Why Everything Is Fucked

Why Everything Is Fucked

By Caitlin Johnstone
Information Clearing House
December 30, 2019

We all slid out of the womb an itty bitty helpless information
sponge into a world full of mentally ill giants who couldn’t
wait to fill our tiny skulls with all of their inner demons.

And now everything, understandably, is fucked.

That’s basically our whole entire situation in a nutshell.

You can add on as many extra details as you like — plutocracy,
corruption, mass media propaganda, billionaire wine cave
fundraisers, whatever — but ultimately our plight is due to the
fact that every single human showed up on this planet completely
helpless and knowing nothing, forced to trust crazy giants to give
them the grand introductory tour.

Why were those giants crazy?

Well you see, they got here the same way you did: small, slippery
and completely clueless, surrounded by enormous gibbering lunatics
who were all in a mad rush to teach them how to be insane.

And those giants came into the world under the exact same
circumstances, as did the giants who came before them,
and the giants who came before them, and so on.

It’s a grand old tradition of ours, ultimately stretching all the way
back to our own evolutionary birth in this world and the emergence
of a massive cerebral cortex in a mammal who up until that point
had been primarily concerned with sneaking in a snack and a quick
shag in between mad sprints away from sharp-fanged predators.

This newfound capacity for complex abstract thought burst
onto this frantic, confusing scene and was quickly seized and
manipulated by the cleverer primates.

And thus human madness was born.

The most powerful early humans were the cleverest humans, the
ones who understood how to use this new capacity for language
and abstract thought to their own advantage.

They realized that by simply saying something is true in a
sufficiently confident way, they could persuade the less clever
humans to treat it as true.

Those clever humans used this newfound ability to place themselves
in charge, and to make a bunch of rules to be passed down from
generation to generation proclaiming that the less powerful humans
must submit to the more powerful humans.

Over the generations these rules became more and more numerous
and complex, weaving in moralism, codes of filial piety, and insane,
power-serving religions glorifying meekness, obedience and poverty.

These power-serving rule sets were picked up and used to justify
highly traumatizing behavior in the service of the powerful, from
wars to genocides to institutionalized torture and brutal executions
of the disobedient, and just within domestic power structures the
institutionalized normalization of spousal rape and physical abuse
in households all around the world.

This eons-long tidal wave of deep trauma and power-serving rules
structures passed from generation to generation to generation
picking up more and more demented flotsam and jetsam as it went
along, to ultimately come crashing down upon your crowning head
as you emerged from your mother’s body.

That is your legacy.

That is everyone’s legacy.

Countless generations of cumulative madness, washed into the
present moment on a current of eons of exploitation and senseless
cruelty stretching all the way back to the dawn of our species on
this planet.

This heritage of madness is funneled straight into our sponge-like
brains from the moment we emerge from the womb and all the
way through an extremely traumatic and confusing ordeal known
as childhood, after which we are handed the keys to the world
and told “You’re an adult now. You’re in charge. See if you can
figure out how to run this place better than we did.”

We never stood a goddamn chance.

None of us did.

The deck was stacked against us long before we got here.

And now you get political commentators constantly railing on
about “Gosh, if only we could get people to stop listening to
their televisions and vote third party and read World Socialist
Website and turn up to demonstrations and take back the
power of the people from our oppressors, we could turn this
thing around!”

Not realizing that everyone else in their country went through
the same traumatic, confusing ordeal that they went through
at the beginning of their lives, the only difference being that
most of them got a lot less lucky in sorting out reality from
madness.

And not realizing that they themselves are still quite mad.

This is ultimately the answer to every question about why
things are fucked right now.

Why does it seem like nothing changes no matter who wins
the election?

Why do the wars keep expanding instead of ending?

Why is the news man always lying?

Why are they locking up that white-haired fellow for publishing
facts?

Why are those nuclear superpowers hurtling closer toward direct
confrontation?

Why are the rainforests vanishing?

Why are the whales dying?

Why are the mass shootings increasing?

Why is everyone so miserable?

Because every adult on this planet started off tiny, helpless,
mpressionable, and surrounded by gargantuan madmen,
and it made it almost impossible to be sane.

That’s why.

Notice I said “almost”. It is still possible to find one’s way into
a relationship with reality that is guided by truth and untainted
by madness, but you’ve got to start way, way, way back at the
beginning and deeply re-examine even your most fundamental
assumptions about what’s true and real.

Because it turns out that while the mad giants gave us information
that was very useful for interacting with other mad giants, it was
almost entirely useless for learning how to navigate through life in
a wise and truthful way.

And that’s what I’m pointing to here: it’s important to get clear on
just how far back the crazy goes and how fundamentally interwoven
it is with the situation in which we now find ourselves.

If you begin with the assumption that our problem is simply due
to humans not voting and mobilizing correctly in alignment with
the correct ideology, you’ll miss the real obstacle entirely.

You’ve got to zoom the camera out much, much further to see the
full picture.

Can you become a deeply sane individual, untainted by your ancient
heritage of madness?

With a lot of work and uncompromising self-honesty you can.

Can all humans become deeply sane and untainted by their ancient
heritage of madness?

It would take a miracle.

A whole lot of miracles.

Billions, to be precise.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52749.htm

Dear House Democrats

Dear House Democrats

By The Last Boy In Line
December 26, 2019

Dear House Democrats:

Sincerely,

Dear Merry Christmas

Dear Merry Christmas

By The Last Boy In Line
December 25, 2019

Dear Merry Christmas:

Sincerely,

America On The Ropes

America On The Ropes

By Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearing House
December 23, 2019

The impeachment proceedings orchestrated by the idiot House
Democrats with the aid of the corrupt FBI, CIA, NSA and presstitute
media have been a boon for Republican fundraising.

Jews such as Schiff and Nadler have created the impression for the
average gentile American that Jews do not accept that “Trump
Deplorables” are qualified to elect their own President, and that
Schiff and Nadler intend to overturn the election outcome as it was
the result of people who shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Jennifer Rubin adds to this impression with her article, “American
Jewish Voters Still Despise Trump,” in The Washington Post.

This impression is very unfortunate for Jews as it will create anti-
semitism even though not all Jews are supportive of Schiff and
Nadler’s conspiracy to dethrone an elected American President
on the basis of alleged hearsay.

Some Jews have expressed their wonderment to me why Schiff,
Nadler, et. al. in the House and Schumer, et. al. in the Senate are
against Trump when Trump is the greatest supporter of Israel of all
US presidents.

Trump has given Israel everything, and his reward
is an impeachment orchestrated by Jews.

They worry that a Jewish-led impeachment will undercut the Israel
Lobby with Republicans and are puzzled that Israel hasn’t told
AIPAC that the Jewish leadership of impeachment needs to be less
pronounced.

One Jewish acquaintance said to me that it is nonsensical for Jews
to try to destroy the US President who has been a godsend to Israel.

It is clear that the impeachment circus is a political act by the
House Democrats.

It is a political orchestration without any evidence or credible
testimony.

The Democrats are after power.

They were frustrated by the Russiagate failure, and orchestrated
a hoax about Ukraine that, even if it were true, would not be an
impeachable event.

The House Democrats are able to get away with this hoax
because the American media is corrupt.

As the impeachment proceedings unfolded, the public turned
against the proceedings, recognizing them as a purely political
action.

The Democrats hope that some of the mud will stick to Trump and
reduce his reelection chances, but it seems the impeachment is
helping Trump.

The Senate will not convict Trump of the charges, unless enough
Republican senators can be blackmailed by the FBI, CIA, and
NSA—police state institutions that have spy folders on everyone—or
unless the military/security complex can bribe enough Republicans
with large sums of money to vote against Trump.

I think this is unlikely as it would be too obvious even for insouciant
Americans not to notice.

What is disturbing about the impeachment and Russiagate is that
these orchestrated actions are an attempt to overturn a democratic
election.

The US now engages in actions against its own population like the
actions Washington recently engaged in against Venezuela, Bolivia,
Honduras, and Ukraine.

It is disturbing also because it demonstrates that there is
no integrity in the media or the American security agencies.

Without the support of the media and security agencies, the
Democrats would not be able to orchestrate such obvious hoaxes.

Russiagate and the impeachment have radicalized the country.

The population is now split in a new way.

On the one hand we have the people who elected Trump, ordinary
traditional Americans who believe in God and Country who are now
demonized as “racists” and “white supremacists” (Jennifer Rubin
labels traditional Americans “white nationalists”).

On the other hand we have the Democrats, no longer the party
of the working people, but the party of immigrant-invaders,
homosexuals, transgendered, pagans, feminists, satanist,
and feminized males.

This fight strikes me as very unequal as the Democrats have
cut themselves off from the traditional American public.

Yet, nonetheless, it is the President of the United States
and his supporters who are on the defensive.

How did the President of the US and those Americans who elected
him get put on the defensive by homosexuals, transgendered,
feminists, crooks like Biden and Hillary Clinton, and a presstitute
media devoid of all integrity and all responsibility to truth?

If Trump loses this fight, we have lost our country.

To see our country’s plight, try to imagine a country whose print,
TV, and NPR media is devoid of integrity.

Try to imagine a country where the goal of the elected
representatives of the people is to serve their own career
and wealth.

The result is not a country in which truth and justice prevail.

If truth and justice do not prevail, then the people do not prevail.

It is as simple as that.

In the United States today the politics is the politics of the
Guillotine.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52741.htm

Dear President Trump

Dear President Trump

By The Last Boy In Line
Thursday, December 19, 2019

Dear President Trump:

Sincerely,

The Politics of Impeachment

The Politics of Impeachment

By Donald Monaco
Information Clearing House
December 18, 2019

The decision by Democrats sitting on the House Judiciary
Committee to approve Articles of Impeachment that will
be affirmed in a full vote of the House of Representatives
just handed Donald Trump a probable victory in the 2020
election barring a sudden economic downturn, the eruption
of an unlikely war, or yet another revolt by a discontented
electorate.

The Democrats know that conviction in the Republican
controlled Senate is impossible.

Why pursue a dead end agenda?

From all appearances, the strategy seems to involve an attempt to
discredit Trump and increase the chances of defeating the orange
tinted billionaire in next year’s November election.

If that’s the calculation, the Democrats are grossly misguided
as Trump is America’s second Teflon President, the invariably
cheerful Ronald Reagan being the first.

Nothing sticks.

Reagan beat Iran Contra-gate.

Trump beat Russia-gate and will most certainly emerge unscathed
from the Ukraine-gate impeachment proceedings in the eyes of his
supporters thus lending credence to the fact that he is fighting the
swamp.

As for the popularity of Reagan and Trump, both opportunistic
politicians had a simple persistently optimistic ‘Make America
Great Again’ feel good message that played well amongst the
disenchanted masses.

Reagan won office amidst the economic stagflation and malaise
of the Carter years.

Trump won the White House after the prolonged recession of the
Bush and Obama eras.

The extended economic slump that propelled Trump to victory
occurred as a direct result of the financialization of America and
the subprime meltdown.

It should be well understood that Wall Street’s speculative frenzy
was financed by the deindustrialization of the United States,
a global flight of capital that cast millions of American workers
on the scrap heap of various rustbelt cities.

Both Reagan and Trump used rightwing populist rhetoric to
win their respective elections only to serve the interests of
the corporate plutocracy as exemplified by the enormous tax
cuts both gave to the upper class and the corporations they
own.

So why don’t the Democrats fight Trump politically and contest
his far right policies of upward wealth transfer; deregulation
and privatization of the economy; slashing of food stamp benefits;
environmental destruction; unending war; unqualified support for
apartheid Israel, the Saudi monarchy and the Egyptian dictatorship;
and the imposition of deadly economic sanctions on Iran, North
Korea, and Venezuela?

Because they agree with the substance of these policy orientations
that’s why.

The Democrats pose no serious alternative to the Republicans
on matters of economic and geopolitical significance, the anti-
corporatist noises being made by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth
Warren notwithstanding.

Stripped of all pretenses, both parties advance an imperialist
agenda that protects the process of global capital accumulation
in America’s corporate neo-liberal empire.

Not a dime’s worth of difference on that score between the
two rival gangs that former independent Minnesota Governor
Jesse Ventura once insightfully referred to as, "Democrips"
and "Rebloodlicans."

The difference between the two parties in foreign policy is
fundamentally tactical and stylistic, not strategic or substantive.

In the realm of international relations both parties genuflect
before the alter of international law and national sovereignty
in word while violating their essence in deed by supporting the
peculiar notion of ‘American exceptionalism’.

Diplomatically, both political regimes employ a negotiating strategy
that conceals the clenched fist of mafia-like demands within a
velvet glove of duplicitous dialogue.

They make offers that cannot be refused.

The price of refusal is regime change.

For example, sequential coup d’etats were engineered by the CIA in
Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1965, Chile 1973, Haiti 1991,
Honduras 2009 and Bolivia 2019.

Militarily, the Republicans favor unilateralism, the Democrats
prefer multilateralism; the Republicans utilize pre-emptive
invasions, the Democrats employ humanitarian and responsibility
to protect (R2P) interventionist rationalizations.

Both parties backed the overarching strategic paradigms for global
hegemony after World War II, namely the ‘War on Communism’
and the more recent ‘War on Terrorism’.

Serial U.S. military interventions occurred in Korea 1950, Vietnam
1965, Dominican Republic 1965, Lebanon 1982, Panama 1983,
Iraq 1991, Somalia 1993, Yugoslavia 1994, Afghanistan 2001 and
Iraq 2003.

These interventions were led by Democratic and Republican
presidents alike.

The foregoing lists documenting covert and overt interventions
are partial, the criminal pattern is evident.

Domestically, the Republicans pose as the party of individualism
and self-reliance.

They serve the American plutocracy by hiding behind the pretense
of support for personal freedom and individual rights against a
corrupt government and media.

The Republicans appeal to religious fundamentalists who oppose
abortion, separation of church and state, and LGBT rights;
second amendment literalists who oppose gun-regulation;
free market fundamentalists who hate taxation of the rich,
corporate regulation, trade unions, immigration; big government
(meaning welfare for the poor); and unrestrained militarists.

They are openly the party of wealth, war and bigotry.

To court favor with their domestic voting base, Democrats have
adopted the veil of identity politics to disguise their support for
the American plutocracy.

They support greater social rights for women, the LGBT community,
immigrants, racial minorities and some modicum of a diminished
welfare state for the poor.

But the Democrats are caught in a web of contradictions because
of their support for the plutocratic minority and its predacious wars.

They claim to support American workers but signed the NAFTA
trade deal that destroyed millions of jobs in the heartland.

They pretend to support main street but deregulated the financial
industry by removing Glass Steagall and continuing the Bush bailout
of Wall street.

They opposed Trump’s ban on Muslim immigrants but supported
the invasion and bombing of the very countries that Muslim’s fled.

They support refugee status for Central American immigrants but
engineered a coup d’etat of the Honduran socialist President Zelaya
in 2009 causing a flood of migrants from a newly installed neo-
liberal regime that deeply impoverished country.

They support LGBT rights but are closely allied to Saudi Arabia,
a country that executes its gay subjects giving a new and hideous
meaning to the heterosexual dictatorship once so aptly described
by Christopher Isherwood.

No small wonder the majority of Americans view Washington as a
fetid swamp inhabited by creatures that need to be flushed down
the drain of history.

Electoral politics will never accomplish this ameliorative task
because of the deep divisions that animate a political terrain
in freedom’s land that has been systematically fractured over
the past several decades by both political parties on behalf of
the wealthy few at the expense of an increasingly despairing
many.

A revolutionary politics is needed to initiate the monumental
project of progressive social transformation.

But that brand of radical political ideology is sadly missing amongst
the ranks of Trump lovers and Trump haters in the age of
personality politics.

In the end, it may be useful to recall that ‘America has only one
political party, the party of private property consisting of two right
wings’, as the iconoclastic writer Gore Vidal never tired of
asserting.

Only when the property party and its benefactors are directly
confronted can genuine social change occur.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52708.htm

Dear Jesus

Dear Jesus

By The Last Boy In Line
Sunday, December 15, 2019

Dear Jesus:

Sincerely,

What Is The Democratic Party Today?

What Is The Democratic Party Today?

By James Howard Kunstler
Information Clearing House
December 12, 2019

The last time the Democratic Party blew up in a presidential
election year was 1860.

It had evolved from Jefferson’s 1800 bloc of yeoman farmers to
Andrew Jackson’s rowdy caucus of frontier populists in the 1830s,
and settled into a slough of pro-slavery apologists by the 1850s,
including two do-nothing Democratic presidents, Pierce and
Buchanan.

The party held a nominating convention in the spring of 1860
and couldn’t come up with a candidate when a claque of southern
“fire-eaters” walked out.

They tried again a few months later and cracked up into three
separate parties with three nominees — and of course Mr. Lincoln
won the election.

The result was the bloodiest war in US history.

That’s one way to drain a swamp.

Historical obfuscators might say the Civil War was a lofty, legalistic
quarrel over “state’s rights,” but of course it was really about the
intolerable depravity of slavery.

A hundred years later, the mysterious inversions of history
converted the old slaver’s party into the Civil Rights party.

That had a good fifty-year run.

It included a hearty side-dish of anti-war sentiment, and a general
disposition against the Big Brother treatment of citizens, including
especially the overreach of the CIA and the FBI.

What is the Democratic Party today?

Well, it’s the cheerleading squad for “seventeen” government
agencies that add up to the craftily-labeled “intel community,”
a warm-and-fuzzy coalition of snoops, false witnesses, rogue
lawfare cadres, seditionists, and bad-faith artists working
sedulously to hide their previous misdeeds with ever-fresh ones.

They’re the party against free speech, the party against
due process of law, the party determined to provoke war
with Russia.

They’re the party of sexual confusion, sexual hysteria, and sexual
conflict, the party of kangaroo courts, cancel culture, erasing
boundaries (including national borders), and of making up rules for
all that as they go along — like the Nazis and Soviets used to do.

The ideas and policies they advocate are so comprehensively crazy
that their old support of slavery looks quaintly straightforward in
comparison.

It’s taken a while for the full efflorescence of these political
pathologies to present.

But now they are finally on display for all to see in what
is supposed to be a climactic impeachment melodrama.

The impeachment process itself has revealed the party’s genius
for inventing new debaucheries of law and government misconduct
the latest being Rep Adam Schiff’s blatantly illegal cadging of his
opponents’ phone logs.

And now, after three years of unchallenged wickedness,
they literally face the moment of truth.

That is when all the many players in this grand game of
"Gotcha" have to face the consequences of what they
have done.

The Horowitz report is necessarily limited to the DOJ Inspector
General’s narrow mission scope: the IG can only interview current
employees of the agency and its stepchild, the FBI, which means
that key players in the Gotcha game such as former FBI director
Comey, former acting director McCabe, fired special agent Peter
Strzok and notably ex-CIA director John Brennan were outside of
Mr. Horowitz’s sphere of operations.

His scope was also supposedly limited to the issues around FISA
warrant mischief — though those complex shenanigans may have
led the IG to other related dodges, cons, and crimes outright.

The IG has no real law enforcement powers.

He can only refer or recommend further action.

Nevertheless, a great miasma of anxiety oppresses the Democratic
Party now as it awaits whatever Mr. Horowitz has to say about
these matters.

The party’s propaganda arms at The New York Times, the WashPo,
and cable news networks worked up a frenzy of distractions
and ruses this past week — for instance the “bombshell” that
International-Man-of-Mystery Joseph Mifsud was not a hireling
of the FBI.

Of course, nobody ever claimed he was.

Rather he is suspected of being an agent of the Italian Intel
Service with links to British Intel, both used by the CIA as
"Beards" for its nefarious activities around its own election
meddling of 2016.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic caucus has been busy
with ersatz impeachment proceedings, which are invidiously
scheduled to continue next week as a smokescreen to conceal
the Horowitz findings.

It’s been a frantic campaign for them at a fraught moment in
this long saga — but the odor of desperation is thick and rank.

Of course, behind the Horowitz report loom the specters of
Barr & Durham.

Whatever they’ve been up to has been hermetically sealed
in a globe of silence even more oppressive and nightmarish
for the Dems than the IG’s inquiry.

Barr & Durham are able to make things stick, most crucially genuine
criminal culpability for the entire RussiaGate fiasco and all of its
offshoots, including the most recent “Whistleblower” caper — a
patently treasonous scheme.

Who knows if and when indictments start raining down, but there’s
a chance that it will be a very hard rain indeed.

I’m not so sure that the Democratic Party can survive the washing
away of its beloved narrative by that hard rain.

They are also faced with a field of manifestly lame presidential
candidates, especially the current leader of the pack, Joe Biden,
fumbling and doddering his way down the campaign trail in an
apparent effort to dodge being investigated for the grifts of his
Veep years.

All this may be enough to put the party down, like a dog that has
peed on the carpet one time too many.

Somebody else, from some other hastily assembled party, may have
to stand against Mr. Trump in 2020.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52674.htm

Dear Quid Pro Joe

Dear Quid Pro Joe

By The Last Boy In Line
Monday, December 9, 2019

Dear Quid Pro Joe:

Sincerely,

VVitch

VVitch

By David Mowers
December 5, 2019

I torment the salt of the earth,

~"Who am I?"~

Eat up the children from unholy birth,

~"Who am I?"~

The ravens caw and come to pick,

~"Who am I?"~

Off woeful ones that I've made sick,

~"Who am I?"~

See travelers on the road of pain,

~"Who am I?"~

Rider on the clouds drive you insane,

~"Who am I?"~

I'm coming for you, I'm coming quick,

~"Who am I?"~

My art deception, my craft, -the trick...

Dear Democrats

Dear Democrats

By The Last Boy In Line
December 4, 2019

Dear Democrats:

Sincerely,

Dear Black Friday

Dear Black Friday

By The Last Boy In Line
Friday, November 29, 2019

Dear Black Friday:

Sincerely,

Dear Thanksgiving

Dear Thanksgiving

By The Last Boy In Line
Thursday, November 28, 2019

Dear Thanksgiving:

Sincerely,

Dear Spygate

Dear Spygate

By The Last Boy In Line
November 25, 2019

Dear Spygate:

Sincerely,

The Impeachment Pantomime

The Impeachment Pantomime

By Patrick Lawrence
Consortium News
November 22, 2019

Now that “Russia-Gate” has failed and “Ukraine-Gate” neatly takes
its place, many questions arise.

Will the Democratic Party, this time in open collusion with the
intelligence apparatus, succeed in its second attempt to depose
President Donald Trump in what might fairly be called a bloodless
coup?

Whatever the outcome of the thus-far-farcical impeachment probe,
which is to be conducted publicly as of Wednesday, did the
President use his office to pressure Ukraine in behalf of his own
personal and political interests?

Did Trump, in his fateful telephone conversation last July 25 with
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, put U.S. national security
at risk, as is alleged?

All good questions.

Here is another: Will Joe Biden, at present the leading contender
for the Democratic presidential nomination, get away with what
is almost certain to prove his gross corruption and gross abuse of
office when he carried the Ukraine portfolio while serving as vice
president under Barack Obama?

Corollary line of inquiry: Will the corporate media, The New
York Times in the lead, get away with self-censoring what is
now irrefutable evidence of the impeachment probe’s various
frauds and corruptions?

Ditto in the Biden case: Can the Times and the media that faithfully
follow its lead continue to disregard accumulating circumstantial
evidence of Biden’s guilt as he appears to have acted in the interest
of his son Hunter while the latter sat on the board of one of
Ukraine’s largest privately held natural gas producers?

Innuendo & Interference

It is not difficult to imagine that Trump presented Zelensky with
his famous quid pro quo when they spoke last summer: Open an
investigation into Biden père et fils and I will release $391 million
in military aid and invite you to the White House.

Trump seems to be no stranger to abuses of power of this sort.

But the impeachment probe has swiftly run up against the same
problem that sank the good ship Russia-Gate: It has produced no
evidence. Innuendo and inference, yes. Various syllogisms, yes.

But no evidence.

There is none in the transcript of the telephone exchange.

Zelensky has flatly stated that there was no quid pro quo.

The witnesses so far called to testify have had little to offer other
than their personal opinions, even if Capitol Hill Democrats pretend
these testimonies are prima facie damning.

And the witnesses are to one or another degree
of questionable motives.

To a one, they appear to be Russophobes who favor military aid to
Ukraine; to a one they are turf-conscious careerists who think they
set U.S. foreign policy and resent the president for intruding upon
them.

It is increasingly evident that Trump’s true offense is proposing
to renovate a foreign policy framework that has been more or
less untouched for 75 years (and is in dire need of renovation).

Ten days ago Real Clear Investigations suggested that the
“whistleblower” whose “complaint” last August set the
impeachment probe in motion was in all likelihood a CIA
agent named Eric Ciaramella.

And who is Eric Ciaramella?

It turns out he is a young but seasoned Democratic Party
apparatchik conducting his spookery on American soil.

Ciaramella has previously worked with Joe Biden during the latter’s
days as veep; with Susan Rice, Obama’s recklessly hawkish national
security adviser; with John Brennan, a key architect of the Russia-
Gate edifice; as well as with Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian born
Democratic National Committee official charged during the 2016
campaign season with digging up dirt on none other than candidate
Donald Trump.

For good measure, Paul Sperry’s perspicacious reporting in
Real Clear Investigations reveals that Ciaramella conferred
with the staff of Rep. Adam Schiff, the House Democrat leading
the impeachment process, a month prior to filing his “complaint”
to the CIA’s inspector general.

This information comes after Schiff stated on the record that the
staff of the House Intelligence Committee, which he heads, had
no contact with the whistleblower. Schiff has since acknowledged
the Ciaramella connection.

Phantom in Plain Sight

No wonder no one in Washington will name this phantom in plain
sight.

The impeachment probe starts to take on a certain reek.

It starts to look as if contempt for Trump takes precedence over
democratic process — a dangerous priority.

Sperry quotes Fred Fleitz, a former National Security Council
official, thus: “Everyone knows who he is.

CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times
knows. Congress knows. The White house knows…. They’re hiding
him because of his political bias.”

Here we come to another question.

If everyone knows the whistleblower’s identity, why have
the corporate media declined to name him?

There can be but one answer to this question.

If Ciaramella’s identity were publicized and his professional record
exposed, the Ukraine-Gate narrative would instantly collapse into
a second-rate vaudeville act — farce by any other name, although
“hoax” might do, even if Trump has made the term his own.

There is another half to this burlesque.

While Schiff and his House colleagues chicken-scratch for
something, anything that may justify a formal impeachment,
a clear, documented record emerges of Joe Biden’s official
interventions in Ukraine in behalf of Burisma Holdings, the
gas company that named Hunter Biden to its board in March
2014 — a month, it is worth noting, after the U.S.–cultivated
coup in Kiev.

There is no thought of scrutinizing Biden’s activities
by way of an official inquiry.

In its way, this, too, reflects upon the pantomime
of the impeachment probe.

Are there sufficient grounds to open an investigation?

Emphatically there are.

Two reports published last week make this plain by
any reasonable measure.

‘Bursima-Gate’

John Solomon, a singularly competent follower of Russia-Gate
and Ukraine-Gate, published a report last Monday exposing Hunter
Biden’s extensive contacts with the Obama State Department in
the early months of 2016.

Two developments were pending at the time.

They lie at the heart of what we may well call “Burisma-Gate.”

One, the Obama administration had committed to providing Ukraine
with $1 billion in loan guarantees. In a December 2015 address to
the Rada, Ukraine’s legislature, V–P Biden withheld an apparently
planned announcement of the credit facility.

Two, coincident with Hunter Biden’s numerous conferences at the
State Department, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin,
was swiftly advancing a corruption investigation into Burisma’s
oligarchic owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was by early 2016 living
in exile.

Just prior to Biden’s spate of visits to Foggy Bottom, Shokin had
confiscated several of Zlochevsky’s properties—a clear sign that
he was closing in.

Joe Biden wanted Shokin fired.

He is, of course, famously on the record boasting of his threat
to withhold the loan guarantee as a means to getting this done.

Shokin was in short order dismissed, and the loan guarantee
went through.

Solomon documents his report with memos he obtained via
the Freedom of Information Act earlier this year.

These add significantly to the picture.

“Hunter Biden and his Ukrainian gas firm colleagues had multiple
contacts with the Obama State Department during the 2016
election cycle,” he writes, “including one just a month before
Vice President Joe Biden forced Ukraine to fire the Prosecutor
investigating his son’s company for corruption.”

Last Tuesday, a day after Solomon published his report, Moon of
Alabama, the much-followed web publication, posted a granularly
researched and well-sourced timeline of the events surrounding
Shokin’s dismissal at Vice President Biden’s request.

This is the most complete chronology of the Burisma-Gate story
yet available.

In an ethical judicial system, it or something like it would now
sit on a prosecutor’s desk.

There is no suggestion in the Moon of Alabama’s timeline that
Shokin had shelved his investigation into Burisma by the time
Biden exerted pressure to get him sacked, as Biden’s defenders
assert.

Just the opposite appears to be the true case: The timeline
indicates Shokin was about to pounce.

Indeed Shokin said so under oath in an Austrian court case,
testifying that he was fired because of Biden’s pressure not
to conduct the probe.

It is important to note that there is no conclusive evidence that
Joe Biden misused his office in behalf of his son’s business interests
simply because there has been no investigation.

Given what is beginning to emerge, however, the need for one
can no longer be in doubt.

Can Democrats and the media obscure indefinitely what now
amounts to very strong circumstantial evidence against Biden?

We live in a time when the corporate media make as much
effort to hide information as they do to report it.

But as in the case of Ciaramella’s identity, it is unlikely these
myriad omissions can be sustained indefinitely — especially if
Biden wins the Democratic nomination next year.

Forecast: If only because of Burisma-Gate, Joe Biden will never be
president.

As everyone in Washington seems to understand, it is highly unlikely
Trump will be ousted via an impeachment trial.

The Republican-controlled Senate can be counted on to keep him
in office.

Whatever Trump got up to with Zelensky, there is little chance it
will prove sufficient to drive him from office.

As to the charge that Trump’s dealings with the Ukrainian president
threatened national security, let us allow this old chestnut to speak
for itself.

Price of Irresponsible Theatrics

This leaves us to reckon the price our troubled republic will pay for
months of irresponsible theatrics that are more or less preordained
to lead nowhere.

More questions.

What damage will the Democrats have done when Ukraine-Gate
draws to a close (assuming it does at some point)? What harm has
come to U.S. political institutions, governing bodies, judiciary and
media?

The corporate press has been profligately careless of its already
questionable credibility during the years of Russia-Gate and now
Ukraine-Gate.

Can anyone argue there is no lasting price to pay for this?

More urgently, what do the past three years of incessant efforts
to unseat a president tell us about the power of un-elected
constituencies?

The CIA is now openly operating on American soil
in clear breach of its charter and U.S. law.

There is absolutely no way this can be questioned.

We must now contemplate the frightening similarities Russia-Gate
and Ukraine-Gate share with the agency’s classic coup operations
abroad: Commandeering the media, stirring discontent with the
leadership, pumping up the opposition, waving false flags and
incessant disinformation campaigns.

Maybe it was fated that what America has been doing abroad
the whole of the postwar era would eventually come home.

What, at last, must we conclude about the ability of any president
(of any stripe) to effect authentic change when our administrative
state — “deep,” if you like — opposes it?

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/12/patrick-lawrence-the-
impeachment-pantomime

Dear Avie

Dear Avie

By The Last Boy In Line
November 20, 2019

Dear Avie:

Love Always 💕,

Peak Hubris

Peak Hubris

By Paul Edwards
Information Clearing House
November 18, 2019

“Hubris” is defined as rash and foolish pride, a dangerous
overconfidence, manifested with arrogance.

The Deep State vaunts our, “exceptionalism” and since Reagan’s,
“City on a Hill” trope Americans have been assured by all
succeeding Presidents that ours is the, “indispensible nation”.

The word describes the way America sells itself to the world
and has for generations.

The yawning cognitive gap between our nomenklatura’s relentless
self-promotion and its pathetic history of botched and humiliating
failures in every single act of Imperial overreach, demands examination.

Are we at Peak Hubris?

When exactly should the hubris of a vicious, lying, sloganeering
criminal state be identified as what it is, a cover for unhinged
stupidity?

Viz. the deranged, hysterical Democratic Party, a subsidiary of
the Deep State, led--if that term applies--by a geriatric clutch of
morally squalid throwbacks and vacuous nonentities, which has
its, "Depends" in a knot in the effort to blame the entire debacle
of recent U.S. historic crime on the Republican, "Yahoo" squatting
in the White House.

As Einstein observed, all explanations should be as simple as
possible...but no simpler.

Of all the villainies attributed to Trump by Democrats and the Deep
State--the Power Elite, Establishment, Ruling Clique, Permanent
Unelected Government--the most egregious and only unforgivable
one, is that his gross and vulgar bathos in Holy Office has exposed
and profoundly embarrassed them, punching holes in their
diligently crafted image.

The Masters of Disaster can’t tolerate open revelation of their evil,
witness the methodical crushing of a roster of whistleblowers,
among whom the most damning and brutally handled are Manning,
Assange, and Snowden.

Two are jailed on bogus, “charges” in peril of their lives and
Snowden is in exile only free because the vengeful engine of
American, “justice” can’t nail him.

The three have exposed the hubris of, “Exceptional America” far
more substantively and damagingly than any of Trump’s blundering
has done and produced damning indictments of its despicable
nature that assured their dragooning.

Their work has done much more to trash and pulverize the
mythology of, "The Empire" but the operators of the propaganda
machine have managed to hide the vast bulk of it from public
awareness, a feat they couldn’t manage with Trump’s ranting,
erratic, diplomacy.

Moreover, the Deep State has been able to crush or stifle these
heroes, but can’t seem to find a way to give Trump the hook
short of terminating him with extreme prejudice, which they
haven’t had the balls to do... yet.

They’ve had to settle, so far, for anathematizing him as the sole
source of the betrayal of America’s exalted values and principles.

The reality is that America has made it ironclad policy to install,
support and enrich a gang of the vilest, most murderous dictators,
tyrants, caudillos and royal brutes in history behind its sinister
fairy tale of principled benevolence.

Their names fill pages but let Pinochet, The Shah, Mobutu,
Papa Doc, Marcos, Somoza, Kagame, and Mubarak stand as
examples.

To be, “our son-of-a-bitch” was simple: crush your people’s
aspirations, kill their leaders, drain their economic blood, sell
off their resources to Rape Capitalism for pennies on the dollar,
and borrow billions from our IMF, taking only a modest 10% or
so for your trouble.

And keep the clamps on hard with torture, rape and murder
so nothing queers the deal for you and Uncle.

The only, “dictators” America despises are those who refuse as
Qaddafi, Saddam and Assad did, to knuckle and suck, or those with
the muscle, wisdom and grit to balk and baffle our folly, as Putin
and Xi do routinely.

This dirty hidden history that the three heroes’ work has revealed
is the reason the Deep State knows it has to destroy Trump.

His loose cannon, ADD follies, and zany impulses draw attention to
their documenting of American crimes while blocking The Empire
from retaking control of the game so it can function as it goddam
pleases, the way it always has.

The single paramount commandment in the Deep State’s tablet of
laws is that nothing must threaten the profits of the War Machine,
and certainly not anything that benefits only The People.

Very clear on this, the Democratic Party, richly suckled by the,
“defense industry” excoriates Trump for his efforts to end a
small war or two, while still advancing the, "Totenkopf Banner"
of the War Machine to the satisfaction of the Deep State.

Major problem, though.

Americans not braindead are sick of endless war, which puts them
at serious odds with the War Machine and the party that glorifies it.

Virulent hatred of Putin and Russia, coupled with the raging lust
to murder ignorant, guiltless peasants and destitute slum dwellers
is no longer a foolproof formula for swelling the ranks of the liberal
faithful.

Which raises (but does not beg) the key question: are we indeed
at Peak Hubris?

Judging by the loss of traction that pure American horseshit
braggadocio from our organs of propaganda is having
internationally, one would have to say we have.

After the long line--beginning at division of Europe, solidified by
stalemate in Korea--of shameful military muggings, half-assed
regime change pratfalls, and humiliating downright defeats, it
is at last becoming clear to the wizards behind the curtain that
hubris ain’t cuttin‘ it no more.

The powerful Exceptionalist Myth, the central tenet of our
catechism, which is the basis of the whole crevassed, dissolving
superstructure of The Empire, the supreme, "Big Lie" upon which
our entire culture of fraud, falsity and philistinism is predicated,
has buckled at last under the strain of our malevolent history,
and is spectacularly shattering and decomposing.

The fact that The Myth and the hubris that buttressed it so
forcefully are disintegrating does not mean they will be abandoned
by the powers and dominions that have used them so long and so
fruitfully.

Absurdity in action is perhaps the most defining single quality
of expiring empires.

Buffoons and Snake Oil men will continue to pitch The Myth,
stinking and decayed, long after its sell-by date as long as it
keeps them on the payroll but where the opinion of the great
world is concerned, the party’s over.

What follows?

There is no reliable template for expiring empires.

The end can be anything from devastating physical destruction, to
ungovernable social chaos and barbarism, to just collapsing quietly
into poor and feeble senescence.

Kipling said it best of an expiring British Empire:

Far called, our navies melt away,
On dune and headland sinks the fire.
Lo! all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52527.htm

Dear Veterans Day

Dear Veterans Day

By The Last Boy In Line
Monday, November 11, 2019

Dear Veterans Day:

Sincerely,

Where Are The ‘High Crimes’?

Where Are The ‘High Crimes’?

By Patrick J. Buchanan
Information Clearing House
November 08, 2019

“Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

These are the offenses designated in the Constitution for which
presidents may be impeached and removed from office.

Which of these did Trump commit?

According to his accusers in this city, his crime is as follows:

The President imperiled our “national security” by delaying for his
own reasons a transfer of lethal aid and Javelin missiles to Ukraine,
the very weapons President Barack Obama refused to send to
Ukraine, lest they widen and lengthen the war in the Donbass.

Now if Trump imperiled national security by delaying the transfer
of the weapons, was not Obama guilty of a greater crime against
our national security by denying the weapons to Ukraine altogether?

The essence of Trump’s crime, it is said, was that he demanded
a quid pro quo.

He passed word to incoming President Volodymyr Zelensky that if
he did not hold a press conference to announce an investigation of
Joe Biden and son Hunter, he, Zelensky, would not get the arms we
had promised, nor the Oval Office meeting that Zelensky requested.

Again, where is the body of the crime?

Did Zelensky hold the press conference Trump demanded?

No.

Did Zelensky announce Ukraine was investigating the Bidens?

No.

Did Zelensky get the Oval Office meeting?

Yes.

Did Zelensky get the U.S. weapons?

Yes, $400 million in arms and Javelin missiles.

Where then is the crime?

When was it consummated?

Or was this a thought crime, a bluff to get Zelensky to look into
how Hunter Biden got a $50,000-a-month seat on the board of the
most corrupt company in Ukraine, days after Joe Biden was in Kyiv
threatening to block a $1 billion loan guarantee to the regime.

By the way, what was Biden doing approving a $1 billion loan
guarantee to Petro Poroshenko’s regime, which was so corrupt
that it ferociously fought not to fire a prosecutor whose dismissal
all of Europe was demanding?

Should Biden be nominated and elected, a special prosecutor would
have to be appointed to investigate this smelly deal, as well as the
$1 billion Hunter got for his equity fund from the Chinese after his
father visited the Middle Kingdom.

Given last week’s party-line vote in the House where all but two
Democrats voted to proceed with the inquiry, the impeachment
of President Donald Trump seems baked in the cake.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s designation of Adam Schiff to head the
investigation tells us all we need to know about the sincerity
of her pledge to make the inquiry bipartisan.

Suppose Zelensky had agreed to an investigation into how
Hunter Biden, with no experience in the energy industry,
got his sweetheart deal.

Would that be impeachable for Trump?

How so?

Does not the U.S. have a right to put conditions on its foreign
aid and to seek guarantees that our money will not be used as
graft to grifters?

A few of those listening in on Trump’s phone call with Zelensky
have gone public asserting that withholding the arms transfer to
Kyiv imperiled our national security.

But if east Ukraine rises up and secedes from Kyiv, as Kyiv itself
seceded from the Russian Federation at the end of the Cold War,
how does any of that endanger America’s national security?

Did not George H.W. Bush himself warn three decades ago that
a declaration of independence by Ukraine from the Russian
Federation would constitute an act of “suicidal nationalism”?

And who does the Constitution charge with making the decisions
as to whether military aid goes to Ukraine?

The President, or some NSC staffer who sits on the Ukraine desk?

Since the U.S.-backed overthrow of the pro-Russian regime in
Kyiv in 2014, and Vladimir Putin’s counter-seizure of Crimea
and support for pro-Russian secessionists in Donetsk and Luhansk,
there has been a debate in the USA over how to deal with this
faraway problem.

Obama decided not to send lethal aid or tank-killing Javelin
missiles, lest the U.S. arms escalate a war between Russia
and Ukraine that Kyiv could not win.

The Republicans argued the issue at their Cleveland convention.

Trump’s team won that argument, but lethal aid and Javelin
missiles were eventually sent to Kyiv.

Now Trump has sent even more weapons.

But again, the authority to make this decision resides in the Oval
Office, not in the NSC, not in the CIA, and not with those in the
“deep state” who have their own settled view of what U.S. foreign
policy should be.

The authority lies with the elected President of the United States.

This impeachment battle will almost surely reach the Senate.

And in the end it will be about what it has been about since
the beginning: An attempt by the deep state and its media,
bureaucratic and political allies to overturn the democratic
verdict of 2016 and to overthrow the elected President of the
United States.

The establishment’s coup attempt is now approaching end game.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52495.htm

Dear Covfefe

Dear Covfefe

By The Last Boy In Line
Monday, November 4, 2019

Dear Covfefe:

Sincerely,

Dear Washington D.C.

Dear Washington D.C.

By The Last Boy In Line
Thursday, October 31, 2019

Dear Washington D.C.:

Sincerely,

‘Truth Is Treason’ – The Torture of Julian Assange

‘Truth Is Treason’ – The Torture of Julian Assange

By Ron Paul
AntiWar.com
October 29, 2019

WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange appeared before a UK judge to
request more time to prepare his case against the US extradition
request.

Acting more like a Soviet triubunal, the judge went on to deny
his every request.

He is not allowed to prepare to fight his extradition.

Even though Assange has served his time for, “jumping bail”
the British court ruled that he must remain in prison.

His shocking mental and physical condition after being held for
months in UK’s notorious Belmarsh prison only confirms the UN
torture official’s assessment that he is being tortured by the US
and UK governments.

Why?

For publishing the truth.

The lesson to others is clear.

Challenge the global US military empire and you will be destroyed.

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2019/10/22/truth-is-treason-the-
torture-of-julian-assange

Dear Benghazi

Dear Benghazi

By The Last Boy In Line
Sunday, October 27, 2019

Dear Benghazi:

Sincerely,