Legacy of Slavery Still Fuels Anti-Black Attitudes in the Deep South

"Although slavery was abolished 150 years ago, its political legacy is alive and well, according to researchers who performed a new county-by-county analysis of census data and opinion polls of more than 39,000 southern whites.

The team of political scientists found that white Southerners who live today in the Cotton Belt where slavery and the plantation economy dominated are much more likely to express more negative attitudes toward blacks than their fellow Southerners who live in nearby areas that had few slaves. Residents of these former slavery strongholds are also more likely to identify as Republican and to express opposition to race-related policies such as affirmative action.

Conducted by Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen from the University of Rochester, the research is believed to be the first to demonstrate quantitatively the lasting effects of slavery on contemporary political attitudes in the American South. The findings hold even when other dynamics often associated with racial animosity are factored in, such as present day concentrations of African Americans in an area, or whether an area is urban or rural.

'Slavery does not explain all forms of current day racism,' says Acharya. 'But the data clearly demonstrates that the legacy of the plantation economy and its reliance on the forced labor of African Americans continues to exacerbate racial bias in the Deep South.'"

Link here.

CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup

Why? Because a democracy that isn't subservient to US hegemonic ambitions can't be allowed to stand.

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"The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that also show how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in his overthrow.

On the 60th anniversary of an event often invoked by Iranians as evidence of western meddling, the US national security archive at George Washington University published a series of declassified CIA documents.

"The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government," reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran.

The documents, published on the archive's website under freedom of information laws, describe in detail how the US – with British help – engineered the coup, codenamed TPAJAX by the CIA and Operation Boot by Britain's MI6."

Link here.

Bill Mitchell: Demystifying Modern Monetary Theory

"For most people, the greatest challenge to near-and-dear convictions is MMT’s claim that a sovereign government’s finances are nothing like those of households and firms. While we hear all the time the statement that 'if I ran my household budget the way that the Federal Government runs its budget, I’d go broke', followed by the claim 'therefore, we need to get the government deficit under control', MMT argues this is a false analogy. A sovereign, currency-issuing government is NOTHING like a currency-using household or firm. The sovereign government cannot become insolvent in its own currency; it can always make all payments as they come due in its own currency because it is the ISSUER of the currency, not simply the USER (as a household or private business is). This issuing capacity means that the government does not face the same kinds of constraints as a private sector user of money, which in turn exposes the fallacy of the household analogy, so beloved in popular economics discourse."

Link here.

Reps. Introduce Legislation to End Illegal U.S. War to Overthrow Syrian Government of Assad

Long overdue . . .

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November 19, 2015

"Washington, DC—Today, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA), both members of the House Armed Services Committee, introduced H.R. 4108, a bipartisan bill to end U.S. efforts to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic led by President Bashar al-Assad.

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a twice-deployed combat veteran, said the intent of the bill is to 'Bring an immediate end to the illegal, counter-productive war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad.'

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard explained,'The U.S. is waging two wars in Syria. The first is the war against ISIS and other Islamic extremists, which Congress authorized after the terrorist attack on 9/11. The second war is the illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad.

The war to overthrow Assad is counter-productive because it actually helps ISIS and other Islamic extremists achieve their goal of overthrowing the Syrian government of Assad and taking control of all of Syria—which will simply increase human suffering in the region, exacerbate the refugee crisis, and pose a greater threat to the world. Also, the war to overthrow Assad is illegal because Congress never authorized it.'

Congressman Austin Scott said, 'Our primary mission should be the war against ISIS, al Qaeda, and radical Islamic extremists that have operations both inside and outside of Syria and Iraq. Those groups have carried out attacks on American allies, and are currently threatening attacks on our homeland. This represents a clear and present danger to our citizens, and I support eliminating these radical Islamic terrorists through any means necessary. Working to remove Assad at this stage is counter-productive to what I believe our primary mission should be.'”

Press release here.

Bibi - master manipulator

This land-thieving, warmongering POS is a master at marshaling the resources necessary for American leadership to sacrifice US interests on behalf of Israel's.      

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"Benjamin Netanyahu's not-so-prescient 2002 message to Congress about Iraq"

"Indeed, Netanyahu was a rather aggressive Iraq hawk back in the early 2000s. 'There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is working, is advancing towards to the development of nuclear weapons,' Netanyahu said in 2002 testimony to Congress. 'Once Saddam has nuclear weapons, the terror network will have nuclear weapons,'

Not only did Netanyahu get the nuclear issue wrong — Saddam was not building a nuclear program after all — but he incorrectly predicted that the war would inspire an Iranian democratic uprising that would topple the theocratic regime.

'If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,' Netanyahu claimed."

Link to article here.

So Wrong for So Long

Why neoconservatives are never right.

"To be more specific, the problem isn’t that these people just happened to be embarrassingly wrong about Iraq. After all, plenty of other people were equally misguided back then, including many people who now support the deal today. Nor is the problem the neocons’ stubborn and morally dubious refusal to admit they were wrong and take responsibility for the lives and money they squandered.

No, the real problem is that the neoconservative worldview — one that still informs the thinking of many of the groups and individuals who are most vocal in opposing the Iran deal — is fundamentally flawed. Getting Iraq wrong wasn’t just an unfortunate miscalculation, it happened because their theories of world politics were dubious and their understanding of how the world works was goofy.  When your strategic software is riddled with bugs, you should expect a lot of error messages."

Article link here.

Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication

You should follow our values of freedom . . . or we'll have to kill you.

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"American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

• Muslims do not “hate our freedom,” but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states. 
• Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that “freedom is the future of the Middle East” is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved. 
• Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination."

Link to document here.

Moscow Nights in Latakia

"Another, related reason is that since the United States has no comprehensive strategy, the repercussions of the Russian actions, military and political, are generating a piecemeal reaction that finds it difficult to gain any intellectual or diplomatic traction in each policy sphere. Theoretically, these developments should highlight the need for such an overarching strategy by underscoring the costs of not having one. There is no evidence, though, of that happening within the Obama administration - or within the American foreign policy community generally. Why? In addition to the manifest lack of aptitude for such an undertaking, the kinds of conceptual adjustments indicated by the Russian intervention touch on highly sensitive questions of America's status and mission in the world which its political elite is unprepared to engage."

Amen.

Link here.

The media are misleading the public on Syria

"Politicians may be forgiven for distorting their past actions. Governments may also be excused for promoting whatever narrative they believe best suits them. Journalism, however, is supposed to remain apart from the power elite and its inbred mendacity. In this crisis it has failed miserably.

Americans are said to be ignorant of the world. We are, but so are people in other countries. If people in Bhutan or Bolivia misunderstand Syria, however, that has no real effect. Our ignorance is more dangerous, because we act on it. The United States has the power to decree the death of nations. It can do so with popular support because many Americans — and many journalists — are content with the official story. In Syria, it is: 'Fight Assad, Russia, and Iran! Join with our Turkish, Saudi, and Kurdish friends to support peace!' This is appallingly distant from reality. It is also likely to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death."

Link here.

Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria

"Even as America contemplates yet another violent Mideast intervention, most Americans are unaware of the many ways that 'blowback' from previous CIA blunders has helped craft the current crisis. The reverberations from decades of CIA shenanigans continue to echo across the Mideast today in national capitals and from mosques to madras schools over the wrecked landscape of democracy and moderate Islam that the CIA helped obliterate.

A parade of Iranian and Syrian dictators, including Bashar al-Assad and his father, have invoked the history of the CIA’s bloody coups as a pretext for their authoritarian rule, repressive tactics and their need for a strong Russian alliance. These stories are therefore well known to the people of Syria and Iran who naturally interpret talk of U.S. intervention in the context of that history.

While the compliant American press parrots the narrative that our military support for the Syrian insurgency is purely humanitarian, many Arabs see the present crisis as just another proxy war over pipelines and geopolitics. Before rushing deeper into the conflagration, it would be wise for us to consider the abundant facts supporting that perspective."

Link here.

Donald Trump’s Surprising Success with Southern Evangelicals

"In 1986, white Republicans and Democrats didn’t differ in their racial attitudes. Indeed the average scores are almost identical. In addition, few Americans provided responses at the extremes of the scale. Only about 12 percent of Democrats and nine percent of Republicans fell in the two categories closest to the most racially resentful poll.

A lot has changed in 30 years. The average white Democrat and Republican have never before provided such divergent responses. Although Democrats have become slightly less racially resentful over time, the real change has occurred among Republicans. They have become far more racially resentful, even as the country has moved away from the worst parts of its troubled racial past.

In 2016, nearly 38 percent of Republicans fell in the two most racially resentful categories, with nearly a quarter in the very most resentful one. Indeed, the two most common categories for Republicans to fall into were the two most racially resentful ones."

Link to article here.

Rising Seas Threaten Land Home to Half a Billion

"Our analysis details the implications of different warming scenarios for every coastal nation and megacity on the planet, and our globally searchable Mapping Choices tool maps them. We are also publishing Google Earth fly-over videos and KML contrasting these different futures for important cities around the world, and printable high-resolution photorealistic images of select global landmarks. We have made these visualizations embeddable and downloadable. These are the stakes for global climate talks, in pictures."

See more here.

Hersh on Syria Machinations

Seymour M. Hersh on US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war

"The four core elements of Obama’s Syria policy remain intact today: an insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS coalition with Russia is possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to support. The Paris attacks on 13 November that killed 130 people did not change the White House’s public stance, although many European leaders, including François Hollande, advocated greater co-operation with Russia and agreed to co-ordinate more closely with its air force; there was also talk of the need to be more flexible about the timing of Assad’s exit from power. On 24 November, Hollande flew to Washington to discuss how France and the US could collaborate more closely in the fight against Islamic State. At a joint press conference at the White House, Obama said he and Hollande had agreed that ‘Russia’s strikes against the moderate opposition only bolster the Assad regime, whose brutality has helped to fuel the rise’ of IS. Hollande didn’t go that far but he said that the diplomatic process in Vienna would ‘lead to Bashar al-Assad’s departure … a government of unity is required.’ The press conference failed to deal with the far more urgent impasse between the two men on the matter of Erdoğan. Obama defended Turkey’s right to defend its borders; Hollande said it was ‘a matter of urgency’ for Turkey to take action against terrorists. The JCS adviser told me that one of Hollande’s main goals in flying to Washington had been to try to persuade Obama to join the EU in a mutual declaration of war against Islamic State. Obama said no. The Europeans had pointedly not gone to Nato, to which Turkey belongs, for such a declaration. ‘Turkey is the problem,’ the JCS adviser said."

Full article here.

The hasbara manual

Newspeak for Likudniks . . . link here.

Failure as a Way of Life

"The fault line in American politics is no longer Republican vs. Democrat nor conservative vs. liberal but establishment vs. anti-establishment. This is an inevitable result of serial failure in establishment policies. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the establishment’s repeated military interventions abroad in wars against non-state opponents. When such interventions fail in one place—first Somalia, then Iraq, then Afghanistan, then Libya, now Syria—it does the same thing again somewhere else, with the same result."
"The public is catching on to all this and, on both sides of the political spectrum, turning to anti-establishment candidates. If we are fortunate, some will win. If the establishment manipulates the rules to hold on to power indefinitely, when it collapses it may take the state with it."

Article here.

S&P 500 Ratio of Daily Hi/Lo

20-trading day moving average

Interesting - Track intraday stock moves

When 40-trading day moving average hits ~1.5% - from low to close.

Link is here.

Wasteful spending on warpigs and contractors

Putting America’s Defense Spending into Perspective

Link here.

Saudi Arabia's Wahhabists are walking assholes

The West’s Alliance With Saudi Arabia Fuels Islamism

"The spread of extremist Islamist ideology is then as much a result of Western foreign policy as of Saudi machinations. Western and Gulf support for the rebels in Syria followed a similar path as the one observed in Afghanistan, before ISIS started to turn against the West and the Gulf states. But it is no coincidence that ISIS is adopting Saudi religious textbooks in its schools, killing Shia in Saudi Arabia just like the early Wahhabi zealots wanted to, and generally garnering much support on a popular level in the kingdom."

Link here.

Brilliant. Foreign policy, Clinton style.

Sell-out your country's interests, and instigate the murder and suffering of millions. All so you can get campaign funding and endorsements from neocon weasels and think tanks bankrolled by state-sponsors of terrorism.

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"Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading Sunni powers in the Middle East, view Iran, the leading Shia power, as a regional rival for power and influence. Right-wing Israelis view Iran as an implacable foe that controls Hezbollah, a Shi'a militant group operating in Lebanon, a border state of Israel. Thus, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel have all clamored to remove Iran's influence in Syria.

This idea is incredibly naïve. Iran has been around as a regional power for a long time--in fact, for about 2,700 years. And Shia Islam is not going away. There is no way, and no reason, to "defeat" Iran. The regional powers need to forge a geopolitical equilibrium that recognizes the mutual and balancing roles of the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and Iran. And Israeli right-wingers are naïve, and deeply ignorant of history, to regard Iran as their implacable foe, especially when that mistaken view pushes Israel to side with Sunni jihadists.

Yet Clinton did not pursue that route. Instead she joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and right-wing Israelis to try to isolate, even defeat, Iran. In 2010, she supported secret negotiations between Israel and Syria to attempt to wrest Syria from Iran's influence.Those talks failed. Then the CIA and Clinton pressed successfully for Plan B: to overthrow Assad."

Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath