“No Kings” and Lack of Democracy

The "No Kings" people are out again, none of them protesting that Kamala Harris was appointed (not elected) to head the presidential ticket. Nor are there any signs protesting what the DNC did to Bernie (who deserves no tears in light of how he folded in countless ways ever since). I once canvassed for Bernie. I will get out and protest when they hold a "No Heroes Day."

Aaron Mate:

To explain: the DNC rigged the 2016 primary against Bernie in favor of Hillary. Leaked DNC emails, released by Wikileaks, proved that. Hillary's campaign invented a conspiracy theory blaming Russia for the DNC leak and accusing Trump of colluding with Moscow.

Rather than call out Hillary's Russiagate scam and seize the Democratic party from the wreckage of her failed neocon/neoliberalism, Bernie decided to prop it up. He event introduced a measure to "Protect American Democracy from Russian Meddling." (see video below)

In 2020, Bernie was rewarded for his obedience by having the Russiagate playbook weaponized against him. The same anonymous intel officials who helped give us Russiagate declared that Putin was trying to help Bernie win. That helped sink his primary chances. Two consecutive primaries rigged against him, this time with his acquiescence.

In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine -- partly a result of years of Russiagate mania, which promoted conflict and criminalized diplomacy -- Bernie again deferred to the Democratic establishment. Abandoning his longstanding warnings about NATO expansion, militarism, and weapons spending, he voted repeatedly to authorize tens of billions of dollars for Biden's proxy war.

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Jeffrey Sach: Trump Lies that the US Needs to Wage War Against Iran

Once again, Jeffrey Sachs is spot on:

Trump's entire framework is completely phony and it's completely phony because Iran did not want nuclear weapons. They signed an agreement that there would not be nuclear weapons and then Trump ripped it up. Now, why did he rip it up in 2018 and why was there a standing ovation in Congress? Because this is Israel's policy, because Congress and the White House are owned by radical, militant, crazy Zionists in Israel, Bibi, Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir, who want a war with Iran, and Trump is a puppet here. He does not have an independent capacity. Maybe he's not bright enough. Maybe he's blackmailed. We don't understand entirely, but the standing ovation reflects the Zionist lobby in the United States. This is Israel's war, and like so many of America's wars, they're trying to bring us into their fight, which is not our fight, when I say so many of our wars, the United States has been drawn by Israel into the wars in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, across the Middle East. These are not wars for American security. They're not even wars for Israel's security. They're wars for Israel's hegemony in the region. They're wars by Israel to take out any opponent in the region or any counterweight in the region. So the United States tasked the CIA to overthrow the Syrian government. That was Obama that started that one. Trump continued it. Trump even said, I put the current leader of Syria into power. Yeah, that's a CIA operation. It was Israel that got the United States to go to war with Libya in 2011 leading to the next 15 years of chaos in that country. It is Israel that got the United States into the Iraq war in 2003. This is all so thoroughly documented at this point that that was not a war under mistaken pretenses of weapons of mass destruction. That was a PR campaign to justify Bibi's war.

And the reason why it's most likely that Trump will attack is the following: The American people don't want it. The Iranians have said they don't want nuclear weapons. The regional leaders have said, Don't go to war. Other leaders around the world, President Putin, President Xi and others have told the United States that is a terrible idea. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have told Trump this is a terrible idea. Trump's political advisers have told Trump this is disastrous because the American people don't want this. But that's all on one side. The other side is Bibi, is Israel, is Miriam Adelson, who else? We don't know exactly why, but this is the point. Trump is being overwhelmingly advised by everybody, by his military, by leaders in the region, by his political advisors, and not the least by the American people: don't do this. But it's so strange and discouraging. There isn't an honest word that comes out of Washington because of this Zionist lobby right now. And there is was no coverage whatsoever, by the way that when Rubio said a couple of weeks ago, look, we need a broad-based negotiation, and the Iranians said two days later in a speech in Doha by the foreign minister, yes, here's a path to peace, The two state solution, a state of Palestine, Israel, mutual respect, peace. That wasn't even picked up in our newspapers. [We] are subject to mass propaganda. And Trump lied every word that we just watched, and the Congress stood up and applauded him. But that's for a reason. That is the chokehold on American politics that this Zionist lobby has right now. And we need to break that chokehold for our own security.

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Wanted: Investigators for the Epstein Investigators . . .

History shows just how corrupt banks can be (consider the 2008 crash). Svetlana Lokhova reports on JPMorgan's records, which give rise to numerous red flags. Finding Epstein fraud and criminality in these records would see to be straight-forward--shooting fish in a barrel--but investigations against Epstein rarely go anywhere. Real investigations would require investigators of the investigators, and investigators of THOSE investigators because no empowered entity seems untouched by Epstein's fractal network. Even worse, today's investigations of Epstein fail because he was an avatar for a vast tangled system of enabling politicians, billionaires and banks.

FinCEN database using [redacted]-possibly Epstein's identifiers like name or accounts, and CTRs referencing Epstein's Social Security Number (SSN). Results: 14 [redacted, likely SARs] (8 with attachments) and 89 CTRs.

Epstein's JPMorgan accounts (held through entities like his Southern Trust Company) processed hundreds of millions in transactions, including payments to young women and co-conspirators. The records would help trace fund flows, identify enablers, and build cases.

The emails strongly indicate that there were suspicious transactions associated with Jeffrey Epstein's accounts at JPMorgan Chase.

Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs): These are confidential filings that banks are legally required to submit to the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) when they detect transactions that may involve illegal activities, such as money laundering, fraud, or in Epstein's case, potential links to sex trafficking.

Continue ReadingWanted: Investigators for the Epstein Investigators . . .

Dave Smith: Tax-Free War Mongering

Dave Smith on US war-waging, tax-free:

In 25 years, we've spent close to $10 trillion on wars and they didn't tax the American people for that, as they know. They couldn't tax us enough to pay. We would put an end to it. If they tried to raise everybody's taxes enough to come up with $10 trillion because we want to go fight regime change wars all over the Middle East, the American people would have been like, "No, we're not doing that." But they didn't do that. They kept taxes where they were. I think they even cut some rates during those years, the top rates. And then they borrowed the rest. And they still couldn't borrow enough. So they just print the money.

And then essentially, what happens is that the price of everything just goes up and up and up. And you just put more money into the system. And then people start looking around and going like, "Geez, why is the price of housing and health care and energy and child care totally unaffordable?" And the answer is, because you're paying for the war in Iraq. And nobody thinks about it like that, but that's really what's going on.

For all the young people who are coming out of college now, and they're like, I'm 150 grand in debt. I have a gender studies major degree or whatever, you know, maybe something better than that, but they got an English degree or something. And they're working at Door Dash, and the average house is going for 600 grand, and they're like, "What am I possibly going to do?"

It's like, the reason why these kids are all demanding socialism, at least on the left, is because, what else are you going to do? The reason why that is the case is because your government decided to spend trillions of dollars on blowing up brown countries, and, in some cases, then rebuilding them to blow them up again. This is the actual cost of the thing.

I feel like it's the almost nobody outside of like the Ron Paul libertarians, the Austrian economics guys, almost nobody else ever makes this connection. This is the deal. You can't be a world empire without having a central bank that can print money for you, because otherwise it just doesn't work. Resources are finite, and you'll run out of them. And so you can't do that without having this monetary system.

But the cost of this monetary system is that prices always go up and up and up and up, and that rigs the entire economy against the working class and the middle class in favor of the rich. It's just the way it is. When the value of assets is going up and up and up and up, that's great if you own stuff. That's great if you own stuff and you're selling it. If you got a billion dollars in the bank, inflation is your best friend. But if you're on a fixed income or you're a working class person, it just destroys you.

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