asiatimes | Western critics continue to pour cold water on China’s Belt and Road
Initiative (BRI), an ambitious and well-planned architecture connecting
the massive Eurasian landmass through a system of roads, railways and
ports. They complain that it lacks transparency, erodes trade standards
set up by the West, is financially too huge for China to handle, is
self-serving, and is a deceptive vehicle for China to dominate the
world, just to name a few.
They insist that the fact India and most countries in the West are
snubbing the BRI is proof that the Chinese initiative is going nowhere
or will likely fail. However, judging from the response of a large
number of prominent economists and world business and political leaders,
the critics may be exaggerating their claims.
In 2016, two-way trade between China and the more than 60 countries
along the BRI corridor approached US$1 trillion, and China invested more
than $2 billion in these countries in addition to infrastructure
investment funded by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Silk
Road Fund. At the recent Belt and Road Forum, China pledged to invest
about $120 billion over the next few years in the countries
participating in the initiative.
The consensus among analysts, participating nations and multinational
institutions is that the BRI in fact fits into the United Nations
Development Agenda of promoting economic growth, eradicating poverty and
enhancing all facets of globalization.
strategic-culture | So, what is India’s real problem with the BRI? Quintessentially, India’s problem is geo-strategic – its inability to come to terms with China’s rise. The pundits in Delhi used to fancy that India would eventually catch up with China’s development and even overtake it. But that turned out to be a pipedream. The real challenge today is to come to terms with the yawning asymmetry in development.
Indeed, India’s China watchers are a rather pedestrian lot. Some assessed that China was about to implode out of internal contradictions, and even if it survived, its high growth would be simply unsustainable. Others insisted that the medium term advantage would accrue to India because of the so-called «demographic curve» – India’s young population. All this turns out to be wishful thinking.
Today, India sees in the BRI the objective co-relative of China’s growing capacity and economic influence in the emerging global economic and strategic architecture. The policymaker agonises that the BRI holds the potential to be a conduit of strategic access for China. No doubt, the BRI event in Beijing showcases China as a responsible great power.
The Indian elites counted on the US’ containment strategy to rein in China’s march to superpower stature. Weaned on the neoconservative foreign-policy ideology dominating successive US administrations through the past decade and a half, they blithely assumed that Washington would mentor India’s rise as a global power, as a counterweight to China.
Admittedly, the United Progressive Alliance government (2004-2014) led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also subscribed to the Washington Consensus but retained some degree of strategic autonomy by keeping an independent line open to China while not averse to selectively tapping into the US’ pivot to Asia to create synergy. That policy worked to India’s advantage and when UPA relinquished power in 2014, India-China relations had reached an appreciable level of stability and predictability. Even the negotiations on the border dispute began tiptoeing toward a breakthrough point.
However, the foreign policy directions under the present government have undone those gains. The policy shift to bandwagon with the Obama administration’s pivot strategy aimed at containing China altogether changed the matrix. Of course, there was a domestic dimension, too, since the Modi government’s strident nationalistic agenda dovetailed nicely with the optics of a «muscular diplomacy» towards China. In turn, if the India-China relations began losing direction, the «animated suspense» only provided justification for the drive to align India’s foreign policy with the US’ regional and global strategies.
Enter Donald Trump. The incipient signs of a reshaping of the US’ ties with China under Trump threaten to derail Modi government’s China policies. Going back to Beijing in sackcloth and ashes is neither an option nor is it acceptable to the Hindu nationalist groups mentoring the government and/or the Sinophobes entrenched amongst the security and foreign policy elites. Therefore, Delhi is watching anxiously the outcome of the power struggle in the Washington Beltway and is hoping against hope that the Obama-era US policies would eventually revive.
Acting-Man | Over the three years in which Narendra Modi has been in power, his
support base has continued to increase. Indian institutions — including
the courts and the media — now toe his line.
The President, otherwise a ceremonial rubber-stamp post, but the last
obstacle keeping Modi from implementing a police state, comes up for
re-election by a vote of the legislative houses in July 2017. No one
should be surprised if a Hindu fanatic is made the next President. India
is rapidly entering a new phase.
During his reign in Gujarat, a civil-war like situation erupted,
which seriously segregated the province’s society. It brought Hindus
into a state of trance and excitement and provided them with the
fake-security of the collective. Alas, wealth and civilization are
created by an intense focus on value-addition, not from the short-term
escapist excitement of mobs expressed through riots and rape.
Destructive endeavors are a major vulnerability of poor societies, given
their irrationality and lack of foresight and planning, and their
short-sighted focus on high time-preference, pleasure-centered
activities.
Modi, a major world-traveler, who has run around quite a bit to
please foreign governments and win the support of identity-lacking
non-resident Indians, is no longer going abroad with the same abandon.
Historically and even today, whatever gained approval in the West is
what Indians have looked up to.
But Modi has matured. Modi has directed the attention of Indians to
nationalism, Hindutava (fanatic Hinduism), the army, the flag, the
anthem, and other superficial collective “causes” not underpinned any
values or wealth-creating, civilization-producing objectives. Behind
this is an empty arrogance pumped up by having grown relatively richer
(still with GDP at a mere $1,718 per capita) over the last several
decades due of the free gift of western technology.
If all this reminds you of the early days of the Arab Spring,
you are right on track with respect to understanding what is happening
in India. India is an extremely irrational, superstitious and tribal
society, which I have discussed in great detail in earlier articles, the
last one of which is linked here.
War of Attrition
Modi has infused so-called educated Indians with a sense of
confidence and identity. It does not matter that this is all fake. To a
man with a tribal, irrational mind incapable of thinking about tomorrow,
throwing furniture onto the bonfire is not a problem, for today’s
excitement is all that matters. Lacking empathy and compassion — another
tribal “quality” — he pays no heed to the suffering of his fellow man.
trtworld | As Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrates three years in power, one
story has persisted in making headlines: the project to create “tall and
fair customised children” with high IQs.
It’s a decade-old project and is operated by the health wing of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the mother organization from which
the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) draws its inspiration, and the
project is spreading its wings around the country.
As the country exploded in rage over similarities with the Nazi
“Ubermenschen” ideal, which attempted to create a super Aryan race
through eugenics funded by Hitler’s regime, many suggested that the RSS’
covert admiration for strong leaders – like US president Donald Trump
and Modi – is directly related to this attempt to create perfect
babies.
An abiding theme of Hindu extreme right-wing literature has been the
self-loathing associated with the inability to fight off invading
armies, mostly Muslim, over the last thousand years. In fact, RSS
leaders routinely collaborated with British authorities before
independence so that they didn’t have to join hands with who they
perceived to be the greater enemy: India’s Muslims.
No wonder RSS leaders are obsessed with the “weak Hindu” and how to overcome his weaknesses. Enter the customised baby project.
The RSS’ ‘Garbh Vigyan Sanskar’ project, loosely translated as
‘Science & Culture of the Womb,’ properly prescribes the norms which
go into the making of a custom-perfect baby. The Indian Express, which
broke the story last week, outlined the process that involves three
months of “purification” of the intended parents which prevents “genetic
defects” from being passed on, intercourse at a time decided by
planetary configurations, complete abstinence after the baby is
conceived as well as procedural and dietary regulations. Fist tap Big Don.
Counterpunch | We don’t know who killed Seth Rich and we’re not going to speculate
on the matter here. But we find it very strange that neither the media
nor the FBI have pursued leads in the case that challenge the prevailing
narrative on the Russia hacking issue. Why is that? Why is the media so
eager to blame Russia when Rich looks like the much more probable
suspect?
And why have the mainstream news organizations put so much energy
into discrediting the latest Fox News report, when– for the last 10
months– they’ve showed absolutely zero interest in Rich’s death at all?
According to Fox News:
“The Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on
July 10 on a Washington, D.C., street just steps from his home had
leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks, law enforcement
sources told Fox News.
A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic
report detailing the contents of DNC staffer Seth Rich’s computer
generated within 96 hours after his murder, said Rich made contact with
WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative
reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was
living in London at the time….
Rod Wheeler, a retired Washington homicide detective and Fox News
contributor investigating the case on behalf of the Rich family, made
the WikiLeaks claim, which was corroborated by a federal investigator
who spoke to Fox News….
“I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and Wikileaks,”
the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen
connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the
stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department.”
(“Family of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich blasts detective over report of
WikiLeaks link”, Fox News)
Okay, so where’s the computer? Who’s got Rich’s computer? Let’s do the forensic work and get on with it.
But the Washington Post and the other bogus news organizations aren’t
interested in such matters because it doesn’t fit with their political
agenda. They’d rather take pot-shots at Fox for running an article that
doesn’t square with their goofy Russia hacking story. This is a
statement on the abysmal condition of journalism today. Headline news
has become the province of perception mandarins who use the venue
to shape information to their own malign specifications, and any facts
that conflict with their dubious storyline, are savagely attacked
and discredited. Journalists are no longer investigators that keep the
public informed, but paid assassins who liquidate views that veer from
the party-line.
WikiLeaks never divulges the names of the people who provide them
with information. Even so, Assange has not only shown an active interest
in the Seth Rich case, but also offered a $20,000 reward for anyone
providing information leading to the arrest and conviction of Rich’s
murder. Why? And why did he post a link to the Fox News article on his
Twitter account on Tuesday?
I don’t know, but if I worked for the FBI or the Washington Post, I’d
sure as hell be beating the bushes to find out. And not just because it
might help in Rich’s murder investigation, but also, because it could
shed light on the Russia fiasco which is being used to lay the
groundwork for impeachment proceedings. So any information that
challenges the government version of events, could actually change the
course of history.
nakedcapitalism | Silicon Valley brings us the worst of two economic systems: the
inefficiency of a command economy coupled with the remorselessness of
laissez-faire liberalism.
One reason it’s been difficult to organize workers in the tech
industry is that people have a hard time separating good intentions from
results. But we have to be cold-blooded about this.
Tech companies are run by a feckless leadership accountable to no
one, creating a toolkit for authoritarianism while hypnotized by
science-fiction fantasy.
There are two things we have to do immediately. The first is to stop
the accelerating process of tracking and surveillance before it can do
any more harm to our institutions.
The danger facing us is not Orwell, but Huxley. The combo of data
collection and machine learning is too good at catering to human nature,
seducing us and appealing to our worst instincts. We have to put
controls on it. The algorithms are amoral; to make them behave morally
will require active intervention.
The second thing we need is accountability. I don’t mean that I want
Mark Zuckerberg’s head on a pike, though I certainly wouldn’t throw it
out of my hotel room if I found it there. I mean some mechanism for
people whose lives are being brought online to have a say in that
process, and an honest debate about its tradeoffs.
I’m here today because I believe the best chance to do this is in
Europe. The American government is not functional right now, and the
process of regulatory capture is too far gone to expect any regulations
limiting the tech giants from either party. American tech workers have
the power to change things, but not the desire.
Only Europe has the clout and the independence to regulate these
companies. You can already point to regulatory successes, like forcing
Facebook to implement hard delete on user accounts. That feature was
added with a lot of grumbling, but because of the way Facebook organizes
its data, they had to make it work the same for all users. So a
European regulation led to a victory for privacy worldwide.
We can do this again.
Here are some specific regulations I would like to see the EU impose:
A strict 30 day time limit on storing behavioral data.
The right to opt out of data collection while continuing to use services.
A ban on the sale or transfer of behavioral data, including to third-party ad networks.
A requirement that advertising be targeted strictly to content, not users.
With these rules in place, we would still have Google and Facebook,
and they would still make a little bit of money. But we would gain some
breathing room. These reforms would knock the legs out from underground
political ad campaigns like we saw in Brexit, and in voter suppression
efforts in the US election. They would give publishers relief in an
advertising market that is currently siphoning all their earnings to
Facebook and Google. And they would remove some of the incentive for
consumer surveillance.
The other thing I hope to see in Europe is a unionized workforce at
every major tech company. Unionized workers could demand features like
ephemeral group messaging at Facebook, a travel mode for social media, a
truly secure Android phone, or the re-imposition of the wall between
Gmail and DoubleClick data. They could demand human oversight over
machine learning algorithms. They could demand non-cooperation with
Trump.
And I will say selfishly, if you can unionize here, it will help us unionize over there.
If nothing else, we need your help and we need you to keep the
pressure on the tech companies, the Trump Administration, and your own
politicians and journalists, so that the disaster that happened in the
United States doesn’t repeat itself in Germany.
You have elections coming soon. Please learn from what happened to us. Please stay safe.
And please regulate, regulate, regulate this industry, while you can.
Independent | Theresa May is planning to introduce huge regulations on the way the
internet works, allowing the government to decide what is said online.
Particular focus has been drawn to the end of the manifesto, which
makes clear that the Tories want to introduce huge changes to the way
the internet works.
"Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it
comes to technology and the internet," it states. "We disagree."
Senior Tories confirmed to BuzzFeed News
that the phrasing indicates that the government intends to introduce
huge restrictions on what people can post, share and publish online.
The plans will allow Britain to become "the global leader in the
regulation of the use of personal data and the internet", the manifesto
claims.
The manifesto makes reference to those increased powers, saying that
the government will work even harder to ensure there is no "safe space
for terrorists to be able to communicate online". That is apparently a
reference in part to its work to encourage technology companies to build
backdoors into their encrypted messaging services – which gives the
government the ability to read terrorists' messages, but also weakens
the security of everyone else's messages, technology companies have
warned.
The government now appears to be launching a similarly radical change
in the way that social networks and internet companies work. While much
of the internet is currently controlled by private businesses like
Google and Facebook, Theresa May intends to allow government to decide
what is and isn't published, the manifesto suggests.
The new rules would include laws that make it harder than ever to
access pornographic and other websites. The government will be able to
place restrictions on seeing adult content and any exceptions would have
to be justified to ministers, the manifesto suggests.
The manifesto even suggests that the government might stop search
engines like Google from directing people to pornographic websites. "We
will put a responsibility on industry not to direct users – even
unintentionally – to hate speech, pornography, or other sources of
harm," the Conservatives write.
iBankCoin | Reddit and 4chan have been hard at work trying to connect the dots surrounding Rich’s murder.
To that end, a user in Reddit’s ‘the_donald’ forum has found Seth Rich’s Reddit account – ‘MeGrimlock4’ (a Transformers reference) revealing much
about the slain DNC staffer. For the most part, Rich seemed like a
regular kinda guy – into football, dogs, patriotism, riding his bike,
fun clothes, and volunteering at the Washington Humane Society.
Seth Rich’s twitter is @panda4progress,
which follows @Reddit, which led us to believe he was in fact a
redditor. That seems consistent with this reddit account, in that
they’re both in DC and have an interest in bicycles. Edit: not JUST
bicycles. A company named “split” which this account is talking abouthere@Panda4Progress talks to themhere. Also/u/MeGrimlock4is posting about Nebraska football.
Rich was from Omaha. No cornfed midwestern kid from Nebraska isn’t a Huskers fan. THIS IS DEFINITELY SETH RICH’S ACCOUNT
— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) May 19, 2017
Here’s where it gets interesting:/u/pandas4bernieand
a tumblr by the same name ALSO stopped posting at the same time as this
account. If that’s Rich, then that proves motive. Rich was a BernieBro.
———-
Which may be why Rich gave WikiLeaks the DNC emails – after they false flagged Bernie…
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) uses an outside software
partner “NGP VAN,” founded by Nathaniel Pearlman, chief technology
officer for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Their
‘VoteBuilder’ software was designed for Democratic candidates (Bernie,
Hillary, etc.) to track and analyze highly detailed information on
voters for the purposes of ‘microtargeting’ specific demographics.
On December 16th, 2015, NGP VAN updated the Votebuilder with a patch
that contained a bug – allowing the Sanders and the Clinton campaigns to
temporarily access each other’s proprietary voter information for
around 40 minutes. Lo and behold, the Sanders campaign National Data
Director, Josh Uretsky, was found to have accessed Clinton’s information and promptly fired.
Uretsky’s excuse was that he was simply grabbing Clinton’s data during the window of vulnerability to prove that the breach was real.
Bernie cried false flag!
Sanders claimed that Uretsky was a DNC plant – “recommended by the DNC’s National Data Director, as well as a former COO of NGP VAN.”
Of note, Seth Rich was not the National Data Director. According to the DNC’s 2016 roster, Seth Rich was the DNC’s “Voter Expansion Data Director” while Andrew Brown was the National Data Director – who Bernie said referred Uretsky.
So Seth Rich, a Bernie supporter, would have known people involved in the ‘hack’ Bernie says was meant to frame him…
It’s easy to speculate how Seth Rich could have become disgruntled
after witnessing the DNC attempt to sabotage the Sanders campaign. As
such, it’s not a stretch to imagine that Rich – a guy with access to
sensitive emails and technical skills, did in fact communicate with
Wikileaks in order to expose and root out the DNC’s misdeeds.
straightlinelogic |If Seth Rich was the source of the
WikiLeaks’ DNC email disclosures and the FBI knew it, then the Russian
hacking story was a fabrication, and James Comey was probably involved
in an attempt to drive President Trump from office.
The biggest story of the entire Russiagate controversy
was published Tuesday. Not the story about President Trump’s alleged
statement to former FBI Director James Comey: “I hope you can let this
go.” A witness is only as good as his or her credibility. If the actual
big story pans out, Comey has none, which is why the mainstream media is
obsessing over Trump’s alleged statement and doing everything it can to
ignore and stifle the other story.
Seth Rich was on the staff of the Democratic
National Committee (DNC). He was gunned down on July 10, 2016. Robbery
has been speculated as a motive for the murder, but his wallet and watch
were not taken. There is also speculation that Rich was the source of
the DNC emails that were released by WikiLeaks twelve days later, to the
consternation and embarrassment of the DNC. Fueling that speculation
was WikiLeaks’ offer of a $20,000 reward for information leading to the
conviction of Rich’s murderer. WikiLeaks has neither confirmed nor
denied that Rich was its source.
The emails appeared to show a concerted DNC
effort to stop Senator Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign for the
Democratic nomination and led to the resignation of party chairperson
Debbie Wasserman Schultz. After WikiLeaks’ DNC disclosure, the DNC
refused to let the FBI investigate its computer servers. Instead, it
allowed a cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike, to investigate. It’s
conclusion, subsequently undercut, was that the Russians had hacked the DNC’s server.
Fox News reported
that an unnamed source, almost certainly from the FBI, has seen and
read emails between Seth Rich and the late Gavin MacFadyen, a director
of WikiLeaks. A FBI forensic report on Seth Rich’s computer was
allegedly compiled within 96 hours of his murder. The source said there
were 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between DNC leaders
transferred from Rich to MacFadyen from January 2015 through May 2016.
If this is correct, then within 96 hours
of Rich’s murder, or by July 14, 2016, the FBI knew that Rich had
communicated with WikiLeaks and it knew what he had communicated. That
means that when WikiLeaks subsequently released the DNC emails on July
22, the FBI knew that Rich, not the Russian government, was the source.
That would make the entire “Russia hacked the DNC” story nothing more
than a concocted fabrication.
Mishtalk | Bending to the will of Democrats and mainstream media, Deputy Attorney
General, Rod Rosenstein, cited ‘public interest’ in investigating
Trump’s ties to Russia. As a matter of public interest,, Rosenstein
named former FBI director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel for Russia Probe.
What’s the Real Mission?
Republicans and Trump want to pacify the media and get this nonsense behind them.
Democrats want this to drag on forever.
Peter King is correct in his assessment “These guys go on forever.”
As a byproduct of point number two, numerous witch hunts will take
place as Democrats will want to investigate every lead, no matter how
ridiculous.
The budget is open-ended and there are no time limits. The witch
hunt could conceivably last for the duration of Trump’s presidency.
Much of Trump’s agenda will be on indefinite hold as the progress, or lack thereof, as the story unfolds.
unz |I am somewhat embarrassed to cheer the US
President for doing such minor routine things as firing an FBI director
or meeting with the Foreign Minister of a major state. Next, I’d have to
laud him for eating an apple or washing his hands (“Attaboy!”). But one
feels that the guy needs our encouragement for doing something right.
As the father of three boys, I know: boys need encouragement. And if
there is no great achievement to cheer them for, even washing their
hands before the meal will do.
Trump has a huge, Herculean task: to turn the battleship America
away from its collision course when all the important people in all the
important positions are deadly keen to run it full speed ahead. They
think the other ship will turn away first; but the “other ship” is
actually a lighthouse. It is the rock of the World-Island and its
Heartland. Why would so many smart Americans, Brits and Europeans push
their luck by courting war and disaster?
Exactly a hundred years ago, in 1917, Vladimir
Lenin discovered that the present system necessarily produces world
wars. It is not a question of bad guys or good guys, it’s the system,
stupid! He wrote about it a concise book called Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,
radically updating Marx. The idea is that capitalism evolves from
dynamic competitive production to financial capital takeover, while the
financial capital unavoidably leads to wars. If financiers rule, war is
inevitable, he said, because they are insatiable.
Industrialists,
builders, farmers can and will stop at the limits of their territory,
but financiers always want more, and there is no natural limit to their
expansion. They want to colonise more lands, subjugate more nations and
suck up their substance. The only way to save the world from the horrors
of war (remember, Lenin wrote after Verdun and Ypres), is to get rid of
financial capital’s dominance (Jesus came to the same conclusion whens
He expelled the moneychangers from the temple).
That
same year, Lenin made his great experiment to rid his country Russia of
bankers and other exploiters, while earning their eternal hatred (and
volumes of fake news about his bloodthirsty cruelty, in addition).
History has proven him partially right: the countries that followed
Lenin’s path never began a war, and they never colonised other states,
though they did help some to get rid of their leeches and Western
interference. Soviet Russia is an example: it was a donor to all the
other socialist states, from Georgia to Afghanistan. (Perhaps the
communists had been too good for this world. After Russia was
de-communised, Russian income went up, while the incomes of practically
all the ex-Soviet states plummeted, unless subsidised by the EU.) And
they knew no war.
On
the other hand, the states that remained under bankers’ sway went to
war more and more frequently. They colonised or were colonised. Probably
none as often as the US, the home country for the Federal Reserve, for
the dollar and for so many great financial companies.
For
America, the next World War is inevitable, unless the Americans can get
rid of their financiers – and of their servants in the mass media and
other state institutions. My sympathy to President Trump has been based
on his antipathy to the moneymen. When he attacked the Federal Reserve
and Wall Street, he swayed me, and perhaps you, too.
medium |Imagine
working for a corporation that produces a (so far) hidden harm to the
community, in concealing a cancer-causing property which kills the
thousands but with an effect that is not (yet) fully visible. You can
alert the public, but would automatically lose your job. There is a
gamble that the company’s evil scientists would disprove you, causing
additional humiliation. Or the news will come and go and you may end-up
being ignored. You are familiar with the history of whistleblowers which
shows that, even if you end up vindicated, it may take time for the
truth to emerge over the noise created by corporate shills. Meanwhile
you will pay the price. A smear campaign against you will destroy any
hope of getting another job.
You
have nine children, a sick parent, and as a result of the stand, the
children’s future would be compromised. College hopes will evaporate
–you may even have trouble feeding them properly. You are severely
conflicted between your obligation to the collective and to your
progeny. You feel part of the crime and unless you do something you are
an agent: thousands are dying from the hidden poisoning by the
corporation. Being ethical comes at a huge cost to others.
In the James Bond movie Specter,
agent Bond found himself fighting –on his own, whistleblower style –a
conspiracy of dark forces that took over the British service, including
his supervisors. “Q” who built the new fancy car and other gadgets for
him, when asked to help against the conspiracy, said “I have a mortgage
and two cats” –in jest of course because he ended up risking the lives
of his two cats to fight the bad guys.
Society
likes saints and moral heroes to be celibate so they do not have family
pressures and be forced into dilemmas of needing to compromise their
sense of ethics to feed their children. The entire human race, something
rather abstract, becomes their family. Some martyrs, such as Socrates,
had young children (although he was in his seventies), and overcame the
dilemma at their expense.[1] Many can’t.
Heatstreet | No one is buying Marvel’s lineup of social justice-themed comics.
It’s no surprise, given that few readers want politics to be forced down
their throats. Thus liberal darling Ta-Nehisi Coates and Yona Harvey’s Black Panther & The Crew is getting the axe after poor sales, just two issues after its launch. Its cancellation comes just weeks after a Marvel VP revealed that comics with forced messages of “diversity” were responsible for the publisher’s sales slump.
Joined by Luke Cage, Manifold, Misty Knight, and Storm, the titular superhero who entered the limelight with Captain America: Civil War
gathers his all-black crew of superheroes to investigate the death of a
civil rights activist who died in police custody. It has echoes of Sandra Bland’s death.
Set in a near-future Harlem-turned-police state patrolled by robotic
police officers controlled by a private security contractor, the comic
has every element you’d expect from a comic attempting to tell a story
inspired by Black Lives Matter. The cops beat people up for no reason,
too.
Naturally, the social justice superheroes take justice into their own
hands and go to battle against the corrupt system, while learning about
the historical figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Univision-owned
entertainment vertical Gizmodo enthusiastically describes The Crew as one that “[tells a] timely [story] about real world issues, like how police brutality devastates black communities.”
Coates explained to The Verge
that Marvel decided to kill the publication due to poor sales, and that
there wouldn’t be any continuation after the current story arc ends in
its sixth and final issue. The market spoke, and Marvel listened. Fist tap Big Don.
Counterpunch | You would think, for example, that in the heart of the most powerful
military empire that the world has ever seen, that an activist who opposedthe
savaging of other countries by the U.S. military would receive
intersectional support from a broad section of the U.S. left. And
particularly since this activist identified as LGBTQ, the LGBTQ left
would particularly be in her corner.
But no. Years earlier a top official in what is now known as the
National LGBTQ Task Force told me that “we will never” again come out
against a U.S. war, following the Task Force’s public opposition to
President George H. W. Bush’s first war against Iraq. He said that the
Task Force’s coming out against that war had “nearly destroyed” the
organization, as wealthy donors pulled their donations and threatened to
never support it again. And this was with the Task Force, the group
that likes to posture itself as the “hippest” of the big LGBTQ
non-profits.
But it was not the first, nor certainly the last time that LGBTQ
non-profits – rightly derided as “Gay Inc.” – prioritized donors’
dollars to fund their salaries and offices, over alleged adherence to
intersectional principles.
For all their talk of “grassroots organizing” – another phrase that’s
become hackneyed thru repeated misuse – Gay Inc. organizations are
staff-driven at best, and at worst, controlled by self-selected boards
chosen for their ability to tap contributions from wealthy donors. In
this way the wealthiest LGBTQs control the political agenda of what
passes for our movement, a pink version of the class stratification
talked about in straight society, but rarely mentioned in the movement.
Some
say that the reason for this conservatism is Gay, Inc.’s affection for
“heteronormativity” – the aping straight people. This is said to explain
their recent emphasis on winning equal marriage rights, for example.
But this interpretation doesn’t adequately explain where
“heteronormativity” itself comes from, and it also radically mis-reads
the chronology of how the marriage issue became center-space in our
movement.
RT | Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is ready to provide
records of the recent meeting between US leader Donald Trump and Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, to dispel the "political schizophrenia"
around the allegations that state secrets were leaked.
"If
the US administration deems it possible, we are ready to provide the
Senate and Congress with the transcript of the conversation between
Lavrov and Trump," Putin said at a press conference, following a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni on Wednesday.
It comes after the Washington Post claimed that Trump had “revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister [Sergey Lavrov] and ambassador in a White House meeting” on May 10.
Trump maintains that the data he shared with Lavrov concerned flight safety and terrorism, and that he had the "absolute right" to provide the information at an openly scheduled White House meeting.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova issued a mocking response to the claims, posting on Facebook:
“Have you guys been reading American newspapers again? Don’t read them.
They can be used in many different ways, but one shouldn’t read them –
recently it has become not only harmful, but dangerous.”
"We are seeing in the US a developing political schizophrenia," Putin said.
"There is no other way I can explain the accusations against the acting US president that he gave away some secrets to Lavrov."
Those who "are
destabilizing the internal US political situation using anti-Russian
slogans either don't understand that they are bringing this nonsense in
on their own side, and then they are just stupid, or else they
understand everything, and then they are dangerous and corrupt people," Putin said.
"Anyway, this is a US matter, and we don't want and don't plan to interfere," the Russian president said.
Putin
promptly followed his statements about the Trump-Lavrov meeting by
saying he did share some secrets with the Italian prime minister.
"As for the message I delivered to Mr. Prime Minister, it is of a secret nature, I cannot tell you about it," Putin said with a smile.
While
much discussed by the media, the alleged state secret leaks appear not
to have damaged Washington's overseas alliances. UK Prime Minister
Theresa May has vowed to continue sharing intelligence data with the US.
therealnews | But why is so much of
the American foreign policy establishment, the political class, the
military leadership, the vast majority of that whole stratum wants to
maintain a very antagonistic position towards Russia, and why?
ROBERT
ENGLISH: You know, four or five reasons that all come together, pushing
in this Russophobic direction. We've always had sort of unreconstructed
Cold Warriors, people who never were easy with the new Russia, right?
Zbigniew Brzezinski and people of that ilk, who wanted to just push
Russia in a corner, take advantage of its weakness, never give it a
chance. Then you have people in the military-industrial complex, for
lack of a better term, whose vested interests lie in a continued
rivalry, and continued arms-racing, and continued threat inflation. You
have other people who normally would be liberal progressive, but they're
so angry at Hillary Clinton's loss, they're so uncomprehending of how
someone they see as vulgar and unqualified as Trump could get elected,
that they're naturally unwilling to let go of this "the Russians hacked
our election, the Russians got Trump elected" theme, and therefore,
Russia is even bigger enemy than they would be otherwise. These and
other strains all come together in a strange way. Some of this is the
hard right, all right? Some of it is from the left, some is from the
center. And across the board, we have ignorance. Ignorance of Russia.
PAUL
JAY: Now, in an article you wrote recently, you went through some of
the history, and we're going to do another segment that digs into this
history more in depth, but when you look at the history of the '90s, and
Yeltsin, and the whole role of the United States in helping bring down
the Soviet Union, the whole point of bringing down the Soviet Union, and
standing Yeltsin up, and interfering in Russian elections to make sure
Yeltsin wins, and so on, was to open Russia for privatization for
American oligarchs. I don't think the idea was to do it for Russian
oligarchs, but that's how it turned out. Is that part of what is making
this section of the American oligarchs so angry about it all?
ROBERT
ENGLISH: You know, when people look at Russia today, they try to
explain it in terms of one evil man, Putin, and that sort of conceals an
assumption that if we could just get rid of Putin, everything would be
better, and that Putin is the way he is — anti-American — because he's
from the KGB. You don't need to go back to his youth or his time in
intelligence to understand why he's very skeptical, why we have bad
relations with Putin and all those around him. You don't have to go back
to the '50s or '40s. You can go back just to the '90s, when we
interfered in Russia, when we foisted dysfunctional economic policies on
them, when we meddled in their elections repeatedly, and basically for
an entire decade, we were handmaidens to a catastrophe — economic,
political, social — that sowed the seeds of this resentment that
continues to this day. It's a-
PAUL JAY: Yeah, you mention in your
article that the consequences of the '90s depression in Russia far
surpassed anything in the '07-'08 recession in the United States.
ROBERT
ENGLISH: They far surpassed that. They even far surpassed anything in
our own Great Depression of the early 1930s, of '29, '30, '31 — you
know, the Great Depression, under Hoover and then Roosevelt. At that
time, our economy contracted by about a quarter, and the slump lasted
about three years before growth resumed. Russia's economy contracted
almost by half, and the slump lasted an entire decade, and it resulted
not just in widespread poverty, but millions of excess deaths, of
suicides, of people dying of despair, of heart disease, of treatable
illnesses caused by the strains, the ... This deep, unbelievable misery
of that decade. It's no wonder that there is deep resentment towards the
US, and this underlies a lot of the Putin elites' attitudes towards us.
It's not something pathological, Putin being a bad guy. If you got rid
of Putin tomorrow, the next guy who came along, the person most Russians
would probably elect in democratic elections, wouldn't be so different.
It wouldn't be another Yeltsin or pro-Western liberal, believe me.
PAUL
JAY: Well, even if everything they say about Putin is true, and I doubt
and ... Quite sure not everything is true. If he is such a dictator,
United States foreign policy has never had any trouble with dictators,
as long as they're our dictators, so the thing drips with hypocrisy.
ROBERT
ENGLISH: Hypocrisy and double standards all around are what Russians
see, okay? I mean, where do you begin? Look at the recent ... The vote,
the referendum in Crimea to secede from Ukraine, and of course, then
Russia annexed it into Russian territory, and we find that outrageous, a
violation of international law, and the Russians say, "Yeah, and what
did you engineer in Kosovo? You yanked Kosovo out of Serbia, you caused
Kosovo to secede from Serbia with no referendum, no international law.
How is that different? Right? When it's your client state it's okay, but
when it's ours, it's not?" And of course the list is a long one; we
could spend all afternoon going through them. So the first thing we need
to do is stop the sanctimony, and deal with Russia as an equal great
power. But, you know, can I say one more thing about the '90s
that connect it with what's going on today? In 1991, we had George
Herbert Walker Bush in the White House. It was still the Soviet Union,
Gorbachev was still in power for the rest of the year, and a warning
came from our ambassador in Moscow, Jack Matlock, which was passed on to
the White House. He had inside information from sources, from
confidential sources, that a coup attempt was being planned. And, by the
way, of course it happened in August of that year. That information
came from our Ambassador Matlock, from his sources in Moscow, to the
White House. George Bush had been instructed that this was highly
sensitive, do not reveal the source of the information, keep it
confidential. Bush fouled up, and within hours, he got on the phone to
Moscow, a line that was open, monitored by the KGB, trying to reach
Gorbachev, and he revealed the information, and he revealed the source,
which went straight to the KGB. This was an unbelievable breach of
confidentiality, dangerous, potentially deadly results, and the greatest
irony is that George Herbert Walker Bush had been Director of the CIA
before. Now, why am I telling this story? Obviously, my first
point is, presidents have fouled up, and have declassified unwittingly,
or sometimes for political purposes, highly sensitive information all
the time. I'm not excusing what Trump did — it looks like he was very
sloppy — but the first thing to note is it's not unusual, this happens a
lot. The second thing, and let's talk about this, is sharing
information intelligence with the Russians. Guys, we've been doing this
for nearly 20 years. After 9/11, the Russians offered us valuable
intelligence on the Taliban, on Afghanistan, to help us fight back
against bin Laden, and we've been exchanging intelligence on terrorists
ever since. A lot of people wish we'd exchange more information; we
might have prevented the Boston bombing. So this hysteria about sharing
intelligence with our adversary, no, we are cooperating with Russia
because we have a common enemy.
PAUL JAY: Now, I said in the
beginning that I thought we should separate Trump's intent from a
policy, which seems more rational, not to treat Russia as such an
adversary, and try to work both in Syria and other places, negotiate
more things out. But when you do look at the side of intent, I don't
think you can negate or forget about the kind of historic ties that
Trump has with Russian oligarchs. Some people suggest Russian Mafia.
Tillerson's energy play, they would love sanctions lifted on Russia, and
I'm not suggesting they shouldn't be lifted, but the motive here is
they want to do a massive play in the energy sector. So it's not ... I
don't think we should forget about what drives Trump and his circle
around him, which is they have a very big fossil fuel agenda and a
money-making agenda. On the other hand, that doesn't mean the policy
towards Russia isn't rational. I mean, what do you ... I don't know if
you agree or not.
unz |There is a growing Washington consensus that
consists of traditional liberals and progressives as well as Democratic
globalist interventionists and neoconservatives who believe that Donald
Trump must be removed from office no matter what it takes. The
interventionists and neocons in particular already control most of the
foreign policy mechanisms but they continue to see Trump as a possible
impediment to their plans for aggressive action against a host of
enemies, most particularly Russia. As they are desirous of bringing down
Trump “legally” through either impeachment or Article 25 of the
Constitution which permits removal for incapacity, it might be termed a
constitutional coup, though the other labels cited above also fit.
The
rationale Trump haters have fabricated is simple: the president and his
team colluded with the Russians to rig the 2016 election in his favor,
which, if true, would provide grounds for impeachment. The driving
force, in terms of the argument being made, is that removing Trump must
be done “for the good of the country” and to “correct a mistake made by
the American voters.” The mainstream media is completely on board of the
process, including the outlets that flatter themselves by describing
their national stature, most notably the New York Times and Washington
Post.
So
what is to be done? For starters, until Donald Trump has unambiguously
broken a law the critics should take a valium and relax. He is an
elected president and his predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama
certainly did plenty of things that in retrospect do not bear much
scrutiny. Folks like Ray McGovern and Robert Parry should be listened to
even when they are being provocative in their views. They are not, to
be sure, friends of the White House in any conventional way and are not
apologists for those in power, quite the contrary. Ray has been strongly
critical of the current foreign policy, most particularly of the
expansion of various wars, claims of Damascus’s use of chemical weapons,
and the cruise missile attack on Syria. Robert in his latest article
describes Trump as narcissistic and politically incompetent. But their
legitimate concerns are that we are moving in a direction that is far
more dangerous than Trump. A soft coup engineered by the national
security and intelligence agencies would be far more dangerous to our
democracy than anything Donald Trump can do.
ibankcoin | Steven Cohen, Professor of Russian studies at Princeton and NYU (an
obvious Russian spy) was besides himself tonight, in sheer disbelief
over the with hunt of gigantic nothing-burgers that are being used to
assault the Presidency of Donald Trump.
He declared, “today, I would say (the greatest threat to national
security) is this assault on President Trump. Let’s be clear what he’s
being accused of is treason. This has never happened in America, that we
had a Russian agent in the White House. Cohen believes Flynn did
nothing wrong by talking to the Russian ambassador, describing it as
‘his job’ to do so.
He then illuminated the indelible fact that there is a 4th branch of
government, the intelligence community, who have been meddling in
American foreign affairs, obstructing the other 3 branches of
government.
“In 2016, President Obama worked out a deal with Russian
President Putin for military cooperation in Syria. He said he was gonna
share intelligence with Russia, just like Trump and the Russians were
supposed to do the other day. Our department of defense said it wouldn’t
share intelligence. And a few days later, they killed Syrian soldiers,
violating the agreement, and that was the end of that. So, we can ask,
who is making our foreign policy in Washington today?”
Professor Cohen added, “you and I have to ask a subversive question,
are there really three branches of government, or is there a 4th branch
of government? These intel services. What we know, as a fact, is that
Obama tried, not very hard but he tried for a military alliance with
Putin, in Syria, against terrorism and it was sabotaged by the
department of defense and its allies in the intelligence services.”
wikipedia |Systema (Система, literally meaning The System) is a Russian martial art.[1]
Training includes, but is not limited to: hand-to-hand combat,
grappling, knife fighting, and firearms training. Training involves
drills and sparring without set kata.
In Systema, the body has to be free of tensions, filled with endurance,
flexibility, effortless movement, and explosive potential; the "spirit"
or psychological state has to be calm, free of anger, irritation, fear,
self-pity, delusion, and pride.[2]
Systema focuses on breathing, relaxation, and fluidity of movement,
as well as utilizing an attacker's momentum against him and controlling
the six body levers (elbows, neck, knees, waist, ankles, and shoulders)
through pressure point
application, striking, and weapon applications. As a discipline, it is
becoming more and more popular among police and security forces and it
is taught by several practitioners inside and outside Russia.
wikipedia | The Russian girya (ги́ря, a loanword from Persian غران girān "heavy") was a type of metal weight, primarily used to weigh crops, in the 18th century. The use of such weights by circus strongmen is recorded for the 19th century. They began to be used for recreational and competition strength athletics in Russia and Europe in the late 19th century. The birth of competitive kettlebell lifting or girevoy sport
(гиревой спорт) is dated to 1885, with the foundation of the founding
year of the "Circle for Amateur Athlethics" (Кружок любителей атлетики).[2]
Russian kettlebells (Russian: ги́ри giri, singular ги́ря girya) are traditionally measured in weight by pood, corresponding to 16.38 kilograms (36.1 lb).[3] The English term kettle bell has been in use since the early 20th century.[4]
Similar weights used in Classical Greece were the haltere, comparable to the modern kettlebell in terms of movements. Another comparable instrument was used by Shaolin monks in China.
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