That a certain portion of conservative and reactionary Republicans have chosen to develop and spread lies about George Soros — it’s practically an industry — comes as no surprise. Push-back, however, seems to me comparatively rare. The Political Correctness of the Far White Right immediately demonizes those who would defend the billionaire’s spacious philanthropy on behalf of authentic democracy, freedom, and progress.
The post that follows came about through involvement in one such conversation.
From the Awesome Conversation
Soros’s funding engages and liberates. Some of the people you hate so much appear to be fashionably “Marxist” but in fact hustling capitalist and modern Americans themselves, but they are leveraging substantial American challenges (involving bigotry) into careers.
BackChannels has come to regard the co-founds of Black Lives Matter as fashionably “Marxist” — the term has been overplayed as a dog whistle for the nation’s reactionaries — but in fact deeply “capitalist” — i.e., making their way — as modern moral entrepreneurs, each uniquely engaged in the address of the more stubborn aspects of America’s issues with class and race.
The Trump Administration lies to Americans — not as yet a still conscionable FBI (please do look up “FBI, Antifa” up to this day (August 8, 2020) and let BackChannels know of any substantiation of claims about either “Antifa” and “Black Lives Matter” as the direct drivers of protester violence.
Perhaps by overreacting to the Man Above It All — or HE who believes he is — we have been following Dr. Fauci.
Dr. Fauci is not a businessman.
Dr. Fauci is not an economist.
Dr. Fauci is not (yet) among the line level workers in entertainment and retail services damaged or shuttered by compelled COVID-19 mask-wearing and social distancing “requirements” driven by generally unconstitutional administrative and Draconian edicts.
Note that in the post-WWII “Baby Boom” generation, America has the certain challenge of retiring and burying within the next ten to twenty years an entire generation of notable Americans and the more general “population bubble” that has been theirs through life. The oldest of that generation is today 75 years old.
Dr. Fauci has been a myopic public health policy analyst whose mission has been restricted to preventing the spread of disease and thereby saving or extending lives. That has been a laudable crusade, but as thrown “candy” (Trumpian stimulus checks) fall short of needs and state unemployment support or related systems also fall short or fall away, lives may be lost to increasing crime and suicide as desperation and inevitable displacement become American realities.
Whatever the nominal economic doctrine in force, all depends on the taxing or taking of tribute from the various sources of economic productivity. As productivity, however defined, diminishes, the value in tax or tribute diminishes. In the integrated social capitalism of the west, contraction within the tax base first pressures and then diminishes also necessary and responsive public service. Entire systems of civil order and the orderly and prudent distribution of a responsible government’s portion of wealth and the obligations built around its abilities risk collapse while inviting even more disastrous “disequilibrium” and “revolution” — and criminal activity in the name of it.
Had America a leader in which The People had invested both confidence and love, we might well have faced our fears, built our capacity to treat COVID-19 cases (without wrecking other hospital services in the process) and, alas, to briefly store and bury the related dead, albeit at a pace not much higher than normal and expected. With a President who has outraged the nation, alienated a growing population of conservative Republicans, and made enemies — even when he tells the truth! — with every other tweet, that leadership appears doubtful.
Perhaps by overreacting to the Man Above It All — or HE who believes he is — we have been following Dr. Fauci.
From the Awesome Conversation, a comment on greed in America and American domestic and foreign policy —
Greed can and will kill the credibility and promise of the USA if the constituency abandons its Constitutional, ethical, and moral obligations and principles. The state will either evolve forward toward greater achievement and enlightenment or it will simply fall backward to the repeated of lost eras more delightful, if that, in memory then tenable in reality.
Bonbons or bon mots, what do with a nice ring than put it up on the web for a few to contemplate momentarily.
Gecko’s “Greed is good!” speech from the Wall Street film provided the prompt for the response (“FTAC” on this blog) — and the response is true: the three “superpowers”, lumbering sumo that each may be, have each autocrats for chiefs. One appears to seek the renewal of dynasty and empire; another appreciates the glory and grandeur of more vicious imperial days; and the last appears to believe that money is existence and existence money, and that is all we know and all we need to know.
😦
Compared to futurists, science fiction writers, and the advanced of 21st Century political and religious philosophers (well, maybe Thomas Berry), they’re kind of dumb and looking that way even cushioned by muscle and planted in luxury.
More —
How much is enough? Enough to make us feel secure and happy. How much is too much? So much that the more we have of it, the less it fills our own wells made empty by the sense of our own shortcomings and related psychological and spiritual bankruptcy and exhaustion. More than enough becomes never enough.
Active Measures — The collection of Russian Agitation, Disinformation, and Propaganda Methods made evident through covert or subtle Influence Campaigns applied to wrecking the political coherence and cohesion of EU/NATO for the purpose of reestablishing Political Absolutism in the same and then using the most thuggish of feudal and medieval methods to leverage loyalty and wealth from them for contribution to the Greater Imperial Glory of Moscow, the Russian “mafia state” it has come to represent, and the immense enrichment of its oligarchy.
From the above references, one might suggest that in or with President Donald J. Trump, Washington, like Moscow, has had some kind of energized disinformation factory. It may not be the President’s factory, but he has encouraged and endorsed baseless conspiracy theories and the most disingenuous innuendo involving his political enemies.
Trump is being attacked, the memo says, because he represents “an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative.” Those threatened by Trump include “‘deep state’ actors, globalists, bankers, Islamists, and establishment Republicans.”
The memo is part of a broader political struggle inside the White House between current National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and alt-right operatives with a nationalist worldview who believe the Army general and his crew are subverting the president’s agenda.
Foreign Policy has the full memo embedded in its account.
Said Rich Higgins back in February: “Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman wasn’t the first staffer to be fired from President Trump’s National Security Council and escorted from the premises by security. I went through the same ritual on July 21, 2017. But in contrast to Col. Vindman, I lost my job because I was loyal to the president” (by Rich Higgins for WSJ Opinion, February 12, 2020).
WASHINGTON — A cabal of leftist “deep state” government workers, “globalists,” bankers, adherents to Islamic fundamentalism and establishment Republicans are conspiring to remove President Trump and impose cultural Marxism in the United States, according to a former White House aide whose darkly worded memo detailing the alleged conspiracy got him removed last month from the National Security Council.
Who has placed themselves behind the QAnon distribution?
Who has been reading and ingesting the garbage?
Who among Americans believes everything an American president might care to tell them (especially this American president)?
Bigoted, fake, weak, willful and enamored, apparently, of the kind of powerful others known to the west as dictators, who, aware of the pain he has caused others through multiple bankruptcies and countless and apparently limitless lies can respect him out of love rather than fear?
Have some Americans been so duped and convinced of “HIS” nobility in character that they cannot admit to themselves that they may have been fooled?
Americans will now have to educate themselves in relation to the collected legacies of the nation without regard for immediate resources and public or private channeling. To have become this ignorant, this vulnerable, to such an ignoramus: politically and socially obscene and tragic.
Malkin was understandably distraught at this unanticipated violent turn of events and expressed frustration that Denver police, who were visibly present in the area, did nothing to stop the attacks or to allow the peaceful pro-police rally to continue.
I would question the motives of police — witnessing an apparent BLM attack on anyone — for failing to intervene and arrest.
Anyone can put on a t-shirt.
Anyone doing violence to another can be stopped by superior force if present.
The police were present during Malkin’s beating.
How could the police have not responded?
Posted to YouTube by Judge Britt, July 20, 2020 with reference to the Gateway Pundit piece cited in the Related Online section of this post.
Thank Putin for setting a bad example.
All available evidence points to Putin’s complicity in the 1999 apartment-building bombings in Russia. Those who have tried to investigate have been killed off, one by one.
The method referred to as “False Flag Operation“ involves a particularly vicious form of “gaslighting“ that spy novelists might include in the term “Theater of the Real” (an act of deception — a piece of theater — inserted into a very real situation) — they are acts designed by the power of the state to cast aspersions on and discredit the made-up enemies of the state.
BackChannels does not believe that Michelle Malkin was acting, but what about the alleged “ANTIFA”?
“Antifa is a movement; antifa is an idea,” said Jim Derrane, a retired FBI special agent. “And certain people that profess to be involved with antifa … but there is no real organization; there is no structure.”
Kolko, Rich and Jack Lowenstein. “Antifa doesn’t have clear organization, but FBI closely monitors activity.” WINK News, June 8, 2020.
The above screen capture taken July 12, 2020 presents a last search page result for the alleged “ANTIFA” arrests. NOTE the date of the “YouTube – Ceron” results: February 20, 2012.
The pro-Trump publication PRNTLY has been in the news about “fake news” a time or two. Here is an appearance found in The Washington Post back in 2016.
Prntly popped up again last week as the source of a rumor about the Ted Cruz campaign. The site cut and pasted an old story about Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe. The headline suggested that perhaps Roe had approved the ad attacking Melania Trump run by an anti-Trump super PAC, but it offered no evidence to that effect.
It was, in other words, a very typical Prntly article: Mostly content from somewhere else with an unabashedly pro-Trump frame overlaid, and then shared by one of the site’s two apparent authors, Connor Balough or Shelby Carella.
As an idea — and it’s not a bad idea: who is for fascism? — floating around the web, it certainly has a presence. Is the message pulling or pushing related “radical activists” into the streets? That’s more easily suggested than proved.
In 2017, Mother Jones interviewed a convicted then “ANTIFA” leader whose politics had to to do with street violence below the police radar. Punk stuff.
The MJ article provides background and sets the stage for today’s apparent drama.
BackChannels has noticed, however, that state-oriented Facebook ANTIFA pages appear to have been abandoned, nonexistent, or pulled (I saw two this month, one for Maryland, the other for Virginia, but neither seem online now). “Rose City Antifa“ (Portland – where else? – Oregon) appears to exist.
Where are all the others?
The attack on Michelle Malkin looked pretty real — and it certainly was real to her — but the police failed to act. A separate event security detail (or help — welcome to the fog of another “different kind of war” — has been mentioned in spiriting her out of harm’s way.
At this point and for all of the Trumpian Parrots now calling (“Antifa, BLM Antifa, BLM”), the suggestion of pure political false flag manipulation (for perceptual control of the nation) may nonetheless develop legs.
Perry, Mark. “False Flag.” Foreign Policy, January 13, 2012. Log line: “A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran.”
Get a firm grip on the Original Operating Instructions, chart a new course, and aspire to greatness as Americans – ambitious, colorful, curious, democratic, educated, enlightened, high minded, humanist, inclusive, independent, just, reasoning, and tolerant – sailing together (for better, not worse) through time and the universe.
Now that the United States has put itself into full reverse gear with the generational updating of the last generation (Old Left -> New Left ->New Old Lost Left; Republican Conservatives -> Conservative Right -> Far (White?) Right), it’s time to cope with a “cluster”, as one old friend may have put it, of “challenges”, among them the report of a squirrel in Colorado testing positive for Bubonic Plague.
A spokesperson for Jefferson County Public Health told CBS News on Tuesday that someone in Morrison reported seeing at least 15 dead squirrels around the town. Officials tested one, and since it was positive for bubonic plague, they expect others are also infected.
BackChannels would suggest thinking cautiously because America’s Report Card suggests those 15 squirrel dead in Colorado may have arrived right on time given a national homeless population of about 554,000 and some millions of doped out, hopped up, and missing or unsettled persons floating about the place.
As predominant head-up-butt (always warm and dark in there) COVID-19 policies continue to scour the economy of basic entertainment, service, and special occasion jobs (crippling bars and restaurants foremost) and tax base nationwide turns anemic with lost jobs – USA Today yesterday: “A closely watched gauge of layoffs across the U.S. held steady at a historically high level last week, pushing the total during the coronavirus-induced economic crisis to a mind-boggling 51.3 million” – the squirrels, the fleas, and the homeless would be joined by the soon-to-be-displaced were it not for an opening salvo by a few governors (and a few helpful laws already in place) to forestall evictions during the COVID-19 Pandemic [Refs.: https://kvoa.com/news/2020/07/16/gov-ducey-extends-executive-order-protects-renters-from-evictions-amid-covid-19-pandemic/ (7/16/2020) | https://www.masslegalhelp.org/health-mental-health/covid-19-illegal-eviction (updated 6/15/2020) | https://www.sdhc.org/evictionban/ – effective through 9/30/2020]. Nonetheless, along with the Bubonic Squirrel narrative, let us all keep a lookout on behalf of idled Americans coming related coming emotional and financial desperation.
BakcChannels wager: lives saved in communal-medical responses to COVID-19 may be made up in rising crime, murder, and suicide rates associated with idleness, social separation, and stress.
BackChannels would strongly suggest the development of a nationwide moratorium on the notion of returning to anything resembling the old “normal” — the Ship of State has lost its moorings and “Safe Harbor” appears to be receding into the past.
America appears to be up for political grabs.
What to do?
Get a firm grip on the Original Operating Instructions, chart a new course, and aspire to greatness as Americans – ambitious, colorful, curious, democratic, educated, enlightened, high minded, humanist, inclusive, independent, just, reasoning, and tolerant – sailing together (for better, not worse) through time and the universe.
Related Online
Wikipedia: “Kurt Blome” – Nazi scientist who experimented with plague: “Blome worked on methods of storage and dispersal of biological agents like plague, cholera, anthrax, and typhoid, and also infected prisoners with plague in order to test the efficacy of vaccines.”
Attorney General Barr’s Address on China’s Abuses and Global Ambitions, July 16, 2020 at 11 a.m. Posted to YouTube by PBS NewsHour.
BackChannels folders related to China’s theft of America’s defense, industrial, scientific, and state secrets. Screen capture July 16, 2020 at 11:31 a.m.
China has indeed produced an astounding track record in the regions of human rights abuses, growth through the theft of proprietary processes and technologies developed elsewhere, biological and space weapons development (to knock out western satellites), etc. China’s quiet assault on the west and against dependent states (state predatory lending) has been as broad and complete as can be.
Doing business with Beijing — from anywhere in the world — has turned into bad business worldwide.
Imagine a society in which you are rated by the government on your trustworthiness. Your “citizen score” follows you wherever you go. A high score allows you access to faster internet service or a fast-tracked visa to Europe. If you make political posts online without a permit, or question or contradict the government’s official narrative on current events, however, your score decreases. To calculate the score, private companies working with your government constantly trawl through vast amounts of your social media and online shopping data.
When you step outside your door, your actions in the physical world are also swept into the dragnet: The government gathers an enormous collection of information through the video cameras placed on your street and all over your city. If you commit a crime—or simply jaywalk—facial recognition algorithms will match video footage of your face to your photo in a national ID database. It won’t be long before the police show up at your door.
Most generally speaking, about 99.5 percent of C19 cases do not result in death. Those that do remain associated with age-related vitality and latent and preexisting conditions. Life’s not fair, especially around 55/65-85. The oldest of America’s “Baby Boom” generation has reached a healthy but nervous 75 years. The average age of death in the United States is 78.5 according to the CDC.
On China as an Aggressive, Criminal, and Totalitarian Threat to Liberal Democracy
The United States, at least, loses billions annually in relation to China’s industrial and scientific espionage and the adaptation of proprietary processes and technologies (and not infrequently knock-offs) to grow its markets. It has been also a key and major supplier of precursor chemicals for the manufacturing of narcotics throughout the western hemisphere. Debacles involving computer, radio, and telephony technologies, much underscored by the Huawei’s global issues (e.g., https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/tech/huawei-fallout-5g-hnk-intl/index.html – 7/15/2020) involving consumer and defense issues (spying and incursions involving defense-related wavelengths) are real and now part of the western challenge involving the nominally “communist” regime (another issue for another post).
Biological weapons and space weapons (intended to kill western satellites, if and when necessary) appear no longer on the far horizon in defense matters.
Altogether, Sino-American cooperation in place of war would seem to require both a steadfast defense and law enforcement effort as well as some new discussion about political absolutism and totalitarian philosophy. At the moment, as China may be seeking revenge for the humiliations of the Opium Wars — so it doesn’t apply too much manpower to policing the narcotics precursor trade — and for what it may perceive as the intimidation of civilizational ambitions. “Sino-American Relations” are not looking very good.
On Sanctions Involving Select Moscow and Tehran Elites
Let’s not forget how Ali Khamenei made his first big bucks: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1 (“Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures,” Reuters, November 11, 2013. These days, the post-Communist and post-Soviet alliances support Big Rocket Man (trying to reach Israel) and Little Rocket Man (the one making Japan nervous) and Trump has been on it but with perhaps amateur enthusiasm (reference John Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened. For post-Soviet Moscow and Tehran, both apparently longing for more barbaric days, sanctions and “maximum pressure” campaigns may not work in a decisive manner, but that doesn’t mean we should drop them (and if Trump should move to ease Putin’s pain, then this blog shift away from any such a fawning, pandering, and placating a move.
Trumps character and character in diplomacy may undermine America’s efforts to defend its own liberal democracy and promote the same worldwide. As much has been America’s mission from its earliest days, days in which the Founding Fathers wrote far out ahead of their own age and its circumstances, and remains its mission in this day when it finds itself sorely tested by dogma, Far Out Left and (predominantly) Far White Right. To have in the President a personality that tends to go its own way — or have its own way — regardless of the advice of the experienced as well as the memory of national lessons learned — seems to represent an unwitting self-sabotage.
