Jenny, I think the judicial system is controlled because the majority of the judges are nominated and approved by the politicians. That is why we have a Supreme court dominated by nominees from Bush and Trump.
It's a fucking mess, their appointment should not be picked by presidents, ensuring they will be loyal to the partisan shit the president who elected them.
And their power is far too much!
No that you say you are in France, I have even more respect for the
Why aren't y'all in the streets?
It actually works well there! And all sides come out, as they did recently over the retirement age. I respect that about y'all 💯
All courts are biased, the issue is suspending bias in favor of a fair hearing or putting ones' judgment on probation until all the facts are in.
but we live within history and so does the law.
the US is a victim and user of weaponized law or what is called lawfare.
You can look it up.
The entire Constitution of the US must be re-written and the fascists know this, this is what they are preparing for a Constitutional Convention to do just that.
In Latin America Constitutions are re-written.
But not in the United Snakes of America where profit always comes before justice.
Bourgeois democracy has failed for it is tied to capitalism also a failure.
We need a new economic model and accompanying institutions.
Maybe you should familiarize yourself with Israel. They have thousands of Palestinians (many being children) incarcerated not only without being found guilty of any legal offense, but being held captive (in many cases for years) without even being charged.
Democracies are not possible under capitalism. Capitalists make decisions not the people. A profit before people system cannot have a democracy. too messy.
Agreed with this qualification, profit seeking, and competitive enterprise are in my opinion essential factors for the well-being of a nation, but with a strict control by the government to stop abuses that harm the community. In most of Europe there is a healthy capitalism (that our greedy billionaires label socialism) that has not interfered with free higher education and health care for most of their inhabitants.
Yes, but the FDR's plan in Europe has succeeded. And yes, we cannot regulate a criminal enterprise like our predatory capitalism, so the solution is to eliminate it by no voting for bribed politicians and elect in their posts true Americans that will work for turning our economic system into a healthy social democracy with free enterprise. This requires a constant effort from our part, after all the FDR plan worked for a while until we succumbed to the pressures of our billionaires.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." -Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, 12 September 1777
The FDR plan failed for it was capitalism. Regulated? For awhile until FDR's death.
It was beaten, as the social democracies have been laid to rest in Europe, as it was in Germany under Weimar.
Capitalism is the problem and the solution is structural change and voting is a defelction.
I am afraid, and this is my opinion, that within the Imperial Core, there can be no meaningful change.
The change that is necessary will come from the Global south, as it should for see in the global south they do not fool around with democrats or faux socialists: it is fascism or socialism and the lines are clearly drawn.
In the Empire, and most Americans do not even think or know they live in an Empire, capitalism is now a religion.
What we can expect to see in the US is the rise of theological fascism, austerity, tax breaks for corporations, free zones, debt, see the country is dying from within, not just through military spending.
Military Keynsianism along with shipping factories overseas left America with a quandry.
The rich know this. they ar the most organized ruling class in history.
It is the average American, the worker in the US that does not understand that you cannot regulate capitalism, that it is not up to electing heroes and villains that the problem lies at the root of the accumulation process -- capitalism.
Here is one example of what millennial women are facing:
And the mortality rate is up, meaning we live less time than our parents.
No, this global system of terrorist-global-financial capitalist system must be stopped.
As to Europe?
Social democracy?
Please do some research on Holland, Germany, France, Greece, Italy and Spain. they are all now part of the international fascist movement and ys, there is an international fascist movement.
Just look who attended the inauguration of Milei the new fascist president of Argentina.
OK. we can name the new system required for our progress as we wish. I call it a mix system of capitalist enterprise because usually the virtue is in the middle, we have to choose the gray zone between a black crude capitalism and pure socialism. The problem is how. save a civil war or a revolution that usually brings unexpected results, can we achieve our goals other than with electing the right leaders.
Yes, we can expect a bleak near future if we don't act now. The Christian right is implementing a fascist theocracy which is the worst of all.
Here in the US, it is separated in theory but that is just a myth. In our plutocracy the billionaires make the rules by controlling the congress and the judiciary. The result is that our jails are full of minorities that commit minor felonies and completely absent of the many tax evaders and white-collar criminals. We only need to look at the records of our presidents and leaders to realize that our system needs to be changed.
Partially correct. But at least acknowledge there can be differences.
Your SC is ruled by whatever party is in at the time and since they are both corrupt I would suggest looking at this a different way instead of coming up with a 'one liner.' This might be the way you deal with politics in the 'great democracy' but it is NOT the way other countries deal with it. We have political discussions/ordinary people. It seems Americans cannot do this!
How many countries have you attacked and subverted in the name of 'democracy?'
I live in France and I know the French had an Empire as did Spain/Germany etc and as for the British!
In this time NOW we are speaking about American Justice.
There is no such thing as American justice. As a public interest attorney for more than 47 years, state and federal, I can tell you there is not one ounce of justice in either criminal or civil court.
American Justice is a TV program or was.
No, what we have in America is a cruel chamber of business interests that decide law through case law.
their appointments for life as federal judges is a crime in and of itself.
their campaign contributions to run for Judge is a crime in and of itself, it is bribery.
And if you are black or brown, forget it.
You'll be pled out or bled out.
Sorry, no justice here unless you are Mark Rich or Michael Milken who got presidential pardons.
"Your SC is ruled by whatever party is in at the time."
Not true. The Supreme Court, and the entire US federal population of justices and judges are an independent branch of the government. The point you are missing is that each individual justice or judge can bring their own political bias to their decisions. They are not supposed to, and some are corrupt in how far they take it to be activists and not real jurists, but all of them inject politics into their decisions because politics shapes individual moral views.
Politics are always a factor in the court decisions because politics are ubiquitous.
Just look at the American process for local district attorneys. They are elected by the voting population and generally independent from the political parties, but often ideologically aligned with one party over the other.
Conservative-leaning justices and judges tend to be less ideologically biased because conservatives by definition have a broader inventory of moral filters (i.e. Haidt) that include, for example, sanctity of law. Left-leaning people on the bench tend to give higher value to consideration of fairness and harm and will dismiss other moral considerations. Thus the decisions of left-leaning justices more often drift from the high standards for objective jurisprudence and can appear to be activism from the bench.
Anita Hill was never materially harmed by anything Clarence Thomas was accused of doing. She was and is a vulnerable narcissist and the exploitation of her was 100% political.
Once upon a time people believed that: "Not true. The Supreme Court, and the entire US federal population of justices and judges are an independent branch of the government.
right out of a grade school primer, no offense.
I too have taught murderers in prison and have been a public interest lawyer for 47 years.
You really think the judicial system is not politicized?
Oh geeze. The Norway, Demark, Sweden comparison is so void of intellectual depth it is laughable. Why don't you move there then?
They are the size of Wisconsin, culturally and ethically homogenous and have nothing at all in common with crime-infested US where we keep bringing people in and let the uppity left and radical socioeconomic malcontents in academia and the media keep telling them that the country they call home sucks and victimizes them at every step.
When people are taught to hate their country they don't care about the other people in the country and they go crime crazy. THAT is the difference between the Scandinavian countries and the US. The average northern European is rooted there, loves their country and do not do near the crime because it is like crapping in their own house.
Love of Country! Petty nationalism and you missed the point: capitalism is the problem and Scandinavia though capitalist, is social democratic capitalist like the New Deal. This of course will vanish in face of nationalism, love of country, and shameful ties to the US.
Why don't I move there? Because I already live outside of the United Snakes of America and have no need.
Why you do not move there or somewhere else: probably because your broke. Well go after the cultural identity thing and find yourself boca a bajo en la cale.
The Scandinavian countries are the most capitalist-loving of all Europe.
Hilarious that you type your malcontent criticism of capitalism on that marvelous machine that would not exist without it.
The problem isn't capitalism, it is corporatism. It is the global corporatocracy. I am guessing that your voting record has been is support of those things.
The bottom line is that the Bretton Woods Global Order is unraveling because it was never sustainable for the US to prop up the rest of the world on the backs of the US working class and poor. This will result in those Scandinavian countries struggling because they don't have the self-sufficient resources to keep up their rich social programs as they will have to defend themselves.
I am a well off American patriot that came from nothing to a good middle-class life... a poor and uneducated family... that knows I am lucky to live in the still best country on God's green earth. If you don't live here then you lack credibility for that level of criticism. My guess is where you live has been made livable by the generosity, blood and tears of Americans. But you keep up your mythology that you are better.
"The problem isn't capitalism, it is corporatism.".
fifty percent of problem solving is defining the problem and if this is your definition of the problem then you fail to see how corporatism arises from capitalism as a stage. We are now in the stage of financial capitalism and this means we are beyond corporatism we are within cartelism.
All of this is an outgrowth of the capitalist system and if one does not understand how capitalism works then they will fall for things like:
the problem is crony capitalism
the problem is corporatism
the problem is corruption
the problem is regulated or unregulated captialism and on and on.
The problem is the economic system we call capitalism and you can put any adject in front of it but it is the same.
A hierarchy of economic and social oppression and imperialism.
That is the system, runn by a small ruling elite who HATE competition and LOVE the corporate state.
No going back to flea market capitalism.
Can't barter your way out of this crisis.
“Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.”
It is because the US does not have enough law enforcement in the high crime areas, and the fact that the US is non-homogenous with a large immigrant culture and a very wide class gap that is the result of the extremely high immigration flow of primarily poor and uneducated contrasting with the large professional class for which the working and lower class cannot break into for a number of reasons... most that are simply a function of a high-level market meritocracy, but some are structural like the crappy public schools that Democrats and their political benefactors, teachers unions, defend to maintain that status quo.
The US has a much larger population of people that don't have the personal capability to perform at a level required to stay above the baseline for socioeconomic self-sufficiency because that line is higher than it is in, for example, France.
France is not a very productive country. It's GDP per capita is about half that of the US. The US is the third largest country in terms of population... and no other large country comes close to the per capita production of the US. For example, the US is about $80,000 in GDP per capita, while China is $12,700 and India is $2,388. France is about $40,000. But France is 68 million in population compared to 332 million in the US. Populations are concentrated in the big cities and that is where most crime happens. The US just has much larger concentrations of people in low socioeconomic circumstances and more that don't care so much about the US because they are still aligned with their home country and culture. People that don't care about their country also don't care about their community... and will be more prone to crime that they can get away with.
France is also more brutal to non-French poor immigrants than is the US brutal to its non-English speaking poor immigrants. And crime by immigrants is over 50% of total crime in France which confirms my explanation for US crime.
However, I think a better comparison than France is Singapore except for its population numbers (it is about the population of Wisconsin). It has a very diverse population and its GDP per capita is stronger than the US. Why does Singapore have such low relative crime?
I have been to Singapore many times. Do you not remember the American guy who brought 'pot' into Singapore from Malaysia. This is death penalty stuff or flogging.
That is why you have so little crime in Singapore.
Bingo. And ordered and well run society requires homogenous culture where people care about each other and don't harm each other, or strict laws and consistent punishment. When you have both of those things you have a lot of order but miss out on the benefits of a diverse population. But when you have a diverse population without enough law and order, then crime becomes the opportunity for many and then a way of life... and eventually it catches up with them and they do time.
It is really so stupid... liberals lament the incarceration rates and attack the foundations of law and order as being corrupt and that results in increased crime that isn't dealt with. If we want to decrease the incarceration rate would would have many more cops in these high crime areas to PREVENT crime, and very consistent and harsh punishment for crime that is the disincentive for people to commit crime.
We need other things too... like to reform the crappy public schools and get more manufacturing and other good-paying jobs to the labor surplus areas. We need to stop flooding the nation with illegal immigrants that compete for the too low supply of family-sustaining resources that low socioeconomic people already struggle with. I don't care that your housekeeper costs more.
Singapore does not have near the percentage of people incarcerated because the people living in Singapore no better than to misbehave.
This we need to talk about paragraph by paragraph. I know many white people also Malaysians/Chinese who live in Singapore. They live very well (compared with the rest of the world) but it is a Capitalist cum facist regime. It looks like America in the 50's and 60's to me. However it is easy to walk around Singapore (similar to China) where you are not fearful of rape(as a woman) or murder. However, If you have a good Justice system (not the case in the US) fines and incarceration can be quite mild.
In Singapore if I remember correctly they have cheap housing for disadvantaged immigrants. IT is possible that these people work harder to get out of cheap housing.........it seems to work.
However Singapore relies on people buying goods. IF people do not buy, then the whole system dies. NOT dissimilar to how the US worked?
I believe that Singapore relied on immigrants to make the market grow. Which every Country now refutes.
Immigrants want to buy and become part of the system.
It's a NO win situation in the end unless you allow the original citizens some rights?
What I see in Singapore is a 'huge bubble' about to burst because immigrants work harder than most indigenous people.
Singapore cannot keep going without killing the natural habitat they once had.
1984 and before it was the most beautiful verdant country. Now it is nothing but shopping malls where you freeze to death from air- conditioning.
I spent time trying to find the real Singapore which I had known since I was a child in Sri Lanka. I worked hard to get on a train to go and find an 'old dragon' kiln. (Old Chinese way of making mass pottery for households). I found it in the end. It was squashed between high rise apartments and more shopping malls I doubt it exists anymore.
I have not been to Singapore yet, so I cannot comment on what the country has become relative to the past, but I do note in you a common, and not so very virtuous, reactionary aesthetic twitch prevalent in my upper class friends and family. I find that with my liberal friends they lack self-awareness about it or otherwise just deny they have it. And they lack visualization capability other than what is fatalistic. The liberal nimbys in my city opposed a change to the general plan that would allow up to 5-story buildings downtown because they fatalistically imagined it would destroy the aesthetics of the downtown. I came to the full-to-capacity with opposition planning commission meeting with large boards with photos of old European cities with their core area filled with five and six story buildings and narrow streets. It had a positive impact that resulted in a compromise of up to 4-story buildings (the NIMBYs wanted it to remain at 3 stories.) Of course these are the same NIMBYs that will not allow peripheral development either.
We see similar behavior with respect to nature... the liberals seem to have a problem in every case where people and civilization develop... like it is an assault to their senses... as if they themselves are magic people that live in communal hemp huts powered by sunlight and wind and subsisting on sustainable rodents and tubers.
Singapore is a place where the standard of living for millions has ben raised. You seem to want it back to when it was a backwater rural territory where people starved... but it looked really cool as a more natural land.
Liz talks about giving elderly black prisoners, many with LWOP sentences, "a chance to come home". This strikes me as a very odd comment. Does she realize that most of them likely had no home to begin with...much less to "come home" to?
I suppose if you are a privileged white girl who went to a predominately white law school and probably lives in a predominately white neighborhood, you would be inclined to make such a comment. She is correct in pointing out the straight line between the history of slavery in the U.S. and today's prison industrial complex. However, I believe it would be far more logical to resolve the missing job and housing elements for this segment of the population before advocating to return to them to something they never had. In other, she she appears to be putting the cart before the horse with her socially privileged thinking.
The mass incarceration industry is and has moved into Latin America.
As 'libertarian' governments, read fascist, gain control in much of Latin America, their plan for youth and surplus labor in Latin America is in virtual harmony.
The Israelis have done such a good job over the last 75 years in containing, murdering, repressing, beating and imprisoning Palestinians that they have become one of the most brutal and dangerous militarist countries in the world: and they are for sale.
They are one of the top ten military contractors in the world and have worked since last century in Latin America training death squads, as in Argentina and especially in Colombia, where the carnage was despicable, for decades.
They are also the new managerial class within the national prison system in Ecuador.
Ecuador: Collaboration with Israel for Prison Reforms
"As part of a comprehensive response to escalating crime and violence, particularly within the prison system, newly elected, 35 year old billionaire, Daniel Noboa has unveiled a robust plan for what he calls ‘prison reform’.
In a strategic alliance, Israel is set to provide technical assistance to help Ecuador regain control over its tumultuous prisons, notorious for violence and disorder.
This international partnership aims to bring about a paradigm shift in the Ecuadorian prison system, restoring law and order."
The Financialization of Collateralized Men and Women -- 'Los degradables'
Once built, you can bet the prison will no doubt be sold to Corrections Co. of America or some such predatory outfit which trades on the NY stock exchange --- bodies for cash.
The reason given will be efficiency and saving on state costs.
Incarceration, like war, is a thriving business or what William I. Robinson calls a form of 'repressive capital accumulation' and seems to be the immediate future of financialized capitalism.
The private Israeli control of prisons will remain in Ecuador, however, for they will be the managerial or custodial body that governs the gulags that dot not just Ecuador, but Latin America.
That is the plan.
The El Salvadorization of Ecuador?
And yes, the prison reform promises to be robust, indeed.
It’s purpose will be to lock-up and manage as many young, surplus laborers as possible under the auspices of fighting terrorism and drug trafficking, a nauseatingly familiar narrative employed from time memorial.
For those readers who have been watching or paying attention, all of this is keeping with what is transpiring in the tiny central American country of El Salvador.
Bukele is the first president of Latin America to take the Super-maximum highway as an answer to rising crime, poverty, sickness, unemployment and violence --- in other words, failed capitalism.
Buekele boasted it only took him nine months to build his super-maximum prison to satisfy the hoi polloi.
Noboa deftly claims he can do the same in eight months, obviously as a stunt to assure his re-election in 2025.
Monsoon, thank you for the very informative links you provided. I'm transcribing part of the Israel-Mossad-Colombia genocide investigation:
"Involved in Israeli espionage since the establishment of the state, Eitan is primarily remembered for capturing the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. However, he also played a central role in several of the Mossad’s most unsavory operations. “All intelligence work is a partnership with crime. Morals are put aside,” Eitan once remarked.
During a 1983 Mossad mission in the United States, he disguised himself as an assistant prosecutor in the Israeli Ministry of Justice and met with the inventor of the PROMIS surveillance software. After a visit to the Department of Justice, Eitan obtained the software and had an Israeli working in Silicon Valley install a backdoor in the program. Fellow Mossad agent Robert Maxwell, (father of Ghislaine Maxwell, the notorious child sex trafficker and partner-in-crime of Jeffrey Epstein), sold the PROMIS technology to dozens of countries around the world, including Colombia. This gave Israel unfettered access to intelligence the program collected in every country using it, friend and foe alike.
In 1985, Eitan initiated a spying operation on Israel’s top ally, the United States. Eitan’s team recruited Jonathan Pollard, the Jewish-American Naval Intelligence Service analyst, who went on to deliver 800 classified military intelligence documents relating to military capabilities of Arab states, Pakistan and the Soviet Union. Seymour Hersh reported that the documents on U.S. intelligence capabilities were passed on to the Soviet Union in exchange for release of Soviet Jewry.
According to a declassified CIA damage assessment, Eitan urged Pollard to obtain material on signals intelligence and “dirt on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States, and any information on U.S. intelligence operations targeted against Israel.” According to a court document, Pollard refused some of Eitan’s requests “because he suspected that Eitan would use such studies for improper political blackmail.”
The discovery of the spying operation landed Pollard in prison. U.S. federal prosecutors named Eitan as one of four co-conspirators but declined to file charges. With Eitan at the center of a national embarrassment, he returned to Israel, never to set foot again in the U.S."
Your comment is spot on and very appropriate. the dots are out there and have been connected by many but repeating the truth and not lies is what is needed.
" During a 1983 Mossad mission in the United States, he disguised himself as an assistant prosecutor in the Israeli Ministry of Justice and met with the inventor of the PROMIS surveillance software. After a visit to the Department of Justice, Eitan obtained the software and had an Israeli working in Silicon Valley install a backdoor in the program. Fellow Mossad agent Robert Maxwell, (father of Ghislaine Maxwell, the notorious child sex trafficker and partner-in-crime of Jeffrey Epstein), sold the PROMIS technology to dozens of countries around the world, including Colombia. "
Indeed. Eitan is much like Kissinger who said had he not been born Jewish he would have been a Nazi.
These are what are called in investigations into dark circles like Mossad and Maxwell et. al. Bormann Jews, for Martin Bormann would regularly use Jews in Germany and especially when it was time for the German fortune to be sent to Argentina, et. al.
It is said that after the Eichmann capture and trial that Israel promised not to hunt down Nazi war criminals in Latin America.
Thus we got Klaus Barbie in Bolivia and Bolsonaro in Brazil, fascists.
Israel fascists, for Israel is a theocratic fascist state, has worked with the worst of the worst, supplying torture techniques and training for they are really not a country but a US warship or satellite.
“Frank Lee” again confirming her racist bias and practicing her unsubstantiated phrenology, accusing people worked to the bone under capitalism and still unable to make ends meet in America of crime caused by a lack of patriotism, even though they may have walked to America to take part... ‘cos y’all ain’t from ‘round heeuh in Georgia, so you cain’t pahssibly love Americuh...
This despite coming from a nation of immigrants whom she believes somehow less brutally than elsewhere shoved the surviving natives onto dry desolate reservations when previously they had pulled huge salmon from the rivers to feed themselves. This form of social coercion is elsewhere called apartheid, and its white instigators breached even those corrals when minerals were found on them, while going on with variously raping and lynching their black slaves, the Americans By Demand who didn’t agree to be taken there.
It’s very telling that her forensic search for non-white crime extends to France.
“Frank Lee”, it is poverty and hopeless lives h def exploitation and contempt, most recently set to the default value system displayed on the walls by advertising that causes crime. You have no shame. People like you have followed Trump’s promise that he will give you all the kingdoms of the world if you will just bow down and worship him. He it was who took out a full page advertisement and called for the execution of the seven black teenagers who were in Central Park when a murder was discovered; and they were all innocent.
The “unproductive” French you mentioned have somehow failed to besiege themselves with their own guns, don’t have so many Israeli cousins, and consequently have fewer obligations to meet with their disposable incomes, which is probably why they don’t need to produce as much, nor hate and blame people as much as as you do yourself.
Thank you for your always insightful coverage! The discussion of policing brings to mind a piece published by your former colleagues this week, observing a set of problems (particularly with police body cameras) that we advocates have been raising for over a decade. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/the-new-york-times-shows-upa-decade
It’s so important to talk about this. It’s amazing to see that a nation gets away with such barbaric behaviour. They actually create the next generation of prisoners with policies intended to undermine any chance of getting ahead in impoverished communities. If that wasn’t bad enough, the fact that the system is set up like this for profit makes it inhumane.
The United States, like it's Zionist pal in the Middle East, is a country in which racism is foundational. As Liz Komar observes, there is a through-line from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration. America's capitalist system punishes the working class, poor, and black or brown. It's an exclusionary system that is designed to benefit the wealthy and mostly white population. Barak Obama, a token black member of the ruling class, embodied the elite's views on governance as much as George W. Bush. Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow should be required reading in highschools, but that would undermine a "justice" and carceral machine than runs smoothly because so many Americans are apathetic or oblivious to it's existence. This is a nation that lacks compassion for it's human refuse; instead resenting reminders of an unjust system and it's casualties.
OK, Frank let us do this one more time for raders:
I see you are ideologically programmed to attack the remedy and support the enemy. You are not unlike many.
when you say remedy what do you mean and what remedy have I attacked and why do you think I have been programmed?
The education system, media and algorithms have done a number on your head.
Do you have any evidence for this claim or is this an assumption and if t is the latter can you explain the role of the algorithims and how they have affected my thinking?
All of those leader you claim are fascists are against the globalist corporatocracy... the REAL neofascist movement.
I did claim it and I gave evidence do you want more evidence Frank?
Nationalism with global trade is the ticket. Capitalism and communitarianism.
Capitalism came out of war it is hierarchical not based n meritocracy disdains competition and is failing all over the world.
How does capitalism create community Frank?
Globalism is a bust.
What do you mean a 'bust?.
It is going away because the US can no longer afford to keep funding it.
So are you saying globalism is funded by the US exclusively?
The Wall-Street / WEF globalist cabal is trying to keep the US spending into a larger debt hole so the cabal can keep raking in the loot.
Really, do you have any evidence for this claim? Can you explain the 'caba'?
Read "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" by Peter Zeihan The old Bretton Woods Global Order is ending because it was never sustainable. There are going to be a lot of people starving in the coming years. It will not be the people of the US though.
OK, so you suggest I read something othe than what you have written?
See Frank and I hope others can see, you use language believing everyone has the same definitions. They don't. i would suggest when using terms you define them, give us examples of what you mean and evidence for you definitions.
You make assumptions that one would assume you do not know you even make. Assumptions about me, algorithims, globalism, cabals, education and that is good: they are claims.
but you never give any evidence, Frank for what you say you believe.
You only give us ideas of what to read or to read your material.
You come to conclusions about people and issues based on those unexamined and unproved assumptions and that is dangerous.
For me, this has shown, and it is not the first time, that critical thinking is really dead in America and fallacious thinking and the values of selfishness and egocentricity rule.
And that is not surprising. For as Marx noted:
"The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class."
Fallacious thinking abounds. Do not fal prey to the Machiavellians.
The Social and Psychological Roots of Machiavellian Thinking and Sophistic Thought
"For as we have said, the art of the sophist is a money-making art which trades on apparent wisdom, and so sophists aim at apparent proof, for sophistry is an appearance of wisdom without reality." ---
(Quoted from Aristotle's On Sophistical Refutations, 171b32-7. Tr. E. S. Forster. Loeb Classical Library Vol. 400 (Harvard, 1955. P. 63)
Chris Hedges: Once again an interview both interesting and, because it’s so true, very moving. I don’t know how many have been in jail. I have. I spent Thanksgiving there one year because of a spiteful neighbor. No big deal for me, really, but I spoke to a kid who had jumped a turnstile, and missed the Holiday with his Grandmother. And when he called her she had to pay $5. for the local call. Everything is as you say. It truly is war against the poor. Remember Dostoyevsky. This is the twisted, rotting, soul of corporate America. But let’s not forget that very few people care. This makes them feel safe.
Well hell yes! I have been hoping you would tackle this subject! I doubt this is the first time you have, but I myself just got turned on to you & your important AF work just in the past year.
I myself did 5 in the feds for drug manufacturering & distribution.
Much love and respect to you for what you do for those men in Jersey.
This country is a mess, you get limited opportunities when you get out, and they drug test you in order to get SNAP OR GA, if you fail you lose benefits for 10 years, so they get the opportunity to no longer provide you food stamps, and starve you if you fail a drug test. Quite a price to pay for drug addiction, and this drug testing goes on for 10 years after release, so long after you are off parole you can still be pissing in a bottle just for food stamps. I am not a fan of America. I recall someone, saying I was just bitter about poor choices I had made. Maybe some truth to that but not a lot.
I would be angry about this system even if I myself had never been thru it, as I care about other human beings.
Thank you for writing this. I do not live in the US. BUT I did.
I have never come across a nation that incarcerates people before they are found guilty. It's Banana Republic Authoritarianism.
The problem with the US is that the Supreme Court is not separate from Politics/Congress.
I really do not understand (I live in France) how the judicial system is controlled? It should have nothing to do with politics.
Jenny, I think the judicial system is controlled because the majority of the judges are nominated and approved by the politicians. That is why we have a Supreme court dominated by nominees from Bush and Trump.
Julio.I just said this!
It's a fucking mess, their appointment should not be picked by presidents, ensuring they will be loyal to the partisan shit the president who elected them.
And their power is far too much!
No that you say you are in France, I have even more respect for the
Why aren't y'all in the streets?
It actually works well there! And all sides come out, as they did recently over the retirement age. I respect that about y'all 💯
It still matters here, everywhere! But y'all have good results when the number of protesters are high
Politics is about 'power'.
Judicial courts wield power.
There is no such thing as an objective Court.
All courts are biased, the issue is suspending bias in favor of a fair hearing or putting ones' judgment on probation until all the facts are in.
but we live within history and so does the law.
the US is a victim and user of weaponized law or what is called lawfare.
You can look it up.
The entire Constitution of the US must be re-written and the fascists know this, this is what they are preparing for a Constitutional Convention to do just that.
In Latin America Constitutions are re-written.
But not in the United Snakes of America where profit always comes before justice.
Bourgeois democracy has failed for it is tied to capitalism also a failure.
We need a new economic model and accompanying institutions.
Maybe you should familiarize yourself with Israel. They have thousands of Palestinians (many being children) incarcerated not only without being found guilty of any legal offense, but being held captive (in many cases for years) without even being charged.
Yes I know this. So what are you saying?
I feel that a requirement to justice is to have a true democracy which we have not enjoyed.
Democracies are not possible under capitalism. Capitalists make decisions not the people. A profit before people system cannot have a democracy. too messy.
Agreed with this qualification, profit seeking, and competitive enterprise are in my opinion essential factors for the well-being of a nation, but with a strict control by the government to stop abuses that harm the community. In most of Europe there is a healthy capitalism (that our greedy billionaires label socialism) that has not interfered with free higher education and health care for most of their inhabitants.
Julio, what you describe is FDR's plan for the US back in the 1930's, a form of social democracy much like Europe HAD.
And it failed. Why?
Capitalism is a criminal enterprise and you cannot regulate a criminal enterprise.
Take Glass Steagal. Put in place under Social democracy FDR style.
Taken down by Clinton a democrat or servant of donors.
No, capitalism cannot be part of the mix. We must leave behind this epoch of domination:
Master-Slave, Lord-Serf, Industrial capitalist - wage slave
And now a new form of ugly medievalism is emerging.
You cannot regulate a criminal enterprise and this is what monopoly capitalism is.
For as Warren Buffet noted rightly: "It's a class struggle and my class is winning."
Yes, but the FDR's plan in Europe has succeeded. And yes, we cannot regulate a criminal enterprise like our predatory capitalism, so the solution is to eliminate it by no voting for bribed politicians and elect in their posts true Americans that will work for turning our economic system into a healthy social democracy with free enterprise. This requires a constant effort from our part, after all the FDR plan worked for a while until we succumbed to the pressures of our billionaires.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." -Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, 12 September 1777
The FDR plan failed for it was capitalism. Regulated? For awhile until FDR's death.
It was beaten, as the social democracies have been laid to rest in Europe, as it was in Germany under Weimar.
Capitalism is the problem and the solution is structural change and voting is a defelction.
I am afraid, and this is my opinion, that within the Imperial Core, there can be no meaningful change.
The change that is necessary will come from the Global south, as it should for see in the global south they do not fool around with democrats or faux socialists: it is fascism or socialism and the lines are clearly drawn.
In the Empire, and most Americans do not even think or know they live in an Empire, capitalism is now a religion.
What we can expect to see in the US is the rise of theological fascism, austerity, tax breaks for corporations, free zones, debt, see the country is dying from within, not just through military spending.
Military Keynsianism along with shipping factories overseas left America with a quandry.
The rich know this. they ar the most organized ruling class in history.
It is the average American, the worker in the US that does not understand that you cannot regulate capitalism, that it is not up to electing heroes and villains that the problem lies at the root of the accumulation process -- capitalism.
Here is one example of what millennial women are facing:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/12/16/jigu-d16.html
And the mortality rate is up, meaning we live less time than our parents.
No, this global system of terrorist-global-financial capitalist system must be stopped.
As to Europe?
Social democracy?
Please do some research on Holland, Germany, France, Greece, Italy and Spain. they are all now part of the international fascist movement and ys, there is an international fascist movement.
Just look who attended the inauguration of Milei the new fascist president of Argentina.
OK. we can name the new system required for our progress as we wish. I call it a mix system of capitalist enterprise because usually the virtue is in the middle, we have to choose the gray zone between a black crude capitalism and pure socialism. The problem is how. save a civil war or a revolution that usually brings unexpected results, can we achieve our goals other than with electing the right leaders.
Yes, we can expect a bleak near future if we don't act now. The Christian right is implementing a fascist theocracy which is the worst of all.
Which is why the Judiciary should be separate from Politics?
Here in the US, it is separated in theory but that is just a myth. In our plutocracy the billionaires make the rules by controlling the congress and the judiciary. The result is that our jails are full of minorities that commit minor felonies and completely absent of the many tax evaders and white-collar criminals. We only need to look at the records of our presidents and leaders to realize that our system needs to be changed.
Julio ............democracy is NOT working!
If not for mass criminality there would be no reason for mass incarceration.
Frank! When the French Revolution happened it was because the rich had enough to eat + VERY important the Justice system did not work!
Since then the Justice system in France is SEPARATE from politics!
Nothing is separate from politics.
Partially correct. But at least acknowledge there can be differences.
Your SC is ruled by whatever party is in at the time and since they are both corrupt I would suggest looking at this a different way instead of coming up with a 'one liner.' This might be the way you deal with politics in the 'great democracy' but it is NOT the way other countries deal with it. We have political discussions/ordinary people. It seems Americans cannot do this!
How many countries have you attacked and subverted in the name of 'democracy?'
I live in France and I know the French had an Empire as did Spain/Germany etc and as for the British!
In this time NOW we are speaking about American Justice.
There is no such thing as American justice. As a public interest attorney for more than 47 years, state and federal, I can tell you there is not one ounce of justice in either criminal or civil court.
American Justice is a TV program or was.
No, what we have in America is a cruel chamber of business interests that decide law through case law.
their appointments for life as federal judges is a crime in and of itself.
their campaign contributions to run for Judge is a crime in and of itself, it is bribery.
And if you are black or brown, forget it.
You'll be pled out or bled out.
Sorry, no justice here unless you are Mark Rich or Michael Milken who got presidential pardons.
but that is injustice?
Yikes!
"Your SC is ruled by whatever party is in at the time."
Not true. The Supreme Court, and the entire US federal population of justices and judges are an independent branch of the government. The point you are missing is that each individual justice or judge can bring their own political bias to their decisions. They are not supposed to, and some are corrupt in how far they take it to be activists and not real jurists, but all of them inject politics into their decisions because politics shapes individual moral views.
Politics are always a factor in the court decisions because politics are ubiquitous.
Just look at the American process for local district attorneys. They are elected by the voting population and generally independent from the political parties, but often ideologically aligned with one party over the other.
Conservative-leaning justices and judges tend to be less ideologically biased because conservatives by definition have a broader inventory of moral filters (i.e. Haidt) that include, for example, sanctity of law. Left-leaning people on the bench tend to give higher value to consideration of fairness and harm and will dismiss other moral considerations. Thus the decisions of left-leaning justices more often drift from the high standards for objective jurisprudence and can appear to be activism from the bench.
SO how come I watched Anita Hill being interrogated by Congress AND Biden alongside them.
They did not believe her but they appointed Clarence Thomas?
This is NOT separation of the SC!
A good example. It should be so obvious that America is a gulag with many gulags.
how can people even argue this separation of powers crap?
Washington Irving would be proud.
Anita Hill was never materially harmed by anything Clarence Thomas was accused of doing. She was and is a vulnerable narcissist and the exploitation of her was 100% political.
Once upon a time people believed that: "Not true. The Supreme Court, and the entire US federal population of justices and judges are an independent branch of the government.
right out of a grade school primer, no offense.
I too have taught murderers in prison and have been a public interest lawyer for 47 years.
You really think the judicial system is not politicized?
Come on.
So true. But if one is limited in their understanding of power as institutional power only, then they miss the boat.
Power is built into all social relations, it is just not seen or often not known,.
The most political institution is the Court.
It levies decisions that change power relations and no one gets to the court starting out as a shoe shine boy or baby sitter.
Privilege, corruption (See our Supreme Court) 'grease' is what gets one on any Court in any country in the world.
And if it wasn't for an economic system that put people before profit there would be less misery and obviously less injustice and mass incarceration.
You don't see Norway or Denmark or Sweden locking up as many people do you?
Why?
Oh geeze. The Norway, Demark, Sweden comparison is so void of intellectual depth it is laughable. Why don't you move there then?
They are the size of Wisconsin, culturally and ethically homogenous and have nothing at all in common with crime-infested US where we keep bringing people in and let the uppity left and radical socioeconomic malcontents in academia and the media keep telling them that the country they call home sucks and victimizes them at every step.
When people are taught to hate their country they don't care about the other people in the country and they go crime crazy. THAT is the difference between the Scandinavian countries and the US. The average northern European is rooted there, loves their country and do not do near the crime because it is like crapping in their own house.
Love of Country! Petty nationalism and you missed the point: capitalism is the problem and Scandinavia though capitalist, is social democratic capitalist like the New Deal. This of course will vanish in face of nationalism, love of country, and shameful ties to the US.
Why don't I move there? Because I already live outside of the United Snakes of America and have no need.
Why you do not move there or somewhere else: probably because your broke. Well go after the cultural identity thing and find yourself boca a bajo en la cale.
The Scandinavian countries are the most capitalist-loving of all Europe.
Hilarious that you type your malcontent criticism of capitalism on that marvelous machine that would not exist without it.
The problem isn't capitalism, it is corporatism. It is the global corporatocracy. I am guessing that your voting record has been is support of those things.
The bottom line is that the Bretton Woods Global Order is unraveling because it was never sustainable for the US to prop up the rest of the world on the backs of the US working class and poor. This will result in those Scandinavian countries struggling because they don't have the self-sufficient resources to keep up their rich social programs as they will have to defend themselves.
I am a well off American patriot that came from nothing to a good middle-class life... a poor and uneducated family... that knows I am lucky to live in the still best country on God's green earth. If you don't live here then you lack credibility for that level of criticism. My guess is where you live has been made livable by the generosity, blood and tears of Americans. But you keep up your mythology that you are better.
"The problem isn't capitalism, it is corporatism.".
fifty percent of problem solving is defining the problem and if this is your definition of the problem then you fail to see how corporatism arises from capitalism as a stage. We are now in the stage of financial capitalism and this means we are beyond corporatism we are within cartelism.
All of this is an outgrowth of the capitalist system and if one does not understand how capitalism works then they will fall for things like:
the problem is crony capitalism
the problem is corporatism
the problem is corruption
the problem is regulated or unregulated captialism and on and on.
The problem is the economic system we call capitalism and you can put any adject in front of it but it is the same.
A hierarchy of economic and social oppression and imperialism.
That is the system, runn by a small ruling elite who HATE competition and LOVE the corporate state.
No going back to flea market capitalism.
Can't barter your way out of this crisis.
“Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.”
----- Vladimir Lenin
You need to read Adam Smith and others that explain what capitalism is and is not.
https://socialmisfit.substack.com/p/the-dangerous-corruptors-of-capitalism
WHY Frank is there so much more 'criminality' in the US?
Is it because your system is defunct? ie you have no welfare system to speak of or is it that Americans are just more ugly than other countries?
The New Deal was repealed, the safety net was replaced by the dragnet.
"The hardest thing for people to do is change their mind." Mary Shelly author of Frankenstein.
We go on, Ripley
"The hardest thing for people to do is change their mind." Mary Shelly author of Frankenstein.
We go on, Ripley
It is because the US does not have enough law enforcement in the high crime areas, and the fact that the US is non-homogenous with a large immigrant culture and a very wide class gap that is the result of the extremely high immigration flow of primarily poor and uneducated contrasting with the large professional class for which the working and lower class cannot break into for a number of reasons... most that are simply a function of a high-level market meritocracy, but some are structural like the crappy public schools that Democrats and their political benefactors, teachers unions, defend to maintain that status quo.
The US has a much larger population of people that don't have the personal capability to perform at a level required to stay above the baseline for socioeconomic self-sufficiency because that line is higher than it is in, for example, France.
France is not a very productive country. It's GDP per capita is about half that of the US. The US is the third largest country in terms of population... and no other large country comes close to the per capita production of the US. For example, the US is about $80,000 in GDP per capita, while China is $12,700 and India is $2,388. France is about $40,000. But France is 68 million in population compared to 332 million in the US. Populations are concentrated in the big cities and that is where most crime happens. The US just has much larger concentrations of people in low socioeconomic circumstances and more that don't care so much about the US because they are still aligned with their home country and culture. People that don't care about their country also don't care about their community... and will be more prone to crime that they can get away with.
France is also more brutal to non-French poor immigrants than is the US brutal to its non-English speaking poor immigrants. And crime by immigrants is over 50% of total crime in France which confirms my explanation for US crime.
However, I think a better comparison than France is Singapore except for its population numbers (it is about the population of Wisconsin). It has a very diverse population and its GDP per capita is stronger than the US. Why does Singapore have such low relative crime?
This is the libertarian argument: we need more prisons, we need more police, we need more guns, we need more security, surveillance, etc.
this is fascism in the mind, not the body politic, the mind and is why there is little chance in America.
Between free market fantasizing and hatred for 'the other' the US is condemned to war.
the mass psychology of fascism.
I have been to Singapore many times. Do you not remember the American guy who brought 'pot' into Singapore from Malaysia. This is death penalty stuff or flogging.
That is why you have so little crime in Singapore.
Bingo. And ordered and well run society requires homogenous culture where people care about each other and don't harm each other, or strict laws and consistent punishment. When you have both of those things you have a lot of order but miss out on the benefits of a diverse population. But when you have a diverse population without enough law and order, then crime becomes the opportunity for many and then a way of life... and eventually it catches up with them and they do time.
It is really so stupid... liberals lament the incarceration rates and attack the foundations of law and order as being corrupt and that results in increased crime that isn't dealt with. If we want to decrease the incarceration rate would would have many more cops in these high crime areas to PREVENT crime, and very consistent and harsh punishment for crime that is the disincentive for people to commit crime.
We need other things too... like to reform the crappy public schools and get more manufacturing and other good-paying jobs to the labor surplus areas. We need to stop flooding the nation with illegal immigrants that compete for the too low supply of family-sustaining resources that low socioeconomic people already struggle with. I don't care that your housekeeper costs more.
Singapore does not have near the percentage of people incarcerated because the people living in Singapore no better than to misbehave.
OH WOW Frank.
This we need to talk about paragraph by paragraph. I know many white people also Malaysians/Chinese who live in Singapore. They live very well (compared with the rest of the world) but it is a Capitalist cum facist regime. It looks like America in the 50's and 60's to me. However it is easy to walk around Singapore (similar to China) where you are not fearful of rape(as a woman) or murder. However, If you have a good Justice system (not the case in the US) fines and incarceration can be quite mild.
In Singapore if I remember correctly they have cheap housing for disadvantaged immigrants. IT is possible that these people work harder to get out of cheap housing.........it seems to work.
However Singapore relies on people buying goods. IF people do not buy, then the whole system dies. NOT dissimilar to how the US worked?
I believe that Singapore relied on immigrants to make the market grow. Which every Country now refutes.
Immigrants want to buy and become part of the system.
It's a NO win situation in the end unless you allow the original citizens some rights?
What I see in Singapore is a 'huge bubble' about to burst because immigrants work harder than most indigenous people.
Singapore cannot keep going without killing the natural habitat they once had.
1984 and before it was the most beautiful verdant country. Now it is nothing but shopping malls where you freeze to death from air- conditioning.
I spent time trying to find the real Singapore which I had known since I was a child in Sri Lanka. I worked hard to get on a train to go and find an 'old dragon' kiln. (Old Chinese way of making mass pottery for households). I found it in the end. It was squashed between high rise apartments and more shopping malls I doubt it exists anymore.
It is a small USA.
I have not been to Singapore yet, so I cannot comment on what the country has become relative to the past, but I do note in you a common, and not so very virtuous, reactionary aesthetic twitch prevalent in my upper class friends and family. I find that with my liberal friends they lack self-awareness about it or otherwise just deny they have it. And they lack visualization capability other than what is fatalistic. The liberal nimbys in my city opposed a change to the general plan that would allow up to 5-story buildings downtown because they fatalistically imagined it would destroy the aesthetics of the downtown. I came to the full-to-capacity with opposition planning commission meeting with large boards with photos of old European cities with their core area filled with five and six story buildings and narrow streets. It had a positive impact that resulted in a compromise of up to 4-story buildings (the NIMBYs wanted it to remain at 3 stories.) Of course these are the same NIMBYs that will not allow peripheral development either.
We see similar behavior with respect to nature... the liberals seem to have a problem in every case where people and civilization develop... like it is an assault to their senses... as if they themselves are magic people that live in communal hemp huts powered by sunlight and wind and subsisting on sustainable rodents and tubers.
Singapore is a place where the standard of living for millions has ben raised. You seem to want it back to when it was a backwater rural territory where people starved... but it looked really cool as a more natural land.
Liz talks about giving elderly black prisoners, many with LWOP sentences, "a chance to come home". This strikes me as a very odd comment. Does she realize that most of them likely had no home to begin with...much less to "come home" to?
I suppose if you are a privileged white girl who went to a predominately white law school and probably lives in a predominately white neighborhood, you would be inclined to make such a comment. She is correct in pointing out the straight line between the history of slavery in the U.S. and today's prison industrial complex. However, I believe it would be far more logical to resolve the missing job and housing elements for this segment of the population before advocating to return to them to something they never had. In other, she she appears to be putting the cart before the horse with her socially privileged thinking.
The mass incarceration industry is and has moved into Latin America.
As 'libertarian' governments, read fascist, gain control in much of Latin America, their plan for youth and surplus labor in Latin America is in virtual harmony.
The Israelis have done such a good job over the last 75 years in containing, murdering, repressing, beating and imprisoning Palestinians that they have become one of the most brutal and dangerous militarist countries in the world: and they are for sale.
They are one of the top ten military contractors in the world and have worked since last century in Latin America training death squads, as in Argentina and especially in Colombia, where the carnage was despicable, for decades.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/investigation-israel-mossad-colombia-genocide-rafael-eitan/277499/
They are also the new managerial class within the national prison system in Ecuador.
Ecuador: Collaboration with Israel for Prison Reforms
"As part of a comprehensive response to escalating crime and violence, particularly within the prison system, newly elected, 35 year old billionaire, Daniel Noboa has unveiled a robust plan for what he calls ‘prison reform’.
In a strategic alliance, Israel is set to provide technical assistance to help Ecuador regain control over its tumultuous prisons, notorious for violence and disorder.
This international partnership aims to bring about a paradigm shift in the Ecuadorian prison system, restoring law and order."
https://bnnbreaking.com/breaking-news/crime/ecuadors-battle-against-organized-crime-peace-talks-prison-reforms-and-more/
The Financialization of Collateralized Men and Women -- 'Los degradables'
Once built, you can bet the prison will no doubt be sold to Corrections Co. of America or some such predatory outfit which trades on the NY stock exchange --- bodies for cash.
The reason given will be efficiency and saving on state costs.
Incarceration, like war, is a thriving business or what William I. Robinson calls a form of 'repressive capital accumulation' and seems to be the immediate future of financialized capitalism.
The private Israeli control of prisons will remain in Ecuador, however, for they will be the managerial or custodial body that governs the gulags that dot not just Ecuador, but Latin America.
That is the plan.
The El Salvadorization of Ecuador?
And yes, the prison reform promises to be robust, indeed.
It’s purpose will be to lock-up and manage as many young, surplus laborers as possible under the auspices of fighting terrorism and drug trafficking, a nauseatingly familiar narrative employed from time memorial.
For those readers who have been watching or paying attention, all of this is keeping with what is transpiring in the tiny central American country of El Salvador.
El Salvador has jailed 1.6% of its population under President Nayib Bukele's unprecedented gang crackdown and the country Is Imprisoning People at Triple the Rate of the US (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-12/el-salvador-jails-1-6-of-population-in-crime-crackdown)
Bukele is the first president of Latin America to take the Super-maximum highway as an answer to rising crime, poverty, sickness, unemployment and violence --- in other words, failed capitalism.
Buekele boasted it only took him nine months to build his super-maximum prison to satisfy the hoi polloi.
Noboa deftly claims he can do the same in eight months, obviously as a stunt to assure his re-election in 2025.
Monsoon, thank you for the very informative links you provided. I'm transcribing part of the Israel-Mossad-Colombia genocide investigation:
"Involved in Israeli espionage since the establishment of the state, Eitan is primarily remembered for capturing the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. However, he also played a central role in several of the Mossad’s most unsavory operations. “All intelligence work is a partnership with crime. Morals are put aside,” Eitan once remarked.
During a 1983 Mossad mission in the United States, he disguised himself as an assistant prosecutor in the Israeli Ministry of Justice and met with the inventor of the PROMIS surveillance software. After a visit to the Department of Justice, Eitan obtained the software and had an Israeli working in Silicon Valley install a backdoor in the program. Fellow Mossad agent Robert Maxwell, (father of Ghislaine Maxwell, the notorious child sex trafficker and partner-in-crime of Jeffrey Epstein), sold the PROMIS technology to dozens of countries around the world, including Colombia. This gave Israel unfettered access to intelligence the program collected in every country using it, friend and foe alike.
In 1985, Eitan initiated a spying operation on Israel’s top ally, the United States. Eitan’s team recruited Jonathan Pollard, the Jewish-American Naval Intelligence Service analyst, who went on to deliver 800 classified military intelligence documents relating to military capabilities of Arab states, Pakistan and the Soviet Union. Seymour Hersh reported that the documents on U.S. intelligence capabilities were passed on to the Soviet Union in exchange for release of Soviet Jewry.
According to a declassified CIA damage assessment, Eitan urged Pollard to obtain material on signals intelligence and “dirt on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States, and any information on U.S. intelligence operations targeted against Israel.” According to a court document, Pollard refused some of Eitan’s requests “because he suspected that Eitan would use such studies for improper political blackmail.”
The discovery of the spying operation landed Pollard in prison. U.S. federal prosecutors named Eitan as one of four co-conspirators but declined to file charges. With Eitan at the center of a national embarrassment, he returned to Israel, never to set foot again in the U.S."
Your comment is spot on and very appropriate. the dots are out there and have been connected by many but repeating the truth and not lies is what is needed.
" During a 1983 Mossad mission in the United States, he disguised himself as an assistant prosecutor in the Israeli Ministry of Justice and met with the inventor of the PROMIS surveillance software. After a visit to the Department of Justice, Eitan obtained the software and had an Israeli working in Silicon Valley install a backdoor in the program. Fellow Mossad agent Robert Maxwell, (father of Ghislaine Maxwell, the notorious child sex trafficker and partner-in-crime of Jeffrey Epstein), sold the PROMIS technology to dozens of countries around the world, including Colombia. "
Indeed. Eitan is much like Kissinger who said had he not been born Jewish he would have been a Nazi.
These are what are called in investigations into dark circles like Mossad and Maxwell et. al. Bormann Jews, for Martin Bormann would regularly use Jews in Germany and especially when it was time for the German fortune to be sent to Argentina, et. al.
It is said that after the Eichmann capture and trial that Israel promised not to hunt down Nazi war criminals in Latin America.
Thus we got Klaus Barbie in Bolivia and Bolsonaro in Brazil, fascists.
Israel fascists, for Israel is a theocratic fascist state, has worked with the worst of the worst, supplying torture techniques and training for they are really not a country but a US warship or satellite.
“Frank Lee” again confirming her racist bias and practicing her unsubstantiated phrenology, accusing people worked to the bone under capitalism and still unable to make ends meet in America of crime caused by a lack of patriotism, even though they may have walked to America to take part... ‘cos y’all ain’t from ‘round heeuh in Georgia, so you cain’t pahssibly love Americuh...
This despite coming from a nation of immigrants whom she believes somehow less brutally than elsewhere shoved the surviving natives onto dry desolate reservations when previously they had pulled huge salmon from the rivers to feed themselves. This form of social coercion is elsewhere called apartheid, and its white instigators breached even those corrals when minerals were found on them, while going on with variously raping and lynching their black slaves, the Americans By Demand who didn’t agree to be taken there.
It’s very telling that her forensic search for non-white crime extends to France.
“Frank Lee”, it is poverty and hopeless lives h def exploitation and contempt, most recently set to the default value system displayed on the walls by advertising that causes crime. You have no shame. People like you have followed Trump’s promise that he will give you all the kingdoms of the world if you will just bow down and worship him. He it was who took out a full page advertisement and called for the execution of the seven black teenagers who were in Central Park when a murder was discovered; and they were all innocent.
The “unproductive” French you mentioned have somehow failed to besiege themselves with their own guns, don’t have so many Israeli cousins, and consequently have fewer obligations to meet with their disposable incomes, which is probably why they don’t need to produce as much, nor hate and blame people as much as as you do yourself.
Thank you for your always insightful coverage! The discussion of policing brings to mind a piece published by your former colleagues this week, observing a set of problems (particularly with police body cameras) that we advocates have been raising for over a decade. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/the-new-york-times-shows-upa-decade
A worthy read, Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising
https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=252
Staughton Lynd, RIP 2023.
Another American crisis simmers ignored by our distracted governing class fixated on foreign wars…
It’s so important to talk about this. It’s amazing to see that a nation gets away with such barbaric behaviour. They actually create the next generation of prisoners with policies intended to undermine any chance of getting ahead in impoverished communities. If that wasn’t bad enough, the fact that the system is set up like this for profit makes it inhumane.
The United States, like it's Zionist pal in the Middle East, is a country in which racism is foundational. As Liz Komar observes, there is a through-line from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration. America's capitalist system punishes the working class, poor, and black or brown. It's an exclusionary system that is designed to benefit the wealthy and mostly white population. Barak Obama, a token black member of the ruling class, embodied the elite's views on governance as much as George W. Bush. Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow should be required reading in highschools, but that would undermine a "justice" and carceral machine than runs smoothly because so many Americans are apathetic or oblivious to it's existence. This is a nation that lacks compassion for it's human refuse; instead resenting reminders of an unjust system and it's casualties.
OK, Frank let us do this one more time for raders:
I see you are ideologically programmed to attack the remedy and support the enemy. You are not unlike many.
when you say remedy what do you mean and what remedy have I attacked and why do you think I have been programmed?
The education system, media and algorithms have done a number on your head.
Do you have any evidence for this claim or is this an assumption and if t is the latter can you explain the role of the algorithims and how they have affected my thinking?
All of those leader you claim are fascists are against the globalist corporatocracy... the REAL neofascist movement.
I did claim it and I gave evidence do you want more evidence Frank?
Nationalism with global trade is the ticket. Capitalism and communitarianism.
Capitalism came out of war it is hierarchical not based n meritocracy disdains competition and is failing all over the world.
How does capitalism create community Frank?
Globalism is a bust.
What do you mean a 'bust?.
It is going away because the US can no longer afford to keep funding it.
So are you saying globalism is funded by the US exclusively?
The Wall-Street / WEF globalist cabal is trying to keep the US spending into a larger debt hole so the cabal can keep raking in the loot.
Really, do you have any evidence for this claim? Can you explain the 'caba'?
Read "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" by Peter Zeihan The old Bretton Woods Global Order is ending because it was never sustainable. There are going to be a lot of people starving in the coming years. It will not be the people of the US though.
OK, so you suggest I read something othe than what you have written?
See Frank and I hope others can see, you use language believing everyone has the same definitions. They don't. i would suggest when using terms you define them, give us examples of what you mean and evidence for you definitions.
You make assumptions that one would assume you do not know you even make. Assumptions about me, algorithims, globalism, cabals, education and that is good: they are claims.
but you never give any evidence, Frank for what you say you believe.
You only give us ideas of what to read or to read your material.
You come to conclusions about people and issues based on those unexamined and unproved assumptions and that is dangerous.
For me, this has shown, and it is not the first time, that critical thinking is really dead in America and fallacious thinking and the values of selfishness and egocentricity rule.
And that is not surprising. For as Marx noted:
"The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class."
Fallacious thinking abounds. Do not fal prey to the Machiavellians.
The Social and Psychological Roots of Machiavellian Thinking and Sophistic Thought
"For as we have said, the art of the sophist is a money-making art which trades on apparent wisdom, and so sophists aim at apparent proof, for sophistry is an appearance of wisdom without reality." ---
(Quoted from Aristotle's On Sophistical Refutations, 171b32-7. Tr. E. S. Forster. Loeb Classical Library Vol. 400 (Harvard, 1955. P. 63)
https://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Social-and-Psychologic-by-Danny-Weil-Belief_Beliefs_Deception_Delusion-141231-996.html
Is this podcast no longer on Apple Podcasts? Why can’t I find it?
Chris Hedges: Once again an interview both interesting and, because it’s so true, very moving. I don’t know how many have been in jail. I have. I spent Thanksgiving there one year because of a spiteful neighbor. No big deal for me, really, but I spoke to a kid who had jumped a turnstile, and missed the Holiday with his Grandmother. And when he called her she had to pay $5. for the local call. Everything is as you say. It truly is war against the poor. Remember Dostoyevsky. This is the twisted, rotting, soul of corporate America. But let’s not forget that very few people care. This makes them feel safe.
Well hell yes! I have been hoping you would tackle this subject! I doubt this is the first time you have, but I myself just got turned on to you & your important AF work just in the past year.
I myself did 5 in the feds for drug manufacturering & distribution.
Much love and respect to you for what you do for those men in Jersey.
This country is a mess, you get limited opportunities when you get out, and they drug test you in order to get SNAP OR GA, if you fail you lose benefits for 10 years, so they get the opportunity to no longer provide you food stamps, and starve you if you fail a drug test. Quite a price to pay for drug addiction, and this drug testing goes on for 10 years after release, so long after you are off parole you can still be pissing in a bottle just for food stamps. I am not a fan of America. I recall someone, saying I was just bitter about poor choices I had made. Maybe some truth to that but not a lot.
I would be angry about this system even if I myself had never been thru it, as I care about other human beings.
Disproportionately is a word that distortions reality.