healthcare...,

lemondediplomatique |  The great underlying political crisis of this plague year, it is often said, is the stubborn refusal of Americans to respect expert authority. There’s an epidemic raging... and just look at those people frolicking in a swimming pool at the Lake of the Ozarks, repeating stupid conspiracy theories, spreading non-peer-reviewed medical advice on social media, running errands without a mask on, setting off roman candles in the street. And just look at their idiot of a president, dismissing the advice of his own medical experts, blaming everyone but himself for the disaster, suggesting we inject ourselves with Clorox because it’s effective on countertops and toilet bowls.

In truth, this grand conflict between the ignorant and the enlightened has been a motif of our politics for years (1). Liberals, we believe, are uniquely attuned to objective reality; they dutifully heed the words of Nobel laureates and Genius Grant winners. But Republicans are different: they live in a world of myth and fable where the truth does not apply.

Ordinarily our punditburo plays this conflict for simple partisan point-scoring. Us: smart! Them: stupid!

But the pandemic has given the conflict an urgency we have not seen before. These days, right-thinking Americans are tearfully declaring their eternal and unswerving faith in science. Democratic leaders are urging our disease-stricken country to heed the findings of medical experts as though they were the word of God.

Our ‘thought leaders’, meanwhile, have developed a theory for understanding the crazy behaviour we see around us: these misguided people are not merely stupid, they are in the grip of a full-blown philosophy of anti-expertise called ‘populism’. These populists are the unlettered who resent the educated and sneer at the learned (2). They believe in hunches instead of scholarship; they flout the advice of the medical profession; they extol the wisdom of the mob. Populism is science’s enemy; it is at war with sound thinking. It is an enabler of disease, if not a disease itself.

So sweetly flattering, so gorgeously attractive is this tidy little syllogism that members of our country’s thinking class return to it again and again. Medical science is so obviously right and populism so obviously wrong that celebrating the one and deploring the other has become for them one of the great literary set pieces of the era, the raw material for endless columns and articles.

The Hijacking Of Local Control And Police Reform By Professional And Managerial Frauds

nakedcapitalism |  The Minneapolis City Council voted to disband the city’s police department on June 26, a little more than a month after George Floyd died after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. Chauvin, along with three other officers who were there when Floyd was killed, has since been fired from the force and is now awaiting trial for Floyd’s death.

The city council vote does not automatically mean Minneapolis will no longer have a police department, of course. After a series of steps, the public will be asked to vote in November on an amendment regarding whether or not this course of action is the right one.

In June, a competing vision of police reform had been on the table in Minneapolis. Just as community-led initiatives were gaining traction, Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo announced in June that his department would be using “real-time data” to overhaul its operations.

The work would be driven not by local grassroots groups, but instead by a Chicago-based company called Benchmark Analytics. Chief Arradondo announced on June 10 that the Minneapolis Police Department “would contract with Benchmark Analytics to identify problematic behavior early,” according to local NBC affiliate KARE 11.

Red flags flew up instantly, however, when this arrangement was made public.
For one thing, Benchmark Analytics is a private firm that promises to deliver an “all-in-one solution to advance police force management,” according to the company’s website, primarily through the use of algorithms that supposedly predict which officers may end up behaving “problematic[ally]” on the job.

This approach was at odds with the reallocation of resources from the police department to social services that many community leaders in Minneapolis and other cities are pushing for.
Another bone of contention involved funding, as it was reported that Benchmark Analytics’ reform model would be paid for by the Minneapolis Foundation, a philanthropic group led by a former mayor of the city, R.T. Rybak.

Activists, however, quickly seized upon the fact that not only did the proposed contract with Benchmark Analytics appear to have materialized without any public oversight, but Rybak himself is a founding board member of the firm. This prompted the Racial Justice Network to launch a petition criticizing “conflicts of interest” in the Minneapolis Foundation’s involvement in police reform.

On June 25, Rybak announced that the Minneapolis Foundation “has dropped its involvement.” A Minneapolis Police Department spokesman also said that “the department is trying to find alternative funding” for the Benchmark Analytics program; Mayor Jacob “Frey said if the city doesn’t find other funders, it will see if the program can be done with existing money.”

It seems unclear so far whether or not another funding source for Benchmark Analytics has been found. But in a July 14 interview with Minnesota Public Radio, while Mayor Frey did not mention Benchmark Analytics by name, he did tell radio host Cathy Wurzer that his plans for police reform will center on an “early intervention system that… uses evidence and data gathered by the University of Chicago.” (This description seems to align with the work of Benchmark Analytics, which is owned in part by the University of Chicago.)

Frey told Wurzer that the data gathered is intended to help the Minneapolis Police Department “weed… bad apples out” by predicting “which officers are more likely to have some sort of critical incident in the future.”

The push to bring in Benchmark Analytics was not the first time either Rybak or the Minneapolis Foundation has attempted to use power and wealth to push privatization plans on city residents—even though they often claim they are acting on behalf of marginalized people of color.

For evidence of how this approach can fail the public, look no further than the Minneapolis Public Schools, where a similar cast of characters and strategies have already been used to shake up the district’s schools. These “reform” efforts took Minneapolis schools down a failed path, and they stand as a warning sign of how attempts to rehabilitate police forces, in Minneapolis and elsewhere, can be subject to the same sort of misguided thinking and exploitation by opportunists.

When Are You Going To Deal With The Fact That Liberal Elites Keep Failing?

theanalysis |  There’s this fascinating moment, Paul, where the word itself, populism, gets flipped and it goes from being a positive thing, you know, the sort of left-wing worker, farmer/worker movement in the 1890s, it goes from that to be a very negative thing to being, something fearful and dreadful. You know, something that’s paranoid and suspicious, and pathological and anti-Semitic. And that moment when that happens is in the 1950s. It’s a really fascinating place where the writing of history intersects, with history itself, with the making of history.

And the man who is probably single-handedly most responsible for this is Richard Hofstadter, the greatest American historian of his day, probably of the 20th century, and aside here. I got a Ph.D. in American history, that’s what I had meant to do with my life when I was young. I was a big admirer of Hofstadter when I was younger and really looked up to him. He’s an elegant writer and an elegant thinker. You know, he brings together these two, these sort of two great functions of a historian, and I thought he was absolutely wonderful. I really looked up to him when I was younger. But now I’m an adult, and I look back at his masterpiece, which is a book that came out in 1955 called, ‘The Age of Reform’, and now as an adult see very clearly what this book is. It was meant as a history of different reform movements in American life. And, you know talking about which ones succeeded and which ones failed. And it was a vicious attack on populism, on the populist movement of the 1890s. But now, as an adult, I can see that it was something else at the same time. It was a manifesto for Hofstadter’s generation, so it was these two things at the same time.

And let’s begin by saying this is the book that really turned the tables on populism and made it into a negative term, a term that you applied to authoritarians and to people like Donald Trump. Hofstetter went back and looked at the original populist movement and said it was, “it was pathological. It was an expression of status anxiety. Farmers were people who were on their way down, and because they were on their way down, they imagined all these scapegoats for their problems, and, you know, they were cranks. They rejected expertise, they were anti-intellectual, and above all, they were anti-Semitic”. And he actually tried to blame anti-Semitism in America, all of it, basically, on populism, which is ridiculous, which is utterly fatuous, but he said that. This book was massively influential, it was a big bestseller. It won the Pulitzer Prize, it has been described as the most influential work of American history ever published. And Hofstadter’s larger idea, as I said, it was a manifesto for his generation and his sociological cohort.

What I mean by that is he said there are two models for reform. One of them is the populist model, a mass movement of working-class people. And that’s how you get reform by bringing together people at the bottom, and he said that doesn’t work. We can see that doesn’t work because populism was a pathological movement that was delusional. They were all hypnotized demagogues, anti-Semitism, scapegoating, et cetera, all of which turned out to be wrong.

But he said there’s another way to do reform, and that other way is to bring highly educated people together and put them in charge of all the different “organs” that go to make up government and society and business and the military. And they will all get together and sit around a big mahogany table in Washington, D.C. and come to an agreement with one another. And that’s how you get things done. And he said this at the very moment, of course, this is how things work in, as we know in the world of ideas. That was, in fact, what was happening. That his generation of intellectuals was coming out of the Ivy League schools, top flight schools and were taking over the corporations. Up until then, corporations had been run by people who inherited them or people who built them, entrepreneurs, that sort of thing. But now they were going to be run by people with MBA’s. people with economics degrees. People with advanced degrees were running the big departments of the government. People with advanced degrees were running the Pentagon. And Hofstadter and his friends, if you think of the other intellectuals of the time, such as Daniel Bell, that’s what they were celebrating. Remember Daniel Bell had a famous book called. ‘The End of Ideology’. You didn’t need ideology or you didn’t need mass movements, you didn’t need millions of people in the streets like you had in the 1890s and the 1930s. You needed people like Daniel Bell, sitting around a big table and making decisions on your behalf. That was the model in the 1950s and Hofstadter’s great book, ‘Attacking Populism’. By great, I mean spectacularly influential book, ‘Attacking Populism’, was a manifesto for that way of understanding the world. You know, The Organization Man, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, you know what I’m talking about. And so this book is hugely influential. All sorts of other intellectuals at the time start copying it. They start writing about populism and the word takes on this life of its own. It becomes a stereotype. Now, here’s what Hofstadter never admitted in his book. His stereotype comes directly from the democracy scare of 1896. Remember, we talked about that in the last episode. All of the elites in American society getting together and denouncing William Jennings Bryan. Hofstadter just basically took that picture that they assembled and said, Yeah, that’s what populism really was. It really was a bunch of crazy farmers who really had no idea what they were doing and were rejecting the consensus expertise of their day.

A Striking Symbol Of A City Built On Racial Inequality

currentaffairs |  On a Saturday in early March, an exclusive private all-girls academy in St. Louis, Missouri held its annual daddy-daughter dance. Unknown to guests or the Ritz-Carlton staff, a father-daughter pair broke quarantine to attend after being exposed to COVID-19 for days. 

The deadly virus had, up until that point, only existed in the news for the St. Louis region. The elder sister of the girl who attended the dance was the area’s first confirmed COVID-19 case; she had just returned from studying abroad in Italy, at a time when the U.S. media was saturated with apocalyptic images of an Italian healthcare system under enormous strain. Videos of Italian nighttime balcony singing, replete with accordions and tambourines, became the bright point of quarantine solidarity, and everyone knew the virus was headed for Missouri since it had already hit New York, and was developing in Chicago. At first, local gatherings over 1,000 were canceled, then 100, then 10. Much of the Midwest held on to a sliver of hope that our lower-density region might fare better than the big cities. Maybe we could pull up the drawbridges, as St. Louis did during the 1918 Spanish influenza, and isolate from the rest of the world; maybe our rusty, hollowed-out downtown would form a rampart against the wave.

Asymptomatic, the elder sister landed in Chicago and boarded an Amtrak train to St. Louis. She quickly began to show symptoms, and on Thursday, two days before the dance, she “went to Mercy Hospital and was evaluated before being sent home to quarantine with her parents, who were not showing any signs of sickness.” She was tested, her Amtrak train was taken out of service to be cleaned, and a quarantine request from St. Louis County was, reportedly, issued that Thursday, March 5^th. Her “presumed positive” case was widely reported on Friday. 

Panic set in on Sunday, March 8^th, as attendees of the dance—some of the richest families in St. Louis—were ordered by the County Executive to quarantine inside their $800,000 estates. The Ritz-Carlton shut down to sterilize its ballroom, bathrooms, and kitchen. Before the dance, the father was rumored to have visited Deer Creek Coffee near their house in Ladue—locally referred to as La-douche, one of the wealthiest zip codes in Missouri. The coffee shop was forced to publicly deny having served the father. St. Louis County Executive Dr. Sam Page, MD, held a press conference that underplayed the point: “From everything we can gather, the patient had conducted herself responsibly and maturely and she is to be commended for complying with the health department’s instructions.” He added,  “The patient’s father did not act consistently with the health department’s instructions.”

The family’s attorney, Neil Bruntrager, materialized to dispute every detail: “These poor people are being pilloried and vilified,” he said. “They were being proactive. They were trying to deal with this problem.” Bruntrager, incidentally, was a well-paid legal representative of both STL Police Officer Jason Stockley, who murdered twenty-four-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith, and Officer Darren Wilson, who murdered Michael Brown. 

Starting with St. Louis’ white upper class, COVID-19 spread quickly to the working-class communities. So far, a disproportionate number of cases and deaths have been—much like the victims of police brutality—working-class Black St. Louisians.

Every Man For Himself With The Devil Taking The Hindmost

thenation |  In early Anglo-Saxon England and until the end of European feudalism, there existed a class of people known as churls, from which we get the adjective “churlish.” They weren’t called that because they had bad manners; churls were the lowest class of free people. They were not bound to a manor like serfs, but neither did they have wealth and own property like nobles. They were people who possessed freedom to do as they pleased in theory. In practice, their poverty meant that their “free” lives were little different from those of unfree serfs.

Economic reality dictated then, as it dictates today, one’s freedom. People are only as free as they can afford to be. For Americans, lacking guaranteed access to basic necessities like housing, food, and health care (and with our bank accounts determining access to the good versions of those things), this is a constant dilemma. We place great value in perceiving ourselves as free. Yet the more we extol this freedom’s virtue, the more it sounds like we are just trying to convince ourselves. 

Real freedom would include being free to quit a terrible job without losing access to everything on the bottom level of Maslow’s pyramid. It would include freedom to live where we want, not where “the market” decides jobs will be available. It would include control over our own labor, like negotiating power over our earnings and our working conditions. In short, it would mean freedom to live the lives we desire, rather than the lives we choose based on a curated set of options over which we exercise no control.

In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama caused controversy by claiming of working-class voters in the postindustrial Midwest, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” The “bitter clingers” remark stuck throughout the campaign, particularly as he applied it to conservative shibboleths like the Second Amendment and religion. 

To many liberals this represents a hard truth, while to the left it is an example of how a politics that abandons economic populism is an invitation for “culture wars” issues to dominate. In either case, it is a useful basis for understanding why so many Americans find comfort in a misguided notion of “freedom” that amounts only to small acts of refusenik-ism, like school kids who rebel against the dress code by untucking one corner of their shirt. When our economic system takes freedom in a meaningful sense away from the vast majority of the population, people place more value on its symbolic expression.

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