Virtue Signalling: When Selfishness Comes Home to Roost

NYTimes |  Any suggestion that the Trump campaign trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes was an outrageous slander based on flimsy evidence and contradicted by the candidate’s Jewish grandchildren. The real enemies of the Jewish state were, anyway, almost exclusively on the political left.

There were additional points, and other excuses, but that was the gist of the Jewish conservative’s case for Trump. The Jewish conservative’s case against Trump was far more simple: Breathe in deeply with your nose and … smell.

You could smell it in the shyster methods by which Trump built his business: the unpaid bills; the endless lawsuits; the deceitful advertising; the shady business partners.

You could smell it in the sort of people drawn, like flies to sewage, to Trump’s candidacy: David Duke, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Richard Spencer, Pat Buchanan and Stephen Bannon, lately of the White House.

You could smell it in the tweets: an approving citation of a Benito Mussolini quote; an image of Hillary Clinton alongside a six-pointed star and a pile of cash.

You could smell it in the denunciations of “globalism” and “international banks” and the “enemy of the American people” news media.

You could smell it in the Muslim ban and the border wall and the trade protectionism and the calls to revoke birthright citizenship and the resurrection of “America First” as an organizing political slogan — a politics of exclusion that has never served Jews well even when we were suffered to be included.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Above all, you could smell it in Trump’s indifference to truth. Hillary Clinton may have been a “congenital liar,” as William Safire famously put it. But Trump is something else: a Jabberwock president, nonsensical, menacing and beyond reason.

All this smelliness explains why nothing that’s happened in Trump’s tenure, culminating in Tuesday’s embrace of the “very fine people” who turned up for the neo-Nazi torchlight rally, comes as a surprise. The president’s newfound (or long-hidden) Confederate sympathies are an extension of his other ethnic antipathies, just as the rally’s anti-Semitic chants of “Jews will not replace us” are an extension of the alt-right’s other hatreds. It’s an unbroken chain of nastiness, in which the president has offered himself as the vital link.

The president’s Jewish supporters are left to wonder why the Iran deal remains in force, the United States Embassy is still in Tel Aviv, Bashar al-Assad is stronger than ever, the Israeli government is outraged by the deals the administration has cut with Russia at Israel’s strategic expense, and Jared Kushner has not proved a worthy strategic heir to Henry Kissinger. What’s the mystery? A man whose word is worthless when it comes to his legal contracts will have no compunction breaking his political promises, no matter whom his daughter married.

If conservatism is supposed to teach anything, it’s that, even in politics, character counts above everything. Trump’s Jewish supporters, like so many on the right, ignored the lesson. After Charlottesville, they’ve discovered too late that the price of that support will fall, as it so often has, disproportionately on them.

It’s not going to get better.

The American Imperium Losing Control of Its Domestic and Foreign Vassals

unz |  The tumultuous events that dominate international news today cannot be accurately understood outside of their underlying context, which connects them together, into a broader narrative — the actual history of our time. History makes sense, even if news-reports about these events don’t. Propagandistic motivations cause such essential facts to be reported little (if at all) in the news, so that the most important matters for the public to know, get left out of news-accounts about those international events.

The purpose here will be to provide that context, for our time.

First, this essential background will be summarized; then, it will be documented (via the links that will be provided here), up till the present moment — the current news:

America’s aristocracy controls both the U.S. federal government and press, but (as will be documented later here) is facing increasing resistance from its many vassal (subordinate) aristocracies around the world (popularly called “America’s allied nations”); and this growing international resistance presents a new challenge to the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC), which is controlled by that same aristocracy and enforces their will worldwide. The MIC is responding to the demands of its aristocratic master. This response largely drives international events today (which countries get invaded, which ones get overthrown by coups, etc.), but the ultimate driving force behind today’s international news is the aristocracy that the MIC represents, the billionaires behind the MIC, because theirs is the collective will that drives the MIC. The MIC is their collective arm, and their collective fist. It is not the American public’s global enforcer; it is the American aristocracy’s fist, around the world.

The MIC (via its military contractors such as Lockheed Martin) also constitutes a core part of the U.S. aristocracy’s wealth (the part that’s extracted from the U.S. taxpaying public via the U.S. government), and also (by means of those privately-owned contractors, plus the taxpayer-funded U.S. armed forces) it protects these aristocrats’ wealth in foreign countries. Though paid by the U.S. government, the MIC does the protection-and-enforcement jobs for the nation’s super-rich. Furthermore, the MIC is crucial to them in other ways, serving not only directly as their “policeman to the world,” but also indirectly (by that means) as a global protection-racket that keeps their many subordinate aristocracies in line, under their control — and that threatens those foreign aristocrats with encroachments against their own territory, whenever a vassal aristocracy resists the master-aristocracy’s will. (International law is never enforced against the U.S., not even after it invaded Iraq in 2003.) So, the MIC is the global bully’s fist, and the global bully is the U.S. aristocracy — America’s billionaires, most especially the controlling stockholders in the U.S.-based international corporations. These are the people the U.S. government actually represents. The links document this, and it’s essential to know, if one is to understand current events.

For the first time ever, a global trend is emerging toward declining control of the world by America’s billionaire-class — into the direction of ultimately replacing the U.S. Empire, by increasingly independent trading-blocs: alliances between aristocracies, replacing this hierarchical control of one aristocracy over another. Ours is becoming a multi-polar world, and America’s aristocracy is struggling mightily against this trend, desperate to continue remaining the one global imperial power — or, as U.S. President Barack Obama often referred to the U.S. government, “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come.” To America’s aristocrats, all other nations than the U.S. are “dispensable.” All American allies have to accept it. This is the imperial mindset, both for the master, and for the vassal. The uni-polar world can’t function otherwise. Vassals must pay (extract from their nation’s public, and then transfer) protection-money, to the master, in order to be safe — to retain their existing power, to exploit their given nation’s public.

The recently growing role of economic sanctions (more accurately called “Weaponization of finance”) by the United States and its vassals, has been central to the operation of this hierarchical imperial system, but is now being increasingly challenged from below, by some of the vassals. Alliances are breaking up over America’s mounting use of sanctions, and new alliances are being formed and cemented to replace the imperial system — replace it by a system without any clear center of global power, in the world that we’re moving into. Economic sanctions have been the U.S. empire’s chief weapon to impose its will against any challengers to U.S. global control, and are thus becoming the chief locus of the old order’s fractures.

This global order cannot be maintained by the MIC alone; the more that the MIC fails (such as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, …), the more that economic sanctions rise to become the essential tool of the imperial masters. We are increasingly in the era of economic sanctions. And, now, we’re entering the backlash-phase of it.

Open Thread: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response ASMR

wikipedia |  Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a colloquial term used for an experience characterized by a static-like or tingling sensation on the skin that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. It has been compared with auditory-tactile synesthesia.^[1][2] ASMR signifies the subjective experience of "low-grade euphoria" characterised by "a combination of positive feelings and a distinct static-like tingling sensation on the skin". It is most commonly triggered by specific acoustic, visual and digital media stimuli, and less commonly by intentional attentional control.^[3][4]

The term "autonomous sensory meridian response" was coined on 25 February 2010 by Jennifer Allen, a cybersecurity professional residing in New York^[5] in the introduction to a Facebook Group she founded entitled the ASMR Group.^[6]

Prior to the subsequent social consensus that led to what is now the ubiquitous adoption of that term, other names were proposed and discussed at a number of locations including the Steady Health forum, the Society of Sensationalists Yahoo! Group and the Unnamed Feeling Blog.

Proposed formal names included "Attention Induced Head Orgasm", "Attention Induced Euphoria" and "Attention Induced Observant Euphoria", whilst colloquial terms in usage included "brain massage", "head tingle", "brain tingle", "spine tingle" and "brain orgasm".^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]}

Whilst many colloquial and formal terms used and proposed between 2007 and 2010 included reference to orgasm, there was during that time a significant majority objection to its use among those active in online discussions, many of whom have continued to persist in differentiating the euphoric and relaxing nature of ASMR from sexual arousal.^[13] However, by 2015, a division had occurred within the ASMR community over the subject of sexual arousal, with some creating videos categorized as ASMRotica (ASMR erotica), which are deliberately designed to be sexually stimulating.^[14][15]

The initial consensus among the ASMR Community was that the name should not pose a high risk of the phenomenon being perceived as sexual. Given that consensus, Allen proposed "autonomous sensory meridian response". Allen chose the words intending or assuming them to have the following specific meanings:^[16]

• Autonomous – spontaneous, self-governing, within or without control
• Sensory – pertaining to the senses or sensation
• Meridian – signifying a peak, climax, or point of highest development
• Response – referring to an experience triggered by something external or internal

Allen verified in a 2016 interview that she purposely selected these terms because they were more objective, comfortable, and clinical than alternative terms for the sensation.^[17] Allen explained she selected the word meridian to replace the word orgasm due to its meaning of point or period of greatest prosperity.

The term "autonomous sensory meridian response" and its initialism ASMR were adopted by both the community of contributors to online discussions and those reporting and commentating on the phenomenon.

Only After Hoover Died Were Blows Struck Against the Mafia

bitterqueen |  The Mafia historically controlled gay bars as part of their vice rackets in many cities across the United States including New York and Chicago due to their once illicit status. A common misunderstanding among the general public is that the wise guys were eliminated from the gay bars following the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. However, organized crime kept a hidden hand -- often through violent means resulting in a few murders -- over many watering holes for the gay community at least into the mid-1980s if not later.  Indeed, the Mafia even hijacked gay liberation for political cover and used so-called Auntie Gays -- the Uncle Toms of the gay community -- as frontmen for their bars to evade suspicion.  The Mafia and the Gays provides a comprehensive look at the mob's involvement with gay bars from the post-war years through the mid-1980s when federal prosecutors targeted the Outfit in Chicago and the Genovese family in New York for their alleged protection rackets and skimming operations involving some establishments.

Ed Scarpo, the blogger behind Cosa Nostra News and author of Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire, says The Mafia and the Gays is "a worthy addition to your library of books about the Mafia." The History Channel website cited The Mafia and the Gays in its excellent overview of the historic role of organized crime in New York gay bars.  Crawford was interviewed by Helen Nianias for VICE and appeared on Mark McNease's podcast about his book, and quoted in an article by Logan Hendrix for the New York Press on the closing of The Candle Bar.

An Odyssey to the Edge of City Life...,

vice |  In the second half of the 20th century, New York City saw a boom in organized crime, with New York and New Jersey at the epicenter of mob rule in the US. Meanwhile, the gay scene had exploded. 

The Mafia—which had a stranglehold on nightlife since the end of Prohibition—spotted a gap in the market. There was a whole new audience who wanted to go to a bar or nightclub to experience the then luxury of being among other gay people. In the aftermath of Prohibition, a new underground scene developed, and naturally the Mafia wanted in on the action. What followed was years of pimping, financial exploitation, the NYPD completely ignoring the LGBT community's concerns, and gossipy FBI files speculating about certain mobsters' sexualities. 

Phillip Crawford Jr., author of the book The Mafia and the Gays, argues that the Mafia were much more than proprietors of illegal nightspots; he says that they are in fact an intrinsic part of the LGBT movement, sparking the Stonewall riots and enabling the gay community to thrive. VICE called him up to talk about all that. 

VICE: Hi, Phillip. When did the link between the gay community and the Mafia begin?
Phillip Crawford Jr: The Mafia was behind many speakeasies in the big cities, such as Chicago and New York, during Prohibition. After Prohibition was repealed, state agencies regulated bars with vague standards against disorderly premises and moral indecency, which were interpreted to prohibit serving gays. Accordingly, the Mafia took its experience with speakeasies and used it to operate gay bars, which involved paying off the police departments and liquor authorities charged with enforcing these discriminatory laws. 

It seems like an unusual fusion...
Well, the Mafia didn't much care about enforcing societal mores or respecting government rules. Ernest Sgroi Sr, one of the principal fronts for gay bars controlled by mob boss Vito Genovese in Greenwich Village, obtained his first liquor license right after the repeal of Prohibition. He was involved with some of the most popular gay bars during the post-war years, including the Bon Soir and the Lion, which started off as nightclubs with live entertainment attracting both straight and gay patrons but ultimately became predominantly gay bars. The Lion was where Barbra Streisand made her first public singing performance in 1960. 

So do you think the Mafia exploited the gay community purely for their own financial ends?
The Mafia controlled most gay bars due to their illegal status, and extracted a monetary premium from the gay community. This recognized both the legal risk the Mob was taking and the near-monopoly status it enjoyed. After all, where else were gay folks going to meet? There were often high cover charges and minimum drink requirements. Moreover, gay men were at risk of blackmail from their Mob overlords. The Mob's exploitation of the gay community was among the reasons for the 1969 protests outside the Stonewall Inn. Indeed, after the Stonewall protests, once of the principal goals of the activist groups such as Gay Activists Alliance and Gay Liberation Front was to get organized crime out of the gay bars.

A Pride Story - Aww, How Sweet, Heroic, and Romantic...,

HuffPo |  In the ’30s and ’40s lesbians formed an unusual alliance when they started working for and with the mafia in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Back then, dressing in a suit was illegal for women — It could mean the difference between life and death. Butch women were taking real fashion risks and the mafia offered lesbians much-needed protection.

Although it might sound surprising to hear about out lesbians working with and for the mob, there was a time in New York City when all the gay clubs were mafia-run. —Vice

There’s always been an attempt to erase women from his-story, but make no mistake, the suffragettes were the first to plant their flag in the Village. The Village was run by lesbians. Working with the mob gave them clout and there was a good amount of money to be made.

Most of the bars in the Village were lesbian...The Village belonged to the gay girls, because the suffragettes had been there first, and they were all queer as pink plates. —Vice

While the mafia used their power to pay off the cops, lesbians in the Village found their own brand of power. Many performed as drag kings, dressed to the nines in suits and ties. They put together acts that included a variety of talents. They worked the biggest drag shows in town, and were some of America’s first drag superstars. Drag was appealing — it meant cash and freedom. Coming out of the Depression, lesbians in Greenwich Village were living it up, buying cars and spending like there was no tomorrow.

“It was mafia bosses who founded hot spots, from the famed Stonewall Inn to the lesbian haunt the Howdy Club to the 181 Club.” —“New York Post”

Off stage, women who broke the dress code oozed with style and sex appeal. Their hair, sleek and daring. Their style choices, undeniably seductive. Women never needed men to tell us what was sexy— We already knew.

Moloch and Ishtar

We are waking up as no society that we've ever been taught about, has had to do. No society that we've ever been taught about has been where we are today.  Our current situation is not a pretty thing.  We know about some of the changes, events, and developments that we're allowed to know about. These are the underlying causes for societal dysfunction that are blamed for our current predicament, and even these permitted causes of societal dysfunction cannot be addressed in any agreeable way. Too many needy people appeared as if out of nowhere too fast. All our budgets are strained with expenditures far outpacing revenues. The welfare of those who brought about this predicament will not be sacrificed. It will never be sacrificed for those already stigmatized as society's weakest links, no matter who is really to blame for their condition.

The proprietors cannot proceed into the world of tomorrow dragging a heavy burden of the unproductive and unprofitable forward with them.  They cannot compete with other elite proprietor's in the global 1% and maintain their influence within that global elite if they spend their last borrowed dime on the unproductive and unprofitable. What our elites are faced with today is a perfect storm of aging boomers, unsustainable national debt and continued borrowing, legislative dysfunction, automation, continued job-shedding with 95 million already on the sidelines, apathy, all of which lead to the type of events which unfolded last weekend in Charlottesville. You're kidding yourself if you think this situation is going to get any better. From here forward, it can only get worse.

Only ignorant peasants wonder why the war on drugs has never been won, why the situation worsens by the day, and why those governance pretend at helplessness to do anything about it. That is because the entire human livestock management scheme is designed. Drugs are just one aspect of the human livestock management scheme. The unproductive and unprofitable have overstayed their welcome. 99% of this herd is subject to accelerated cull. The challenge, to the extent there is one, is putting down these two-legged cattle without being too obviously to blame for the cull.  This is the way the corporate neofeudal system works. Top people, thought-leaders are rewarded and accorded status for their cleverness at squeezing out profits under by any means necessary but under cover of law - and doing so in a manner designed to shield them and the proprietors they represent from any liability for any externalities that may be involved in yielding that profit.

The top lives off the yield from the bottom...the roof or top of the structure is supported by the bottom or foundation of the structure.

If the bottom can't support the top...the structure collapses.

Oh I get it you all think you support those below...

You think the top or roof supports the foundation of the structure...well I guess in your mind where LAW that governs the Universe does not apply you could imagine such.

The bottom produces everything and the top monetizes it...They then mark up everything and sell it back to the bottom to get their money back.

The top owns the money system...it and all the money belongs to them...it's their money that monetizes the wholesale production operation...not yours...all the money in circulation does not belong to any of you...You just think it does.

The difference between the wholesale cost and the retail price is the yield the top lives off of...well then how does the bottom make up the difference?

By supplying the top with more than the top gives...forever...Until the bottom can't supply the top with the yield they demand.

Somebody has been glorifying the use of drugs, especially alcohol, for quite some time now. Think, "most interesting man in the world", when was the last time you saw a commercial that showcased the actual results of alcohol indulgence? Colleges are ranked by how hard they "party".  Endless televised coverage of the young and beautiful doing themselves in all the while leaving viewers with the impression they are missing out on something wonderful. The drug and degeneracy problem could not have grown to this extent without the complicity of those in power or connected, whether locally or nationally, running things behind the scenes. Most do it for the profit while others for more sinister reasons. Like so many cattle, Americans don't really have to be forced any more to go to their own slaughter. The pied-piper of our celebrity addiction has made it so that Americans seemingly can't get enough.

Self-pity, fringe sexual acts, drugs and alcohol, excessive eating, conspicuous consumption, these humans have become so lacking in meaning and purpose that they destroy themselves (and everything around them) in pursuit of fashionable degeneracy. All this degeneracy has  turned us against and blinded us to the fundamental necessity of WORK. WORK is the only thing that rewards and fulfills our being. Not the money we receive from the fruits of our work, not the luxury this money may afford, but the sense of accomplishment and mastery that one discovers within himself. In comparison with this fundamental being-duty, everything else is merely conversation....,

Degeneracy is a deceiver. It lies, telling you how smart, how deserving, how rewarding, how fulfilling it is.  Even those who try to WORK can be turned from the truth within, misdirected toward getting money instead of life. These misdirected souls seek money and spend money on the empty things and degeneracy they've been conditioned to believe that others value. This is what hypnotic marketing does to our "monkey-see monkey-do" species ethology. Marketing doesn't tell you humans what you want or need, rather, it convinces you to want what everyone else has been or is being convinced to want. Marketing has built this false consensus, making you believe what the proprietors want you to believe and do what is profitable for them to have you do. Foolish humans, addicted to an unsatisfiable set of urges that cannot be explained by simple biological necessity.

This is our world now, and we're not at the beginning of this process, we are in fact fast approaching its culmination. The contagion of degeneracy and aversion to WORK has become apocalyptic.

Merck's Fraudulent Virtue Signalling A Moral Atrocity

statnews |  The warning signs of what would become a deadly opioid epidemic emerged in early 2001. That’s when officials of the state employee health plan in West Virginia noticed a surge in deaths attributed to oxycodone, the active ingredient in the painkiller OxyContin.

They quickly decided to do something about it: OxyContin prescriptions would require prior authorization. It was a way to ensure that only people who genuinely needed the painkiller could get it and that people abusing opioids could not.

But an investigation by STAT has found that Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, thwarted the state’s plan by paying a middleman, known as a pharmacy benefits manager, to prevent insurers from limiting prescriptions of  the drug.

The financial quid pro quo between the painkiller maker and the pharmacy benefits manager, Merck Medco, came to light in West Virginia court records unsealed by a state judge at the request of STAT, and in interviews with people familiar with the arrangement.

“We were screaming at the wall,” said Tom Susman, who headed the state’s public employee insurance agency in the early 2000s and led the push to limit OxyContin prescribing in West Virginia.

“We saw it coming,” he said of the opioid epidemic, which today causes 28,000 overdose deaths a year in the United States. “Now to see the aftermath is the most frustrating thing I have ever seen.”

Overprescribing of OxyContin and other opioid painkillers is blamed for helping to plant the seeds for the current opioid crisis. West Virginia has been hit harder than any other state: It suffers the highest per capita drug overdose death rate in the country — more than double the national average. It also has one of the highest rates of painkiller prescribing.

Nancy Pelosi's Daddy Built This...,

stockboardasset |  Earlier this month, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions unveiled a plan to go after doctors and pharmacies suspected of healthcare fraud by oversubscribing opioids. America’s opioid epidemic killed 33,000 people in 2015 making it the worst drug crisis in our history. Last week, President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a national emergency allowing the executive branch to direct funds towards treatment facilities and supplying police officers with naloxone.

As a socio-economist on the front lines of the opioid crisis in Baltimore, Maryland. I am about to take you through an opioid experience like you’ve never seen before. We’re going to travel into the inner city of Baltimore and interview current and former addicts of opioids and heroin. Some of these individuals used heroin 15-minutes before the cameras started rolling.

These individuals have never been given the chance to tell their story until now. Baltimore’s mainstream news is not allowed to share this because it breaks the narrative that everything is awesome. It turns out that Baltimore could have the largest methadone clinic in the United States called Turning Point Clinic. Each of the interviewees are current and past patients of the clinic and speak very negatively about it. A similar description of Baltimore is heard  from each of the interviewees of a hellacious city with decades of deindustrialization, drug abuse, and violent crime. 

bitterqueen |  Nancy Pelosi's father Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. allegedly was a "constant companion" of notorious mobster Benjamin "Benny Trotta" Magliano and other underworld figures during his political years in Baltimore, MD.  D'Alesandro was a Congressman for five terms from 1938 to 1947, and Baltimore mayor for three terms from 1947 to 1959.   Magliano was identified by the FBI as one of Baltimore's "top hoodlums," and he widely was acknowledged as the representative for New York's Frankie Carbo who made his bones with Murder, Inc. and later became a made guy in the Lucchese family.  The allegations are included in D'Alesandro's recently-released FBI files which Friends of Ours has obtained pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.

In 1947 the FBI investigated Magliano for securing a draft exemption from Selective Service for himself and prize fighters he controlled by falsely representing they had essential employment at American Ship Cleaning Company which was operated by John Cataneo.   In fact, Magliano and his boxers had no such employment, and they were convicted with Cataneo in federal court for their unpatriotic draft-dodging scam.  Peter Galiano, one of the convicted boxers, told the FBI in January 1947 that "Thomas D'Alesandro was a constant companion of John Cataneo; Benjamin Magliano . . . and [redacted]":

It was reported that these individuals had worked hard for Thomas D'Alesandro's reelection to Congress and on his campaign at that time to become Mayor of Baltimore.  It was stated that John Cataneo and Magliano during the time of this campaign were under Federal indictments for violation of the Selective Service Act and for fraud against the Government and were subsequently convicted in Federal court.  Cataneo allegedly admitted giving large sums of money toward the Democratic campaign and stated that he would receive the sanitation contracts for Baltimore if Mr. D'Alesandro was elected mayor.

At that time the FBI never investigated D'Alesandro concerning this or numerous other allegations involving hoodlum associations and public corruption.  Of course, while in Congress D'Alesandro sat on the appropriations committee and was a friend of Director J. Edgar Hoover.  For example, an FBI memo dated March 27, 1946 from E. G. Fitch to D. M. Ladd provides:

Supervisor Orrin H. Bartlett advised me that while talking to Congressman Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr. (D., Md.) on March 26, 1946, the Congressman advised Agent Bartlett he was running for Congress again in the fall 1946 election and that in 1947 he was running for the office of Mayor of Baltimore.  Congressman D'Alesandro advised Agent Bartlett that since he had been on the Appropriations Committee, he has been back of the Director and the Bureau one hundred percent, and further, that he was vitally interested in and completely satisfied with the results of the Bureau's work.

Hoover sent warm congratulations to D'Alesandro upon his November 1946 re-election to the House and then his May 1947 election as Baltimore Mayor, and after leaving Congress for City Hall D'Alesandro wrote Hoover by letter dated May 14, 1947:

Thank you very much for message congratulating me on my election as Mayor of the City of Baltimore.  I was most pleased to receive your good wishes and assure you that I will do my utmost to give the people of Baltimore an efficient and outstanding administration.  I, too, will miss you and many other friends in Washington but I am grateful for the proximity of our two cities which will afford the opportunity for frequent visits when and if time permits.  Whenever you are in Baltimore, please make it a point to visit me at City Hall. 

Meanwhile, the allegations against D'Alesandro continued to pile up.  Finally, in January 1961 President John F. Kennedy requested the G-men to address "allegations of D'Alesando's involvement with Baltimore hoodlums; with favoritism in awarding city contracts; [and] protection for political contributors and the prosecution of local cases."  President Kennedy wanted to appoint D'Alesandro to the United States Renegotiation Board which was a government watchdog against profit gouging by defense contractors.  A February 6, 1961 memo from Hoover to the Baltimore and Washington Field Offices cautiously advises:  "The White House has requested that we proceed with a special inquiry investigation but that if substantial derogatory information were developed, we should report this and discontinue any further inquiries because substantiation of any of the allegations would eliminate D'Alesandro."

Where To Now Least Supreme Alt-Whites?

theatlantic  |  The rally in Charlottesville illustrated that the umbrella of the alt-right is an effective means to mobilize a highly visible mix of old-school white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Offline, at least, this isn’t the new white nationalism; it’s the old white nationalism as the primary beneficiary of the activity generated by a looser collection of people online.  

Third, the composition of the crowd in Charlottesville shows that there are more potential fracture lines in the alt-right than the optics of white supremacy. Since the 1970s, white nationalism in the United States has been a sectarian affair. White nationalists all generally agree white people should be in charge, but they have many different competing beliefs about why that is the case, and how white rule should be implemented. These differences are not trivial, and for decades they have prevented a broadly concerted campaign of action by white nationalists in America. Charlottesville was an example of how the alt-right umbrella community can muster numbers that Odinists or the KKK alone cannot.

The events scheduled for this coming Saturday—a “free speech” rally in Boston and marches scheduled in nine cities to protest Google’s firing of an employee who wrote a screed against diversity—will help clarify where all the chaotic elements that comprise the alt-right are headed in the near-term future. (The anti-Google protests are slated for Atlanta, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Seattle, New York, Washington, Austin, Boston, and Mountain View, California. On Sunday, organizers released a statement condemning violence and insisting that they are “in no way associated with any group who organized” in Charlottesville.)

Prior to Fields’s attack, Charlottesville was on track to be a clear victory for the alt-right. While attendance of 500 people is a pittance compared to most mainstream political events, it represents a marked upswing from 2016. Simply turning out that many people in one place was an unqualified win.

The fact that few participants sought to conceal their identities was a bold statement about the mainstreaming of white nationalism, which did not go unnoticed during an ominous torch-wielding event the night before the formal rally. Even after the “Unite the Right” rally itself was shut down by authorities as an unlawful assembly in the face of escalating violence, the event was seen as a show of strength.

But the terrorist attack by Fields, who attended the rally alongside a neo-Nazi group known as Vanguard America, was a game-changer. Videos posted online depicted his car accelerating down a street to target a group of pedestrians with devastating effect. The horrifying attack, recorded in graphic detail, sparked a massive national outpouring of outrage and condemnation. When “Unite the Right” organizer Jason Kessler attempted to hold a press conference on Sunday in Charlottesville, he was chased away by a crowd of people shouting “murderer” and “shame.”

The question now is how the alt-right will process the backlash, and an early indicator will be seen in Saturday’s marches and rallies.

More Authoritah And Respeck For My Two-Piece and a Biscuit Wymyn

unz |  This past Saturday night, August 12, the media was filled to overflowing with nothing but lurid and hysterical accounts of the “violence” and the “massacre” by so-called “white nationalists” (alternately identified as “white supremacists” or “white racists”) inflicted on poor, innocent “counter demonstrators” in Charlottesville who were “protesting hate and bigotry.” That’s the narrative that showed up, including wall-to-wall coverage on Fox, overpowering everything else, and spewed forth as if handed down from Mount Olympus by assorted “wise” Republican senators, including most notably Marco Rubio, Orrin Hatch, and John McCain, whose biggest complaint was that Donald Trump somehow did not specify that the violence was exclusively caused by something that is termed the “Alt-right.”

 

Nary a word about the ultimate and real responsibility of the American Left for a continuing history of violence, nary a word about the responsibility of the so-called “resist Trump” organizations and their actions, nary a word about the uncontrolled rampaging of the Black Lives Matter movement (e.g., Ferguson, Baltimore, etc.), nary a word about the stepped up and planned confrontations by the “antifa” (self-titled “antifascists”) militants. That is, not one word about the history of virulent street action, fire bombing, trashing of private property, and, yes, attempts to kill anyone (e.g., Representative Steve Scalise) to the perceived right of, say, John McCain, anyone who might in any way say a good word about Donald Trump, or defend older American traditions and beliefs.

Continually, the networks portray what happened Saturday as simply the manifestation of extremism and bigotry from the Right. And practically the only voice that got even remotely close to a rational perspective came from, quite ironically, a black professor, Carol Swain at Vanderbilt University, who distinguished between the very legitimate desires, aspirations and fears of America’s under-attack white majority and the misapprehension that somehow those desires equal inevitably “white racism” or “white supremacy.” As Swain indicated, what has happened during the past few decades is a palpable marginalization of millions of hard working Americans, mostly white and mostly Christian, who have been sidelined and left behind by the advancing progressivist revolution (these last words are mine). They are not naturally “racists” or even “white supremacists,” but rather they seek to guarantee their own survival, and the survival of their families, their communities, and their culture. They have seen the standards, beliefs, traditions, morality and customs that they inherited and have cherished—they have seen them attacked, ridiculed, and, in many cases, banned, even criminalized.

The so-called “Alt-right” march and their demonstration in Charlottesville, then, must be seen as something of a predictable boiling over of that legitimate and simmering sentiment. Protesting the attempt to take down the historic Robert E. Lee statue was not, in this sense, the underlying reason for the Alt-right protest. Rather, it served as a much broader, if much angrier and extreme, reminder of what is and has been occurring in our society, a symbol of the continuing destruction of this nation and its history by those who zealously possess and attempt to impose a world view, a template, which is the antithesis of those beliefs and that faith that millions of us have inherited and which we hold dear and believe.

 

The attacks by nearly the entirety of the media—including notably Fox—on the “Alt-right” demonstrators as “white racists” and “white supremacists,” then, is not only misguided scattershot, but it partakes in the dominant and ideologically leftist Deep State establishment narrative which posits as absolute truth that “hate,” “bigotry,” “racism,” ad nauseum, only come from what they identity as the “far” or “extreme” right, or more recently, “Alt-right.” And those terms are all-inclusive for anyone who dissents even in the slightest from the ongoing progressivist Revolution.

Thus, when the president condemned violence from “both sides,” it was as if Mount Vesuvius had erupted and had poured down its ash and lava all over Pompei! The Mainstream Media went literally berserk in outrage and demanded that he specify by name the “right” and “rightist violence.” And in jumped with both feet the obsequiously sickening Marco Rubio and Karl Rove, obedient to the standard Deep State mindset, urging the president to condemn “white nationalism” and “white supremacy.”

And so it went throughout that afternoon and evening…until I finally couldn’t take it any longer, and switched over to watch John Wayne in John Ford’s 1950 film masterpiece, “Rio Grande.” (It is always a gracious reward at the end to hear the Yankee band strike up “Dixie” as the Union troops pass in review!)

Certainly, the Alt-right demonstrators in Charlottesville included some extreme elements. Certainly, some would advocate a form of “supremacy,” or rather a return to a time when white people had more authority in this nation.

A Deep State Charlottesville Ukraine Connection?

ibtimes |  In 2012, the EU parliament voiced concern about "rising nationalistic sentiment in Ukraine, expressed in support of the Svoboda party".

"[Parliament] recalls that racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU's fundamental values and principles and therefore appeals to pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada [Ukraine's legislature] not to associate with, endorse, or form coalitions with this party."

In 2005 Tyahnybok signed an open letter to then Ukrainain president Viktor Yushchenko urging him to ban all Jewish organisations, including the Anti-Defamation League, which he claimed carried out "criminal activities [of] organised Jewry", ultimately aimed at the genocide of the Ukrainian people.

In December, US Republican senator John McCain flew to Kiev to meet the three leaders of the opposition at a rally against then president Victor Yanukovich. McCain sparked criticism when he shook hands with Tyahnybok.

In a leaked phone conversation with the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, US secretary of state Victoria Nuland revealed her wish for Tyahnybok to remain "on the outside" but to consult opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk "four times a week".

Fifteen thousand Svoboda members held a torchlit ceremony in the city of Lviv in January to honour Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator who led forces to ethnically cleanse western Ukraine of Poles in 1943 and 1944. Over 90,000 Poles and many Jews were killed.

"Lviv has become the epicentre of neo-fascist activity in Ukraine, with elected Svoboda officials waging a campaign to rename its airport after Bandera and successfully changing the name of Peace Street to the name of the Nachtigall Battalion, an OUN-B wing that participated directly in the Holocaust," AlterNet explained.

In Washington, the OUN-B reconstituted under the banner of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) .

"By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members. Reagan personally welcomed Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7,000 Jews in Lviv, in the White House in 1983.

"'Your struggle is our struggle,' Reagan told the former Nazi collaborator. 'Your dream is our dream'," AterNet claimed.

In 2010, Viktor Yushchenko who was president of Ukraine at the time, awarded Bandera the title National Hero of Ukraine.

"When the European parliament condemned Yushchenko's proclamation as an affront to European values, the UCCA-affiliated Ukrainian World Congress reacted with outrage, accusing the EU of another attempt to rewrite Ukrainian history during WWII," AlterNet continued.

"On its website, the UCCA dismissed historical accounts of Bandera's collaboration with the Nazis as Soviet propaganda."

Slate Hops On Top Of Charlottesville Conspiracy Theorists

slate | Over the course of the day, two similar threads held the second highest spot in that forum. One argued that “Unite the Right” organizer Jason Kessler was possibly a secret pro-Obama operative and another said that far-right rallies across the country were part of an “organized smear campaign.”

Alt-right media personality Mike Cernovich, meanwhile, claimed that the violence was being initiated by left-wing groups in order to provoke a civil war. Another prominent alt-right social media voice, Jack Posobiec, said it was part of a “deep state [plot] to remove Trump allies in the WH and accelerate their coup.”

Julian Assange compared the torch-lit rally in Charlottesville to ones that took place in Ukraine in 2014, which he and alt-right voices also claim were Soros-funded affairs meant to foment the breakdown of civil society.

Finally, former Breitbart writer Patrick Howley wrote that by pressuring the president to denounce the racist attack, “Trump’s enemies are clearly hoping to separate Trump from any and all militia groups that could take part in potential acts of civil disobedience if Trump gets impeached and the nation heads into a Civil War-type scenario.”

His old boss, Steve Bannon, is now one of the most senior officials in Donald Trump's government.

Did the Unite the White Neckbeard Sausage Festival Have Deep State Backing After All?

reddit |  Just did some digging and I found out that this little fuck was a leftist operative until when? You guessed it - November 2016.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, (fuck them, but they've done good research into him), Jason Kessler was previously involved with the Occupy Movement and was an ardent Obama supporter through both terms.

He only changed his views in November 2016 (top kek), and established his white supremacist group, "Unity & Security For America" in January 2017.

Kessler organized this rally, in a similar vein to prior free speech rallies to get as many Trump supporters there as possible, and went on to invite several neo-Nazi and KKK groups to smear everyone attending.

This is right up the alley of Scott Foval and Bob Creamer, Democratic operatives who organized "bird-dogging" at Trump rallies last year to smear regular Trump supporters as racist and violent.

Jason Kessler should be arrested.

Spez: He also has several prior charges including assault (as recently as this year), obstruction of justice and failure to appear.

Spez2: From u/SethEllis: https://twitter.com/JasonBKessler/status/896388650824384512

As a result of this tweet, I'm removing the section about CNN for now as it has come to my attention that it may be a different Jason Kessler. If someone can confirm it was the Kessler in question I will put back the info about CNN.

Spez3: Also removing the part where a "Jason Kessler" received money for assisting a Democrat in his Senate run. Same reason as Spez2.

Spez4: u/William-WallaceGhost has posted a video from Lee Stranahan breaking down several instances of this rally that are identical to the lead-up to the Ukrainian coup of 2013, including the Mosquito Torch March, the chants of "Blood and Soil", and the demonization of Ukrainian government supporters, orchestrated by Soros, McCain and Graham. Link

Spez5: This post is getting brigaded. Look out for posts from users spamming conspiracy theories defending Challenger Nazi.

Spez6: Apparently ZeroHedge is running this story. Link

 

Spez7: From u/pdotuts: Has Kessler been mentioned in any of the leaked emails?

Spez8: Kessler BTFO by Alex Jones: https://twitter.com/infowars/status/897269114963509249

Spez9: From u/FraudulentNews: Courtesy of James O'Keefe, a Tutorial in Bird-Dogging, Featuring Scott "Cuck" Foval and Bob "Cuck" Creamer

UPDATE: So, it looks like my post has hit a fever pitch. Reported by DailyCaller, ZeroHedge, Business Insider and InfoWars. That alone means millions of people have seen this crucial information.

Listen Little Man - No Romantic Violence Without Deep State Backing

npr |  If, underneath that fundamental search is something that's broken — I call them potholes — is there abuse or trauma or mental illness or addiction? In my case, many years ago, it was abandonment. I felt abandoned, and that led me to this community. But what happens is because there are so many marginalized young people, so many disenfranchised young people today with not a lot to believe in, with not a lot of hope, they tend to search for very simple black and white answers.

Because of the Internet, we now have this propaganda machine that is flooding the Internet with conspiracy theory propaganda from the far right — disinformation — and when a young person who feels disenchanted, or disaffected, goes online where most of them live, they're able to find that identity online.

They're able to find that community, and they're able to find that purpose that's being fed to them by savvy recruiters who understand how to target vulnerable young people. And they go for this solution because, frankly, it promises paradise. And it requires very little work except for dedicating your life to that purpose.

But I can say that they're all being fooled, because the people at the very top have an agenda. And it's a broken ideology that can never work, that in fact, is destroying people's lives more than the promise that they were given of helping the world or saving the white race.

On Charlottesville as a turning point for this country politically and philosophically

I believe that the world has now seen what we have been sweeping under the rug for many many years — thinking we were in a post-racial society. ... I think that this catalyst shows the world 1. That it's a problem, a real problem that exists in our country; 2: that white extremism should be classified as terrorism, and now that we attached the terrorism word to it, it will get more resources. It will be at the top of people's minds.

What people need to understand is that since Sept. 11, more Americans have been killed on U.S. soil by white supremacists than by any other foreign or domestic group combined by a factor of two. Yet we don't really talk about that, nor do we even call these instances of the shooting at Charleston, S.C., or what happened at Oak Creek, Wis., at the Sikh temple or even what happened in Charlottesville this weekend — as terrorism.

Why Unite the White Was a Neckbeard Sausage Festival

realitycallshow |   CK: My big question is this: Why does the alt-right movement appear to be so overwhelmingly male? Is it just that less women come out to highly-visible protests like Charlottesville, or are there just far fewer women involved in the movement than men?

TM: Judging by the analytics data of my and other Alt Right personalities’ social media accounts, I estimate the Alt Right is about 15% female.

White males are fed up of being systematically disenfranchised and discriminated against through affirmative action in all of its many manifestations. But maybe more importantly, the Alt Right is overtly patriarchal.

We expect men to take leadership positions and to put themselves on the front lines. We do not expect, or want this of women – not because we hate women, but because we don’t view it as their job. The Alt Right doesn’t expect women to put themselves in dangerous situations, and instead seeks to protect them.

CK: Do you think the media tries to minimize the presence of women at alt-right gatherings like this? (almost all the big photos circulated from Charlottesville featured men)

TM: The media tries to minimize all aspects of the Alt Right that make it look remotely reasonable. We see this when they show closeups of the few odd guys out of thousands who take it upon themselves to do Nazi salutes or wear KKK outfits.

Most of us in the Alt Right view Nazi and KKK symbolism either with distaste, or we use it ironically to trigger hysteria in the uninitiated (for entertainment purposes).

The vast majority of people in the Alt Right don’t care about Nazis, or about the KKK. We are focused on the issues that whites face today.

CK: If you agree that there are far fewer women involved, what stops them from affiliating with the alt-right? Ideological reasons, or something else?

TM: What motivates the Alt Right is the love of our people and the desire to protect them from being disenfranchised politically. Men are naturally more likely to notice trends like this and to feel it is their duty to take action to protect their people. So we put this down to biological male/female roles.

We don’t believe that male/female roles are conditioned by society to any great extent, but that they are biologically engrained in us, so we would not consider this ideological but simply a manifestation of the natural way of things.

It’s not the role of women to protect the borders, the nation, or the family. So we do not expect this of women, nor do we find it strange that they are less represented in something that we view as an innately male occupation: guarding territory.

What Happened With The Charlottesville Police?

“But when the tear gas started to fly, thrown by protesters, the police themselves began to evacuate then. I asked the guy who was in charge, “Where you going?” He said, “We’re leaving. It’s too dangerous.” They had a chance to nip this thing in the bud and they chose not to.“

What Are These White Men Fighting For?

Narrative Construction: Only Morons Believe These War Drums

medium | Political IQ test: What does it mean when CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and the President’s Twitter account all agree that a foreign state poses a suddenly increased threat to America?

A) If they all agree it must be true!
B) Well I dislike some of those outlets, but I trust one of them.
C) The US intelligence community would never lie to us.
D) Hmm… this sounds an awful lot like the leadup to Iraq?

If you said anything but D, you are of course a fucking moron. The United States power establishment has an extensive history of using lies, false flags and propaganda to manipulate its hundreds of millions of citizens into supporting needless military interventionism. From the Gulf of Tonkin incident to the false Nayirah testimony to the amazing network of lies spun about Saddam Hussein to the “humanitarian” intervention in Libya to the unconscionable Bana Alabed psy-op in Syria, there is no depth to which the US war machine will not stoop in deceiving the public about the need to unload the military-industrial complex’s expensive inventory onto some third world country overseas, no limit to the evils that America’s unelected power establishment will commit in order to secure geopolitical dominance, and no end to the mass media propaganda machine’s willingness to report war propaganda as objective fact.

It is quite literally impossible to be too paranoid about these people. If you had an acquaintance who was a known compulsive liar with an extensive history of duping people into fighting one another for his own sociopathic amusement, how would you react if he handed you a gun and told you that your neighbor is getting ready to attack you?

The US government lies about war, and Phil Donahue was fired from his top-ranked show for expressing skepticism about the Iraq invasion. This fact should overlay every single segment of news media you consume which has anything to do with a potential military rival of the United States and its allies/client states. Like Dr. Gregory House’s perpetual mantra “people lie”, awareness of the US war machine’s love of deceit and manipulation is absolutely essential in forming a clear worldview.

U.S. - Venezuela - Russia - Oil

reuters |  Venezuela’s unraveling socialist government is increasingly turning to ally Russia for the cash and credit it needs to survive – and offering prized state-owned oil assets in return, sources familiar with the negotiations told Reuters. 

As Caracas struggles to contain an economic meltdown and violent street protests, Moscow is using its position as Venezuela’s lender of last resort to gain more control over the OPEC nation’s crude reserves, the largest in the world. 

Venezuela's state-owned oil firm, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), has been secretly negotiating since at least early this year with Russia's biggest state-owned oil company, Rosneft (ROSN.MM) - offering ownership interests in up to nine of Venezuela's most productive petroleum projects, according to a top Venezuelan government official and two industry sources familiar with the talks. 

Moscow has substantial leverage in the negotiations: Cash from Russia and Rosneft has been crucial in helping the financially strapped government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro avoid a sovereign debt default or a political coup. 

Rosneft delivered Venezuela’s state-owned firm more than $1 billion in April alone in exchange for a promise of oil shipments later. On at least two occasions, the Venezuelan government has used Russian cash to avoid imminent defaults on payments to bondholders, a high-level PDVSA official told Reuters. 

Rosneft has also positioned itself as a middleman in sales of Venezuelan oil to customers worldwide. Much of it ends up at refineries in the United States – despite U.S. sanctions against Russia – because it is sold through intermediaries such as oil trading firms, according to internal PDVSA trade reports seen by Reuters and a source at the firm. 

PDVSA and the government of Venezuela did not respond to requests for comment.

The Russian government declined to comment and referred questions to the foreign ministry and the ministries of finance and defense, which did not respond to questions from Reuters. Rosneft declined to comment.