Welcome to Pottersville 2 (Blogging Against Fascism!): The "Crisis" in Europe Has Been Averted! (Diverted?) New World Order Time! (Naomi Klein, Where Are You When We Need You the Most?)

Ukraine Disinformation Battle: Little Green Men, Hamsters and the Fog of War

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There has always been a gap in how media on both sides of the former Iron Curtain have reported world events, and it’s growing as the crisis in Ukraine escalates. It has become increasingly difficult to obtain reliable information from any side — west, east, or further east — about what is going on in Eastern Ukraine. While powerful propaganda machines fill the public space with smoke and mirrors, one of the few facts that can be positively established in Eastern Ukraine is that the body count is steadily growing: a testament of just how easy it is for self-interested foreign powers to start, either intentionally or recklessly, a civil war in the heart of Europe. Continuing coverage is available at this link and this link.

Paul Krugman:

Paul Craig Roberts:

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US Media _________________
"Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda."

"The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media.

Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives — not by journalists — whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers.

Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home."
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War On Terror _________________
Roberts asked "Is the War on Terror a Hoax", and claims it has "killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans of millions of Muslims in six countries". Roberts called the attacks "naked aggression" on civilian populations and infrastructure which constitute war crimes. _________________
Republican Party _________________
Roberts is seriously dismayed by what he considers the Republican Party's disregard for the U.S. Constitution. He has even voiced his regret that he ever worked for it, avowing that, had he known what it would become, he would never have contributed to the Reagan Revolution. _________________
American Democracy and Oligarchy _________________
Roberts has been increasingly critical of what he deems as the lessening of democracy in the U.S.; instead accusing it of being run by oligarchs by stating:

"The west prides itself that it is the standard for the world, that it is a democracy. But nowhere do you see democratic outcomes: not in Greece, not in Ireland, not in the UK, not here, the outcomes are always to punish the innocent and reward the guilty.

And that's what the Greeks are in the streets protesting. We see this all over the west. There is no democracy, there are oligarchies, some of these smaller European countries are not even run by their own governments, they are run by Wall Street... There is probably more democracy in China than there is in the west.

Revolution is the only answer... We are confronted with a curious situation. Throughout the west we think we have democracy, we hold ourselves up high, we demonize China, we talk about the mafia state of Russia, we talk about the Arabs and so on, but where is the democracy here?" _________________
Farewell Speech _________________
"Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It,"

Roberts effectively announced his journalistic retirement. The article, published at Counterpunch.org, begins:

"There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest."

It proceeds to a bitter chronicle of the demise of American intellectual integrity, particularly that of financial journalists and economists. These have been thoroughly corrupted by monetary inducements to misrepresent and ignore what has been, in effect, the systematic dismantling of the nation's productive life, in the name of globalization.

He holds the members of his own journalistic profession largely responsible for abetting relentless outsourcing of American industry, thereby gutting the American middle class and effectively dooming the nation's future.

He describes his own ostracism from mainstream media access, the consequence of his relentless and unflinching criticism of the demolition process over the past decade. His column ends, "The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off." _________________

Liberal?

"If by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal."

John F. Kennedy, 1960
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Citizen's United

"[T]his Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy."

– Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
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Saturday, December 10, 2011

The "Crisis" in Europe Has Been Averted! (Diverted?) New World Order Time! (Naomi Klein, Where Are You When We Need You the Most?)

Europe Forges Fiscal Union, Sees Way Out of Crisis

Naomi Klein published a book, The Shock Doctrine, in 2007 that can be utilized as a tour guide to the planned future of the American Empire and how the Neolib-laden government was able to create national and worldwide crises for the last 30 years (since Raygun's ascension to power) in order to consolidate power and relieve the citizenry of the burden of Constitutional government (and, of course, all their treasure).

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, et al., and the prior arrest, imprisonment, and, ultimately, release without serious charges of International Monetary Fund chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, by the extremely law-abiding New York City cops (who took him to Rikers Island without bail, for gods' sake!), the Eurozone has now been totally imprisoned by the Finance Neolibs (except for Britain, which is already suffering from a hard-driving austerity regime), who will "lead" the now much-poorer folk out of their incredibly complex dilemma. (Remind anyone else of Dostoyevsky's Poor Folk?) And deliver the goods.

You may remember that I reported with incredulity on the improbable series of events encompassing Dominique Strauss-Kahn's imprisonment in New York City on the charges of raping a maid who turned out to be a foreign agent of who-knows-whom? The story was totally factually unbelievable from the first blow, and now that Europe has embraced the New World Order's formula for massive austerity (ah, the formula - not for babies, kids!) in light of the continuing Greek catastrophe, with the rest of the PIIGS on deck, it's time to call the tune.

In a squeamishly familiar fashion just like the "killing of long-dead Bin Ladin," the facts will soon be slipping out. Again.

American Everyman does the honors:

Strauss-Kahn Hotel Video Released – Hotel Security and Maid’s Boss Seen Dancing and Celebrating After Maid Tells them What Happened
Posted on December 9, 2011 by willyloman
by Scott Creighton

A French news agency has released the hotel security tapes that show Dominique Strauss-Kahn checking out of the hotel after the alleged rape of the hotel maid. The video shows that DSK did not in fact “flee” the scene as he was accused of doing, but rather he calmly and quite routinely walked into the lobby, checked out, got help with his bags and went out to get in a cab to go have lunch with his daughter before catching a flight on his way to Germany to discuss the Greek debt crisis.

More interesting though is the video showing the maid in question and specifically, her boss and a hotel security person talking to her and then for some reason they went to another more secluded area before the police arrived and gave each other some kind of celebratory hand slapping and hugs and one even did a little dance step. All that they did prior to the police arriving on the scene and after the maid told them her story.

To the uncomplicit eye (yes, I made that word up) of a real journalist, it might seem, and rightly so, that they had some kind of plan in place and they had gone to a more secluded area in the hotel and were celebrating it’s positive outcome after the maid talked to them.

Or maybe that’s how bosses react when their employees are raped these days.

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to get their financial statements and bank records and see if either or both of those gentlemen came into a little extra cash after the DSK incident.

As I have stated from the very beginning, the DSK story was a set-up from the start. They got him out of the way so that Greece would be used as a catalyst and a model for the forced takeover of sovereign nations by technocrats in Brussels. As we all know now, that is exactly what is happening throughout the Eurozone, the 17 member states of the EU that are locked into using the Euro as their currency.

Clearly Greece was critical to the staged crisis of the Euro that now precipitates the need for 17 nations to hand over control of their economies to a trifecta of unelected technocrats in Brussels. As William Engdahl points out on Global Research today, Greece had been set up by Goldman Sachs and the European Central Bank as early as 2001 to be the weak link which brings the Euro to this “crisis” from the very state.

Had DSK been allowed to interfere with that plan, then all of this control being debated right now would have been lost because the “crisis” would have been resolved already.

I doubt that the video of the dancing hotel employees will become as iconic as the dancing Israelis were, but you never know.

Point is, I doubt they were hugging each other and celebrating because one of their employees got raped.

Something else prompted their unbridled joy and maybe, just maybe, someone might investigate what that was before a bunch of countries hand over control of their nations to a bunch of neoliberal bankers. Just a thought.