Salon Interview: Tucker Carlson bashes capitalism, says he might vote for Elizabeth Warren Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism

Not exactly the kind of left/right coalition I would envision, but you’ve got to crawl before you can run, I guess.

By Matthew Rozsa

Salon.Com

In my recent interview with Tucker Carlson, he waited until nearly the end of a long conversation to drop a bomb: He might vote for Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2020. OK, there’s a “but” and an “if.” Carlson actually said that if Warren focuses on the economic populism ideas articulated in her 2004 book “The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke,” he would consider supporting her. It wasn’t a promise. From the point of view of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, it might be more like a threat.

We have to put Salon’s interview with Carlson, a top-rated prime-time host and commentator on Fox News, in the proper context. That context would be the Overton window, a concept developed at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy by Joseph P. Overton:

Imagine, if you will, a yardstick standing on end. On either end are the extreme policy actions for any political issue. Between the ends lie all gradations of policy from one extreme to the other. The yardstick represents the full political spectrum for a particular issue. The essence of the Overton window is that only a portion of this policy spectrum is within the realm of the politically possible at any time. Regardless of how vigorously a think tank or other group may campaign, only policy initiatives within this window of the politically possible will meet with success.

That doesn’t exactly describe my conversation with Carlson, but it provides a useful frame. In any society at a given time, certain political ideas are deemed to fall outside the realm of the acceptable. Sometimes that’s healthy, if it drives totalitarian ideologies to the margins, but it can be harmful when it stifles meaningful dialogue.

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Alain de Benoist: Jair Bolsonaro’s program is appalling! 1

by • Uncategorized • Tags: ,

That so many Western, particularly American, right-wingers are fans of Bolsonaro illustrates why the Right remains as useless as the Left.

Geopolitca.RU

Elected president of Brazil last October, with more than 55% of the vote, Jair Bolsonaro just took office. The left, which multiplies the anathemas against him (homophobe, sexist, racist, etc.), speaks of a new upsurge of “populism” and says that his victory delights everyone that the world regards as “right wing and extreme right wing” people. Are you one of them?

​Not at all. Bolsonaro certainly benefited from the current trend of populism and captured the vote of the popular classes who previously voted for the Workers’ Party, but populism, I remind you, doesn’t have a precise ideological content. It’s only a style, a manner of responding to political supply and demand, and this style can combine itself with very different ideologies (Luiz Inácio Lula, the former president, was also a “populist”). The right always wags in a Pavlovian manner when it hears they are are going to reestablish “law and order.” The problem is that the law can be unjust and order is often only an established disorder.
​I will, of course, refrain from judging Bolsonaro’s intentions. I sincerely hope that he can put an end to corruption and restore some peace in a country where they record 64,000 homicides per year (more than a half million in ten years). What I observe at the same time, is that he was the candidate of the financial markets before all (the São Paulo Stock Exchange leaped 6% the day after his victory), multinationals, starting with Monsanto, and the lobby of large landowners (la bancada ruralista), and that it was the evangelical churches, controlled by North American televangelists and steeped in Zionist messianism, who gave him the most decisive support (formerly Catholic, he converted to evangelicalism by being symbolically baptized in the Jordan in 2016).

But what essentially do you criticize him for?

​I’ve listened to Bolsonaro’s various speeches and I’ve attentively read his program, which I find appalling in many regards. After having decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on the climate, he announced the construction of a new highway through the Amazon, the opening of indigenous territories, whose inhabitants will be expelled, to oil and mineral exploitation, and the systematic promotion of industrial agriculture to the detriment of environmental protection. To make things clear, he also coldly suppressed the Ministry of the Environment, whose functions were transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture, and announced the elimination of the Ministry of Culture.

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Arizona Legislator Proposes Securing State Reserves with Gold and Silver Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations • Tags:

By J P Cortez

Phoenix, Arizona (January 22, 2019) – An Arizona legislator has put forward a bill to de-risk the state’s financial holdings with a modest allocation to physical gold and silver in the state’s reserve fund.

Introduced by Representative Mark Finchem (R-Tucson), the Arizona Sound Money Stabilization Act (HB 2500) requires that at least 10% of Arizona’s Budget Stabilization Fund be held in the monetary metals in a secure depository.

Arizona’s Budget Stabilization Fund has almost $500 million in assets but is currently invested in debt instruments and the stock market. The state owns no gold or silver.

Finchem’s past sound money initiatives have been successful. In 2017, Rep. Finchem passed the ground-breaking House Bill 2014, a measure which removed all income taxation of gold and silver at the state level.

Gold and silver do not have the default or inflation risks that bonds and other “fixed income” investments carry. Most importantly, physical gold and silver held in a depository carry no counterparty risk – or risk of failure or default – unlike stocks, bonds, and other financial assets.

In support of the measure, Rep. Finchem said, “it’s high time to safeguard the state’s assets and taxpayers against the volatile dollar.”

Furthermore, an allocation to precious metals is proven to increase overall returns over time, reduce volatility, and reduce drawdowns.

Backed by the Sound Money Defense League, this measure protects Arizona’s rainy day fund by including the only money proven to protect against the Federal Reserve Note’s ongoing devaluation.

Arizona’s Sound Money Stabilization Act comes on the heels of three sound money bills introduced in Wyoming last week.

Concerned that state investments have no protection against a stock market crash, credit crisis, or other existential financial risks, Wyoming legislators want a small portion of Wyoming’s pension fund, reserve fund, and mineral trust fund allocated to physical gold and silver held in a depository within (or near) the Cowboy State.

The Sound Money Defense League is a public policy group working nationally to bring back gold and silver as America’s constitutional money and publisher of the Sound Money Index. For comment or more information, call 1-208-577-2225 or email jp.cortez@soundmoneydefense.org.

 

Alexander Reid-Ross-Podhoretz-Kristol: State Department Anarchist 10

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags: ,

Mr. Antifa Intellectual serves up the “Anarcho-MSNBC” line. This kind of stuff is why I started attacking anarcho-social democrats and totalitarian humanists so vehemently 20 years ago. Regrettably, a substantial tendency has developed among “anarchists” that opposes regional or localized illiberalism more than it opposes imperialism, opposes marginal right-wing extremists more than it opposes the power elite, opposes redneck ruckus makers like the Bundys more than it opposes the FBI and ATF, opposes social conservatives more than it opposes the state itself, and (probably) opposes the reality show president more than it opposes the actual national security state.

I suppose they’re entitled to their opinion. Unlike many anarchists, I consider freedom of opinion and freedom of association to be paramount. But, seriously, how are these kinds of folks any different from the Democratic Party?

 

Kick the Puppy Episode 19 7

by • Kick the Puppy, Uncategorized

whats_causing_the_rise_of_hoarding_disorder_1050x700

The condition of internet freedom 6 years after the death of Aaron Schwartz, divided about immigration because we speak different languages, Vilfredo Pareto, South Carolina town now a Juggalo free zone, Juggalos VS facial recognition software, wearing a mask in public, Illinois thinks it is now taxing lap dances, tourists relax on the beach in Acapulco among bullet ridden bodies, 7 Star Trek series to be on the air by 2020, how anarchists respond to the government “shutdown,” what’s causing the rise of hoarding disorder, U.S. now says all online gambling is illegal, U.S. proposes to allow drone operation at night over people, hackers broke into an SEC database and made millions from inside information, against federal identification numbers, Costco is opening a $440 million chicken farm to escape America’s chicken monopoly, Florida man drives golf cart drunk barks like a dog and gives deputies the middle finger, getting tasered by Reno 911.

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Dancing On America’s Grave 2

by • American Decline, Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

Washington is a fucking zoo. The entire town seems to be teeming with an almost demonic energy that’s usually reserved for Third World capitals hours before the fall of some CIA funded cannibal despot. We have had fucked up presidencies before, about 44 of them if memory serves correctly, and the temptation is always rich to proclaim the current bastard the worst, but the Donald is a very special flavor of fucked up and his ADHD appears to be contagious. For the first time in centuries, the crumbling ghettos surrounding the District of Colombia look downright pristine compared to the cracked ivory white domes that have long cast shadows across their project courtyards. If you look real carefully through the purple haze of the Sour Diesel and Sherman Hemsley of Potomac Gardens you can just barely see a teary eyed Mike Pence in a West Wing window, dreaming of some place that’s green.

All across the vast expanse of Trump’s America this chaos is spreading like lice. Peep through the blinds of any given ranch-style rambler from Pittsburgh to Peoria and you’ll witness tableaus straight out of a Flannery O’Connor novel. Grotesque creatures ranting and raving across the dinner table at one another over their supposed loved ones’ refusal to despise the right villain in this sick Southern Gothic horror story of a country. Brothers at war with brothers over two sides of the same foul oligarchy. Republicrats or Dempublicans? Crips or Bloods? Kind of grants the concept of ‘White People Problems’ a sick new irony. How much for a room at the Gardens again? I desperately need some sleep and even gunshots beat the sound of gnashing teeth and cable news.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his Botox poisoned limousine liberal nemesis, Nancy Pelosi, continue to play one side of the country off the other, shutting down our crooked federal government over some fictional crisis manufactured in the middle of the fucking desert. Prison guards and TSA gropers are expected to sexually violate the public without a paycheck while Trump bets his staffers $6 billion that he can piss over that 12 foot wall.

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Press TV’s Hashemi unlikely to be released immediately: Son 2

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Law/Justice, Police State/Civil Liberties • Tags: ,

Listen here.

A court in the United States has confirmed the arrest of US-born Iranian Press TV news presenter Marzieh Hashemi as a material witness in an unspecified investigation.

Ms. Hashemi, 59, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on unspecified charges upon arrival at St. Louis Lambert International Airport in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sunday, her family and friends said.

At the request of the US Justice Department, Judge Beryl Alaine Howell, the chief district judge for the District of Columbia, issued a federal court order, approving the partial unsealing of the Press TV journalist’s case, Reuters reported.

According to the document, since her arrest, the journalist has appeared twice before a US district judge in Washington and has been appointed a lawyer.

The Associated Press said US government officials expected her to be released immediately after her testimony before a grand jury, but Ms. Hashemi’s elder son, Hossein, was pessimistic about prospects for her immediate release, saying it was not clear yet how long his mother’s testimony would last.

“We’re hoping that it would be complete and she would be out this week. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen,” said Hossein outside the court on Friday. “So we’re just waiting to hear more.”

However, the Friday court order did not include any details regarding the criminal case in which she has been named as a material witness.

The order said that Ms. Hashemi “has not been accused of any crime,” but she has said she was handcuffed and shackled and was treated like a criminal. The journalist has also said she had her hijab forcibly removed, and was photographed without her headscarf upon arrival at the prison.

In Defense of Tulsi Gabbard Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right • Tags: ,

An interesting article from Daily Kos. I know the author of this piece, who is generally friendly to ATS.

By Alex Shepard

Daily Kos

he election of 2020 is approaching us fast, and the primary season will be here before we know it. Already, the 2020 democratic field has a few challengers. The darling of the establishment, Elizabeth Warren, has announced. From the insurgency ranks, outside of the establishment, is Hawaii congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard.

Tulsi Gabbard, on nearly all sensible and progressive policies gets a perfect score. She supports the reinstitution of the Glass Steagall act.[1] She supports raising the minimum wage.[2] She also has vocally opposed and taken part in protests against the monstrosity called the Keystone Pipeline. She has continuously called for Climate change to be taken seriously and for America to embark on a pragmatic shift away from fossil fuels to efficient alternative energy.[3] She has supported civil rights for all individual Americans, including our Latino, LGBT, African-American, disabled and Muslim citizens.[4] So therefore, it appears she should be an ideal candidate for all left-leaning individuals, mainly those who supported Sanders in the 2016 primary. She also was one of the few Democrat Party officials to endorse Bernie Sanders during his presidential race in 2016, with considerable risk to her political career. She freely resigned from her high ranking post as vice chair of the DNC in order to follow her conscience and endorse Sanders, much to the chagrin of the DNC’s operators.

Most importantly, and speaking from the personal perspective as a PHD candidate in the field of Middle Eastern Studies, she has a spotless foreign policy. Hers is the kind needed for a successful and functional American relationship with not only the Middle East, but the rest of the world as well. She has rightly condemned the illegal war of aggression against Syria.[5] At great risk to her person, and her own political career, she undertook a fact-finding mission in the war-torn nation of Syria. She has since taken it upon herself, much to the ire of the Democratic Party establishment, to tell Americans the truth about where their tax-dollars are going. They are being funneled at the behest of the Military Industry Complex, Saudi Arabia, and Israel to aid the wrong side of a conflict that is of no interest to the United States. Mainly, the American government is actively using American money to assist those who have killed Americans in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.[6] She also repeatedly called for the suspension of aid and weapon sales to the atrocious and genocidal regime in Saudi Arabia, which has been in the process of starving the Yemeni population to death.[7] She also condemned Obama’s illegal war of aggression against Libya, which our former commander in chief admitted was a tragic mistake.[8]

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Robert Stark talks to Guillaume Durocher about the Yellow Vests & National Economics Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations • Tags: ,

The Stark Truth. Listen here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Stark and Anatoly Karlin talk to Alt-French Unz Review blogger  about the Yellow Vest Protests, political situation in France, and National Economics.

Topics:

The gas tax as largely symbolic for overall populist discontent
Macron’s Neoliberal economic polices
Decentralized nature of the movement
The culture of protest in France
The role of the police(update: Police Deploy Rifles with Live Ammunition to Yellow Vest Protests)
The White Working Class demographic
Fusion of Left and Right Populism and support from both nationalist Le Pen and leftist Mélenchon supporters
How the outcome of the Yellow Vest protests will impact the next election
Why movements need a segment of the elite to succeed
Russian and American(ex. Steve Bannon) conspiracy theories
Orbánomics, or the Return of National Economics
National Economic policies such as state control of banks, national banks, and local production
The Economics of Globalism and High vs. Low Globalism
Left Wing French Social Nationalist Alain Soral
France Is Becoming More Violent

Wyoming Legislators Want State to De-Risk Investments by Holding Gold and Silver 1

by • Economics/Class Relations • Tags:

By J.P. Cortez

Cheyenne, Wyoming (January 17, 2019) – A group of Wyoming legislators have introduced three bills this week to de-risk the state’s financial holdings with modest allocations to physical gold and silver in the state’s pension fund, reserve fund, and mineral trust fund.

Introduced by Representative Roy Edwards (R-Gillette) and co-sponsored by 15 others, the Wyoming Sound Money Trust Act (HB 174) empowers the State Treasurer to hold at least 10% of the Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund in the monetary metals in a depository in or near the state of Wyoming.

The Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund is the state’s oldest and most well-funded permanent fund with over $8 billion in assets.

Last year, Rep. Edwards successfully passed the ground-breaking Wyoming Legal Tender Act, a measure which reaffirmed that gold and silver are constitutional money and removed all state taxation of them.

Meanwhile, the Wyoming Sound Money Pension Act (HB 156), introduced by Representative Mark Jennings (R-Sheridan), aims to reduce financial risk and better secure state-managed pension funds by allocating a modest 10% of Wyoming Pension System assets to the monetary metals.

And Representative Scott Clem (R-Campbell) introduced the third bill, the Wyoming Sound Money Reserve Act (HB 190). This measure requires that at least 10% of Wyoming’s Legislative Stabilization Reserve Account be held in gold and silver.

All of these measures would help the state hedge its risks of holding stocks, bonds, and short-term debt instrument with an allocation to a bedrock asset carrying no counterparty risk and proven to maintain purchasing power. The state has suffered significant investment losses in recent months, including a $220 million unrealized loss on investments in Third World debt.

Backed by the Sound Money Defense League and Campaign for Liberty, these measures protect Wyoming’s accounts by insulating them with the only money proven to protect against the Federal Reserve Note’s ongoing devaluation. Furthermore, an allocation to precious metals is proven to increase overall returns over time, reduce volatility, and reduce drawdowns.

The Sound Money Defense League is a public policy group working nationally to bring back gold and silver as America’s constitutional money and publisher of the Sound Money Index. For comment or more information, call 1-208-577-2225 or email jp.cortez@soundmoneydefense.org.

My Decades Long Conspiracy to Subvert an Irrelevant Fringe Subculture 19

by • Uncategorized

Apparently, the C4SS crowd is now being attacked by rival leftists for being associated with “fascists,” with yours truly being among the primary exhibits in favor of the prosecution. And the accuser is none less than Max Blumenthal, son of former Bill Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal. I have no clue at to what this is about. It looks like it has something to do with Russia. Gillis’ equally goofy but less entertaining friend Alexander Reid Ross is a major Russophobe, and apparently Blumenthal is an impeccably otherwise PC but not quite as Russophobic rival to ARR. Or maybe not. Who knows with these lunatics.

Who Cares About Russia? Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags:

The Russian Bear is the Wizard of Oz, and Putin is the man behind the curtain. The Russophilia of the far left/far right and the Russophobia of the center left/center right is pathetic.

My own geopolitical outlook is more like that of the classical anarchists of the late 19th/early 20th century or the Sunni jihadis today, i.e. global insurgency against the global enemy even if I don’t share the politics of the jihadis.

Ultimately, I would want to see worldwide insurgencies attacking states, ruling classes, and empires on a global scale. An insurgency against the DC empire, against the EU, against the Kremlin, against Beijing, against Delhi and Islamabad at the same time.

The problem that I have with the Russophiles and Sinophiles is that ultimately they are just an Eastern version of the Republicans, only instead of a bunch of yahoos chanting “USA! USA!” at a monster truck exhibition it’s “Russia! Russia! China! China!” at a Communist or Alt-Right assembly. Just like the SJWs are really just a variation of social conservatism, only instead of being anti-abortion fanatics they are animal rights fanatics, or instead of being obsessively anti-gay they are obsessively pro-gay, or instead of protesting against adult bookstores and Satanic rock they are protesting Confederate flags and center-right campus speakers. And sometimes they overlap, e.g anti-porn feminism, anti-smoking puritans, sex trafficking hysteria, etc. It’s the same problem with the antifa who are just a variation of the skinheads (and both of these have their roots in the cultural milieu in England in the 70s and 80s). A real anarchist revolutionary insurgency would not be wasting time with any of this crap.

Tulsi Gabbard Is Running For President In 2020 Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right • Tags:

This is a pretty good discussion of Gabbard. From what I can tell, she’s basically just a moderate who trends liberal on social issues, who is pro-military, pro-Israel, and pro-terror war but who merely thinks the neocon/neoliberal foreign policy paradigm is insane (which it is), largely from her experience of actually having been in the military in Iraq. She apparently has a soft spot for India, which is obviously due to her own Hinduism. The worst thing that I have ever heard about her is her friendship with Sheldon Adelson.

Marzieh Hashemi, American journalist who works for Iranian TV, arrested in US, state-run media says 3

by • Police State/Civil Liberties

MSN.Com

American-born Marzieh Hashemi is a news anchor for Press TV, Iran 's English-language service.
Iran’s foreign minister called for the United States to release Press TV anchor Marzieh Hashemi in comments carried on the website of state-run IRNA news.

Iranian state-funded Press TV reported Wednesday morning that Hashemi, a journalist born in the United States as Melanie Franklin, was detained in the St. Louis, Missouri international airport on Sunday.

She was transferred to a detention facility in Washington, DC, according to Press TV, Iran’s English-language service.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment on Hashemi’s detention.

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Views on Press TV anchor’s arrest Reply

by • Police State/Civil Liberties

Keith Preston, director of the Attackthesystem.com

“The arrest of Marzieh Hashemi is clearly an effort to silence voices that speak in opposition to the policies of the American government, and to intimidate others to prevent them from speaking. Marzieh Hashemi is being used as a hostage for the purpose of threatening the nation of Iran, and opponents of America’s international policies everywhere. This action is also an attack on independent journalism and the freedom of the press. The arbitrary arrest and detention without trial of Marzieh Hashemi is an affront to civilized legal procedure, and the denial of her rights as a Muslim while in custody is an attack on religious liberty and a violation of human rights,” Preston said.

Listen here.

Poll: Most Americans blame Trump, Republicans for longest govt. shutdown 4

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies

The United States’ partial government shutdown drags into its fourth consecutive week as President Donald Trump and Democrats fail to settle their scores over funding a border wall.
The stalemate has led to the closure of at least 25 percent of the federal operation since December 22. Air travelers have also had to wait for more than an hour to get through domestic checkpoints at Atlanta airport. The shutdown has also put on hold the Federal Aviation Administration approval of aircraft. Trump is demanding five-point-seven billion dollars from Congress for building a border wall with Mexico. The U-S president has warned that the partial shutdown will continue unless he receives the money.

Kick the Puppy Episode 18 5

by • Kick the Puppy, Uncategorized

the-devils-rejects-sequel

Government shutdown highlights issues that 78% of workers live paycheck to paycheck, research shows affluent Americans barely recognize US income gap, lawsuit by families of Sandy Hook victims against Alex Jones advances, Alex Jones IS the crisis actor, man accused of killing brother with a sword, lizard people, schizophrenia on drugs, new congressional marijuana bill is numbered HR 420, Portland bar sues bartender for $115,000 for drinking on the job, people like to talk to strangers, repeated radio signals are coming from galaxy 1.5 billion light years away, cancer in America is way down for the wealthy, people older than 65 share the most fake news, Attack the System mentioned in “Anarchism in 2018” podcast by The Brilliant, not being recognized by the Church.

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