What Is At The Root Of Illinois Financialized Civil War?

politico  |  “Illinois is a real outlier in the most striking way. The sheer size of the state’s unfunded pension liabilities … just looking at the state’s finances, its habit of deferring payments from one year to the next, has created a vicious circle,” said Ted Hampton, vice president with Moody’s Investment Services. “Illinois has had a very large negative balance both in absolute terms and relative to its budget for many years.” 

What does the crisis all boil down to? It began with an ego-laden brawl between two powerful men: Rauner and Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan. Rauner was elected in 2014 as the first Republican governor in Illinois in more than a decade, vowing to “shake up Springfield” in a campaign that demonized Madigan — the longest serving House speaker in state history — and targeted “corrupt union bosses.” 

Upon taking office, Rauner, a multimillionaire businessman, laid out a list of policy demands that initially included right to work elements as a condition of signing a budget into law. Rauner wanted changes to laws affecting workers' compensation, collective bargaining and state property taxes, among others. Democrats considered the agenda an attack on unions, which the governor had vilified, saying they had too much power in Illinois politics. Rauner called the measures pro-business and necessary to address decades of financial mismanagement.

But Madigan, who has served as speaker under governors from both political parties, was loath to condition the passage of a budget on the governor’s political agenda. Each side dug in, with unions rushing behind Madigan and Republicans — tired of being shut out for years by Madigan and thrilled to have a generous donor to their campaigns in the governor’s office — lined up behind Rauner. 

Today, Madigan’s Democratic-majority House and the Republican governor remain entrenched in the war to end all political wars. The exception is the Democratic-controlled Senate, which ultimately voted on a tax increase before May 31 adjournment. 

Both Rauner and Madigan counted on the other to cave. Neither has. Meantime, the state is drowning in debt, deficit spending and multiple bond-rating downgrades. 

It’s increasingly possible that Rauner — who promised that he carried negotiation credibility and the know-how to fix the state’s finances — could complete his four-year term in office without ever having passed a budget. At that point, economic forecasts indicate the state’s unpaid bill pile would soar beyond $20 billion. The bill backlog was at about $6 billion when Rauner first took office.

To put it into perspective, the Republican-dominated Kansas Legislature just overrode a veto by its governor from the same party that reversed the governor’s tax cuts and created $1.9 billion in revenue. Lawmakers there panicked after the state found itself $900 million in the hole — a drop in the bucket compared to Illinois.

Council For United Civil Rights Leadership: Wonder If We Could Identify Today's Stephen Currier?

wikipedia |  Farmer reports a dialogue between Wilkins and King:^[18]

Wilkins: One of these days, Martin, some bright reporter is going to take a good hard look at Montgomery and discover that despite all the hoopla, your boycott didn't desegregate a single city bus. It was the quiet NAACP-type legal action that did it.

King: We're fully aware of that, Roy. And we in the SCLC believe that it's going to have to be a partnership between nonviolent direct action and legal action if we're going to get the job done.

Wilkins: In fact, Martin, if you have desegregated anything by your efforts, kindly enlighten me.

King: Well, I guess about the only thing I've desegregated so far is a few human hearts.

Wilkins (nodding): Yes, I'm sure you have done that, and that's important. So keep on doing it; I'm sure it will help the cause in the long run.

 

Malcolm X claimed in his November 1963 "Message to the Grass Roots" speech that the White power structure created the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership specifically for the purpose of infiltrating and coopting a revolutionary march on Washington.^[26] His account parallels those assembled later by historians, beginning with discord among moderate civil rights leaders: "As these Negroes of national stature began to attack each other, they began to lose their control of the Negro masses."^[27]

X suggests that revolutionary actions became inevitable after the breakdown of nonviolence in Birmingham:^[26]

Negroes was out there in the streets. They was talking about we was going to march on Washington. By the way, right at that time Birmingham had exploded, and the Negroes in Birmingham—remember, they also exploded. They began to stab the crackers in the back and bust them up 'side their head—yes, they did. That's when Kennedy sent in the troops, down in Birmingham. [...] the Negroes started talking—about what? We're going to march on Washington, march on the Senate, march on the White House, march on the Congress, and tie it up, bring it to a halt; don't let the government proceed. They even said they was [sic] going out to the airport and lay down on the runway and don't let no airplanes land. I'm telling you what they said. That was revolution. That was revolution. That was the black revolution. It was the grass roots out there in the street. Scared the white man to death, scared the White power structure in Washington, D. C. to death; I was there.

He goes on to describe the meeting in the Carlyle Hotel:^[26]

A philanthropic society headed by a white man named Stephen Currier called all the top civil-rights leaders together at the Carlyle Hotel. And he told them that, "By you all fighting each other, you are destroying the civil-rights movement. And since you're fighting over money from white liberals, let us set up what is known as the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership. Let's form this council, and all the civil-rights organizations will belong to it, and we'll use it for fund-raising purposes." Let me show you how tricky the white man is. And as soon as they got it formed, they elected Whitney Young as the chairman, and who [do] you think became the co-chairman? Stephen Currier, the white man, a millionaire.

Once these leaders agreed to the CUCRL bargain, they gained access to the resources of the white power structure:^[26]

Soon as they got the setup organized, the white man made available to them top public relations experts; opened the news media across the country at their disposal; and then they begin to project these Big Six as the leaders of the march. Originally, they weren't even in the march.

As a result, the March did not threaten systemic racism:^[26]

They controlled it so tight—they told those Negroes what time to hit town, how to come, where to stop, what signs to carry, what song to sing, what speech they could make, and what speech they couldn't make; and then told them to get out town by sundown. And everyone of those Toms was out of town by sundown.

Audio rights

King announced in October 1963 that he was assigning all rights to the recording of his "I Have a Dream" speech to the Council.^[28]

The Council subsequently released an official recording of speeches at the March, titled "We Shall Overcome". It includes speeches from King, Wilkins, Young, Rustin, Lewis, Randolph, Walter Reuther, and Joachim Prinz, as well as music from Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Odetta, Marian Anderson, and Peter, Paul & Mary. This record sold for $3.00 by mail or $3.98 retail.^[29][30]

Legal action was taken to halt sales of other recordings.^[28] Clarence Jones argued that Mr. Maestro Inc and Twentieth Century Fox had infringed on the group's copyright. The defendants argued that King was a public figure and his words were in the public domain.^[31]

Gatekeeping and Permitted Discourse Productions The Perils of Philanthropy

CounterPunch |  Much has been said and written over the years about early elite philanthropic interventions into the civil rights movement, but the first book to treat this topic seriously was Robert Allen’s Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History (Doubleday, 1969). As Allen noted in the introduction to his timeless treaty on power and resistance:

“In the United States today a program of domestic neo-colonialism is rapidly advancing. It was designed to counter the potentially revolutionary thrust of the recent black rebellions in major cities across the country. This program was formulated by America’s corporate elite – the major owners, managers, and directors of the giant corporations, banks, and foundations which increasingly dominate the economy and society as a whole – because they believe that the urban revolts pose a serious threat to economic and social stability. Led by organizations as the Ford Foundation, the Urban Coalition, and the National Alliance of Businessmen, the corporatists are attempting with considerable success to co-opt the black power movement. Their strategy is to equate black power with black capitalism.” (pp.17-8)

Allen defined his use of the word co-opt in this way: “to assimilate militant leaders and militant rhetoric while subtly transforming the militants’ program for social change into a program which in essence buttresses the status quo.” (p.17) This co-optive function of philanthropic largesse applied across the board to all manner of progressive movements, as illustrated by Professor Joan Roelofs in her important book Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (2003).

We should recall that in February 1965 Malcolm X had been gunned-down in a “factional dispute” which the FBI took credit for having “developed” within the Nation of Islam — a conspiracy elaborated upon within the book The Assassination of Malcolm X. Moreover it turned out that at the time of his murder one of Malcolm’s personal bodyguards, Eugene Roberts, had actually been working for the New York Police Department’s “subversives” unit which itself worked closely with COINTELPRO operatives; while in later years Roberts went on to serve as a infiltrating “charter member” of the New York Chapter of the Black Panther Party.

As an insightful and charismatic leader, Malcolm X was killed precisely because of his rising influence among Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Speaking in November 1963, shortly before his break with the National of Islam, he accused white liberals of dressing up the anointed leaders of the civil rights movement to use them as house Negroes. He drew particular attention to the manner why which millionaire elites like Stephen Currier – who before his own early death helped set up the Urban Coalition — has acted to take control of the March on Washington which had taken place in the summer. After outlining these co-optive actions Malcolm famously surmised:

“It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What you do? You integrate it with cream; you make it weak. If you pour too much cream in, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it’ll put you to sleep. This is what they did with the march on Washington. They joined it. They didn’t integrate it; they infiltrated it. They joined it, became a part of it, took it over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. They ceased to be angry. They ceased to be hot. They ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all.”

After splitting from the Nation of Islam, Malcolm spent the last year of his life planning and strategizing about how to end injustice in ways that departed from his earlier commitment to Black Nationalism.

Sessions A Political Liability Trump Can Do Without

WaPo |  Attorney General Jeff Sessions is asking congressional leaders to undo federal medical-marijuana protections that have been in place since 2014, according to a May letter that became public Monday.

The protections, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, prohibit the Justice Department from using federal funds to prevent certain states "from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana."

In his letter, first obtained by Tom Angell of Massroots.com and verified independently by The Washington Post, Sessions argued that the amendment would "inhibit [the Justice Department's] authority to enforce the Controlled Substances Act." He continues:

I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime. The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives.

Sessions's citing of a "historic drug epidemic" to justify a crackdown on medical marijuana is at odds with what researchers know about current drug use and abuse in the United States. The epidemic Sessions refers to involves deadly opiate drugs, not marijuana. A growing body of research (acknowledged by the National Institute on Drug Abuse) has shown that opiate deaths and overdoses actually decrease in states with medical marijuana laws on the books.

Illinois Our First Failed State

MishTalk |  Both Powerball and Mega Millions Lotteries Will Pull Out of Illinois on June 30 due to the budget impasse.

Neither lottery would comment on the record.

Mary Pat at the Stump says Now, It’s Serious.

MP notes that while cash flow on lotteries is rising, so are admin costs.

Without a budget in place, the state is not authorized to make payments to the lotteries.

“Dear Contractor”

Illinois IOUs continue to mount and unpaid contractors have stopped work.

For details, please see Unable to Pay Bills, Illinois Sends “Dear Contractor” Letter Telling Firms to Halt Road Work on July 1

Will Powerball and Mega Millions be the force that gets Illinois to pass its first budget in three years?

Valodya The Real Reality Winner!

Tass |  According to Putin, Comey is more like a rights activist than a secret service chief. "If he continues to be persecuted in this connection, we will be ready to provide political asylum to him, he should know about that," the Russian president said.

Putin pointed out that Comey had admitted to have recorded his conversation with Trump, handing it over to the media through a friend. "This sounds strange when a secret service chief records his conversation with the commander-in-chief to hand the record to the media," Putin added.

Gatekeeping and Permitted Discourse Productions Will NEVER Promote a Militant New Negro!!!

CounterPunch |  The July 4 meeting at which The Voice appeared came in the wake of the vicious white supremacist attacks (Harrison called it a “pogrom”) on the African American community of East St. Louis, Illinois (which is twelve miles from Ferguson, Missouri). Harrison again advised “Negroes” who faced mob violence in the South and elsewhere to “supply themselves with rifles and fight if necessary, to defend their lives and property.”  According to the New York Times he received great applause when he declared that “the time had come for the Negroes [to] do what white men who were threatened did, look out for themselves, and kill rather than submit to be killed.”  He was quoted as saying: “We intend to fight if we must . . . for the things dearest to us, for our hearths and homes.”  In his talk he encouraged “Negroes” everywhere who did not enjoy the protection of the law to arm in self-defense, to hide their arms, and to learn how to use their weapons.  He also reportedly called for a collection of money to buy rifles for those who could not obtain them themselves, emphasizing that “Negroes in New York cannot afford to lie down in the face of this” because “East St. Louis touches us too nearly.” According to the Times, Harrison said it was imperative to “demand justice” and to “make our voices heard.” This call for armed self-defense and the desire to have the political voice of the militant New Negro heard were important components of Harrison’s militant “New Negro” activism.

The Voice featured Harrison’s outstanding writing and editing and it included important book review and “Poetry for the People” sections. It contributed significantly to the climate leading up to Alain LeRoy Locke’s 1925 publication The New Negro.

Beginning in August 1919 Harrison edited The New Negro: A Monthly Magazine of a Different Sort, which described itself as “A Magazine for the New Negro,” published “in the interest of the New Negro Manhood Movement,” and “intended as an organ of the international consciousness of the darker races — especially of the Negro race.”

In early 1920 Harrison assumed “the joint editorship” of the Negro World and served as principal editor of that globe-sweeping newspaper of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (which was a major component of the “New Negro Movement”).

Bill Maher Gatekeeping and Permitted Discourse Productions Promoting Transitive Victimization

vice |  I used to be close to 300 pounds, so a lot of what you wrote hurt to read—it took me back to a time when I wasn't fitting in airplane seats. Reading your book really made me think back to that girl and how I still end up being her, even after losing weight.Exactly. After writing this book, I realized that I want to change my body, but not in the way that you would think. I started seeing a dietician. We don't even talk about food. We talk about behaviors around food. On the first day, she was asking me about the traumas in my life. And I started to list them: "Well, I was assaulted." And then I thought about it longer and said: "Well, being fat." I just started crying because I realized, "Oh God, this is a thing that is never going to leave me." It's not about self-loathing at all. It's because of societal loathing and the ways in which people talk about our bodies and frame our bodies. I just realized that it is a trauma—and that shows how pervasive fatphobia is.

Yep.

I've told my parents many times that I'm as over being raped as I'll ever be. It's 30 years later. It's not fine, but I've dealt with it. I've gone to therapy, I have worked through those issues. But I don't know if I'll ever overcome the ways in which I was treated for daring to be fat. Honestly, I think it's one of those final frontiers of discrimination. People feel very comfortable being cruel to fat people and talking shit about fat people. Very fucking comfortable.

They think, I'm at work, I'll just fire off a tweet at some woman about how fat she is. It's hard, I think, particularly for men, to handle a woman who can't easily be made into a sexual object.

Exactly. They don't know what to do. They lose their fucking minds. They get confused. "Wait, I'm not getting a boner from you? What are you doing on this planet? You don't belong here! Get out of here!"

"The implication is that if you have a body that doesn't fit, fix your body because they're not going to fix the chair."

This sort of goes back to the idea in your book about being seen as genderless because of your weight.Being fat means you aren't desirable. So as a woman, you are basically degendered. People also often read fat bodies as male. I was just in Australia and almost every person there called me "sir." And it really drives me crazy because I have huge boobs and they are incredible. So it's like, "Come on. What are you fucking talking about?"

One part of the book that really broke my heart was hearing about the planning that you do when you visit different cities to make sure a restaurant has chairs that will accommodate you. This idea that you couldn't just show up somewhere made me so fucking mad for some reason.Well, it's either prepare or be humiliated. And I have learned to prepare. The world is not accommodating. I spend a lot my time in LA these days. All the chairs are tiny and super modern and sleek. And that's cute but my ass is not going to fit on those chairs for two hours. When a chair designer is creating a chair, they're creating it for one type of body. And it's not my kind of body. The implication is that if you have a body that doesn't fit, fix your body because they're not going to fix the chair.

By the end of the book, you emerge as this fierce being—open, raw, defiant in book and body. Did you feel that way while writing it?Partly I did. Partly I was like this is the book of no fucks given. I was terrified to write the book, but when I got to certain places, I was like, "You know what? I'm going to let it all fucking hang out."

One thing that was so interesting about this book is that you don't wrap it up in a neat bow. You don't end it with a declaration of diet or anything like that.That's exactly why I wrote the book. There is no easy answer for our bodies. There is no closure.

Southern Baptist Convention and the Alt-Right

WaPo |  The initial text of the resolution called on Southern Baptists to “reject the retrograde ideologies, xenophobic biases, and racial bigotries of the so-called ‘Alt-Right’ that seek to subvert our government, destabilize society, and infect our political system,” which was removed in the final version.

The new text of the resolution noted some of the convention’s previous actions on race, including how Southern Baptists voted in 1995 to apologize for the role that slavery played in the convention’s creation. It noted how in 2012 it elected its first black president. More than 20 percent of Southern Baptist congregations, it says, identifies as predominantly nonwhite.

“Racism and white supremacy are, sadly, not extinct but present all over the world in various white supremacist movements, sometimes known as ‘white nationalism’ or ‘alt-right,’ ” the resolution states. Southern Baptists “decry every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ” and “we denounce and repudiate white supremacy and every form of racial and ethnic hatred as of the devil.”

Moore and Steve Gaines, the president of the SBC, who worked on the revised resolution, declined to comment on the resolution before it came to a vote. But Moore said he was encouraged by the decision to revisit the resolution. “They recognize that white supremacy in this alt-right guise is dangerous and devilish and we need to say something,” Moore said.

McKissic, who wrote the original resolution, declined to speculate over why the committee didn’t bring his proposal forward. He said black Southern Baptists were disappointed by how it was handled, but it became clear on Tuesday that a large number of white Southern Baptists wanted to vote on the resolution.

“I don’t think they anticipated how white people would get upset about this and demand something be done,” McKissic said. “I’m encouraged and heartened by this. It was the white people who said, no we will not take this sitting down. We don’t want this association with the convention.”

Just before the proposal was passed, one member asked Southern Baptist leaders whether a study of the “alt right and the alt left” could be done this year. But then several Southern Baptists stood before the convention urging the convention to adopt the resolution before it passed.

The Southern Baptist Convention has a long and complicated history on race, one that has recently gotten wrapped up in many Southern Baptists’ support for Trump. Some of the committee members are affiliated with National Religious Broadcasters and First Baptist Church in Dallas, institutions that are seen as friendly to Trump. The committee considering resolutions has 10 members, one of whom is black.

Tom Cotton Destroys The Lying Absurdity That Kamala Harris Embodies

The 4th Branch Goes to War On Alex Jones and Infowars

WaPo |  The signs about Megyn Kelly’s one-on-one NBC interview with the despicable conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have been bad from the start.

First, there was their flirtatious pre-interview banter when Kelly visited Jones’s studio in Austin recently. Jones, on camera, asks Kelly when she is going to interview President Trump, and when she answers that she would use her Jones interview “as a lure,” Jones asks whether she would sit in the president’s lap.

Then there was the teaser for Kelly’s Jones interview that aired Sunday in which Kelly mildly reproves Jones, saying “that’s a dodge” when he utterly avoids her question about calling the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre of six adults and 20 children schoolchildren a hoax orchestrated by gun-control advocates. Nothing about this suggests that she held his feet to the fire.

How To Write Propaganda For The New York Times

nakedcapitalism |  This past Thursday the New York Times vomited up a hit piece on little ol’ me – a guy who has been doing stand-up comedy for nearly 20 years and thought maybe that comedy could be used to inform and inspire audiences, rather than just make fun of the differences between men and women.

At first when you’re the center of a smear job, you’re annoyed and frustrated. But as I read further through the piece, I realized it was a master class in how to write propaganda for one of the most “respected” news outlets in our country. I’m actually grateful it was written about me because now I can see with my own eyes exactly how the glorious chicanery is done. I count no less than 15 lies, manipulations, and false implications in this short article, a score that even our fearless prevaricator-in-chief Donald Trump would envy.

So here now is a “How To” for writing propaganda for the New York Times – using the smear piece against me as an example.

Aside From Hacking, What Other Recourse Do We Have to Access Our Government?

CounterPunch |  To sum up: The Founders were wisely concerned about the potential dangers of factions and partisanship and were aware of how previous democracies had failed. They believed that  a representative form of government would obviate the unavoidable tendencies toward partisanship and the ills to which it could lead.

Their concerns were justified. Their solution has been an utter failure! 

The very worst version of the Founders’ fear has been realized. The faction we know as the 1 percent, with the help of the Republican and Democrat partisans, currently administers government policies “adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”, to put it lightly!

Since these partisans are responsible for our current dreadful circumstances, just as the Founders warned, how can we possibly rely upon them to correct the situation?

The representative government that was supposed to protect us from the evils of factions and partisans has collapsed. It has been subverted by the very elected representative body that the Constitution created for our protection!

Today, our two party form of government resembles a baseball game where the players of both teams are also the umpires. Having nullified voters, the parties have no independent check on their behavior or performance. Imagine that the two baseball  teams have the same owner who chooses  their players with no input from the fans (unlike the All Star game, where fans get to vote for the starting lineups). Having a common owner, all ticket sales go into the same pocket, so it doesn’t matter who wins. One nominal team must “lose”, but, still, everybody wins. So it is with the Dems and Repubs. Election wins and losses are not important, because the owners always win. Different in name only, they have no competition and are secure in their shared power. Backed by incredible corporate and private wealth, they believe they have no worries. And as long as their adversarial charade continues to fool and divide a substantial portion of the public, they do not.

We voters have effectively lost all control of our government. Our votes are managed, manipulated, gerrymandered, hacked and thrown in the trash. Our representatives avoid, disregard and disrespect us. They lie to and deceive us. They either openly show disdain , or they only pretend to be working for us. Our representative body is giving us the middle finger. What other recourse do we have to access government in our own country?

The Fix Is In - Mueller Hired To Take Down Trump

smirkingchimp |  “The Democrats are not fighting Trump over his assault on health care, his attacks on immigrants, his militaristic bullying around the world, or even his status as a minority president who can claim no mandate after losing the popular vote. Instead, they have chosen to attack Trump, the most right-wing president in US history, from the right, denouncing him as insufficiently committed to a military confrontation with Russia.”
— Patrick Martin, “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming”, World Socialist Web Site

Donald Trump is not the target of an FBI investigation.

Donald Trump has never been the target of an FBI investigation.

The FBI is not investigating Trump for collusion, improper relations with a foreign government, treason or any of the other ridiculous things he’s been falsely accused of in the fake media. In fact, the FBI is not investigating him at all.

We do not indict or impeach people for being boorish or clueless … or simply being Donald Trump.” (“James Comey’s testimony doesn’t make the case for impeachment or obstruction against Donald Trump”, USA Today)

The fact that the obstruction charge won’t stick is not going to stop Mueller from rummaging around and making Trump’s life a living Hell. Heck no. He’s going to dig through his old phone records, bank accounts, tax returns, shaky land deals, ex girl friends, whatever it takes. His prosecutorial tentacles will extend into every nook and cranny of Trump’s private life and affairs until he latches onto some particularly sordid incident or transaction he can use he can use to disgrace, discredit, and demonize Trump to the point that impeachment proceedings seem like a welcome relief. It should be obvious by now, that the deep state elites who launched this coup are not going to be satisfied until Trump is forced from office and the results of the 2016 presidential election are wiped out.

But, why? Why is Trump so hated by these people?

Trump is not being attacked because of his reactionary political agenda, but because he’s been deemed insufficiently hostile to Washington’s sworn enemy, Russia. It’s all about Russia. Trump wanted to “normalize” relations with Moscow which pitted him against the powerful US foreign policy establishment. Now Trump has to be taught a lesson. He must be crushed, humiliated and exiled. And that’s probably the way this will end.

You May Not Know It But This Man's a Spy - An Undercover Agent For the FBI...,

NationalReview | Jeff Sessions looked at the morning newspapers. Both the Times and the Post had the story. He turned on Morning Joe just in time to hear Mika Brzezinski speculate that his career as attorney general may be over.

 “Ну, дерьмо,” he sighed, as he pulled down the bottom of his cashmere sweater vest to eliminate any unwanted creases. He then calmly walked to his private Senate office and pulled a painting of some ducks and spaniels off the wall. He paused to look at the scene, as if for the first time. “Ridiculous, Americans,” he muttered to himself. “Bears. Men hunt medvedi,” he said, letting himself enjoy speaking Russian after all of these years.

EUTimes |  Need we remind each and every single one of you Demonrat schizophrenics that Jeff Sessions was a US SENATOR up until only a few days ago? He was not part of the Trump campaign. If the Demonrats manage to destroy Sessions as they did with Flynn then there will simply be no hope left.

Now top House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi demands US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions resign for “lying under oath” during his confirmation hearings. Sessions’ spokeswoman said he was speaking of Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, not of his own activities. Ohh yeah everybody is a Russian spy according to those schizophrenics.

“Jeff Sessions lied under oath during his confirmation hearing before the Senate. Under penalty of perjury, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee, ‘I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.’ We now know that statement is false,” mentally ill demonrat Pelosi wrote.

Unnamed Justice Department officials told the Washington Post on Wednesday that Sessions spoke to Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak twice last year, which would contradict statements Sessions made as US senator during Senate hearings for his confirmation to the Attorney General post.

"Comedians" Gatekeep and Control Low Attention/Information Political Discourse

slate |  But things really went off the rails in this exchange, when Stone tried very hard not to answer a yes or no question with “yes” or “no.”

Colbert: Do you like Vladimir Putin? After spending twenty hours with the guy, do you trust him?

Stone: I think you should see the film for yourself.

Colbert: I’m just asking you a question. Do you trust him after spending twenty hours with him? I’d like to see the film, I haven’t had a chance to see it yet.

Stone: He’s a head of state, he has Russian—he has his own interests in Russia. I respect him for that, I understand why he’s doing it. He’s a strong nationalist…

By the time Stone got to his monologue about how Putin refused to badmouth anyone despite being “insulted and abused,” the audience was audibly scoffing, and Colbert wasn’t above feeding off the mood of the crowd. “Anything about him negative you found?” he asked as a follow-up, to laughter and applause. “Anything? Anything? Or does he have your dog in a cage somewhere?” The final straw came when Stone suggested that Russia was a convenient scapegoat for people who didn’t like Trump. Colbert interrupted him, dropped the “some people say” pose, and spoke for himself:

Colbert: I don’t understand why our president will never say anything negative about Vladimir Putin, given that Putin is an oppressive leader of his country who suppresses the free press and arrests his enemies—that is not something that I as an American or a member of the press can respect. And I’m surprised that you do respect that.

Stone: Well, you know I’ve always been for free speech.

Colbert: Yes, and it doesn’t seem like he would be a hero of that.

Stone: Listen, no question he’s a social conservative in that way, he believes that [Audience laughter] I don’t know why you’re laughing, but it’s—he believes strongly that—

Colbert: Because it seems like a mild description of his behavior. That’s why they’re laughing.

It’s brutal. Stone does make one good point, which is that it’s ridiculous to talk about a four-hour film based on a few clips, or even two hours. “What I said is in this four-hour documentary,” he told Colbert. “I think that if you watch it patiently, you’ll see that it’s developed, it’s a film, it has a flow from 2000 all the way to 2017—we went back after the election to talk to him seriously about the election.” He also specifically mentions the pressing Putin harder in the fourth episode. It’s possible that Stone established a base of trust with Putin before hitting him with harder questions—in fact, that’s exactly what Colbert did with his ramble about how great it was to talk philosophy with “an Oliver Stone” before asking him if he’d conducted “a fawning interview with a brutal dictator.”

Oliver Stone Interviews Vladimir Putin: Accept No Substitutes

cbsnews |  Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone is known for such films as "Born on the Fourth of July," "Platoon," "Wall Street" and "JFK." He also wrote the screenplays for "Midnight Express" and "Scarface." Over his career he has also interviewed controversial figures like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

For his latest documentary, the Showtime series "The Putin Interviews," Stone was granted extensive access to the Russian president. Stone interviewed Putin more than a dozen times over two years. No topic was off limits. 

In one conversation from February 2016, Stone asked Putin about the candidates in the United States' presidential election:

Stone: "You do realize how powerful your answer could be; if you said subtly that you preferred X candidate, he would go like that [indicates nosedive] tomorrow, and if you said you didn't like Trump or something, right, what would happen? He would win. You have that amount of power in the U.S."

Putin: "Unlike many partners of ours, we never interfere within the domestic affairs of other countries. That is one of the principles we stick to in our work."

On "CBS This Morning" Monday, Stone said he first got to know Putin during production of his film about Edward Snowden, released in 2016, for which he interviewed the former NSA analyst in Moscow nine times. Stone also asked Putin about the Snowden affair and his point of view on it, "and one thing led to another."

Stone said he was invited by Putin to conduct the interviews. 

"I think he needed to be heard fairly because I'm not going to be an editor; I'm going to let him speak," Stone said. "And his point of view is not heard; you don't hear him in Russian in the West; you hear a dubbed voice, and sometimes a dubbed voice can be very harsh."

The four-part documentary series debuts on Showtime June 12.

Why Did the 4th Branch NBC Distort or Omit Putin's Responses to Megyn Kelly?

Russia-Insider |  Dear NBC News Team,

Congratulations! You have graduated from fake news to falsified news, arriving at a journalistic level that is identical to that in the Soviet Union in its heyday.

A couple of days ago, the political talk show moderated by Vladimir Soloviev on state television channel Rossiya 1 broadcast two versions of a segment from Megyn Kelly's interview with Vladimir Putin last Friday in the St Petersburg on the sidelines of the International Economic Forum.  One was the complete, uncut version that was aired on RT. The other was the cut-to-shreds version that you put on air for the American audience. 

The segment was Megyn Kelly's aggressive question to Putin, asking his response to what she said was Americans' understanding of his government, namely one that murders journalists, suppresses political opposition, is rife with corruption, etc., etc.  In the NBC version, Putin's answer has been cut to one empty introductory statement that "Russia is on its way to becoming a democracy" bracketed by an equally empty closing sentence.  In the full, uncut version , Putin responds to Kelly's allegations point by point and then turns the question around asking what right the USA and the West have to question Russia's record when they have been actively doing much worse than what was in Kelly's charges. He asks where is Occupy Wall Street today, why US and European police use billy clubs and tear gas to break up demonstrations, when Russian police do nothing of the sort, and so on.

Media's Ridiculous, Evidence-Free Claims Against Trump, Putin, Syria, et al...,

unz |  Disinformation and lies have been used to justify the wars on Syria that started in 2011.[1] But lately I’ve been amazed at the extent to which our entire public discourse now rests on disinformation and lies. This is a broader problem, but it also affects the prospects for peace in Syria, one of several places where U.S./NATO activities heighten the risk of nuclear war.[2]

I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed by it all lately, capped (most recently) by the third U.S. attack on Syria. As I put that together with President Trump’s giving the military free rein over “tactics,” it sank in that, with this delegation of authority, war-making power has now devolved from the Congress through the President to the military itself, in areas where not only Syrians but Russians, Iranians and others operate.

In the apparent absence of an organized peace movement, the concentration of so many people on opposing Trump, rather than on opposing U.S. wars, distracts attention from this problem. Otherwise under fire from all directions, Mr. Trump gets approval – across the spectrum – when he does something awful but military, like launching cruise missiles at Syria or dropping that horrific bomb in Afghanistan. Meanwhile his attempt to reset U.S. relations and reduce tension with Russia is being used to lay the groundwork for impeachment and/or charges of treason.

The lies about Syria have of course continued. First, Amnesty International issued “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison Syria,” claiming that the Syrian government executed between 5,000 and 13,000 people over a five-year period. Then another chemical weapons incident, blamed without evidence on the government, was used as the excuse for a second U.S. attack on Syria. Both of these charges were widely and uncritically reported in the major media, though neither of them is credible.[3]

But the use of disinformation has been expanded in what I now see as an attempt to destabilize the U.S. government itself, to achieve “regime change” at home as it has been practiced in many foreign countries over the last 70 years.[4] It started right after the election with the attacks on General Mike Flynn. And as it has continued, the campaign to demonize Russia and Russian president Vladimir Putin has also intensified.

Bottom line: It seems clear there is no evidence, let alone proof, that computers at the DNC were hacked at all, let alone by Russia, or that Russia tried in any way to “meddle” in the U.S. election. It has thus far made no difference that, soon after the charge of Russian interference in the last election was first made, an organization of intelligence veterans who have the expertise to know pointed out that U.S. intelligence has the capability of presenting hard evidence of any such hacking and had not done so (and, I would add, still hasn’t). Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity stated bluntly: “We have gone through the various claims about hacking. For us, it is child’s play to dismiss them. The email disclosures in question are the result of a leak, not a hack.” They then explained the difference between leaking and hacking.[5]

Counterpunch |  Vladimir Putin and Megyn Kelly had a far more interesting exchange about Syria and sarin gas at the St. Petersburg forum. NBC did not include this in the 11 minutes that aired Sunday, but RT America filmed and posted it to YouTube. In this one, Kelly echoed former UN Ambassador Samantha Power, NPR commentator Scott Simon, and other American politicians  and pundits who have characterized Bashar-al-Assad as “evil.” She noted that even his alleged co-conspirator Donald Trump called Assad an “evil guy,” as he did after the alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian army.

“Our president has said that you’re backing an evil guy there. He said Assad is an evil guy. Do you believe that?”

Putin dismissed the silly question about “evil” with a comic response, then responded that Russia is not defending Assad; it is defending the Syrian state from the fate of Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan.

What Else Would The Former Director of America's Snitching and Extorting Agency the FBI Do?

iBankCoin |  Former CIA Director under Bill Clinton, James Woolsey, is ‘stunned’ that former FBI Directors, James Comey leaked notes of private conversations with the President of the United States to his friend and then the press.

The CNN host, Fareed Zakaria, attempted to advocate on Comey’s behalf, suggesting that since Comey was a ‘private citizen’ he had the right to leak his notes. Woolsey was having none of that horseshit and said it was ‘stunning’ that ‘he would give up the secrecy of a conversation with the President of the United States.’

In the land of snitches, everyone is a leaker.