Month: November 2018

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.”– Justice William J. Brennan, City of Houston v. Hill

What the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of line.

What the First Amendment protects – and a healthy constitutional republic requires – are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

It’s not an easy undertaking.

Weaponized by police, prosecutors, courts and legislatures, “disorderly conduct” charges have become a convenient means by which to punish those individuals who refuse to be muzzled.

• Deyshia Hargrave, a language arts teacher in Louisiana, was thrown to the ground, handcuffed and arrested for speaking out during a public comment period at a school board meeting.

• Fane Lozman was arrested for alluding to government corruption during open comment time at a City Council meeting in Palm Beach County, Fla.

• Dan Heyman, a reporter for the Public News Service, was arrested for “aggressively” questioning Tom Price, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services during an encounter in the West Virginia State Capitol.

• College professor Ersula Ore was slammed to the ground and arrested after she objected to the “disrespectful manner” shown by a campus cop who stopped her in the middle of the street and demanded that she show her ID.

• Philadelphia lawyer Rebecca Musarra was arrested for exercising her right to remain silent and refusing to answer questions posed by a police officer during a routine traffic stop. (Note: she cooperated in every other way by providing license and registration, etc.)

• Robert Bartlett was arrested during an Arctic Man festival in Alaska, allegedly in retaliation for refusing to be interrogated by police and intervening when police attempted to question other people. His case is before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cases like these have become all too common, typical of the bipolar nature of life in the American police state today: you may have distinct, protected rights on paper, but dare to exercise those rights and you put yourself at risk for fines, arrests, injuries and even death.

This is the unfortunate price of freedom.

Yet these are not new developments.

We have been circling this particular drain hole for some time now.

Almost 50 years ago, in fact, Lewis Colten was arrested outside Lexington, Kentucky, for questioning police and offering advice to his friend during a traffic stop.

Colten was one of 20 or so college students who had driven to the Blue Grass Airport to demonstrate against then-First Lady Pat Nixon. Upon leaving the airport, police stopped one of the cars in Colten’s motorcade because it bore an expired, out-of-state license plate. Colten and the other drivers also pulled over to the side of the road.

Fearing violence on the part of the police, Colten exited his vehicle and stood nearby while police issued his friend, Mendez, a ticket and arranged to tow his car. Police repeatedly asked Colten to leave. At one point, a state trooper declared, “This is none of your affair . . . get back in your car and please move on and clear the road.”

Insisting that he wanted to make a transportation arrangement for his friend Mendez and the occupants of the Mendez car, Colten failed to move away and was arrested for violating Kentucky’s disorderly conduct statute.

Colten subsequently challenged his arrest as a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech and took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sided with the police.

Although the Court acknowledged that Colten was not trespassing or disobeying any traffic regulation himself, the majority affirmed that Colten “had no constitutional right to observe the issuance of a traffic ticket or to engage the issuing officer in conversation at that time.”

The Supreme Court’s bottom line: protecting police from inconvenience, annoyance or alarm is more important than protecting speech that, in the government’s estimation, has “no social value.”

While the ruling itself was unsurprising for a judiciary that tends to march in lockstep with the police, the dissent by Justice William O. Douglas is a powerful reminder that the government exists to serve the people and not the other way around.

Stressing that Colten’s speech was quiet, not boisterous, devoid of “fighting words,” and involved no overt acts, fisticuffs, or disorderly conduct in the normal meaning of the words, Douglas took issue with the idea that merely by speaking to a government representative, in this case the police—a right enshrined in the First Amendment, by the way—Colten was perceived as inconveniencing and annoying the police.

In a passionate defense of free speech, Douglas declared: 

Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?

The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet. The situation might have indicated that Colten’s techniques were ill-suited to the mission he was on, that diplomacy would have been more effective. But at the constitutional level speech need not be a sedative; it can be disruptive.

It’s a power-packed paragraph full of important truths that the powers-that-be would prefer we quickly forget: We the people are the sovereigns. We have the final word. We can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy. We need not stay docile and quiet. Our speech can be disruptive. It can invite dispute. It can be provocative and challenging. We do not have to bow submissively to authority or speak with reverence to government officials.

Now in theory, “we the people” have a constitutional right to talk back to the government.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded as much in City of Houston v. Hill when it struck down a city ordinance prohibiting verbal abuse of police officers as unconstitutionally overbroad and a criminalization of protected speech.

In practice, however, talking back—especially when the police are involved—can get you killed.

The danger is real.

We live in an age in which “we the people” are at the mercy of militarized, weaponized, immunized cops who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”

While violent crime in America remains at an all-time low, the death toll as a result of police-sponsored violence continues to rise. In fact, more than 1,000 people are killed every year by police in America, more than any other country in the world.

What we are dealing with is a nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out against individuals posing little or no real threat.

I’m not talking about the number of individuals—especially young people—who are being shot and killed by police for having a look-alike gun in their possession, such as a BB gun. I’m not even talking about people who have been shot for brandishing weapons at police, such as scissors.

I’m talking about the growing numbers of unarmed people are who being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or looking a certain way, or moving a certain way, or not moving fast enough, or asking a question, or not answering a question, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

This is not what life should be like in a so-called “free” country.

Police encounters have deteriorated so far that anything short of compliance—including behavior the police perceive as disrespectful or “insufficiently deferential to their authority,” “threatening” or resistant—could get you arrested, jailed or killed.  

The problem, of course, is that compliance is rarely enough to guarantee one’s safety.

Case in point: Miami-Dade police slammed a 14-year-old boy to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and handcuffing him after he allegedly gave them “dehumanizing stares” and walked away from them, which the officers found unacceptable.

According to Miami-Dade Police Detective Alvaro Zabaleta, “His body language was that he was stiffening up and pulling away… When you have somebody resistant to them and pulling away and somebody clenching their fists and flailing their arms, that’s a threat. Of course we have to neutralize the threat.”

This mindset that any challenge to police authority is a threat that needs to be “neutralized” is a dangerous one that is part of a greater nationwide trend that sets the police beyond the reach of the First and Fourth Amendments.

When police officers are allowed to operate under the assumption that their word is law and that there is no room for any form of disagreement or even question, that serves to destroy the First Amendment’s assurances of free speech, free assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Then again, this is what happens when you take a police recruit, hype him (or her) up on the power of the gun in his holster and the superiority of his uniform, render him woefully ignorant of how to handle a situation without resorting to violence, drill him in military tactics but keep him in the dark about the Constitution, and never stress to him that he is to be a peacemaker and a peacekeeper, respectful of and subservient to the taxpayers, who are in fact his masters and employers.

The problem, as one reporter rightly concluded, is “not that life has gotten that much more dangerous, it’s that authorities have chosen to respond to even innocent situations as if they were in a warzone.”

What we’re dealing with today is a skewed shoot-to-kill mindset in which police, trained to view themselves as warriors or soldiers in a war, whether against drugs, or terror, or crime, must “get” the bad guys—i.e., anyone who is a potential target—before the bad guys get them.

Never mind that the fatality rate of on-duty police officers is reportedly far lower than many other professions, including construction, logging, fishing, truck driving, and even trash collection.

The result of this battlefield approach to domestic peacekeeping is a society in which police shoot first and ask questions later.

The message being drummed into our heads with every police shooting of an unarmed citizen is this: if you don’t want to get probed, poked, pinched, tasered, tackled, searched, seized, stripped, manhandled, arrested, shot, or killed, don’t say, do or even suggest anything that even hints of noncompliance.

This is the “thin blue line” over which you must not cross in interactions with police if you want to walk away with your life and freedoms intact.

If ever there were a time to scale back on the mindset adopted by cops that they are the law and should be revered, feared and obeyed, it’s now.

It doesn’t matter where you live—big city or small town—it’s the same scenario being played out over and over again in which government agents, hyped up on their own authority and the power of their uniform, ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.

Americans as young as 4 years old are being leg shackled, handcuffed, tasered and held at gun point for not being quiet, not being orderly and just being childlike—i.e., not being compliant enough.

Americans as old as 95 are being beaten, shot and killed for questioning an order, hesitating in the face of a directive, and mistaking a policeman crashing through their door for a criminal breaking into their home—i.e., not being submissive enough.

And Americans of every age and skin color are being taught the painful lesson that the only truly compliant, submissive and obedient citizen in a police state is a dead one.

As a result, Americans are being brainwashed into believing that anyone who wears a government uniform—soldier, police officer, prison guard—must be obeyed without question.

Of course, the Constitution takes a far different position, but does anyone in the government even read, let alone abide by, the Constitution anymore?

If we just cower before government agents and meekly obey, we may find ourselves following in the footsteps of those nations that eventually fell to tyranny.

The alternative involves standing up and speaking truth to power. Jesus Christ walked that road. So did Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and countless other freedom fighters whose actions changed the course of history.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the American dream was built on the idea that no one is above the law, that our rights are inalienable and cannot be taken away, and that our government and its appointed agents exist to serve us.

It may be that things are too far gone to save, but still we must try.

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A brand new expose by Bloomberg shines light on modern day loan sharks: city officials that are armed with badges like Vadim Barbarovich, who earned $1.7 million last year, easily giving him the most lucrative job within the government of New York City. His official title is City Marshal, and he’s one of 35 that the mayor has appointed to compete for fees from recovering debts. While traditionally marshals evict tenants and tow cars, Barbarovich has found his place in part of a debt collection industry that allows them to use their legal authority on behalf of predatory lenders.

It’s a practice that dates back to the 17th century. Back then, jobs across the Hudson River for marshals yielded the highest fees. Under current law, marshals are entitled to keep 5% of cash that they collect. The city also has a Sheriff’s office that does similar work, but those employees get a salary. Several mayors have called for an end to the marshal system over the last few decades, but nobody has been successful in getting the state legislature to act upon it.

While Barbarovich’s jurisdiction is supposed to end at city limits, he has worked to recover debts from places like California and Illinois, among others nationwide.

One person he “recovered” debt money from, to the tune of $56,000, Jose Soliz, asked: “How could they pull all that money? I’ve never even been to New York.” 

When asked about Barbarovich’s practices, a spokesman for the New York City Marshals Association said that marshals simply “enforce court judgments”.

The genesis of these judgments are often lenders who advance money to people at rates that can sometimes top 400% annualized. They have found a loophole around loansharking rules by stating that they are instead buying the money that businesses will likely make in the future at a discounted price. Courts have been supportive of this distinction and, as such, the “merchant cash advance” industry has grown to about $15 billion a year.

As soon as lenders see that borrowers have fallen behind they call marshals, whose job is to force the banks to handover whatever cash is left. They do this by using a court order stamped by a clerk that’s obtained without going before a judge. Banks generally comply immediately, without checking if the marshal has the right to actually take the funds. The borrower often doesn’t understand what’s going on until the money is gone.

Prior to becoming a marshal, Barbarovich worked in property control earning about $70,000 a year and sometimes volunteered as a Russian translator. Upon starting as a marshal in 2013, he earned about $90,000. When cash advance companies discovered the power he had, his income skyrocketed and his earnings increased almost 20 fold.

His financial disclosures show that his work enforcing Supreme Court property judgments skyrocketed dramatically over the last two years, as did the amount of cash he recovered. In some respects, the collection process is like the wild west: marshals don’t draw a salary, earn fees from customers and are encouraged to compete with one another, which can catalyze aggressive behavior. 

Avery Steinberg, a lawyer in White Plains, New York, who represents a few clients whose accounts were seized by Barbarovich, told Bloomberg: “He goes about it in any which way he can. He has a reputation of being a bully.”

The Bloomberg article tells the story of Jose Soliz, whose company builds concrete block walls for schools and stores in the Texas Panhandle. He had started borrowing from cash advance companies several years ago and found himself trapped in a cycle of debt.

He eventually wound up taking out a $23,000 loan that he agreed to pay back within nine weeks – to the tune of $44,970: an 800% annualized interest rate.

He says that the fees were more than expected, so he stopped payment. When he went to go pay his employees a couple days later, he noticed that his Wells Fargo account had been frozen and his paychecks bounced.

He found out the hard way that cash advance companies like the one he used required him to sign a document agreeing in advance that if there’s a legal dispute, the borrower will automatically lose, rendering any type of judicial review useless. Those who are signing these agreements don’t often realize the power that they are waiving. Based on these agreements, the lender can accuse the borrower of defaulting, without proof, and have a court judgment signed by a clerk on the same day.

This is exactly what happened to Soliz. His lender obtained such a judgment against him in Buffalo, New York and called in Barbarovich to collect. Even though his Wells Fargo account was opened in Texas, and the judgment was only valid in New York State, the bank turned over $56,764 to the marshal. The rule is supposedly that marshals can go after out of state funds as long as they serve demands at a bank location in New York City, according to the New York City Department of Investigation.

On the other hand, it’s not clear whether or not banks have to comply with these orders. Some banks reject these demands but most have a policy of following any legal order they receive so as to avoid the hassle of reviewing them and not to ruffle any feathers.

Wells Fargo, when contacted by Bloomberg, stated that it “carefully review[s] each legal order to ensure it’s valid and properly handled.”

Barbarovich claims that he serves all legal orders by hand, though that is disputed by Soliz’s lawyer.

The Department of Investigation reportedly “continues to review” Barbarovich’s work and offered few specifics to Bloomberg.

The Department has stated that they’re conducting multiple investigations into the enforcement of judgments and focusing on whether not marshals are serving orders by hand.

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Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Tijuana health officials have said that of those migrants in the caravan at the United States’ border with Mexico, about one third is being treated for health concerns. Migrants who came with the caravan are suffering from respiratory infections, tuberculosis, chickenpox, and some other serious health issues, Tijuana’s Health Department warned on Thursday morning.

A spokesman for the Tijuana Health Department told Fox News that out of 6,000 migrants currently residing in the city, over a third of them (2,267) are being treated for health-related issues. There are several migrants who have contracted serious diseases that are life-threatening. So far, there have been three confirmed cases of tuberculosis and four cases of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus)/AIDS (advanced immunodeficiency syndrome). Lesser illnesses that pose little threat to life include four separate cases of chickenpox, the spokesman said. And at least 101 migrants have lice and multiple instances of skin infections, the department’s data shows, according to a Fox News report.

There’s also a looming threat of a Hepatitis outbreak due to unsanitary conditions in and around the shelter caused by the migrants, the spokesman said.  The location also has only 35 portable bathrooms and a sign reading “No Spitting” had to be put up because coughing and spitting by migrants are rampant in the shelter.

There are thousands of migrants being sheltered at the Benito Juarez Sports Complex near the San Ysidro U.S.-Mexico Port of Entry, despite the place being capable of providing for 1,000 people.

Tijuana’s Mayor, Juan Manuel Gastelum, said Tuesday that the city only has enough money to assist the migrants only for a few more days, with the city saying it’s spending around $30,000 a day.

“We won’t compromise the resources of the residents of Tijuana,” Gastelum said during a press conference.

“We won’t raise taxes tomorrow to pay for today’s problem.” It’s difficult to say what the lack of funding will mean for the migrants at this time.

Despite the disturbingly disgusting conditions most of the migrants find themselves in today, most are still committed to entering the U.S. A few have “self-deported” and others have been deported by Mexico, but there are thousands remaining determined to cross the border at all costs.

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House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has cast serious doubt over the “bizarre” California midterm election results, where it appears that seven GOP-held seats will flip to Democratic control, weeks later. 

The election result “just defies logic to me,” said Ryan during a Washington Post live event. 

“We were only down 26 seats the night of the election and three weeks later, we lost basically every California race. This election system they have — I can’t begin to understand what ‘ballot harvesting’ is.”

Ryan, who is retiring after this year, has previously declined to side with President Trump and other Republicans who have complained of election related irregularities and suspected fraud in places such as Florida and California, according to The Hill. 

California does have a more liberal policy when it comes to counting ballots. The Golden State allows absentee ballots to be counted if they are mailed by Election Day and arrive at the registrar by the Friday after the election. That’s why results in a handful of close California House races were not called until days, or weeks, after Nov. 6.

In many cases, the GOP candidates had been leading on Election Night, but Democrats ultimately prevailed as additional absentee and provisional ballots were tallied in the days after. –The Hill

“In Wisconsin, we knew the next day. Scott Walker, my friend, I was sad to see him lose, but we accepted the results on Wednesday,” said Ryan following the election. In California, however, “their system is bizarre; I still don’t completely understand it. There are a lot of races there we should have won.“

When pressed about his California comments, Ryan said it seemed “bizarre” and “strange” that Democrats would win all seven competitive House races in California. Democrats ousted GOP Reps. Mimi Walters, Dana Rohrabacher, Jeff Denham and Steve Knight, and won seats held by retiring GOP Reps. Ed Royce and Darrell Issa. GOP Rep. David Valadao is trailing Democrat TJ Cox, but the race is too close to call. –The Hill

“The way the absentee-ballot program used to work, and the way it works now, it seems pretty loosey goose,” said Ryan. “When you have candidates who win the absentee ballot vote and then lose three weeks later because of provisionals, that’s really bizarre. I just think that’s a very very strange outcome.”

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla defended the process in an interview with CNN. 

“The philosophy here is, while it may take a little bit longer to finish counting ballots in California, the policies are in place to ensure that all votes can be properly processed and added to the tally — and I guess better said, that all voices can be heard in the political process,” said Padilla. 

 

 

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Authored by James Petras via The Unz Review,

US Mass Mobilizations: Wars and Financial Plunder

Introduction

Over the past three decades, the US government has engaged in over a dozen wars, none of which have evoked popular celebrations either before, during or after. Nor did the government succeed in securing popular support in its efforts to confront the economic crises of 2008 – 2009.

This paper will begin by discussing the major wars of our time, namely the two US invasions of Iraq . We will proceed to analyze the nature of the popular response and the political consequences.

In the second section we will discuss the economic crises of 2008 -2009, the government bailout and popular response. We will conclude by focusing on the potential powerful changes inherent in mass popular movements.

The Iraq War and the US Public

In the run-up to the two US wars against Iraq, (1990 – 01 and 2003 – 2011) there was no mass war fever, nor did the public celebrate the outcome. On the contrary both wars were preceded by massive protests in the US and among EU allies. The first Iraqi invasion was opposed by the vast-majority of the US public despite a major mass media and regime propaganda campaign backed by President George H. W. Bush. Subsequently, President Clinton launched a bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998 with virtually no public support or approval.

March 20, 2003, President George W. Bush launched the second major war against Iraq despite massive protests in all major US cities. The war was officially concluded by President Obama in December 2011. President Obama’s declaration of a successful conclusion failed to elicit popular agreement.

Several questions arise:

Why mass opposition at the start of the Iraq wars and why did they fail to continue?

Why did the public refuse to celebrate President Obama’s ending of the war in 2011?

Why did mass protests of the Iraq wars fail to produce durable political vehicles to secure the peace?

The Anti-Iraq War Syndrome

The massive popular movements which actively opposed the Iraq wars had their roots in several historical sources. The success of the movements that ended the Viet Nam war, the ideas that mass activity could resist and win was solidly embedded in large segments of the progressive public. Moreover, they strongly held the idea that the mass media and Congress could not be trusted; this reinforced the idea that mass direct action was essential to reverse Presidential and Pentagon war policies.

The second factor encouraging US mass protest was the fact that the US was internationally isolated. Presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush wars faced hostile regime and mass opposition in Europe, the Middle East and in the UN General Assembly. US activists felt that they were part of a global movement which could succeed.

Thirdly the advent of Democratic President Clinton did not reverse the mass anti-war movements.The terror bombing of Iraq in December 1998 was destructive and Clinton’s war against Serbia kept the movements alive and active To the extent that Clinton avoided large scale long-term wars, he avoided provoking mass movements from re-emerging during the latter part of the 1990’s.

The last big wave of mass anti-war protest occurred from 2003 to 2008. Mass anti-war protest to war exploded soon after the World Trade Center bombings of 9/11. White House exploited the events to proclaim a global ‘war on terror’, yet the mass popular movements interpreted the same events as a call to oppose new wars in the Middle East.

Anti-war leaders drew activists of the entire decade, envisioning a ‘build-up’ which could prevent the Bush regime from launching a series of wars without end. Moreover, the vast-majority of the public was not convinced by officials’ claims that Iraq, weakened and encircled, was stocking ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to attack the US.

Large scale popular protests challenged the mass media, the so called respectable press and ignored the Israeli lobby and other Pentagon warlords demanding an invasion of Iraq. The vast-majority of American, did not believe they were threatened by Saddam Hussain they felt a greater threat from the White House’s resort to severe repressive legislation like the Patriot Act. Washington’s rapid military defeat of Iraqi forces and its occupation of the Iraqi state led to a decline in the size and scope of the anti-war movement but not to its potential mass base.

Two events led to the demise of the anti-war movements. The anti-war leaders turned from independent direct action to electoral politics and secondly, they embraced and channeled their followers to support Democratic presidential candidate Obama. In large part the movement leaders and activists believed that direct action had failed to prevent or end the previous two Iraq wars. Secondly, Obama made a direct demagogic appeal to the peace movement – he promised to end wars and pursue social justice at home.

With the advent of Obama, many peace leaders and followers joined the Obama political machine .Those who were not co-opted were quickly disillusioned on all counts. Obama continued the ongoing wars and added new ones—Libya, Honduras, Syria. The US occupation in Iraq led to new extremist militia armies which preceded to defeat US trained vassal armies up to the gates of Baghdad. In short time Obama launched a flotilla of warships and warplanes to the South China Sea and dispatched added troops to Afghanistan.

The mass popular movements of the previous two decades were totally disillusioned, betrayed and disoriented. While most opposed Obama’s ‘new’ and ‘old wars’ they struggled to find new outlets for their anti-war beliefs. Lacking alternative anti-war movements, they were vulnerable to the war propaganda of the media and the new demagogue of the right. Donald Trump attracted many who opposed the war monger Hilary Clinton.

The Bank Bailout: Mass Protest Denied

In 2008, at the end of his presidency, President George W. Bush signed off on a massive federal bailout of the biggest Wall Street banks who faced bankruptcy from their wild speculative profiteering.

In 2009 President Obama endorsed the bailout and urged rapid Congressional approval. Congress complied to a $700-billion- dollar handout ,which according to Forbes (July 14, 2015) rose to $7.77 trillion. Overnight hundreds of thousands of American demanded Congress rescind the vote. Under immense popular protest, Congress capitulated. However President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership insisted: the bill was slightly modified and approved. The ‘popular will’ was denied. The protests were neutralized and dissipated. The bailout of the banks proceeded, while several million households watched while their homes were foreclosed ,despite some local protests. Among the anti-bank movement, radical proposals flourished, ranging from calls to nationalize them, to demands to let the big banks go bankrupt and provide federal financing for co-operatives and community banks.

Clearly the vast-majority of the American people were aware and acted to resist corporate-collusion to plunder taxpayers.

Conclusion: What is to be Done?

Mass popular mobilizations are a reality in the United States. The problem is that they have not been sustained and the reasons are clear: they lacked political organization which would go beyond protests and reject lesser evil policies.

The anti-war movement which started in opposition to the Iraq war was marginalized by the two dominant parties. The result was the multiplication of new wars. By the second year of Obama’s presidency the US was engaged in seven wars.

By the second year of Trump’s Presidency the US was threatening nuclear wars against Russia, Iran and other ‘enemies’ of the empire. While public opinion was decidedly opposed, the ‘opinion’ barely rippled in the mid-term elections.

Where have the anti-war and anti-bank masses gone? I would argue they are still with us but they cannot turn their voices into action and organization if they remain in the Democratic Party. Before the movements can turn direct action into effective political and economic transformations, they need to build struggles at every level from the local to the national.

The international conditions are ripening. Washington has alienated countries around the world ;it is challenged by allies and faces formidable rivals. The domestic economy is polarized and the elites are divided.

Mobilizations, as in France today, are self-organized through the internet; the mass media are discredited. The time of liberal and rightwing demagogues is passing; the bombast of Trump arouses the same disgust as ended the Obama regime.

Optimal conditions for a new comprehensive movement that goes beyond piecemeal reforms is on the agenda. The question is whether it is now or in future years or decades?

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Chinese students studying in the US have helped pad the coffers of elite US universities for years. But over the summer, the Trump Administration angered academic leaders across the US by adopting new restrictions on visas for Chinese graduate students (though the president decided against a ban on all visas for Chinese students, a policy pushed by Trump aide Steven Miller). And in what looks like the next step in the administration’s crackdown on espionage by Chinese nationals in the US on student or employment visas, Reuters reported Thursday that the State Department plans to tighten its vetting of Chinese students to try and prevent espionage at America’s universities.

The new vetting measures will include checks of student phone records, as well as the scouring of personal accounts on Chinese and US social media platforms for anything that might raise doubts about a students’ intentions – including affiliations with the Chinese government. The plan also involves providing training to US academics to help them spot spying and cyber theft.

“Every Chinese student who China sends here has to go through a party and government approval process,” one senior US official told Reuters. “You may not be here for espionage purposes as traditionally defined, but no Chinese student who’s coming here is untethered from the state.”

The White House declined comment on the new student restrictions under review. Asked what consideration was being given to additional vetting, a State Department official said: “The department helps to ensure that those who receive U.S. visas are eligible and pose no risk to national interests.”

The Chinese government has repeatedly insisted that Washington has exaggerated the problem for political reasons. China’s ambassador to the United States told Reuters the accusations were groundless and “very indecent.”

“Why should anybody accuse them as spies? I think that this is extremely unfair for them,” Ambassador Cui Tiankai said.

In recent months, the US has embarked on an unprecedented crackdown on China’s intelligence services, arresting suspected spies and warning friendly countries to steer clear of Chinese telecom giant Huawei.All of this suggests that the stronger vetting processes are part of a broader crackdown.

Greater scrutiny of Chinese students would be part of a broader effort to confront Beijing over what Washington sees as the use of sometimes illicit methods for acquiring rapid technological advances that China has made a national priority. The world’s two biggest economies also are in a trade war and increasingly at odds over diplomatic and economic issues.

Any changes would seek to strike a balance between preventing possible espionage while not scaring away talented students in a way that would harm universities financially or undercut technological innovation, administration officials said.

Regardless of whether the national security concerns are legitimate or not, US academics will do everything they can to oppose and stymie these measures. Why? Because Chinese students are responsible for some $14 billion of economic activity that directly benefits American universities.

But that is exactly what universities – ranging from the Ivy League’s Harvard, Yale and Princeton universities to state-funded schools such as University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – fear most. They have spent much of 2018 lobbying against what they see as a broad effort by the administration to crack down on Chinese students with the change in visas this summer and a fear of more restrictions to come.

At stake is about $14 billion of economic activity, most of it tuition and other fees generated annually from the 360,000 Chinese nationals who attend U.S. schools, that could erode if these students look elsewhere for higher education abroad.

Trump and senior members of his administration have already reverted to playing the “bad cop” role in the ongoing trade negotiations with China, warning that the talks haven’t yielded any progress, and that China has made no effort to reform its espionage and IP theft practices. Now analysts will inevitably wonder” Could this crackdown on Chinese students help poison the well ahead of Trump’s Saturday dinner with Xi?

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Authored by Thierry Meyssan via Voltaire Network,

The new unilateral sanctions by the United States against Iran, Russia and Syria add to the previous actions concerning the same three targets. They now form the most unforgiving embargo in History. The way in which they have been organised is illegal according to the definition of the Charter of the United Nations – these are weapons of war, designed for killing.

For his visit to Moscow on 8 November, ambassador James Jeffrey was tasked with explaining the current US obsession with the expansion of Persian influence in the Arab world (Saudi Arabia, Bahrein, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen). Washington now wishes to formulate this question in geo-strategic rather than religious terms (Chiites/Sunni), while Teheran is organising its national defence around forward posts composed of Chiite Arabs.

Moscow then considered the possibility of negotiating on Teheran’s behalf for the easing of unilateral US sanctions, in exchange for its military withdrawal from Syria. President Vladimir Putin confirmed his proposition, not only for his US opposite number, but also for the Israëli Prime Minister, during their meeting in Paris on 11 November for the celebrations marking the centenary of the end of the First World War .

He attempted to convince the Westerners that Russia alone in Syria was preferable to the Irano-Russian tandem. However, he could not guarantee that Iran would have sufficient authority over Hezbollah – as both Washington and Tel-Aviv pretend – to be able to order it to withdraw also.

Washington’s only answer, nine days later, was to announce the eleventh series of unilateral sanctions against Russia since the beginning of August. This was accompanied by a ridiculous speech according to which Russia and Iran had together organised a vast plot aimed at maintaining President Assad in power and expanding Persian control in the Arab world.

This rhetoric, which we believed had been abandoned, assimilates three states (the Russian Federation, the Syrian Arab Republic and the Islamic Republic of Iran) as machines in the service of three men (Bachar el-Assad, Ali Khamenei and Vladimir Putin) who are united by the same hatred of their respective peoples. It ignores the massive popular support they enjoy, while the United States are profoundly torn apart.

We can leave aside the stupid assertion that Russia is aiding and abetting the conquest of the Arab world by Persia.

According to the US Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, who presented the unilateral US sanctions on 20 November, they do not form the economic section of the present war, but are intended to punish the « atrocities » committed by these three « régimes ». However, on the verge of winter, they mostly concern the supply of refined petroleum to the Syrian people so that they may light their homes and keep warm.

It is not necessary to specify that the three states targeted deny the « atrocities » of which they are accused, while the United States pursue the wars that they started in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

The US sanctions were not decided by the United Nations Security Council, but by the United States alone. They are illegal in international law because in order to make them lethal, Washington is attempting to force third-party states to associate themselves with the motion, which constitutes a threat to the states targeted and therefore a violation of the United Nations Charter. The United States have the sovereign right to refuse to enter into commerce with other states, but not to exercise pressure on third-party states in order to harm their targets. At one time, the Pentagon claimed that inflicting damaging treatment on a particular nation would lead its people to overthrow its government. That was also the theoretical justification for the bombing of Dresden during the Second World War and the endless embargo against Cuba during the Cold War. However, in the space of 75 years, this theory has never, absolutely never, been verified by the facts. Now the Pentagon is considering using detrimental treatment against a nation as a weapon of war like any other. Embargoes are designed to kill civilians.

The ensemble of systems currently used against Iran, Russia and Syria constitute the most gigantic siege system in History. These are not economic measures, but – without any possible doubt – military actions implemented in the economic sector. In time, they will probably lead to a division of the world into two parts, just as in the period of USA-USSR rivalry.

Secretary Mnuchin insisted at length on the fact that these sanctions were aimed above all at the interruption of the sale of hydro-carbons, meaning depriving these countries – mostly exporters— of their main financial resources.

The mechanism described by Steven Mnuchin is as follows:

Syria is presently unable to refine petrol since its installations were destroyed either by Daesh or by the international Coalition’s bombing raids against Daesh.

For the last four years, Iran has been supplying refined petrol to Syria in violation of previous unilateral US sanctions. This petrol is transported by Western companies working for the Russian public company Promsyrioimport. This company is paid by the private Syrian company Global Vision Group, which is itself financed by the Iranian company Tabir Kish Medical and Pharmaceutical.

Finally the Global Vision Group transfers a part of the money it receives to Hezbollah and Hamas.

This a cock and bull story :

The international Coalition has the official objective of fighting Daesh. However, numerous testimonies over the last four years attest that it had alternatively bombed the Islamic state whenever it exceeded the zone which had been allocated to it by the Pentagon (the Wright plan), and that, on the contrary, it had parachuted weapons to Daesh in order to maintain its position in the specified area. The two entities worked together to destroy Syrian refineries.

What is the purpose of implicating the Russian government in the transfer of petroleum from Iranian refineries towards Syrian ports?

Why would Iran suddenly need Syria to transfer money to Hezbollah and Hamas?

Why would Syria transfer Iranian money to Hamas while the Palestinian organisation – whose leaders are members of the Muslim Brotherhood – is at war with them?

US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin

Steven Mnuchin doesn’t bother with long explanations. As far as he is concerned, Syria is criminal state and Russia is its accomplice, while Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are all « terrorists ». This is the most important point, the word that cancels out thought.

A French proverb assures that « When you want to drown your dog, you claim it has rabies ». So there’s no point expecting logic in Secretary Mnuchin’s answer to President Putin’s proposition of mediation.

Progressively, the United States are withdrawing their troops from the conflicts in which they were engaged, and replacing them with mercenaries on the ground (the jihadists) and economic sanctions, the modern version of the medieval siege.

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NBCUniversal has announced a machine learning tool that will tie advertisements to relevant moments on television; for example, wedding scene might be followed by an advertisement for champagne or other products related to tying the knot. 

The Contextual Intelligence Platform will analyze programming scripts, closed-captioning data and visual descriptors contained within both shows and advertisements to match relevant content, while also determining “an emotional gauge for each scene determined by proprietary algorithms,” according to AdWeek. 

Focus groups for ads placed with the platform thus far have shown an average bump of 19 percent in brand memorability, 13 percent in likability and 64 percent in message memorability, according to Josh Feldman, evp and head of marketing and advertising creative, NBCU.

The announcement comes as linear television providers continue to grapple with how to bring digital targeting practices to a medium that still largely operates on traditional phone-call media buying and manual ad placements. –AdWeek

NBC is now working with up to five advertisers for the system’s trial run, and is aiming for a full rollout in early 2019. While the company has declined to reveal which brands are participating in the trials, NBC has acknowledged that they were selected from a range of consumer categories – including studios, retailers and packaged goods. 

“Before there was machine learning, there was common sense,” said Feldman, the NBC Executive VP, adding “When my team created something for an advertiser that was a really heartfelt piece of marketing, we would make sure that the spot ran on heartfelt-type programming as opposed to, say, slapstick comedy. We’ve been doing this on a manual basis for a long time—but now we’re going to be able to do it at scale.”

And now, NBC’s advertising sales department will be able to use machine learning to automate the process on all content except for live media such as news and sports. 

“This is going to be a big part of our conversations with advertisers for next year’s Upfront,” said Feldman. “Our sales leads are fully up-to-speed on this; this is a project that Linda Yaccarino has personally blessed and thinks is a game-changer for us.”

NBC‘s svp of advanced advertising products and strategy, Denise Colella, says that the “Contextual Intelligence” platform is the future of advertising. 

While the platform will simply provide advertisers with a media buying plan based on relevant scenes, NBCU’s product team is already working on ways to expand it to the point where it will be able to place ads automatically. Denise Colella, svp of advanced advertising products and strategy, NBCU, said the Contextual Intelligence Platform is part of a broader push to better integrate linear television with digital advertising techniques. –AdWeek

“I don’t like to think of the products individually but think of them as a suite that builds on one another,” said Colella. “When you look at digital premium sites, you’re looking at thematic advertising in context. The goal is to bring that to linear television and to make sure the ads match the audience involved, the audience matches the context involved and that we’re able to carry that experience across platforms. That’s really where we’re going.” 

Meanwhile, NBCU also announced an on-demand targeted advertising format for live and time-shifted media for all of its subsidiaries to be rolled out next year. 

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Authored by Irina Slav via Oilprice.com,

Three countries currently account for close to 40 percent of global crude oil production and only one of these countries is a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The three are Russia, the United States, and Saudi Arabia and as their clout over oil markets increases with rising production rates, OPEC’s is set to decline, at least temporarily.

Reuters’ John Kemp noted in a recent column on the topic that the so-called troika now called the shots more than ever before: all three countries produced north of 11 million bpd a day in October, a record high and more than the combined production of the rest of OPEC. And, according to OPEC, this state of affairs will continue to develop in a direction unfavorable for OPEC with the troika’s combined production rising to over 40 percent of the global total this year while OPEC’s share falls below 30 percent.

Each of the three producers has its own oil production policy that is relatively independent of other producers’. True, Saudi Arabia and Russia have been playing on the same team for the last two years to a large extent because the game strategy has been mutually beneficial. Yet we have seen abundant indications that the moment the interests of the two begin to diverge each is likely to drop the team game and pursue its own priorities. The U.S. in the meantime has become the single largest swing factor outside the OPEC+ club with relentlessly rising production that could push it to the top spot globally next year.

This production will only continue to rise if OPEC now decides to start cutting production once again in order to push prices higher, further strengthening the U.S.’ importance on the global oil market. So, does this all mean OPEC is as good as dead? For the time being, mostly yes. Most of its members, as Kemp notes, fall in one or more of the following categories: “is struggling under sanctions, mismanagement and unrest; is too small to matter; is maximizing production rather than participating in output controls; or simply aligns its output policies with those of Saudi Arabia.”

The future remains uncertain, however. Most respectable forecasters such as the Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency are upbeat about the growth of oil demand, but the upbeat forecasts come with conditions: the IEA most recently said in its World Energy Outlook that producers will need to up investments in new conventional production substantially to be ale to respond to this demand. Failing that, the U.S. would have to increase its shale oil production by as much as 10 million bpd in the seven years to 2025, which is a bold target, to say the least.

OPEC members are obvious candidates for some of this production growth. Despite a lot of worry around the cartel’s spare capacity earlier this year when it became clear the cuts need to be reversed to rein in prices, some of the members, such as Iraq and Libya, are on track to grow their production. True, this growth will likely be nowhere near the more than a million bpd that U.S. producers have added in the past year, but it could be substantial in the case of Iraq, if the political and price conditions allow it.

What’s more, Venezuela and Iran are unlikely to spend the rest of eternity under sanctions. There is a possibility, however, remote at the moment, that these two could at some point reverse the decline in production they are experiencing now. Iran has already demonstrated it could ramp up pretty quickly if given the chance. In other words, OPEC’s clout on oil markets may be waning but it might be too early to bury the cartel for good just yet.

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America’s crumbling public infrastructure has degenerated to the point that desperate Americans are turning to crowd-funding to try and pitch in – anything to ease the pain of their hellish daily commute.

One anonymous resident of the Garden State recently started a GoFundMe page to raise money for replacing the Portal Bridge, the 108-year-old Amtrak-owned railroad bridge over the Hackensack River that is a crucial chokepoint for Jersey commuters traveling to their offices in New York City.

The fundraising goal? $920 million.

Though the campaign was intended as a tongue-in-cheek joke about the misery of traveling on New Jersey transit – the individual who launched it listed their name as “Sad New Jersey Commuter” from Clifton, NJ – the sentiment clearly resonated with the 200,000 commuters who cross the bridge every day and the post quickly went viral. 

As the anonymous author pointed out in their post, New Jersey approved bond financing to start building a replacement for the Portal Bridge earlier this year. Yet, more funding is needed to finish the project. Hence, the crowd-funding drive. The author also joked that they added $20 million in “oversight” funding to create some cushion for when the project inevitably blows through its budget.

“We’ve already come up with $600 Million already approved in bond financing in June of 2018, will only require $920,000,000!” the organizer wrote. “Yeah, I added 20 Million in oversight funding, but we are going to totally chew through that in no time, when this goes massively over budget.”

As Bloomberg pointed out, train traffic over the Portal is often delayed because the bridge swings to clear the way for ships sailing through the river. Sometimes – particularly during the summer – the swing mechanism will malfunction, causing the bridge to get stuck. Crews are then called to hammer it back into place with sledgehammers.

The bridge over the Hackensack River between Kearny and Secaucus swings to accommodate maritime traffic. In extreme temperatures, though, it’s prone to closing incorrectly and crews sometimes must smack it into place with sledgehammers. The swing mechanism malfunctioned most recently on Oct. 30, causing 90-minute delays. On Nov. 14, a tugboat bonked into the bridge, forcing back-ups of at least an hour while inspectors checked for damage.

A spokesman for the agency tasked with replacing the bridge said its replacement has been designed and approved, and that construction on the project is already underway.

When approached by Bloomberg, he welcomed the GoFundMe effort.

Steve Sigmund, spokesman for Gateway Development Corp., said the replacement bridge is designed, has regulatory approvals and some construction underway, and a $600 million state funding commitment.

“The more 200,000 daily passengers are focused on replacing this 108-year-old, one-track- in, one-track-out system, the better chance we have of getting the most vital transportation infrastructure project in the country done,” Sigmund said in an email.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for NJ Transit said in an email that “We appreciate the public’s interest in this vital project.”

Though we doubt the shambolic state of vital American infrastructure (including bridges, highways, railways and roads) will sufficiently move Democrats to cooperate with President Trump on a badly needed infrastructure plan (as the many investigations they have planned will almost certainly be a higher priority).

And remember: Amazon is getting billions in tax breaks to build a helipad on top of their Queens headquarters, while the subway sinks into disrepair and the tunnels under the Hudson River have degraded to dangerous levels.

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