It is hard to overstate the sociopathy of US national security officials: their casual willingness to blatantly lie about the gravest matters is limitless.
Oh please 🙄 Nobody forced Rhodes to give 2 contradictory accounts of what happened. On that basis alone, he's outed *himself* as a liar. Only 1 of his 2 accounts is consistent with Snowden's. Which means they're either both telling the truth about Snowden being trapped in Moscow, or they're both lying.
Nevermind the only reason we know Snowden's name is bc he revealed the government's massive corruption -- I'm sure he's the one who's lying here. But then how should it rehabilitate Rhodes reputation in your eyes, for him to lie along with Snowden.... to pump up his reputation? I hope you can see how dumb all of that sounds.
I have been thinking about that. I believe now at almost 2 am that we are in Crime and Punishment by Dostoievsky. We are the detective and Rhodes is the murderer. The murderer wishes to confess and confess to the investigator which is really all of us. To accomplish what he has accomplished secretly and invisibly is not enough. He must CONFESS. And he has. And few believe his confession as they are in it. We are not. Greenwald is not. And Greenwald is the investigator par excellence. Rhodes must CONFESS to his peer who seeks him out. He has. And Greenwald is that perfect peer who perceives that he has created what he damns Snowden for doing. Now since this is almost totalized culturally we are all surrounded by sociopaths who block us, ruin us, destroy our goodness our purity, etc. I was told this last month by my Invisible Man that I havnt talked to in almost 2 years. He said, "There are people out there to take away all purity." He had wrapped his legs over mine (why I asked, "to let anyone know I am protecting you")as we sat on a bench in the sunshine by the four lane talking for the first time in 2 years (and the last it seems) and how can I help loving someone who knows this and verbalizes it while sounding like a prophet while completely drunk all the time. IDK. And for the first time I understood alcoholic drunkenness as opposed to HIGH on drugs. And why our culture favors drunk over high and why the middle east favors high over drunk. In each culture the opposite is "criminal" and maybe must recently legalized IDK.Forgive all the typo messes. It is too late to fix them.
Liars don't lie all the time. They lie when it suits them. We need to be suspicious of every utterance of every individual, but when we identify clear conflicts in their language it raises the caution.
Its odd hearing a journalist yell about someone being a liar then point to one of their statements and ask us to use it as the crux of (what I consider) an already tenuous argument
you hit the nail on the head with this one. a lying member of the upper echelon of the national security apparatus and we are supposed to take his every word in his cash grabbing memoir as sacrosanct. glenn is aware that a large chunk of his subscribers will salivate over any criticism of members of the obama/clinton orbit.
you are misunderstanding my comment. i do think he was lying then, so, how are we to know he is not lying now? as iconoclast pointed out, it's a paradox: he lied in the past, so why are we now to take him at his word? these people are not to be trusted in their official public statements, so why should we now believe what they write in a self-serving book?
Right around 1970-71 when after the DNC of 1968 and other nonsense, the media saw it could bully governments and corporations. The world has never been the same since.
If in 1903, you told the average frustrated Russian peasant that in the next fifteen years, the Russian Empire would fight and lose two wars (including losing to Japan) and that Russia would undergo three revolutions, as a result of which there would no longer be a Tsar in St. Petersburg, or in Russia at all, the peasant would think you were possessed by an unclean spirit.
But it's not just the Great Unwashed. If you told the average frustrated London investment banker the same thing in 1903, he would pronounce you quite mad and also altogether not our sort.
There is a lesson here. I am not saying that anything in particular is happening in the next fifteen, but there is a lesson.
Then again, in 1970, Andrei Amalrik wrote "Will the Soviet Union Last Until 1984?" He was widely dismissed as a crank, especially by professional anti-communists. Turns out that Amalrik wasn't that far off.
Nonsense, Amy. That Ayn Rand rant goes on the rocket too. M4A or some equivalent, affordable housing, education are standard in most western capitalist countries. There hasn't been a "free market" since governments entered the market with military budgets, utility budgets, education budgets, etc. So who is your "Majority of Americans"? As for socialism and welfare take even a casual look at how Walmart employees subsidize their minimum wages with food stamps and ask yourself how the Koch family made their fortunes.
Majority might prefer capitalism, might not. Surveys indicate majority of college age prefer Marxism. As that cohort grows, they'll become the dominant opinion. Hopefully they'll change when they get out in the real world. They usually do.
All great ideas, especially the rocket to space, but good luck. I do not see the "Balkanization" happening without a major civil war. The left owns the country, they can manipulate elections from every angle. There is no breaking away without violence, which most Americans, for now, are not willing to do. If we can get our elections right and reestablish the flow of all information ... maybe. The first test is California recall.
It is not just lying in government -- it is lying EVERYWHERE.
This is a sea change from the mid-20th century US, which I remember. At that time, exposure of a lie of any importance could easily get someone in deep trouble. Now, meh, "all people lie!"
Because lying rots society -- it is, after all, a failure in *reciprocal* human connection -- it would be instructive to examine just how this change came to be.
EXACTLY!!! I remember when I was working in a high level Ontario /Canada govt office (Constitutional negotiations) many years ago and we had one weenie obvious liar/sociopath (lol named Barry 🤔) who I caught red handed doing his usual lying in front of the Premier and his staff and YES he tried to spin it 😳😳 Sociopaths will not admit it even if their exposed publicly or caught in the act. Its not that Rhodes is stupid , he sees NOTHING WRONG with his explanation. He doesn't see that it is a lie because that is all they do. Thats a sociopath
Yes. At some point he is overcome with his brilliance at creating a Virtual Reality for everyone around him. And so he must CONFESS as invisibility doesn't do it for him anymore?
As someone who was not always honest in my younger years, I still feel that it's ok to lie to some people. For example, if they ask a question that's none of their business and have power over me.
I, too, can support justifiable defensive lies. I don't mean to be black-and-white here.
What is toxic, though, is the recent *normalization* of lying -- that's it's now "just something people do" to get by in the world. Something has been lost from our consciousness about communication and relationships.
I always lie to authorities unless I know the question is already answered on one of my databases that they have access to. Then I just say what is there. Telling the truth to them is one of the ways they trap you.
I'm telling y'all, it started with Benghazi. Susan Rice blatantly lied on Meet the Press (or whatever show it was), and the lie was repeated by Obama (AND the "moderator" Candi Crowley!) at the 2nd Presidential Debate.
This is when they learned they could say whatever they want.
OMG Americans look back farther!!!!! When did the CIA start (ie morph from-- yup the OSS-- who helped get that going-- those "consultants" who worked fro that German guy???
Well then let me give you the psychoanalyst reply to that: Are you asking that because.....and then you put in whatever you want. It retains its interrogative subtext that the other started and throws it back on them. I am needing to remind myself this today.
As a kid I remember watching those old black and white cowboy and Indian movies on TV, the ones where they made the Indians the bad guys for fighting the cowboys from taking what was theirs, their land. And of course many refer to the McCarthy era as a sea of lies. Etc, etc, etc. So much for the mid-20th century.
You mean when he warned about the military industrial complex? Too bad almost no one listened. Afghanistan is a perfect example of what Ike was talking about. No one said, it was all lies, but they were ever present and usually served the interest of the elites as they continue to do.
Sarah Chayes who was an NPR reporter and covered the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and lived in Kandahar for 8 years made the statement on Democracy Now that the US wasn't interested in going into Afghanistan, an afterthought, she said. The Bush administration was solely interested in going into Iraq, but there was no intelligence connecting 9/11 to them, so they reluctantly went into Afghanistan which meant by 2002 their interest was in Iraq. She of course talks about it in more detail. Worth a listen.
Allen Dulles and his CIA murdered Lumumba -- there is a famous photograph of John Kennedy holding his head in despair after learning what CIA did behind his back.
Kennedy fired Allen Dulles -- who later become a key filter in commission "investigating" John's assassination.
Allen Dulles was the architect of the assassination of JFK. He brought in General Edward Landsdale, an expert in coups to plan the details. Landsdale was photographed in Dealy Plaza after the day of the assassination. He is seen in the photo of "the three tramps" who seem to nod at him as they go by.
Lumumba was a threat to the Euro banks/Belgian far right who were perfectly able to do their own dirty work...and was it ever cruel. Of course, the CIA reports. When you pull the yarn on a big sweater you never know how far things will unravel.
Indians were the bad guys. Settlers were bad guys, too. US government was often worse guys. Bad was a survival skill back then. Then, as now, no one is allowed to kill people for trespassing. And in every culture in the history of the world, if somebody kills, we have a right to kill them. Culture is no excuse.
Sorry but your logic escapes me. If someone puts a knife to your throat with an emphasis on your throat use your sense of logic and see if you don't alter your perception of things.
Again Watson, gross generalities are inappropriate. Your saying the hostilities were started by the Indians, presumes that all Indians were one huge tribe with the same goals and hostilities held against the 'White Man'. It is jejune sloppy thinking.
How old are you David? You seem like a very young person, 15 or 16 years old?
You have a slight regard for history and are obviously ignorant of a great deal of things.
So how do you think it started? All those mean white people sailed across the ocean to pick a fight with darker primitives? The natives had been killing each other for millenia. Their nature. Ours, too, but we had learned to suppress those instincts to create civilization. When civilization confronts uncivilization, civilization usually wins, unless civilization has become suicidal. It took 400 years for our civilization to become suicidal. Maybe we'll learn to suppress that urge, too.
Mccarthy was proven correct - by the Russians. Search Mccarthy venona, or read blacklisted by history. Sometimes accusations of lies are used to conceal the truth. Often works.
How so what? If you need tips on searching, please be more specific. If you don't want to wear a deerstalker, that's fine with me. If are trying to say you don't understand lying to hide the truth, I suspect you are doing so with the implied question. QED. Go to any courtroom for a constant stream of examples. My all time fave was "I didn't have sexual relations with that woman..." which would have worked if not for the blue dress.
I was referring to Dr. Watson, from Sherlock Holmes who wore a deerstalker hat. We disagree and I know we will never reach any middle ground. While I respect your perceptions on this issue I hardily disagree. Clinton's affair was none of my business and the republicans used it to their political advantage and it disgusted me. I couldn't care less who he slept with, even though I couldn't stand him. McCarthy took advantage of the new TV media to spread his BS, and destroy people's lives while he drew attention to himself.
Those who are unaware of Mccarthy's sussesses are unaware that America faced a truly existential threat after WW II. Mccarthy brought the spreading invasion to light while facing enormous resistance from those soviet agents and their supporters. The ensuing confusion slowed the attacks enough that we eventually prevailed, but not before a lot more damage. Communism still has adherents in the US, who still attempt to undermine the recognition of the threat, and many unwitting supporters who Lenin celebrated as "useful idiots."
I don't care what Bubba did with his staff either, simply showing an example of using lies to hide the truth, as you seemed to request. She apparently wasn't the only recipient of his "affections."
Believing something at a point in time, but then deciding later is false, doesn't make one a liar. It takes intention to be a liar. The vast majority of the American public had, and has, no intention to lie. It was ignorant, not evil.
Wel Fran, Joe McCarthy was actually right, there were many Communist agents in the Eisenhower State Department. Edward R. Murrow was one of CIA's Mockingbird boys, and he was put up to taking down McCarthy for clandistine political reasons. Some of the names on his list were undercover FBI and CIA agents. A complex situation, very hush hush -- spy counter spy stuff. The cold war was so complex that no one was sure who was who there was so much entanglement and mutual paranoia.
You're right when you reference the American public. I was thinking about those in the political arena, those that dictate policy. However I wish the American public would make themselves more knowledgeable which in turn would make it more difficult for those in power to lie.
I think that's only possible, and only for a generation or two, after full-blown calamity strikes. THEN, they (the laggard majority) start thinking. So, bad as it seems -- to *us* -- we're not quite there yet.
Unfortunately, this cycle may be built into our DNA and near impossible to rapidly evolve from.
As it's turned out Mr. Snowden was very lucky that he wound up in Russia, one of very few countries who can and will stand up to the empire. Europe has turned out to be a giant vassal state with Quislings for political leaders. Vladimir Putin for all the bad press he gets in the west, mostly because he stood up to the empire and his own oligarchs. After the criminal yeltsin had people starving from turning the country over foreign and domestic oligarchs, he brought tens of millions out of poverty despite everything the west could throw at Russia. Ask Julian Assange if he would have been better off in Russia than the UK. The other country that will stand up to the empire and has by far the largest "real " economy is, of course, China where those terrible authoritarians have brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty including people outside China because they don't screw over countries like the IMF & WORLD Banksters etc. In 2008 and now, China builds infrastructure including more kilometers of high speed rail and more G5 antennas than the rest of the world. Usa has ZERO high speed rail and way behind on G5. BTW Afghanistan had a democratic secular government before Jimmy Carter and Brezinski destroyed it. The same with Iran before the usa destroyed it for the British. Truman wouldn't do it but Eisenhower did. Having lived in the usa for a few years, I've seen the nasty underbelly, the hoods and the hollers and they ain't pretty, nor is the drug addiction and omnipresent crime and poverty, jails with more inmates than any other country, almost all plea bargain cases and related to poverty, lousy housing and schools with few able to escape the system. Let me know when Assange gets out, gets an apology and a huge settlement, I'm not holding my breath.
Tell me how many illegal aliens have snuck into or are clamoring to emigrate to China??? Oh none! You’ve missed the point about the messy experiment called democracy and why it’s preferred. The whole world wants to move here, not move to China and be unwilling organ donors for the CCP.
Reintroduce, ok. Boris there’s all kinds of problems presently especially with the woke lunatics that wind up and control the very demented Biden and send him out (after wiring him with amphetamines) to blather. There is a large group of younger republicans that should be elected next year, many are veterans. Then impeach Biden, fire Austen, blinken, milley plus all political appointees down through three stars, replace with the colonels who aren’t brown misers get rid of cia, nsa, Sullivan, Majorca have I missed anybody? If so fire them too! All Rhinos must go. Then threaten Harris if she so much as farts the wrong way she’s gone too. Then 2024, DeSantis, Hawley, Cotton, others? Then deal and heal all the damage these bastards are inflicting on OUR country. This is now war and we have to regain control to “re introduce” democracy.
2 DNC oligarchs (Biden, Pelosi, Schumer) are even WORSE (censorship, they concocted Russia-gate hoax, torture of Julian Assange, Daniel Hale’s persecution for Obama’s drone crimes, $16+B Haiti-corruption under Hillary/Obama – Biden-family corruption pales in comparison)
The ONLY solution – vote THIRD party – now and forever. ALWAYS vote – but VOTE for a Third (or fourth, fifth..) party – at ALL levels, especially at LOCAL levels (vote OUT each and every incumbent).
“If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less.” [Ralph Nader].
Only ACTION: Sustained organized mass civil disobedience - not distractions like DNC-controlled hollering and tweeting....
PS: Can we be perfectly clear who "won" in Afghanistan? Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, and their "shareholders" (70%+ of "shareholders" are just Wall Street and DC parasitic “blob” + Congress scumbags)
There is no factual bases for this claim. The corporatist oligarcy would not have mounted the conspiracy to rig the 2020 presidential election to install their meat puppet Biden in the White House if Trump wasn't viewed as a danger to their continued rule.
He didn't pardon Julian Assange his strongest witness about still going-on Russia-gate hoax and catastrophic lack of leadership - just two examples:
Donald Trump 'wants FDA to approve oleander plant extract as a drug to cure Covid-19' after it was promoted by Ben Carson and MyPillow founder - despite no proof that it works
• Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson ( my note: the bible idiot – pyramids were built by St. Joseph to store wheat ) and MyPillow boss and ( my note – a deeply repulsive grifter ) Mike Lindell, a big Trump supporter, have urged Trump to look at the botanical extract (oleander oil)
• Meeting arranged by the pair with a director at company developing the product
• Andrew Whitney, of Phoenix Biotechnology, claims he is '100%' sure it's a cure
• But there is no peer-reviewed study to support the claim
• Lindell says that in the meeting, Trump 'basically said the FDA should approve it'
• Senior administration official expressed deep concern that Carson and Lindell were 'pushing a dubious product at the highest levels' during the pandemic
"VOTE for a third party or fourth or fifth", "only action sustained civil disobedience". these aren't going to change anything. May be you like perpetual chaos, I don't. I don't see this young group of republicans as evil, you have to start somewhere and out in the streets won't get it done. Your just going to keep tilting at windmills otherwise.
Janet, that's a very cynical view that generally comes out of the comfort of economic security: "making a $killing" and "M-O-N-E-Y". When you have nothing and you're surrounded by nothing but poverty, misery and perhaps war then a flawed place like the US is a dream worth dreaming. That's the tragedy of today's Left: raging about "systemic racism", income inequality, misogyny, and all kinds of Isms and completely ignoring the millions of black, brown, asian...people, women with children who are desperately trying to get here to make a "$killing". To see a scene like a woman handing over a small child to an American soldier in Kabul with the hope that at least the child will get out, should make every morally self-satisfied keyboard warrior pause and ask him/herself why that is. Do you think the dirt poor Irish who survived the mid 1800s "potatoe famine" - that starved about a million people to death - and left everything and everyone behind to come to America just wanted to make a "$killing" or avoid a "killing"?
I think the attitudes are often intertwined. Many are *both* escaping poverty and other horrors, *and* hoping to make a killing. That's why it's specifically *the US* they seem to prefer, instead of any number of other Western-style capitalist democracies. Because if they read the fine print, they'd realize how poorly the U.S. in 2021 stacks up against those other Western countries in many aspects of life for the average citizen.
The US doesn't stack poorly when it comes to immigrants making it. Countries like Germany may have a safer welfare system for a freshly arrived immigrant but when it comes to socio-economic mobility the picture will shift very fast. Also opportunity shouldn't be confused with evenly distributed results and a guarantee of it. And I won't even go into being accepted as an immigrant within a much more homogeneous population in Europe vs. US, personal freedom etc.
I believe this still supports my position. It is *more* likely that an immigrant succeeds to great wealth in the US vs Europe, but it is still statistically unlikely for any random immigrant. Many buy into the dream, but few succeed -- and the upshot is that a larger percentage than in Europe will suffer significant hardship.
They knowingly choose a lottery ticket. So, Janet has a point.
How would you know? Have you asked "these people "? For some reason they are overwhelmingly trying to get to the US and 1 million do, get in, every year, lieber Andreas! 1 million! Does Germany bring in let's say 250,000 into the country as a official immigration policy? How well would that go over in Berlin?
The poor want to move here because of our uncontrolled welfare state. If our poor were a country, they'd have the highest standard of living on the planet, except the tax paying part of America. Control welfare and immigration will slow to only those who can contribute.
Wikipedia: {A}ttending New York University and [Ben Rhodes] graduat[ed] in 2002 with an MFA in creative writing.
. . . and has been writing fiction ever since.
But here is an entire Greenwald article saying a statement in said liars book must be 100% true.
How odd of a paradox.
Fair (ish) point, but Rhodes does contradict his earlier statements. So he was either lying then or he's lying now.
Net-net: he's a goddamned liar. Which is probably a job requirement anyway.
Oh please 🙄 Nobody forced Rhodes to give 2 contradictory accounts of what happened. On that basis alone, he's outed *himself* as a liar. Only 1 of his 2 accounts is consistent with Snowden's. Which means they're either both telling the truth about Snowden being trapped in Moscow, or they're both lying.
Nevermind the only reason we know Snowden's name is bc he revealed the government's massive corruption -- I'm sure he's the one who's lying here. But then how should it rehabilitate Rhodes reputation in your eyes, for him to lie along with Snowden.... to pump up his reputation? I hope you can see how dumb all of that sounds.
it's called an admission against interest. Such statements are generally credible.
I have been thinking about that. I believe now at almost 2 am that we are in Crime and Punishment by Dostoievsky. We are the detective and Rhodes is the murderer. The murderer wishes to confess and confess to the investigator which is really all of us. To accomplish what he has accomplished secretly and invisibly is not enough. He must CONFESS. And he has. And few believe his confession as they are in it. We are not. Greenwald is not. And Greenwald is the investigator par excellence. Rhodes must CONFESS to his peer who seeks him out. He has. And Greenwald is that perfect peer who perceives that he has created what he damns Snowden for doing. Now since this is almost totalized culturally we are all surrounded by sociopaths who block us, ruin us, destroy our goodness our purity, etc. I was told this last month by my Invisible Man that I havnt talked to in almost 2 years. He said, "There are people out there to take away all purity." He had wrapped his legs over mine (why I asked, "to let anyone know I am protecting you")as we sat on a bench in the sunshine by the four lane talking for the first time in 2 years (and the last it seems) and how can I help loving someone who knows this and verbalizes it while sounding like a prophet while completely drunk all the time. IDK. And for the first time I understood alcoholic drunkenness as opposed to HIGH on drugs. And why our culture favors drunk over high and why the middle east favors high over drunk. In each culture the opposite is "criminal" and maybe must recently legalized IDK.Forgive all the typo messes. It is too late to fix them.
Wow Janet...WTF ?!?!?!?
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Secrets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUWu744yhjA
It is Hegelian Metaphysics known as, "The Revelation of the Method".
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Liars don't lie all the time. They lie when it suits them. We need to be suspicious of every utterance of every individual, but when we identify clear conflicts in their language it raises the caution.
It’s a statement against interest, why would he tell a lie that indicts himself?
I'm simply pointing out some facts.
Its odd hearing a journalist yell about someone being a liar then point to one of their statements and ask us to use it as the crux of (what I consider) an already tenuous argument
You were wrong. Just pointing out a 'fact'.
What was I wrong about? Please fill me in.
you hit the nail on the head with this one. a lying member of the upper echelon of the national security apparatus and we are supposed to take his every word in his cash grabbing memoir as sacrosanct. glenn is aware that a large chunk of his subscribers will salivate over any criticism of members of the obama/clinton orbit.
Agree but that doesnt mean he is lying at all.
Let the reader decide for themselves and may we all become better critical thinkers, for the good of society.
Play it safe and trust Snowden. He pissed off more people.
This is the single biggest argument I have in my head that what he did wasn't some Gepetto type shit.
Question: what makes you think he's lying now and not then?
you are misunderstanding my comment. i do think he was lying then, so, how are we to know he is not lying now? as iconoclast pointed out, it's a paradox: he lied in the past, so why are we now to take him at his word? these people are not to be trusted in their official public statements, so why should we now believe what they write in a self-serving book?
what makes you think he was lying then?
you are proving the point...it's a paradox
LOL!
Didn't "gender studies" used to be called "urology."
We called it dating.
Now you've really dated yourself.
Its intriguing how "science" changed about trans individuals, isn't it? Science, the jilted lover of all politics.
Right around 1970-71 when after the DNC of 1968 and other nonsense, the media saw it could bully governments and corporations. The world has never been the same since.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
" media saw it could bully governments and corporations."--Iconoclast
WTF?!?! The media ARE corporations!
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@ William Whitten ✔
Thanks William, this astute observation deserves added(modest) emphasis.😉
EA
Thank you Ethan, sometimes the obvious needs to be emphasized.
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this was also when the medical industry was forced to accept fixed prices set by government.
50 thumbs up! Which explains pretty much every visualization on that site…
Maybe I'm being optimistic here, but I don't see us ever getting far enough down the road to get to that level.
I wish I shared your optimism, Scott.
I don't think it"s optimism. He appears to think we won't last that long.
yes
If in 1903, you told the average frustrated Russian peasant that in the next fifteen years, the Russian Empire would fight and lose two wars (including losing to Japan) and that Russia would undergo three revolutions, as a result of which there would no longer be a Tsar in St. Petersburg, or in Russia at all, the peasant would think you were possessed by an unclean spirit.
But it's not just the Great Unwashed. If you told the average frustrated London investment banker the same thing in 1903, he would pronounce you quite mad and also altogether not our sort.
There is a lesson here. I am not saying that anything in particular is happening in the next fifteen, but there is a lesson.
Then again, in 1970, Andrei Amalrik wrote "Will the Soviet Union Last Until 1984?" He was widely dismissed as a crank, especially by professional anti-communists. Turns out that Amalrik wasn't that far off.
Nonsense, Amy. That Ayn Rand rant goes on the rocket too. M4A or some equivalent, affordable housing, education are standard in most western capitalist countries. There hasn't been a "free market" since governments entered the market with military budgets, utility budgets, education budgets, etc. So who is your "Majority of Americans"? As for socialism and welfare take even a casual look at how Walmart employees subsidize their minimum wages with food stamps and ask yourself how the Koch family made their fortunes.
Majority might prefer capitalism, might not. Surveys indicate majority of college age prefer Marxism. As that cohort grows, they'll become the dominant opinion. Hopefully they'll change when they get out in the real world. They usually do.
All great ideas, especially the rocket to space, but good luck. I do not see the "Balkanization" happening without a major civil war. The left owns the country, they can manipulate elections from every angle. There is no breaking away without violence, which most Americans, for now, are not willing to do. If we can get our elections right and reestablish the flow of all information ... maybe. The first test is California recall.
That is a cute little rocket Amy.
Lol
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Ha! It’s right around the corner.
we wont
1913, to be exact. This is the 27th consecutive term of Everwar Banking Inc., known colloquially as the federal reserve system.
It is not just lying in government -- it is lying EVERYWHERE.
This is a sea change from the mid-20th century US, which I remember. At that time, exposure of a lie of any importance could easily get someone in deep trouble. Now, meh, "all people lie!"
Because lying rots society -- it is, after all, a failure in *reciprocal* human connection -- it would be instructive to examine just how this change came to be.
EXACTLY!!! I remember when I was working in a high level Ontario /Canada govt office (Constitutional negotiations) many years ago and we had one weenie obvious liar/sociopath (lol named Barry 🤔) who I caught red handed doing his usual lying in front of the Premier and his staff and YES he tried to spin it 😳😳 Sociopaths will not admit it even if their exposed publicly or caught in the act. Its not that Rhodes is stupid , he sees NOTHING WRONG with his explanation. He doesn't see that it is a lie because that is all they do. Thats a sociopath
Yes. At some point he is overcome with his brilliance at creating a Virtual Reality for everyone around him. And so he must CONFESS as invisibility doesn't do it for him anymore?
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/democrats-finally-get-comfortable-saying-obama-is-a-jerk/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=native-evergreen&utm_term=sixth
Yes it is everywhere which means it is invisible.
These days I find great amusement in not lying. It’s very difficult for many.
The standard American greeting "How's it going?" is often a lie.
Just like that movie with Jim Carrey. As referenced by Seth Rogen in the movie with Steve Carell.
As someone who was not always honest in my younger years, I still feel that it's ok to lie to some people. For example, if they ask a question that's none of their business and have power over me.
I, too, can support justifiable defensive lies. I don't mean to be black-and-white here.
What is toxic, though, is the recent *normalization* of lying -- that's it's now "just something people do" to get by in the world. Something has been lost from our consciousness about communication and relationships.
Highly paid liars are the worst of all.
I always lie to authorities unless I know the question is already answered on one of my databases that they have access to. Then I just say what is there. Telling the truth to them is one of the ways they trap you.
It's called "hyper-realism" and it's exactly how the USSR tried to keep hold as it, too collapsed.
I'm telling y'all, it started with Benghazi. Susan Rice blatantly lied on Meet the Press (or whatever show it was), and the lie was repeated by Obama (AND the "moderator" Candi Crowley!) at the 2nd Presidential Debate.
This is when they learned they could say whatever they want.
No, actually it started with, "And ah did not have inappropriate sexual relations with that woman.", or something to that effect...
“I’m NOT a crook!”
OMG Americans look back farther!!!!! When did the CIA start (ie morph from-- yup the OSS-- who helped get that going-- those "consultants" who worked fro that German guy???
My Grand Father used to say, “if you ask me a question that is none of your business and I lie to you, you get what you deserve.”
I agree with gramps, though rather than lie, I usually tell 'em off.
I like that approach too.
Well then let me give you the psychoanalyst reply to that: Are you asking that because.....and then you put in whatever you want. It retains its interrogative subtext that the other started and throws it back on them. I am needing to remind myself this today.
Yes Toynbee addresses this in Disintegration of Empires. Language becomes corrupted. And words.
As a kid I remember watching those old black and white cowboy and Indian movies on TV, the ones where they made the Indians the bad guys for fighting the cowboys from taking what was theirs, their land. And of course many refer to the McCarthy era as a sea of lies. Etc, etc, etc. So much for the mid-20th century.
Still, Eisenhower's farewell address was a fountain of truth compared to what recent politicians emit.
You mean when he warned about the military industrial complex? Too bad almost no one listened. Afghanistan is a perfect example of what Ike was talking about. No one said, it was all lies, but they were ever present and usually served the interest of the elites as they continue to do.
Yes, the MIC and also scientific-technological elite. Ike spoke a truth that still reverberates, as opposed to the modern liars-in-chief.
Sarah Chayes who was an NPR reporter and covered the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and lived in Kandahar for 8 years made the statement on Democracy Now that the US wasn't interested in going into Afghanistan, an afterthought, she said. The Bush administration was solely interested in going into Iraq, but there was no intelligence connecting 9/11 to them, so they reluctantly went into Afghanistan which meant by 2002 their interest was in Iraq. She of course talks about it in more detail. Worth a listen.
GW Bush was hot to go into Iraq to show up his dad, who didn't take the oportunity when he had it.
The whole PNAC thing seems to be forgotten now 20 years later.
They were the ones who called for a "New Pearl Harbor" and instigated 9/11 as just that, their new Pearl Harbor.
The ONLY country they didn't hit was actually the main target; Iran.
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Generations come and go, and no one remembers anything at all.
True, and weeks and a few years can come and go and the same thing happens.
And he let his CIA murder Lumumba the loved and elected president of The Congo
Allen Dulles and his CIA murdered Lumumba -- there is a famous photograph of John Kennedy holding his head in despair after learning what CIA did behind his back.
Kennedy fired Allen Dulles -- who later become a key filter in commission "investigating" John's assassination.
No one will ever convince me that Allen Dulles wasn't involved in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK.
Allen Dulles was the architect of the assassination of JFK. He brought in General Edward Landsdale, an expert in coups to plan the details. Landsdale was photographed in Dealy Plaza after the day of the assassination. He is seen in the photo of "the three tramps" who seem to nod at him as they go by.
See: Col. Fletcher Prouty - THE SECRET TEAM
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Lumumba was a threat to the Euro banks/Belgian far right who were perfectly able to do their own dirty work...and was it ever cruel. Of course, the CIA reports. When you pull the yarn on a big sweater you never know how far things will unravel.
Indians were the bad guys. Settlers were bad guys, too. US government was often worse guys. Bad was a survival skill back then. Then, as now, no one is allowed to kill people for trespassing. And in every culture in the history of the world, if somebody kills, we have a right to kill them. Culture is no excuse.
Sorry but your logic escapes me. If someone puts a knife to your throat with an emphasis on your throat use your sense of logic and see if you don't alter your perception of things.
If someone puts a knife to your throat when you try to kill them, that's justified. Hostilities were started by the Indians.
"The only good Injun is a dead Injun"
Again Watson, gross generalities are inappropriate. Your saying the hostilities were started by the Indians, presumes that all Indians were one huge tribe with the same goals and hostilities held against the 'White Man'. It is jejune sloppy thinking.
How old are you David? You seem like a very young person, 15 or 16 years old?
You have a slight regard for history and are obviously ignorant of a great deal of things.
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Old enough to recognize those who can't make coherent points, and why.
This is LAUGHABLY WRONG:
"Hostilities were started by the Indians."
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaahahahahahahaha!
Thanks for the entertainment.
So how do you think it started? All those mean white people sailed across the ocean to pick a fight with darker primitives? The natives had been killing each other for millenia. Their nature. Ours, too, but we had learned to suppress those instincts to create civilization. When civilization confronts uncivilization, civilization usually wins, unless civilization has become suicidal. It took 400 years for our civilization to become suicidal. Maybe we'll learn to suppress that urge, too.
Mccarthy was proven correct - by the Russians. Search Mccarthy venona, or read blacklisted by history. Sometimes accusations of lies are used to conceal the truth. Often works.
How so Watson? I phrase the question this way, and I don't even smoke a pipe, or wear a deerstalker.
How so what? If you need tips on searching, please be more specific. If you don't want to wear a deerstalker, that's fine with me. If are trying to say you don't understand lying to hide the truth, I suspect you are doing so with the implied question. QED. Go to any courtroom for a constant stream of examples. My all time fave was "I didn't have sexual relations with that woman..." which would have worked if not for the blue dress.
I was referring to Dr. Watson, from Sherlock Holmes who wore a deerstalker hat. We disagree and I know we will never reach any middle ground. While I respect your perceptions on this issue I hardily disagree. Clinton's affair was none of my business and the republicans used it to their political advantage and it disgusted me. I couldn't care less who he slept with, even though I couldn't stand him. McCarthy took advantage of the new TV media to spread his BS, and destroy people's lives while he drew attention to himself.
Those who are unaware of Mccarthy's sussesses are unaware that America faced a truly existential threat after WW II. Mccarthy brought the spreading invasion to light while facing enormous resistance from those soviet agents and their supporters. The ensuing confusion slowed the attacks enough that we eventually prevailed, but not before a lot more damage. Communism still has adherents in the US, who still attempt to undermine the recognition of the threat, and many unwitting supporters who Lenin celebrated as "useful idiots."
I don't care what Bubba did with his staff either, simply showing an example of using lies to hide the truth, as you seemed to request. She apparently wasn't the only recipient of his "affections."
Believing something at a point in time, but then deciding later is false, doesn't make one a liar. It takes intention to be a liar. The vast majority of the American public had, and has, no intention to lie. It was ignorant, not evil.
You mean McCarthy wasn't a political opportunist, or Hollywood didn't know it's history?
Wel Fran, Joe McCarthy was actually right, there were many Communist agents in the Eisenhower State Department. Edward R. Murrow was one of CIA's Mockingbird boys, and he was put up to taking down McCarthy for clandistine political reasons. Some of the names on his list were undercover FBI and CIA agents. A complex situation, very hush hush -- spy counter spy stuff. The cold war was so complex that no one was sure who was who there was so much entanglement and mutual paranoia.
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McCarthy wasn't what I meant when I said the "vast majority of the American public".
You're right when you reference the American public. I was thinking about those in the political arena, those that dictate policy. However I wish the American public would make themselves more knowledgeable which in turn would make it more difficult for those in power to lie.
I think that's only possible, and only for a generation or two, after full-blown calamity strikes. THEN, they (the laggard majority) start thinking. So, bad as it seems -- to *us* -- we're not quite there yet.
Unfortunately, this cycle may be built into our DNA and near impossible to rapidly evolve from.
They call it “progress”.
Hannah arendt: "All progress is mirrored by chaos."
Thank you, Glenn, for continuing to bring the truth to light.
As it's turned out Mr. Snowden was very lucky that he wound up in Russia, one of very few countries who can and will stand up to the empire. Europe has turned out to be a giant vassal state with Quislings for political leaders. Vladimir Putin for all the bad press he gets in the west, mostly because he stood up to the empire and his own oligarchs. After the criminal yeltsin had people starving from turning the country over foreign and domestic oligarchs, he brought tens of millions out of poverty despite everything the west could throw at Russia. Ask Julian Assange if he would have been better off in Russia than the UK. The other country that will stand up to the empire and has by far the largest "real " economy is, of course, China where those terrible authoritarians have brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty including people outside China because they don't screw over countries like the IMF & WORLD Banksters etc. In 2008 and now, China builds infrastructure including more kilometers of high speed rail and more G5 antennas than the rest of the world. Usa has ZERO high speed rail and way behind on G5. BTW Afghanistan had a democratic secular government before Jimmy Carter and Brezinski destroyed it. The same with Iran before the usa destroyed it for the British. Truman wouldn't do it but Eisenhower did. Having lived in the usa for a few years, I've seen the nasty underbelly, the hoods and the hollers and they ain't pretty, nor is the drug addiction and omnipresent crime and poverty, jails with more inmates than any other country, almost all plea bargain cases and related to poverty, lousy housing and schools with few able to escape the system. Let me know when Assange gets out, gets an apology and a huge settlement, I'm not holding my breath.
Tell me how many illegal aliens have snuck into or are clamoring to emigrate to China??? Oh none! You’ve missed the point about the messy experiment called democracy and why it’s preferred. The whole world wants to move here, not move to China and be unwilling organ donors for the CCP.
Let's fight to reintroduce democracy in our beloved country -- instead of "fighting" to free China ;-))
Reintroduce, ok. Boris there’s all kinds of problems presently especially with the woke lunatics that wind up and control the very demented Biden and send him out (after wiring him with amphetamines) to blather. There is a large group of younger republicans that should be elected next year, many are veterans. Then impeach Biden, fire Austen, blinken, milley plus all political appointees down through three stars, replace with the colonels who aren’t brown misers get rid of cia, nsa, Sullivan, Majorca have I missed anybody? If so fire them too! All Rhinos must go. Then threaten Harris if she so much as farts the wrong way she’s gone too. Then 2024, DeSantis, Hawley, Cotton, others? Then deal and heal all the damage these bastards are inflicting on OUR country. This is now war and we have to regain control to “re introduce” democracy.
1 Trump and GOP are truly HORRIBLE.
2 DNC oligarchs (Biden, Pelosi, Schumer) are even WORSE (censorship, they concocted Russia-gate hoax, torture of Julian Assange, Daniel Hale’s persecution for Obama’s drone crimes, $16+B Haiti-corruption under Hillary/Obama – Biden-family corruption pales in comparison)
The ONLY solution – vote THIRD party – now and forever. ALWAYS vote – but VOTE for a Third (or fourth, fifth..) party – at ALL levels, especially at LOCAL levels (vote OUT each and every incumbent).
“If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less.” [Ralph Nader].
Only ACTION: Sustained organized mass civil disobedience - not distractions like DNC-controlled hollering and tweeting....
PS: Can we be perfectly clear who "won" in Afghanistan? Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, and their "shareholders" (70%+ of "shareholders" are just Wall Street and DC parasitic “blob” + Congress scumbags)
"1 Trump and GOP are truly HORRIBLE."--Petrov
There is no factual bases for this claim. The corporatist oligarcy would not have mounted the conspiracy to rig the 2020 presidential election to install their meat puppet Biden in the White House if Trump wasn't viewed as a danger to their continued rule.
https://thedissedent.page/2021/07/01/2020-presidential-election-fraud/
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He didn't pardon Julian Assange his strongest witness about still going-on Russia-gate hoax and catastrophic lack of leadership - just two examples:
Donald Trump 'wants FDA to approve oleander plant extract as a drug to cure Covid-19' after it was promoted by Ben Carson and MyPillow founder - despite no proof that it works
• Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson ( my note: the bible idiot – pyramids were built by St. Joseph to store wheat ) and MyPillow boss and ( my note – a deeply repulsive grifter ) Mike Lindell, a big Trump supporter, have urged Trump to look at the botanical extract (oleander oil)
• Meeting arranged by the pair with a director at company developing the product
• Andrew Whitney, of Phoenix Biotechnology, claims he is '100%' sure it's a cure
• But there is no peer-reviewed study to support the claim
• Lindell says that in the meeting, Trump 'basically said the FDA should approve it'
• Senior administration official expressed deep concern that Carson and Lindell were 'pushing a dubious product at the highest levels' during the pandemic
By ROSS IBBETSON -- 17 August 2020
"VOTE for a third party or fourth or fifth", "only action sustained civil disobedience". these aren't going to change anything. May be you like perpetual chaos, I don't. I don't see this young group of republicans as evil, you have to start somewhere and out in the streets won't get it done. Your just going to keep tilting at windmills otherwise.
VOTING FOR A THIRD PARTY IS ALSWAYS A WASTED VOTE.
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Like the immigrants from the 1800's the US is the land of "making a $ killing!" They want to come for the dream of M-O-N-E-Y!
Janet, that's a very cynical view that generally comes out of the comfort of economic security: "making a $killing" and "M-O-N-E-Y". When you have nothing and you're surrounded by nothing but poverty, misery and perhaps war then a flawed place like the US is a dream worth dreaming. That's the tragedy of today's Left: raging about "systemic racism", income inequality, misogyny, and all kinds of Isms and completely ignoring the millions of black, brown, asian...people, women with children who are desperately trying to get here to make a "$killing". To see a scene like a woman handing over a small child to an American soldier in Kabul with the hope that at least the child will get out, should make every morally self-satisfied keyboard warrior pause and ask him/herself why that is. Do you think the dirt poor Irish who survived the mid 1800s "potatoe famine" - that starved about a million people to death - and left everything and everyone behind to come to America just wanted to make a "$killing" or avoid a "killing"?
I think the attitudes are often intertwined. Many are *both* escaping poverty and other horrors, *and* hoping to make a killing. That's why it's specifically *the US* they seem to prefer, instead of any number of other Western-style capitalist democracies. Because if they read the fine print, they'd realize how poorly the U.S. in 2021 stacks up against those other Western countries in many aspects of life for the average citizen.
The US doesn't stack poorly when it comes to immigrants making it. Countries like Germany may have a safer welfare system for a freshly arrived immigrant but when it comes to socio-economic mobility the picture will shift very fast. Also opportunity shouldn't be confused with evenly distributed results and a guarantee of it. And I won't even go into being accepted as an immigrant within a much more homogeneous population in Europe vs. US, personal freedom etc.
I believe this still supports my position. It is *more* likely that an immigrant succeeds to great wealth in the US vs Europe, but it is still statistically unlikely for any random immigrant. Many buy into the dream, but few succeed -- and the upshot is that a larger percentage than in Europe will suffer significant hardship.
They knowingly choose a lottery ticket. So, Janet has a point.
How would you know? Have you asked "these people "? For some reason they are overwhelmingly trying to get to the US and 1 million do, get in, every year, lieber Andreas! 1 million! Does Germany bring in let's say 250,000 into the country as a official immigration policy? How well would that go over in Berlin?
But Andreas, there is no Statue of Liberty in Canada or Europe, and certainly not Draconian Australia...
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
--Emma Lazarus (1883)
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Me Wonka is ignorant ain't we? Not in Europe, Willie? Paris? Look it up.
The poor want to move here because of our uncontrolled welfare state. If our poor were a country, they'd have the highest standard of living on the planet, except the tax paying part of America. Control welfare and immigration will slow to only those who can contribute.