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О самом важном…
Apr. 22nd, 2020 11:44 amС Ленты новостей CNN.
Мэр Лас-Вегаса “грозится” открыть казино.
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Coronavirus Death Toll…
Apr. 20th, 2020 08:42 pmЭто все из официальных источников. С сайта CNN и с сайта стопкоронавирус.рф
В Мире — 2468733 — 169794 — 6.8%
В США — 782159 — 41816 — 5.3%
В России — 47121 — 405 — 0.85%
Такая вот, печальная картина в цифрах на сегодня.
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Лапа у Габи зажила. Собака довольна. Я — очень доволен.
Теперь вот, наблюдаю спиной, как “вирус шагает по Планете”. Спиной, — это потому что я сижу спиной к телевизору, и звук на нем выключен. Я только изредка посматриваю, что же там происходит?!.
В стране, где я живу, все очень печально. Каждый день бьет рекорд предыдущего дня по количеству смертей.
А я вернулся в Сеть.
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Про смертность от…
Apr. 9th, 2020 03:11 pmЦифра умерших от коронавируса в США сегодня перевалила за 16 000.
У меня есть предположение почему здесь смертность высокая. Вполне возможно, что это все оттого, что много американцев с очень плохим здоровьем. Люди умирают от сопутствующих болезней, которые осложняются коронавирусом.
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Долларовая Хроника Лечения Собак
Apr. 7th, 2020 02:49 pmСобака порезала лапу. И кто мог тогда подумать, что все будет так, как оно потом все обернулось.
Все это началось 7-ого января. Началось с того, что моя бедная псина отправилась к парикмахеру. Точнее, парикмахер приехал к ней, но в даном случае это не очень важно. В этом отношении здесь все налажено очень хорошо. Приезжает небольшой автобус, в котором есть все, что нужно для того чтобы собака выглядела красивой. И чистой.
( Read more )The C.I.A.’s Fake News Campaign
Oct. 16th, 2017 04:08 pmСтатья из газеты, которая сама вложила огромный вклад в распространение "фейковых" новостей.
Отсюда.
Здесь, перевод на русский.
Russia’s crafty campaign to hack the 2016 election may seem unprecedented, but in a way it’s not. Sure, secret agents and front groups have hacked email systems, dumped documents on WikiLeaks, paid an army of internet trolls and spent thousands buying political ads on social media. It all seems new because the technologies are new. But it’s not the first time a government tried to mess with our heads by manipulating our media.
In fact, for more than two decades during the Cold War, the public was bombarded by an enormous publicity campaign to shape American views of Russia and its foreign policy. Advertisements appeared on every TV network, on radio stations across the country and in hundreds of newspapers. The campaign may have been the largest and most consistent source of political advertising in American history. And it was orchestrated by a big, powerful intelligence service: the Central Intelligence Agency.
It all began as a cover story. As the Cold War was getting underway, the C.I.A. wanted to take the fight into Russia’s backyard. So, in 1950, it created Radio Free Europe, a government-sponsored broadcasting station. Ostensibly, it provided unbiased news for Eastern Europeans, but in fact the agency used it to wage a subversive campaign to weaken Communist governments behind the Iron Curtain.
But how to hide the agency’s hand? How to account for the millions of C.I.A. dollars pouring into the broadcasting station? Simple: pretend that ordinary Americans are paying the bills.
The C.I.A.’s freewheeling spymaster, Frank Wisner, created a well-heeled and well-connected front group, the National Committee for a Free Europe. Each year it ran an enormous fund-raising campaign called the Crusade for Freedom (later renamed the Radio Free Europe Fund) that implored Americans to donate “freedom dollars” to combat Kremlin lies, complete with annual appeals resembling a hybrid of World War II war bond campaigns and contemporary NPR pledge drives.
Every president from Harry Truman to Richard Nixon endorsed the campaign. So did hundreds of governors, mayors, celebrities, editors and executives. Entertainers like Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson, Jerry Lewis and the Kingston Trio pleaded for donations on radio and television. The Hollywood producers Darryl Zanuck and Cecil B. DeMille amplified those messages, as did powerful media figures like Bill Paley, the president of CBS; C. D. Jackson, the publisher of Fortune; and the media mogul Henry Luce. Even newspaper delivery boys played a part, soliciting donations from subscribers on their paper routes.
Then there was the Ad Council, the same industry organization that turned Smokey Bear into a cultural icon. The council sponsored the crusade as a public service, arranging for broadcasters to run ads without charge. The Ad Council’s sponsorship translated into as much as $2 billion worth of free advertising over the campaign’s history, in 2017 dollars.
The message was simple: Russia was aggressive; Communism was awful. The enemy couldn’t be trusted. Typical ads conveyed a brutalized vision of life behind the Iron Curtain: “a strip of Communist-controlled hell-on-earth,” one read. Donating a few bucks would save Czechs, Poles, Hungarians and others from this tyranny. Many thousands of Americans took the bait. They dutifully wrote checks to Radio Free Europe, and their contributions were magnified by gifts from many of the country’s biggest corporations, yielding, on average, about $1 million annually.
It wasn’t enough: The donations barely covered the cost of running the “fund-raising drives,” to say nothing of Radio Free Europe’s $30 million annual budgets. But that wasn’t the point.
Declassified documents reveal that almost from the start, the C.I.A. saw that it could exploit the fund-raising campaign as a conduit for domestic propaganda. It was a way to rally public support for the Cold War by dramatizing Communist repression and stoking fears of a worldwide menace. The plight of Eastern Europe brought moral clarity to the Cold War, and it cemented the region as a vital national interest in American domestic politics.
Its impact outlived the campaign itself. Even though the pleas for donations ended in 1971, when the C.I.A. was exposed and stopped funding the station, they cemented anti-Communist hostility that animated conservative opposition to détente in the 1970s. It provided the leitmotif for Reagan’s denunciations of the “evil empire” in the 1980s. One can even hear echoes in Donald Trump’s recent speech to the United Nations: His long digression on the evils of socialism seems drawn from the heated rhetoric of ads gone by.
So, too, does our post-truth media environment carry voices from this past. The crusade blasted all information from enemy sources as lies and deceit — fake news, we could say. This counter-propaganda sought to inoculate the public from being receptive to anything said by the other side. It’s a tactic we’ve seen play out in real time on the president’s Twitter feed.
And almost certainly, Radio Free Europe itself — which continues to operate out of its headquarters in Prague — has shaped Vladimir Putin’s worldview. Russia has long tried to claim Eastern Europe as its sphere of influence. Moscow hated the station for its meddling. As a K.G.B. officer, Mr. Putin no doubt spent many hours fretting over its activities in the Soviet bloc. It was a major irritant. He may even see the 2016 election hack as a way to even the score. If so, it’s payback indeed.
Отсюда.
Здесь, перевод на русский.
Письмо Министру Обороны США…
Sep. 6th, 2017 04:25 amОт бывшего командира муджехеддинов…
Editor’s Note: Khadir Mohmand was a Mujahideen commander once upon a time, until the yellow brick road of life brought him to the US where he became a successful businessman and has supported his people every since from Kalamazoo, MI. We should all be so lucky to have someone this passionate and steadfast to support our cause… Jim W. Dean
September 5, 2017
To the Honorable James Mattis
U.S. Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000
RE: The United States’ New Strategy of Escalating the Killing of the Afghan/Pashtun Majority in Afghanistan Will Not Work. This Longest War For Control of the REEs Must End.
*
Dear Secretary Mattis:
War crimes are being committed against Afghan/Pashtun villagers by the United States. Just last week Afghan/Pashtun villagers were killed in Pashtun areas throughout Afghanistan especially in Helmand Province, Logar, Herat, Kunduz and Kunar Province. History has shown that wars against Afghan/Pashtun cannot be won. Presently, I believe the United States’ troops, its mercenaries/private contractors, and the Afghan administration’s puppet forces cannot beat the resisting Pashtun villagers/freedom fighters on the ground. I believe it is cowardice to use more B-52 bombers, drones and other sophisticated weapons and aircraft to kill Afghan/Pashtun villagers, who are the native majority population. I am sorry to say if we continue with this stupid strategy of fighting the Afghans/Pashtun, our country will end up like the former Soviet Union, which collapsed after they lost in Afghanistan. If we continue with the war strategy in Afghanistan only China and Russia will be the winners.
I believe the new U.S. Trump strategy in Afghanistan is genocide- the intentional killing of the Afghan/Pashtun villagers, who are the only roadblock to the Trump administration’s exploitation of the Rare Earth Elements (REEs), is wrong and unlawful. At one of his recent media events, Trump himself boldly stated that he wanted the United States to “exploit” the REEs. His friends, Michael N. Silver of American Elements, a company that specializes in mining REEs and his adviser, billionaire friend, Stephen A. Feinberg of Dyncorp will benefit from this exploitation. The vast untapped deposits of REEs are located on the Afghan/Pashtun villagers’ land especially in Helmand Province and other Pashtun areas throughout Afghanistan. The Afghan/Pashtun villagers are fighting to defend their land that is being taken from them for control over the REEs. It is really not about terrorism. It is really about exploiting the Afghan’s REEs! I believe the Afghan Villagers are not terrorizing the United States, but the United States is terrorizing the Afghan villagers.
The United States, under the command of Trump and ultimately under your command and the command on the ground of General Nicholson, is cowardly attacking the Afghan/Pashtun villagers using phosphorus and other chemical bombs against them. On August 28, 2017, thirty five (35) Afghan villagers, many women and children, were killed in Shindand District in Herat Province. This killing of Afghan villagers/civilians is happening throughout Afghanistan every day-mostly unreported by the media. It is escalating under Trump’s new strategy of genocide of the Afghan /Pashtun villagers, who are the road block to his exploitation of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.
The native majority, the Pashtun villagers, are not the enemy of the United States. I believe that the best path for the United States is to stop the war against the Pashtun villagers and talk directly with them to reach peace. The United States needs to be united with the Afghan/Pashtun villagers, the majority, in order to keep Russia and China from becoming the new superpowers. China’s and Russia’s power is evidenced in the recent BRICS Summit. China and Russia benefit from the United States continuing its war strategy in Afghanistan in its longest war. Their power and influence in the world have grown. Whereas, the United States continues to spend trillions and cause the loss of life in a war it cannot win. Our stature in the world has decreased because of this war.
I fought against the Soviet Union and the Afghan communists in Afghanistan in the 1980s (Please see my attached biography and photos). I hate war. It takes more courage to admit that a war cannot be won and change the strategy to a peace strategy than cowardly escalate the bombardment of Afghan /Pashtun villagers in a 16 year long war. You are a soldier, a general, who understands what war is and its destructiveness. I expect more from you, as Secretary of Defense.
Please change the strategy now. Stop the genocide of the Pashtun villagers in Afghanistan. Stop the war.
Sincerely,
Kadir A. Mohmand
6147 Old Log Trail
Kalamazoo, MI 49009
(269) 353-7044
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Очень любопытно…
On Wednesday, 12 civilians were killed and 16 wounded in American airstrikes in Afghanistan’s eastern province Logar. Afghan politicians commented to Sputnik Afghanistan on the issue, noting that civilians fear US army and NATO operations more that the Taliban.
On Wednesday, 12 civilians were killed and 16 wounded in an American airstrike in Dasht-e-Bari, an area of the city Pul-e-Alam, the capital of Logar province, according to Afghan broadcaster 1TV.
US media also reported on the incident, saying that 11 civilians were killed, including eight women.
The Afghan and American forces apparently came under fire from the Taliban while an American helicopter attempted to make a “precautionary landing because of a maintenance issue,” The New York Times quotes Capt. Bill Salvin, a spokesman for the United States military in Afghanistan, as saying.
The allied forces have called for air support and another aircraft bombed the house from where militants allegedly fired at the helicopter.
“Three families were living in the house which was bombed; 11 people, including eight women, were killed,” the newspaper quotes Hawas Khan Kochai, a resident of the Dasht e Bari area, as saying by phone.
“We recovered all the bodies with an excavator after several hours, but two children are still missing,” he added.
The incident comes days after 13 civilians were killed in an air raid in the western province of Herat.
Haji Ullah Gol Mujahid, a military expert and member of the Afghan parliament from Kabul province, commented to Sputnik Afghanistan on the incident, saying that Afghan civilians fear the US army more than the Taliban.
“After the defeat of the Taliban, Afghan people did not want the war to continue, but it was still going on because of the US operations in the country: they have been breaking into houses, bombing settlements and even striking weddings and have been blaming it on the Taliban,” he told Sputnik.
The politician further recalled that 150 civilians have been killed in Nangarhar province, while similar incidents happened in Helmand province.
“Nobody wants the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan. The Afghans have not seen anything good from the Americans and they don’t want them staying on their land any longer,” he concluded.
Obaid Kabir, one of the leaders of the Afghanistan Solidarity Party, told Sputnik that his home country is now “in the mill, stuck between three millstones.”
“This is all being done by American occupiers, their allies, the puppet government in Kabul, the Taliban and Daesh,” he told Sputnik.The Taliban, he said, is the brainchild of the US and Pakistani intelligence, thus it will only continue to strengthen. The movement, he said, has now found other patrons. However Afghan residents see no difference between the US and the Taliban: all of them eat out of the same dish, and ordinary Afghans are left to suffer.
A recent report of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recorded a 43 percent increase in civilian casualties from aerial operations during the first six months of 2017 compared to the same period in 2016, documenting 232 civilian casualties (95 deaths and 137 injured), with substantial increases in deaths among women and children.
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В общем…
Neocons Leverage Trump-Hate for More Wars
Exclusive: The enactment of new sanctions against Russia and Iran – with the support of nearly all Democrats and Republicans in Congress – shows how the warmongering neocons again have come out on top, reports Robert Parry.
A savvy Washington observer once told me that the political reality about the neoconservatives is that they alone couldn’t win you a single precinct in the United States. But both Republicans and Democrats still line up to gain neocon support or at least neocon acceptance.
Part of the reason for this paradox is the degree of dominance that the neoconservatives have established in the national news media – as op-ed writers and TV commentators – and the neocon ties to the Israel Lobby that is famous for showering contributions on favored politicians and on the opponents of those not favored.Since the neocons’ emergence as big-time foreign policy players in the Reagan administration, they also have demonstrated extraordinary resilience, receiving a steady flow of money often through U.S. government-funded grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and through donations from military contractors to hawkish neocon think tanks.
But neocons’ most astonishing success over the past year may have been how they have pulled liberals and even some progressives into the neocon strategies for war and more war, largely by exploiting the Left’s disgust with President Trump.
People who would normally favor international cooperation toward peaceful resolution of conflicts have joined the neocons in ratcheting up global tensions and making progress toward peace far more difficult.
The provocative “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,” which imposes sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea while tying President Trump’s hands in removing those penalties, passed the Congress without a single Democrat voting no.
The only dissenting votes came from three Republican House members – Justin Amash of Michigan, Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky – and from Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Senate.
In other words, every Democrat present for the vote adopted the neocon position of escalating tensions with Russia and Iran. The new sanctions appear to close off hopes for a détente with Russia and may torpedo the nuclear agreement with Iran, which would put the bomb-bomb-bomb option back on the table just where the neocons want it.
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Очень хорошая статья об Истории Гражданской войны в США. О причинах войны, о Линкольне..
В общем, обо всем том, из-за чего сейчас здесь сносят памятники и т.д.
Thomas DiLorenzo
“Lincoln is theology, not historiology. He is a faith, he is a church, he is a religion, and he has his own priests and acolytes, most of whom . . . are passionately opposed to anybody telling the truth about him . . . with rare exceptions, you can’t believe what any major Lincoln scholar tells you about Abraham Lincoln and race.”
–Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced into Glory, p. 114The author of the above quotation, Lerone Bennett, Jr., was the executive editor of Ebony magazine for several decades, beginning in 1958. He is a distinguished African-American author of numerous books, including a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. He spent twenty years researching and writing his book, Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream, from which he drew the above conclusion about the so-called Lincoln scholars and how they have lied about Lincoln for generations. For obvious reasons, Mr. Bennett is incensed over how so many lies have been told about Lincoln and race.
Few Americans have ever been taught the truth about Lincoln and race, but it is all right there in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (CW), and in his actions and behavior throughout his life. For example, he said the following:
“Free them [i.e. the slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We cannot then make them equals” (CW, vol. II, p. 256.
“What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races” (CW, vol. II, p. 521).
“I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races . . . . I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary” (CW, vol. III, p, 16). (Has there ever been a clearer definition of “white supremacist”?).
“I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races . . . . I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people” (CW, vol. III, pp. 145-146).
“I will to the very last stand by the law of this state [Illinois], which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes” (CW, vol. III, p. 146).
“Senator Douglas remarked . . . that . . . this government was made for the white people and not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too” (CW, vol. II, p. 281)
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Про Трампа и Америку…
Aug. 21st, 2017 04:05 amИ про то, что здесь происходит.
Мне показалось очень интересной статьей.
О фигуре Дональда Трампа будут спорить еще долгие годы. Какова его роль в истории Америки? Кто он? Американский герой — супермен, борющийся один против всех за правду американской глубинки против «вашингтонского бюрократического болота»? Новый Джордж Вашингтон, оставивший свою любимую плантацию, чтобы возглавить войну за свободу от кабалы глобальных элит (тогда — британского короля Георга III). Самовлюбленный эксцентрик, решивший добавить к своим реалити-шоу роль президента США? А может быть, неординарность личности Трампа отражает беспрецедентность развертывающейся в Америке революции?
В том, что в Соединенных Штатах происходит именно революция, то есть «радикальное, коренное, глубокое, качественное изменение в развитии общества», нет никакого сомнения. Все ее классические элементы — от экономических проблем, провоцирующих массовую мобилизацию на фоне нарратива перемен, до паралича элит, погрязших в междоусобных разборках, до атмосферы глобального кризиса, дезориентирующего старую власть и ожесточающую новую, — налицо.
Более того, в Америке одновременно идут две революции. Первая — та, что на поверхности, — политическая, ведет к слому монополии американских «универсалистов-глобалистов», которые завели страну в тупик, и приходу националистов. Эта революция — в своем апогее.
Вторая революция пока почти незаметна, но именно она определит, какими будут Соединенные Штаты через 10, а возможно, и 30 лет. Эта вторая революция медленно, но неумолимо приближается. Скоро она столкнет между собой консерваторов и социал-либералов, или, сильно упрощая — наследников Рейгана и наследников Рузвельта.
Трамп является если не вдохновителем, то безусловным символом первой революции. Ирония истории заключается в том, что своей победой он расчищает дорогу к поражению своих сторонников во второй.
Причины первой революции не вызывают сомнений. С конца 1980-х Америка вступила в имперскую эпоху. В отсутствие идеологических конкурентов американская политическая система загнила, закостенела. В Вашингтоне вырос «имперский класс», который решил, что его звездный час никогда не кончится. Как в Древнем Риме, возникла типично имперская элита, идеологию которой можно назвать универсализмом. Веря в фукуямовский «конец истории», она провозгласила универсальность американской системы (то есть то, что существующие в США принципы организации экономической и политической жизни являются единственно верными и должны быть распространены на весь мир). Универсалисты полностью контролировали американскую повестку дня от Билла Клинтона до Трампа, независимо от того, к какой партии принадлежал президент и какой был расклад на Капитолийском холме, поэтому деление на республиканцев и демократов давно потеряло смысл.
Универсалисты создали понятие глобализации и идеального «глобального» человека будущего, который существует вне контекста социальной принадлежности, пола, цвета кожи и страны. Этот стерильно толерантный индивидуум символизирует глобально-коннектированную, полностью уверенную в своей правоте элиту, которая смотрит CNN и тусуется в Давосе. Исторически и ментально универсализм опирается на англосаксонский белый протестантский активизм — на понимание роли США как избранного Богом защитника вселенского добра от зла и утверждение киплинговского «бремени белого человека» как модели развития мира.
Нынешняя универсалистская элита даже забыла, как делаются деньги: большинство ее представителей никогда не занимались бизнесом, это обслуживающие систему профессиональные политики, партийные активисты, журналисты, профессора, бюрократы, руководители благотворительных фондов и созданных на политические гранты НКО.
Эта элита получает деньги только потому, что является политической и идеологической надстройкой над американской имперской системой. Именно потому она настолько агрессивна в попытках сохранить свои позиции, что по-другому кормиться просто не сможет. Как показывают недавние события в Шарлотсвилле, чтобы сломать Трампа, она даже готова развязать новую гражданскую войну.
Лишь в последние несколько лет, после череды военных и финансовых провалов со стороны универсалистов, у их противников — консерваторов-националистов — появился шанс. У американских предпринимателей, теряющих конкурентоспособность, и у нищающего американского среднего класса возник общий интерес в победе национального перед глобальным. Призыв Трампа к джексоновской, антиэлитной, традиционной, самодостаточной Америке нашел отклик среди всех тех, кто чувствовал страх за свое будущее, за свой образ жизни.
Националист Трамп поставил точку в глобализации, прямо назвав весь мир конкурентом США. Но он также положил конец лицемерию Америки, лицемерию прежде всего по отношению к самой себе. С появлением Трампа пришел конец политкорректности — этакому эсперанто универсалистов, которая контролировала, суживала общественную дискуссию до допустимых элитами рамок и дискредитировала, объявляла вне закона все идеи, выходившие за эти рамки, вместе с их авторами. Это была самая страшная цензура. Публично навешивая ярлыки (вспомните «русских хакеров»), она навсегда выводила из игры неугодных вместе с их идеями. Кстати, Токвилль предупреждал об американском идеологическом тоталитаризме еще 150 лет назад!
Однако феномен Дональда Трампа — это не только результат подъема консервативного движения. В не меньшей мере это результат провала левой идеологии в США. Став имперскими универсалистами, верхушка демократов оторвалась от среднего класса как своей традиционной базы. Партия ушла от социал-либерализма Рузвельта к олигархическому неолиберализму Клинтонов.
Однако сейчас Америка, да и весь мир, вернулись к ситуации, которая привела Рузвельта к власти почти сто лет назад. Перед нами опять системный экономический кризис и финансовые пузыри, вопиющая поляризация и социальное недовольство, а главное — перспектива нового передела мира и необходимость концентрации национальных ресурсов для новой гонки за мировое лидерство.
Исторический выбор, стоящий перед Америкой, таков: либо, как когда-то Рузвельт, в целях сохранения социальной стабильности и покупательной способности сделать распределение национального богатства более справедливым, обеспечить нормальную, осмысленную жизнь человека в обществе, всё более атомизируемом «Убером», где роботы скоро могут оставить без надежды на будущее миллионы людей, либо последует революционный взрыв — как в голливудских «Голодных играх». С Америкой это уже случалось — праздник 1 Мая к нам пришел после расстрелов чикагских рабочих в 1886 году.
Ни один из вопросов, от которых зависит будущее Америки, нельзя решить с позиций побеждающего сегодня консерватизма, который, наоборот, предполагает сокращение роли государства, максимальную свободу для бизнеса и примат интересов индивидуума над интересами общества, то есть ведет страну в тупик, к социальному взрыву. Для решения накопившихся проблем необходим новый этап государственного регулирования экономики и новый социальный договор на уровне тех экономических возможностей, которые реально останутся у США. Поэтому приход социал-либералов к власти неизбежен, это только вопрос времени.
Но при чем же здесь Трамп?
Для того чтобы построить что-то новое, старое должно быть сломано. Трамп — это разрушитель старой системы, срезающий раковый нарост ее закостеневшей элиты, освобождающий политическое пространство для перемен. Любой другой, менее радикальный, если не сказать одиозный, политик попытался бы медленно реформировать систему и был бы этой системой переварен и подчинен.
Трамп дезавуировал Вашингтон — и демократов, и республиканцев — как носителей универсальной правды, спровоцировав яркую демонстрацию их моральной деградации и показав, что, кроме американских универсалистов, есть и американские националисты, то есть что американский универсализм не универсален. Заодно Трамп разрушает и атлантическую солидарность, которая для самодостаточной Америки становится ненужной и затратной.
Прогрессивные демократы должны быть благодарны Трампу за то, что он ускорил зачистку левого фланга американской политики от клинтонистской гнили, которую сами демократы боялись тронуть. Как показала предвыборная кампания, с левого фланга, со стороны Сандерса, пробить стену политкорректной, всеобволакивающей цензуры было просто невозможно. Это мог сделать только Трамп — тот, кому ярлыки, сколько бы их ни навешивали, уже не могли навредить!
Трамп еще может проиграть, но возврата к статусу-кво уже не будет. Он уже разрушил договор элит, обострил их противостояние, вывел их войну в публичное пространство, отрезал всем путь к отступлению. Консерваторы его администрации уже ломают отжившие социальные программы, на которые у экономики США больше нет ресурсов, развязывая руки тем, кто придет после них с кардинально новыми решениями!
Это значит, что впервые за долгие годы вместо постановочного соревнования республиканцев и демократов мы увидим реальную борьбу правых и левых — консерваторов и либералов. Обе партии омолаживаются и радикализируются — они уже начали возвращение к своим идеологическим истокам — именно на базе американских национальных интересов, и с явным уклоном на социальную повестку дня. Эта борьба начинается с местных органов власти и через 4–8 лет радикально обновит конгресс.
Особо стоит отметить, что приоритеты консерваторов Трампа и прогрессистов Сандерса совпадают по целому ряду ключевых проблем Америки: по необходимости налоговой реформы, ограничению власти финансистов, возрождению национальной экономики, реформе избирательной системы. Это вселяет надежду на то, что стабильное электоральное большинство в поддержку леволиберального, «рузвельтовского» курса во внутренней, да и во внешней политике завтрашней Америки не только возможно, но практически неизбежно.
С одной стороны, Трамп — лидер консервативной революции отходящей англосаксонской протестантской Америки. С другой стороны, Трамп — это акселератор другой революции, гораздо более фундаментальной. Он неумолимо разваливает систему, которая эту революцию сдерживает. Приход консерваторов к власти заставит всех тех, кто с ними не согласен, вернуться к истокам американского социального прогрессивизма. Консервативная революция сверху открывает дорогу либеральной революции снизу. Таким образом, Трамп, вполне возможно, сам того не понимая и не желая, ускоряет исторический поворот Америки от наследников Рейгана к наследникам Рузвельта.
Автор -— доцент Университета МГИМО
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Про страхи. Про Россию и Америку…
Aug. 19th, 2017 04:38 amЛюбопытно…
SOFIA, Bulgaria — There is something mystifying about the American obsession with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The Kremlin’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, its military involvement in Syria and its meddling in elections abroad may help explain some of America’s sense of alarm. But they fail to explain why liberals in the United States are so much more vexed by Russia than they are by, say, the growing economic power and geopolitical ambitions of China, or the global ideological challenge of radical Islam or the sheer craziness of a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Russia suffers from demographic decline and arrested modernization. Its economy is overdependent on exporting natural resources. Its population has one of the highest percentages of university-educated people but the lowest labor productivity in the industrialized world. And although Mr. Putin is a strong and ruthless leader who enjoys popular support at home and celebrity status abroad, Russia’s institutions are corrupt and dysfunctional: Russian bureaucrats spend much of their energy fighting one another over money and power and have no time to cooperate. And Russia’s future after Mr. Putin — whenever that may come — is anybody’s guess.
Was it not just two years ago that President Barack Obama called Russia a “regional power”? And is it not true that even today most experts concur that while Moscow is an aggressive military power interested in counterbalancing America’s influence in the world, it is no traditional “rising power”? As the eminent American historian Stephen Kotkin wrote last year in Foreign Affairs, “For half a millennium Russian foreign policy has been characterized by soaring ambitions that have exceeded the country’s capabilities.” It is no different today.
And yet despite all of this, Americans are mesmerized and terrified by Russia. Is it simply that for liberal America, “Russia” is a code name for “Donald Trump”?
As for many of the great questions of our times, an explanation can be found in Russian classical literature. In this case, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella “The Double.” It is the story of a government clerk who winds up in the madhouse after meeting his doppelgänger — a man who looks like him and speaks like him, but who displays all the charm and self-confidence that the tortured protagonist lacks. The doppelgänger in Dostoyevsky’s story does not drive the protagonist insane just because they look alike but because he makes the protagonist realize what it is he doesn’t like about himself. And such it is with the United States and Russia today.
The Soviet Union terrorized the West for most of the 20th century in part because it was so radically different. There was ostensibly no God, no private property and no political pluralism. America could be Sovietized only by losing the war against Communism. Mr. Putin’s Russia, by contrast, frightens Americans because they know that the United States and Russia should be very different, but many of the pathologies present in Russia can also be found in the United States. What disturbs liberal America is not that Russia will run the world — far from it. Rather, the fear, whether liberals fully recognize it or not, is that the United States has started to resemble Russia.
It was the Kremlin that for the past two decades tried to explain away its problems and failures by blaming foreign meddling. Now America is doing the same. Everything that liberal Americans dislike — Mr. Trump’s electoral victory, the reverse of the process of democratization in the world and the decline of American power — are viewed as the results of Mr. Putin’s plottings.
For liberal Americans, Russia is — rightfully — a frightening example of how authoritarian rule can function within the institutional framework of a democracy. Russia’s “managed democracy” provides a vivid illustration of how institutions and practices that originally emancipated citizens from the whim of unaccountable rulers can be refashioned to effectively disenfranchise citizens (even while allowing them to vote).
Russia also embodies what politics can look like when the elites are completely divorced from the people. It is not only a highly unequal society but also one in which rising inequality is normal, and a handful of very rich and politically unaccountable rulers have managed to stay on top without having to use much violence. The privileged few do not need to dominate or control their fellow citizens; they can simply ignore them like an irrelevant nuisance.
It may take a while before working-class Americans start to realize that while the American economy is dramatically different from that of Russia, the technological revolution led by Silicon Valley could in time tilt Western societies toward authoritarian politics in the same way that an abundance of natural resources has made Mr. Putin’s regime possible. Robots — not unlike post-Soviet citizens — are not that interested in democracy.
For many years, Americans were able to look at Russia and its social and political problems and see a country stuck in the past, perhaps someday to develop into a modern country like the United States. But that’s no longer the prevailing attitude. Now, whether they realize it or not, many Americans fear that when they look at Russia they are looking at the future. What is most disturbing is that it could be their future, too.
Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies, a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, a contributing opinion writer and the author, most recently, of “After Europe.”
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Через пару дней, после…
Aug. 19th, 2017 04:26 amПосле своего выступления, он продержался пару дней…
(CNN)In any normal White House, in any normal week, the ouster of the President’s political and ideological guru would signal a major course correction.
Though Steve Bannon has been a force of disruption in President Donald Trump’s tumultuous seven months in power, the now former chief White House strategist is unlikely to take the chaos he has fomented with him after being forced out of the West Wing Friday.
That’s because the most disruptive, unpredictable, outrageous influence in the White House is going nowhere, and he just happens to be the man in charge.
“Trump is still President and he is an uncontrollable force, we have found out,” said David Gergen, an adviser to four presidents, Democrats and Republicans.
“A lot of the chaos and spewing of hatred comes from him himself, not just the people around him.”
Ever since jumping to the President’s campaign a year ago, Bannon has been portrayed as a political flamethrower and the personification of the “America First” economic nationalism and populism that Trump rode to the White House.On one level, his exit is a victory for the generals Trump has gathered around him, including John Kelly, his new chief of staff, and H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser, who have battled to impose order and continuity on Trump’s governing process and foreign policy as pandemonium raged.
One administration was clearly not big enough for Kelly and Bannon.
And sources have told CNN that Trump had grown irritated with his chief strategist’s outsized media profile and reputation as the intellectual guardian of his political project.
Yet photos of Kelly, staring helplessly at his shoes Tuesday as Trump drew new equivalencies between white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, told their own story.
Kelly may be able to impose order and to oust the most disruptive elements of Trump’s White House staff. But corralling the unruly President who resists discipline and control and who blurts out inflammatory statements and sets Twitter alight on a whim is another.
Bannon has often been seen as a link between Trump and the alt-right, nationalist sectors of his political base, that were particularly attracted to his rhetoric on immigration and tough line on Islamic terror during the campaign.But Bannon, while clearly playing a role in laying out the ideological underpinnings of Trump’s worldview, was always more of a symptom of Trumpism than its cause. The President was lashing out against Mexicans and indulging in anti-Muslim rhetoric long before he officially joined the campaign.
And the most remarkable news conference in presidential history also made another point clear: Trump’s reticence in specifically singling out white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups was not the result of Bannon whispering in his ear — it was an authentic representation of his own core beliefs.
RELATED: A Trump meltdown for the ages
As a massive backlash grew against Trump, from business leaders, Republican senators and others, it became clear that his presidency itself was facing a huge crisis of moral legitimacy — a reality that the firing of a mere operative like Bannon, who has been at the fringes of Trump’s team during the President’s politically disastrous two-week “working vacation,” would do little to change.
After his ousting Friday, Bannon spoke to The Weekly Standard, making a pointed case that the Trump presidency that his brand of populist, right-wing conservatives helped make possible is now “over.”
“We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency,” Bannon told The Weekly Standard. “But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”
The departure of the rumpled chief strategist provokes questions that could shape the Trump presidency going forward.
One effect could be to consolidate the White House’s political message more fully under the control of Kelly and any future appointees.
His absence could allow Kelly and McMaster to rein in conflicting strands of Trump’s foreign policy. Bannon’s comment for example this week in an interview with the American Prospect that there was no military solution to the North Korea nuclear showdown undercut the President’s rhetoric and caused deep confusion among US allies in Asia.Still, given Trump’s tendency to ad-lib his way through foreign policy crises, any control that Kelly and McMaster do manage to exert on national security policy is always going to be tenuous.
With chaos reigning in the White House, Trump has struggled to attract new blood to his team, following regular rounds of staff bloodletting. Perhaps, with Kelly running a tighter ship on military discipline, that could change.
“Gen. Kelly is getting control of the staff, now we will see who he can attract in,” Republican political consultant Rich Galen said on CNN.
For months, the conventional wisdom in Washington has been that Trump would be loathe to let Bannon go because he fears his slash-and-burn political tactics could be turned back against the administration itself.
But there is also anxiety among those who work in the intellectual engines of Trumpism that Bannon’s demise could see the President transformed into a more traditional, moderate politician. This would be especially the case if Bannon’s exit leads to more power for Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House economic supremo Gary Cohn.
Bannon’s former home, the conservative website, Breitbart, was quick to declare war on the Trump administration following Bannon’s firing.
The group’s senior editor at large Joel Pollak warned that Trump could share the fate of another outsider candidate who disappointed his followers and turned into a liberal: former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“Steve Bannon personified the Trump agenda. With Bannon gone, there is no guarantee that Trump will stick to the plan,” Pollak wrote.
His comments were a signal that any softening of Trump’s political persona would spell trouble for the White House
“I think they are going to go to all-out war with what they perceive to be the West Wing globalists and really go after Jared and Ivanka and Gary Cohn and Don Jr.,” said Kurt Bardella, a Republican strategist and former Breitbart executive.
It did not take long for Bannon to end up back at Breitbart. The website said Friday evening that the man it described as a “populist hero” had returned to the company as executive chairman and had already chaired an editorial meeting.
His new perch will allow Bannon to pursue the feuds he waged inside the West Wing and license to push his key issues, including a crackdown on what he sees as China’s trade abuses and the economic plight of white working-class Americans.
“I think that Bannon is going to try to paint the narrative that the person that his audience voted for has been co-opted by these West Wing globalists,” Bardella said.
Still, a White House ally of Bannon told CNN’s Jeremy Diamond on Friday, that the now former chief strategist did not want to go to war with Trump.
“That’s not where Steve’s head is at,” this source said. “He’s been fighting for the exact same things that the president has been fighting for.”
The source quoted Bannon as saying “I want (Trump) to succeed.”
That could lead to Bannon going hard after his former enemies in the West Wing, but staying publicly loyal to Trump — in a way that would allow him to emerge as a private counselor for a President, who is known to trawl a wide range of former associates and colleagues for advice, and support.
Администрацию лихорадит и Трамп сдает своих одного за другим.
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Бесконечная атака продолжается…
Aug. 18th, 2017 04:04 amЧестно говоря, очень надеялся на то, что вся та мерзость, которая была в предвыборной кампании, она прекратится.
После выборов, обычно американцы называли Президентом того человека, который побеждал. Все откладывали предвыборные страсти и потихоньку страна возвращалась к нормальной жизни, хотя бы до следующих выборов.
После объявления Президентом Трампа, ничего подобного не случилось.
Увы…
The “Trump colluded with Russia” narrative is alive and well in the United States. With the media and the Marxist left lacking any facts to support this falsehood, they have now resorted to guessing what evidence hackers overseas may provide to resuscitate their attempt to unseat a duly elected U.S. president.
The Associated Press and The New York Times reported this week that a Ukrainian hacker named “Profexer” had turned himself in and is now a cooperating witness for the FBI. The mainstream media is beside itself reporting what “facts” this new twist of the Russia story may uncover. Why do you need facts when you can pollute the news cycle with things you can make up about what a man might say about President Trump?
According to the AP account, “There is no evidence that Profexer worked, at least knowingly, for Russia’s intelligence services.” But hey — why does that matter when you can attach all kinds of innuendo and made-up stuff to an overseas arrest for hacking?But that story aside, some real news is coming out of Ukraine on the collusion front. I’m not talking about Russian collusion against Hillary Clinton; I’m talking about collusion between the Democratic National Committee and the government of Ukraine to try to stop Donald Trump from winning the presidential election.
We all know what Mr. Trump said about trying to work with Moscow on the world stage during the campaign. Essentially, it was a recognition that Washington should seek better relations with Russia — you know, that really big nation that has the most nuclear weapons in the world. Mr. Trump essentially said we should respect Moscow’s concerns about its “near abroad” and work with Russia where we could to defeat the Islamic State and other threats to both countries.This obviously didn’t sit well with Kiev, which has been fighting a pro-Russian insurgency in the eastern Donbass region for the past few years. Would Mr. Trump end sanctions on Russia? Would Mr. Trump end support for the Ukrainian armed forces in its conflict against Moscow?
Once in office, however, Mr. Trump has done just the opposite. He has buttressed support for Ukraine and even attacked a Syrian air base with 59 cruise missiles even with hundreds of Russian technicians deployed there.
Evidence has been released suggesting DNC operatives may have worked with the government of Ukraine to manufacture evidence against Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s onetime campaign manager who has emerged as a central figure in the Russian meddling probe. After speaking with the Ukrainian National Anti-corruption Bureau (NABU), I wrote in this space a year ago that they knew at the time that a “ledger” published in The New York Times supposedly showing that Mr. Manfort received illegal payments from a source tied to ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was bogus. NABU investigators clearly said at the time that the newspaper took the phony document from the internet.
This week, Ukrainian parliamentary member Andrei Derkach sent a letter to the country’s chief prosecutor demanding an investigation into illegal collusion with the Clinton campaign to defeat Mr. Trump.
“Only a transparent and thorough investigation into the unlawful interference of Ukrainian officials with the U.S. election campaign can restore the trust of our strategic partner,” Mr. Derkach wrote.
He said there has been “illegal interference in the election of president of the United States organized by a criminal organization” consisting of Ukrainian government officials, an effort that had harmed relations with the U.S.
I spoke with NABU officials again this week, and they provided a canned statement saying essentially they had washed their hands of the Manafort affair.
Will special counsel Robert Mueller do the right thing and investigate this collusion as well? Or will he act in a partisan manner and ignore the evidence?
This week we also found out that rocket engines from a Ukrainian factory may have found their way to North Korea and vastly improved Kim Jong-un’s ability to attack the U.S. mainland with nuclear weapons. I guess we are supposed to ignore this revelation as well.• L. Todd Wood is a former special operations helicopter pilot and Wall Street debt trader, and has contributed to Fox Business, The Moscow Times, National Review, the New York Post and many other publications. He can be reached through his website, LToddWood.com.
Это все уже немного утомляет….
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Про все сразу….
Aug. 18th, 2017 03:32 amНа то, что в Америке происходит снос памятнков, смотрю сейчас с большим недоумением и непониманием.
Не думал никогда, что до этого дойдет в стране, пытающейся стать цивилизационным маяком для других стран.
Вот сейчас в Мемфисе дошла очередь до сноса памятника и даже могилы этого человека.
Кстати, о нем есть упоминание в одном из любимых мной фильмов. Собственно говоря, в фильме говорится, что главный герой был назван в его честь…
О каком фильме речь, думаю — понятно…
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Что происходит в Белом Доме…
Aug. 17th, 2017 03:33 amВидение одного из советников Президента Трампа…
You might think from recent press accounts that Steve Bannon is on the ropes and therefore behaving prudently. In the aftermath of events in Charlottesville, he is widely blamed for his boss’s continuing indulgence of white supremacists. Allies of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster hold Bannon responsible for a campaign by Breitbart News, which Bannon once led, to vilify the security chief. Trump’s defense of Bannon, at his Tuesday press conference, was tepid.
But Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of taking a harder line with China, and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury. “They’re wetting themselves,” he said, proceeding to detail how he would oust some of his opponents at State and Defense.
Needless to say, I was a little stunned to get an email from Bannon’s assistant midday Tuesday, just as all hell was breaking loose once again about Charlottesville, saying that Bannon wished to meet with me. I’d just published a column on how China was profiting from the U.S.-North Korea nuclear brinkmanship, and it included some choice words about Bannon’s boss.
“In Kim, Trump has met his match,” I wrote. “The risk of two arrogant fools blundering into a nuclear exchange is more serious than at any time since October 1962.” Maybe Bannon wanted to scream at me?
I told the assistant that I was on vacation, but I would be happy to speak by phone. Bannon promptly called.
Far from dressing me down for comparing Trump to Kim, he began, “It’s a great honor to finally track you down. I’ve followed your writing for years and I think you and I are in the same boat when it comes to China. You absolutely nailed it.”
“We’re at economic war with China,” he added. “It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path. On Korea, they’re just tapping us along. It’s just a sideshow.”
Bannon said he might consider a deal in which China got North Korea to freeze its nuclear buildup with verifiable inspections and the United States removed its troops from the peninsula, but such a deal seemed remote. Given that China is not likely to do much more on North Korea, and that the logic of mutually assured destruction was its own source of restraint, Bannon saw no reason not to proceed with tough trade sanctions against China.
Contrary to Trump’s threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.” Bannon went on to describe his battle inside the administration to take a harder line on China trade, and not to fall into a trap of wishful thinking in which complaints against China’s trade practices now had to take a backseat to the hope that China, as honest broker, would help restrain Kim.
“To me,” Bannon said, “the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we’re five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never be able to recover.”
Bannon’s plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. “We’re going to run the tables on these guys. We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us.”
But what about his internal adversaries, at the departments of State and Defense, who think the United States can enlist Beijing’s aid on the North Korean standoff, and at Treasury and the National Economic Council who don’t want to mess with the trading system?
“Oh, they’re wetting themselves,” he said, explaining that the Section 301 complaint, which was put on hold when the war of threats with North Korea broke out, was shelved only temporarily, and will be revived in three weeks. As for other cabinet departments, Bannon has big plans to marginalize their influence.
“I’m changing out people at East Asian Defense; I’m getting hawks in. I’m getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State.”
But can Bannon really win that fight internally?
“That’s a fight I fight every day here,” he said. “We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying.”
“We gotta do this. The president’s default position is to do it, but the apparatus is going crazy. Don’t get me wrong. It’s like, every day.”
Bannon explained that his strategy is to battle the trade doves inside the administration while building an outside coalition of trade hawks that includes left as well as right. Hence the phone call to me.
There are a couple of things that are startling about this premise. First, to the extent that most of the opponents of Bannon’s China trade strategy are other Trump administration officials, it’s not clear how reaching out to the left helps him. If anything, it gives his adversaries ammunition to characterize Bannon as unreliable or disloyal.
More puzzling is the fact that Bannon would phone a writer and editor of a progressive publication (the cover lines on whose first two issues after Trump’s election were “Resisting Trump” and “Containing Trump”) and assume that a possible convergence of views on China trade might somehow paper over the political and moral chasm on white nationalism.
The question of whether the phone call was on or off the record never came up. This is also puzzling, since Steve Bannon is not exactly Bambi when it comes to dealing with the press. He’s probably the most media-savvy person in America.
I asked Bannon about the connection between his program of economic nationalism and the ugly white nationalism epitomized by the racist violence in Charlottesville and Trump’s reluctance to condemn it. Bannon, after all, was the architect of the strategy of using Breitbart to heat up white nationalism and then rely on the radical right as Trump’s base.
He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: “Ethno-nationalism—it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.”
“These guys are a collection of clowns,” he added.
From his lips to Trump’s ear.
“The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
I had never before spoken with Bannon. I came away from the conversation with a sense both of his savvy and his recklessness. The waters around him are rising, but he is going about his business of infighting, and attempting to cultivate improbable outside allies, to promote his China strategy. His enemies will do what they do.
Either the reports of the threats to Bannon’s job are grossly exaggerated and leaked by his rivals, or he has decided not to change his routine and to go down fighting. Given Trump’s impulsivity, neither Bannon nor Trump really has any idea from day to day whether Bannon is staying or going. He has survived earlier threats. So what the hell, damn the torpedoes.
The conversation ended with Bannon inviting me to the White House after Labor Day to continue the discussion of China and trade. We’ll see if he’s still there.
Основная мысль, — главный враг Америки — Китай.
Не Россия…
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Ода Империи…
Jul. 8th, 2017 02:49 amЭто, пожалуй, нечто…
Op-ed: America must accept its status as an empire
By Larry CarcelliI am very concerned about recent foreign policy decisions made by the Trump administration that have alienated once-dependable allies. I believe the decisions have been made based on a gross misreading of history.
It appears that the Trump administration does not understand that the United States was permanently transformed from a sovereign nation to an empire after the fall of the Soviet Union. The problems the United States faces today are the same problems that all emergent empires in the past have faced. Acceptance of this paradigm shift is essential to finding realistic solutions to current problems.
The success of any political entity is based on the exchange of security and well-being for allegiance. Sovereign nations have the luxury of focusing almost exclusively on the parochial needs of its own homogenous and well understood polity. Empires must accommodate the needs a more numerous and heterogeneous citizenry.
Our own security and well-being are now inextricably linked with the security and well-being of our allies. Our military alliances assure access to raw materials and secure trade routes. Our trade agreements bind us in a mutually beneficial web of economic well-being. And our political alliances reinforce the cultural values that promote the universal hope of a better future that sustains the allegiance of a heterogeneous and far-flung citizenry. It is this allegiance that allows our empire to flourish.
Historically, empire has been sustained by tribute paid by subjugated states to the imperial hegemon. The American empire has constructed a unique system of tribute that does not require subject states to submit, force dynastic marriage, impose taxation, exploit the local populace or coerce unfair trade agreements. The American empire is willingly supplied with a luxurious surfeit of cheap manufactured goods in exchange for security and the promise of material well-being. We trade labor for the American Dream.
And, counter to popular belief, the United States must run a trade deficit to maintain liquidity in the international trade system for this dynamic to flourish. If we were ever able to attain a neutral trade balance the entire world economy would most likely collapse.
The three billion members of the empire can only thrive in stable social and political systems that support their means of subsistence and hopes of obtaining the American dream. Only an empire can guarantee this kind of security. For instance, the individual nations bordering China and Russia are overwhelmingly vulnerable to the vastly greater military might of their larger neighbors. Funding the military infrastructure to sustain this defense is impossible without the allegiance and assistance of our allies. The combined efforts of all the countries in the empire that cooperate to defend borders is a sum greater than its parts.
The young men and women of the American military have been dying in the service of empire for well over two decades now. We laud their profound sacrifices and patriotism to the United States without recognizing their greater service to the empire. It is time for this very noble sacrifice in service to half of the human beings on Earth to be recognized. This sacrifice is ennobled by the truth not diminished. The defense of the empire will always require the expenditure of American blood and treasure. This necessity must be faced and addressed realistically.
Finally, a successful transition to empire will require rewriting the social contract within the domestic United States to adapt to increasing economic competition and loss of jobs. And it will require us to directly address the prevailing cultural memes that guide Western culture. It is difficult sometimes to stomach the abusive violations of our basic beliefs in the integrity of the individual and the necessity for justice, as second and third world cultures struggle to emerge into modernity. We must find a way within ourselves to restrain our immediate impulse to punish and hate, and develop an equable patience to slowly nurture these cultures into the possibility of a broader acceptance of humanitarian values.
Larry Carcelli, Ph.D., is an Ogden psychologist with degrees from UCLA and Utah State University and a lifelong interest in history and international relations.
Здесь, то же самое, но уже на русском.
Все там хорошо. Вот только, каждый, кто хоть немного изучал Историю, должны бы очень хорошо знать, чем заканчивали ВСЕ Империи в Истории Цивилизации…
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Если хотя бы часть из этого правда, то кто является кибертеррористом?
..Россия или… Обама и его Администрация?
Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.
Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.
At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S. election were increasingly apparent. Hackers with ties to Russian intelligence services had been rummaging through Democratic Party computer networks, as well as some Republican systems, for more than a year. In July, the FBI had opened an investigation of contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22, nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online by WikiLeaks.
SECRET CIA REPORT ARRIVES AT THE WHITE HOUSE
CIA Director John Brennan first alerts the White House in early August that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an operation to defeat or at least damage Hillary Clinton and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.
The president instructs aides to assess vulnerabilities in the election system and get agencies to agree on the intelligence that Putin was seeking to influence the election.
Brennan calls Alexander Bortnikov, the director of Russia’s main security agency, and warns him about interfering in the U.S. presidential election.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson’s efforts to secure the U.S. voting systems run aground when some state officials reject his plan, calling it a federal takeover.
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Tags:
“Шутки” или загадки Голливуда…
May. 7th, 2017 02:55 amДруг прислал картинку, которую он увидел в сериале “Blacklist”.
Как я понимаю, это обнаружено у какого-то там, кто кое-где, (в США, если точно) “честно жить не хочет” ©.
Вот для меня здесь несколько загадок.
Во-первых, почему на пачке с русскими деньгами, (это они, если я не ошибаюсь?), почему на пачке написано по-русски “10 долларов”?
И, почему, пачка с китайскими банкнотами перетянута резиночкой?
Вот что этим самым хотел сказать Голливуд, или, если это в нашем случае, компания NBC?
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…И о погоде на сегодня…
May. 6th, 2017 04:10 pmВ Портланде погода в этом году просто сумасшедшая.
Начать с того, что прошедшая зима была необычайно холодна для Портланда. Обычно, снег в Портланде если и выпадал, то всего один раз за всю зиму, лежал, самое долгое на моей памяти, дней семь, а потом — все.. До следующей зимы.
Прошлой зимой снег выпадал, если не ошибаюсь, три раза. Даже старожилы, прожившие в Портланде всю жизнь, говорили мне, что они такого не помнят.
Буквально до прошлого вторника было достаточно прохладно. Весной это назвать было сложно. Хотя, все что должно было расцвести, попыталось это сделать.
В прошлую среду, вдруг, стало жарко. Было ощущение того, что погода из зимней, в одночасье превратилась в летнюю, даже не попытавшись сделать остановки на весну.
Вчера я водил Йипу к ветеринару и промок, и продрог весь, потому что шел очень холодный и сильный дождь. Но, это уже больше было похоже на Портланд.
Сегодня, — все как обычно в Портланде.
Пасмурно…
Но так мне нравится больше.
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