Hey Everybody, David Klion Needs You to Panic about Russia Right Now--Before It's Too Late!

We're doomed. The neoliberal sky is falling, and the only thing that can keep you from being crushed by neoliberal debris is a neoliberal umbrella.

Yesterday, David Klion released a red-baiting screed entitled "Russia may be meddling in U.S. Politics. Where is the leftwing outrage?" through The Guardian. The purpose of the article is to convince readers that the only way they can protect themselves from the neoliberal corruption in Russia is to embrace the neoliberal fear mongering of the Democratic National Committee and their hired hands in the cybersecurity industry (CrowdStrike).

There are several laugh-out-loud paragraphs in Klion's piece, but the richest is probably this one:

[Contemporary Russia] is better understood as a cautionary tale of unchecked neoliberalism. The US-supported 1990s privatization schemes described in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine are directly responsible for the rise of Putin and the repressive state he presides over.

See that? Klion has to be a good guy because he knows to blame neoliberalism for bad things, such as Putin's authoritarianism.

But the neoliberalism of the DNC (whose spokespeople and cybersecurity experts are the only folks pushing the narrative that Russia is to blame for the leak) doesn't seem to trouble Klion at all.

Weird.

Klion's first paragraph acknowledges that we still don't know who hacked the DNC: "Russians may have hacked and leaked Democratic National Committee emails via WikiLeaks" (emphasis added). But Klion doesn't like to think in terms of maybe or maybe not. He wants to assume that what the DNC and CrowdStrike have said must be true and that anyone who fails to share his sense of alarm must be a closet Leninist:

[I]t was frustrating to watch many of my friends and allies on the left shrugging off concerns about Russia in my Twitter feed last week. Nearly a century after the Bolsheviks first seized power, the American left’s relationship with Russia is still defined by an abstract nostalgia for a failed socialist experiment that has little relevance today.

Klion carefully sidesteps the possibility that those of us who refuse to get caught up in his hysteria aren't so much waxing nostalgic for the days of "Uncle Joe" Stalin as we are deeply skeptical of claims made by the warmongering DNC and scare-and-sell cybersecurity tacticians:

Reminder: Cybersecurity firms like FireEye & Crowdstrike have a $$ incentive to keep nation-state hacking fears high pic.twitter.com/HIkSAGmEXg

— Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) July 25, 2016

To The Guardian's credit, it balanced Klion's red-baiting hysteria with a calmer, more reasonable piece by Trevor Timm entitled "The rush to blame Russia for the DNC email hack is premature."

So read the Timm piece if you want the boredom of feeling informed, but turn to Klion if you prefer the exhilaration of running around like a chicken with your head cut off.

Chris Hedges Vs. Robert Reich on Differences That Simultaneously Make No Difference and All the Difference in the World

If you haven't watched the debate on Democracy Now! between Chris Hedges and Robert Reich (7/26/16--linked above), please do yourself the favor of reviewing the last 90 seconds, in which Hedges says:

I don't think it makes any difference [whether we elect Trump or Clinton]. The TPP is gonna go through whether it's Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Endless war is gonna be continued whether it's Trump or Clinton. We're not gonna get our privacy back whether it's under Clinton or Trump. The idea that at this point the figure in the executive branch exercises that much power, given the power of the war industry and Wall Street, is a myth.

Hedges' points are not only true, but virtually indisputable.

Nevertheless, Robert Reich roars back with heartfelt resentment: "I just wanna say equating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is absolute nonsense."

The video closes out before Hedges can explain that he isn't equating the person of Donald Trump with the person of Hillary Clinton. All his argument does is highlight the absence of any practical distinction in the ways their policies will affect people in the U.S. and throughout the world.

That bitter and brutal truth is difficult for Clinton supporters like Reich to swallow even though they have already accepted it on some level. They know that Clinton will support the TPP once she's in office and that she'll promote aggression by the U.S. military throughout the globe and that she'll expand the powers of the surveillance state instead of curtailing those powers.

To people like Reich, however, it's preposterous to say that a Trump presidency and a Clinton presidency will come to the same thing because Trump will make them feel horrible about such policies and Clinton will make them feel good about the exact same policies.

Will Clinton stop police brutality against people of color in the U.S.? Certainly not--but every now and then she'll get some of the members of a choir in a black church to go on camera and forgive the police. Trump, by contrast, will laugh openly at the oppression of communities of color.

Will Clinton stop the U.S. military from murdering innocent civilians all over the globe? Certainly not--but she'll make long, incomprehensible speeches with lots of irrelevant (but nevertheless correct) facts that seem to warrant continuing the murders. Trump, on the other hand, will make short, incomprehensible speeches with a few irrelevant (and completely incorrect) facts that seem to warrant continuing the murders.

When Trump signs the TPP into law, he'll simply give the middle finger to the white working class people who voted him into office. When Clinton signs it into law, she'll just avoid press conferences for the next 200 days while occasionally appearing on The Rachel Maddow Show to deny that she is avoiding press conferences.

Trump will make us feel terrible about the moral bankruptcy of our country, but the Clinton media machine will do a top-notch job of distracting us from that moral bankruptcy.

So that's why Chris Hedges is crazy to suggest that it makes no difference whether we elect Clinton or Trump--because he's just focusing on what will happen instead of how we'll feel about what will happen.

Hitler Gave Us Quislings; The Clintons Give Us Quoslings

A quisling (named after Norway's Vidkun Quisling) is someone who collaborates with an enemy occupying force. A quosling (my word for followers of Hillary Clinton) is someone who collaborates with corporate interests to perpetuate the status quo.

While I was protesting the DNC in Philadelphia last week, I met some Democrats who are so disappointed in the nomination of Clinton that they intend to vote for Donald Trump. I can't follow their logic, but I can paraphrase it:

"Clinton is such a heinous liar that I have to vote for Trump, even though I know he is also a heinous liar."

"Clinton is such a despicable fraud that I have to vote for Trump, even though I know he is also a despicable fraud."

"Clinton is so shamelessly self-serving that I have to vote for Trump, even though he's every bit as shamelessly self-serving."

I think these folks just feel betrayed by the Democratic Party right now (as they should), and I expect most of them to wake up to the realization (before November) that it makes no sense to reward Trump simply for not being Clinton. In fact, this is exactly the sort of nonsense logic that led the Nobel Committee to award a Peace Prize to Barack Obama simply for not being George W. Bush (even though Obama, after accepting the prize, would turn out to be more committed to wars of choice than any president in U.S. history).

I'm not terribly worried about the Democrats who say they will vote for Trump, but I am terrified of those who say that they will hold their noses and vote for Clinton--especially in swing states.

For heaven's sake, why?

Clinton isn't just a flawed candidate; she's unconscionable. And those who say otherwise are lying to themselves and the people around them. If Trump supporters are driven by raw stupidity (the stupidity of believing that Trump actually has the political skill to defeat the TPP as he promises), then Clinton supporters are driven by raw cynicism (the cynicism of pretending that she has the political will to defeat the TPP as she promises).

The pro-Clinton arguments are just as inane as the pro-Trump arguments:

"Trump is such a heinous racist that I have to vote for Clinton, even though I know that the war on drugs to which she remains committed is unabashed racism masquerading as policy for the benefit of prisons-for-profit and the pharmaceutical industry."

"Trump is such a despicable xenophobe that I have to vote for Clinton, whose indifference to human lives all over the globe led to the coup in Honduras, the destabilization of Lybia, the rise of ISIS, and the Syrian diaspora."

"Trump is such a shameless climate change denier that I have to vote for Clinton, who will sell out the future of the planet to her fossil fuel sponsors just as eagerly as Trump, but who at least knows better than to seem gleeful about it."

Clinton supporters don't mind institutional racism; they just want a candidate who knows how to keep racism on the down low, where it's sustainable (unlike the obnoxious and unsustainable racism of Trump). Clinton supporters don't object to xenophobia; they just want a candidate who can slaughter innocent non-American civilians all over the planet without calling too much attention to the phenomenon. Clinton supporters don't care about whether future generations will have clean air and water; they just want someone who knows how to present the illusion that the climate situation is improving even as it continues to deteriorate.

Clinton supporters aren't dumb; they're just selfishly committed to the status quo because they believe it's their turn to reap their rewards for having supported self-serving corporatists such as Clinton over the years.

Clinton supporters are quoslings because they are actively and deliberately collaborating with the enemy--the corporate interests for whom the TPP amounts to a hostile takeover of the U.S. government.

Clinton supporters are quoslings because they are actively and deliberately working to perpetuate the institutional racism associated with the carceral state, the erosion of privacy associated with the surveillance state, and the genocidal impulses associated with the imperialist state.

Clinton supporters are quoslings because they are actively and deliberately working to help the Clinton media machine pretend that talking about climate change is the same as doing something about climate change.

They're quoslings because they know exactly what they're doing--and that's what makes their attempts to bully the rest of us into supporting Clinton even more repugnant than the anger that is driving some misguided Democrats into the Trump camp.

Quoslings are going to keep attacking Jill Stein for her lack of experience and her supposed non-viability because they don't understand that what draws us to Jill isn't her experience or her viability, but her fundamental human decency. They don't understand that no matter how flawed a candidate Trump may be, the monstrous indecency of Clinton will never become acceptable to those of us who know that the status quo has got to go.

Democrats keep telling me that I have to face the binary they're focused on: Trump v. Clinton. I'm not allowed to have a third choice because the political reality is such that anyone who doesn't support Clinton becomes a supporter of Trump. I don't accept that premise, but even if I did, it's plain to me that Clinton (who is spoiling for fights with Russia, Iran, and Syria) is a greater danger than Trump to the safety of Americans and people throughout the world.

But don't worry. I won't vote for Trump because I refuse to confine myself to your binary. If I'm going to be trapped in a binary, I choose this one: After the way the Democratic Party treated my candidate and my values in 2016, am I down with Dems or done with Dems?

That question is way easier to answer than choosing between the twin nightmares of Trump and Clinton.

I am done with Dems--done.

Also, I've seen Jill Stein in person, so I'm a lot more excited to discover what she can do than I am worried about whatever frivolous distinctions there might be between Trump and Clinton.

Stein/Turner Is a Stronger Ticket Than Sanders/Stein

Supporters of Bernie Sanders have long known about Jill Stein's offer to surrender her spot on the Green ticket to him if he would be willing to defect from the Democratic Party.

Sanders has never shown any interest in that offer--perhaps because he understands a point about sore loser laws that few Greens (apart from Texans such as myself) appreciate.

Most people understand that the Green Party doesn't have ballot access in all fifty states. In 2012, Stein was on the ballot in 37 states (and an eligible write-in candidate in 7 more). So far in 2016, the Greens have secured ballot access for Stein in 24 states and are currently working to achieve it in 23 more. It's certain that she won't be on the ballot in Oklahoma, North Carolina, or Indiana.

The good news for the Greens is that they already have ballot access in the states with the highest populations, including the big 4 of California, Texas, New York, and Florida. The bad news for Sanders supporters is that Texas is one of only a handful of states whose "sore loser" laws would disqualify Sanders from appearing as a presidential candidate for the Green Party. (In most states, sore loser laws only affect candidates running for local or state races, but Texas, regrettably, has legal precedents for denying ballot access to national candidates as well.)

As of this writing, the Greens lack ballot access in 8 sparsely populated north-central states that, added together, carry the same weight in the electoral college as Texas' 38 votes: Utah (6), Idaho (4), Montana (3), North Dakota (3), South Dakota (3), Wyoming (3), Iowa (6), and Minnesota (10).

By Novemeber, the Greens will probably be on the ballot in most of those states, since they jumped through the hoops to qualify in 5 of them in 2012 (Utah, Idaho, North Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota).

Missing out on ballot access anywhere in the country matters, of course, but for presidential candidates, it matters most in the states with the most votes in the electoral college. From any presidential candidate's perspective, it's simply more important to be on the ballot in Texas than in Wyoming.

If Bernie were at the top of the Green ticket--Texans wouldn't be able to vote for him. That matters even though Texas is a reliably Republican state because ballot access in Texas will help the Greens break through one of the most difficult barriers in American presidential politics: the 5% of the popular vote necessary to receive federal funding.

With Nina Turner as Stein's vice-presidential nominee, Texans will turn out in droves to support the Greens. Turner loves to quote one of the great slogans of Texas' own Barbara Jordan, who spent her career calling for "an America as good as its promise."

I live in Austin. Jordan is still legendary in these parts, and Turner strikes a powerful chord with Texans who were once inspired by figures such as Jordan (who is no longer with us) and Jim Hightower (who has been a vocal surrogate for Bernie).

By running a Stein/Turner ticket, the Greens are sure to get tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of votes from Texans who simply wouldn't be allowed to vote for a Sanders/Stein ticket.

Nominating Turner for VP is the smartest play the Greens can make for numerous reasons. I read earlier that Turner considers herself a reformer who intends to work within the Democratic Party, but I hope she will reconsider.

N re 2green party VP @ninaturner has officially stated ‘She is a reformer & will continue her fight WITHIN t/Democrat party' @MSNBC

— Tezlyn Figaro (@TezlynFigaro) August 1, 2016

Turner can help us all tremendously by recognizing the truth of Stein's assertion that it's hard to have a revolution within a counterrevolutionary party.

***

Update: This post became moot when Jill Stein named Ajamu Baraka as her running mate. Here's a quick video from Tim Black that plugs Baraka:

Jill Stein's VP pick, Ajamu Baraka is an EXCELLENT choice, here's why! @DrJillStein @ajamubaraka #Greenparty pic.twitter.com/HTNr8laXSW

— Tim Black ™ (@TimBartender) August 2, 2016

Politifact Uses Sneaky Language (and Sneakier Punctuation) to Present Speculation as Fact in DNC Breach

Yesterday, Politifact's Lauren Carroll released an article entitled "What we know about Russia's role in the DNC email leak." The purpose of the article is to make speculation seem more factual than it is.

Carroll is an artful writer who knows how to create the illusion of objectivity by placing almost all (but not quite all) of her quoted material within quotation marks. She also understands how balanced it makes her article seem for her to begin and end with arguments (one from Julian Assange and the other from Jeffrey Carr) that challenge its preconceived conclusion.

Carroll certainly seems meticulous in the presentation of her evidence with paragraphs such as this one:

"The consensus that Russia hacked the DNC is at this point, very strong, albeit not unanimous," said cybersecurity consultant Matt Tait, who has been critical of Clinton's email practices. "The consensus that Russia hacked the DNC in support of Trump is, by contrast, plausible, but something for which the jury at this stage is very much still out."

Did you notice all the signifiers of non-partisan objectivity? First, Tait is no shameless Clinton surrogate, since he dares to be critical of her patently careless email practices. Second, he admits that the consensus about Russia's guilt isn't unanimous. And third, he is positively eager to concede the point that even if Russia is responsible for the DNC breach, that doesn't mean the purpose of the hack was to support Trump in the election (which suggests that asking "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is more reasonable than asking "Have you stopped beating your wife for her bad singing voice?" because the former question doesn't foreclose possible answers with as much specificity as the latter).

Caroll is equally artful in her construction of this paragraph:

The U.S. government is not ready to publicly name the suspected perpetrators behind the DNC hack, but the New York Times has reported that intelligence agencies have "high confidence" regarding the Russian government's involvement.

See what she did there? She's a responsible journalist who recognizes and maintains distinctions between the accusations of private cybersecurity companies (such as CrowdStrike) and the findings of official government intelligence agencies. But she also wants her readers to know that even though she can't say the U.S. government blames Russia for the attack, the New York Times says it (which is analogous to the argument that Clinton campaign chairman Robby Mook used to support his redbaiting analysis of the breach on CNN on July 24th: "This isn't my assertion; there are a number of experts that are asserting this").

However, Carroll is at her most artful not when she couches quotations in slanted ways, but when she eschews quotation marks entirely so as to blur her own voice (the voice of a presumably disinterested journalist) with the voice of her interviewees (some of whom are shameless partisan shills):

Translation: The agencies have likely corroborated the technical evidence with other intelligence, like human or financial sources, said Susan Hennessey, a Brookings Institution fellow and a former lawyer for the National Security Agency.

As of yet, there’s no evidence anyone other than Russia breached the DNC. So unless someone hacked the Russian agencies, the Russian government is likely WikiLeaks’ source, Hennessey said. Additionally, Assange and the Russian government have a well-documented relationship, for example the fact that Assange has hosted a television show on RT, a state-owned network. [Emphasis added.]

Just look at the first sentence of that second paragraph (the one in bold type), and ask yourself what effect it's likely to have on most readers skimming through the article. It completely dispenses with the question of whether Russia is behind the DNC breach by wondering only whether any other entities might also have participated. And the absence of quotation marks doesn't even warn readers that the incredibly lazy logic of such an argument belongs to Susan Hennessey rather than Lauren Carroll--not until they reach the end of the next sentence (which some skimmers never do).

The most positive thing I can say about Carroll's article is that it at least mentions Jeffrey Carr, whose "Can Facts Slow The DNC Breach Runaway Train?" is the single most cogent analysis of the DNC breach written from the perspective of someone with the relevant technological expertise.

I can't say the Politifact article is bad because it's actually a brilliant example of propaganda. Carroll has chops as a writer; she knows better than to try to jam an argument down her readers' throats without first coating it in FD&C Yellow #34 (a synthetic coloring and flavorizer designed by muckrakers to make arguments taste more objective than they are). So read the Politifact article if you want to know what the corporate media wants you to think about the DNC breach.

But read Carr's article if you want reasoned, relevant analysis.

The Whole Story: Guccifer 2.0

This blog will be on hiatus until 7/28, as the operator will be joining protesters in Philadelphia for the upcoming week.

While I'm in Philly, I hope to edit a comprehensive video on Guccifer 2.0 that I prepared for YouTube earlier today:

Gamers Repeat "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" with a Chuckle, but Journalists Repeat "We've Deployed the Recommended" with a Straight Face

On July 18th, Joe Uchill of The Hill turned a quotation from the DNC into gibberish by ending a sentence prematurely. Check out his final paragraph, which I have pasted below exactly as it appears in his article:

“Our experts are confident in their assessment that the Russian government hackers were the actors responsible for the breach detected in April,” that statement read, “and we believe that the subsequent release and the claims around it may be a part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians. We’ve deployed the recommended.”

Again, that final period is Uchill's editorial insertion, not mine. The full sentence that he abridged into meaninglessness is a chestnut that first appeared in various media outlets (such as CNN) in mid-June: "We've deployed the recommended technology so that today our systems are secure thanks to a swift response to that attack and we will continue to monitor our systems closely."

So you're probably thinking: "What's the big deal? Uchill obviously made a mistake. It's a cut-and-paste error. Those happen all the time."

You're right. It isn't a big deal that Uchill made an error, but it is worth noting that other press outlets have simply repeated that error without commenting on it (or even noticing it).

Here's a passage from Michael Sainato's latest piece on Guccifer 2.0 for The Observer:

Instead of confirming or denying the validity of the documents, the DNC has reverberated the same tired excuse, claiming Russian hackers are responsible: “Our experts are confident in their assessment that the Russian government hackers were the actors responsible for the breach detected in April and we believe that the subsequent release and the claims around it may be a part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians. We’ve deployed the recommended.”

While the DNC and Clinton campaign have called for party unity, Clinton has continued the politically-expedient tactic of adopting several of Sanders’ popular ideas.

I don't have a problem with Sainato quoting Uchill, but I find it strange that he didn't bother to read the material he quoted--since anyone who reads "We've deployed the recommended" is bound to wonder what happened to the rest of the sentence.

Sainato isn't alone. Uchill's meaningless formulation was also repeated (without comment) by The Nagaland Post and Investment Watch.

This isn't just a case of Uchill making a mistake; it's a case of multiple journalistic outfits failing to recognize that mistake for what it is--probably because they all know better than to read anything inside a quotation attributed to the DNC.

Our journalists believe that their job is simply to repeat whatever our political parties tell them, not to evaluate quotations for accuracy or even intelligibility. Worse yet, since they know that whatever appears inside quotation marks from a political source is almost certainly a lie, they protect themselves from that dishonesty by NOT reading the material in question even as they are in the process of PRESENTING it to their audience.

This is the state of the fourth estate in America is 2016.