the empire is planning more 'mischief' and here's some evidence;
During his visit with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Lebanese
President Michael Aoun reportedly received a US-Israeli document
detailing plans for creating a civil war in Lebanon with covert false
flag operations and possible Israeli invasion.
Although the source of the document is Israeli and created in
partnership with Washington, no one knows who presented it to Aoun. The Lebanese TV station, Al-Jadeed,
initially reported the document on Lebanese TV and a video on its
website. Geopolitics Alert translated the report for this article.........https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-07/secret-document-reveals-plans-civil-war-lebanon-israeli-false-flags-invasion
Monday, April 8, 2019
here is the current state of the monroe doctrine and some of its origins leading to the empire's current actions in venezuela, as it were;
Because there is a presidential election coming up next year, the Donald Trump Administration appears to be looking for a country that it can attack and destroy in order to prove its toughness and willingness to go all the way in support of alleged American interests. It is a version of the old neocon doctrine attributed to Michael Ledeen, the belief that every once in a while, it is necessary to pick out some crappy little country and throw it against the wall just to demonstrate that the United States means business.
“Meaning business” is a tactic whereby the adversary surrenders immediately in fear of the possible consequences, but there are a couple of problems with that thinking. The first is that an opponent who can resist will sometimes balk and create a continuing problem for the United States, which has a demonstrated inability to start and end wars in any coherent fashion.
This tendency to get caught in a quagmire in a situation that might have been resolved through diplomacy has been exacerbated by the current White House’s negotiating style, which is to both demand and expect submission on all points even before discussions begin. That was clearly the perception with North Korea, where National Security Advisor John Bolton insisted that Pyongyang had agreed to American demands over its nuclear program even though it hadn’t and would have been foolish to do so for fear of being treated down the road like Libya, which denuclearized but then was attacked and destroyed seven years later. The Bolton mis-perception, which was apparently bought into by Trump, led to a complete unraveling of what might actually have been accomplished if the negotiations had been serious and open to reasonable compromise right from the beginning.......https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/04/phil-giraldi/what-monroe-doctrine/
Because there is a presidential election coming up next year, the Donald Trump Administration appears to be looking for a country that it can attack and destroy in order to prove its toughness and willingness to go all the way in support of alleged American interests. It is a version of the old neocon doctrine attributed to Michael Ledeen, the belief that every once in a while, it is necessary to pick out some crappy little country and throw it against the wall just to demonstrate that the United States means business.
“Meaning business” is a tactic whereby the adversary surrenders immediately in fear of the possible consequences, but there are a couple of problems with that thinking. The first is that an opponent who can resist will sometimes balk and create a continuing problem for the United States, which has a demonstrated inability to start and end wars in any coherent fashion.
This tendency to get caught in a quagmire in a situation that might have been resolved through diplomacy has been exacerbated by the current White House’s negotiating style, which is to both demand and expect submission on all points even before discussions begin. That was clearly the perception with North Korea, where National Security Advisor John Bolton insisted that Pyongyang had agreed to American demands over its nuclear program even though it hadn’t and would have been foolish to do so for fear of being treated down the road like Libya, which denuclearized but then was attacked and destroyed seven years later. The Bolton mis-perception, which was apparently bought into by Trump, led to a complete unraveling of what might actually have been accomplished if the negotiations had been serious and open to reasonable compromise right from the beginning.......https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/04/phil-giraldi/what-monroe-doctrine/
Sunday, April 7, 2019
i've been looking for a quote by harriet tubman in which she says she could have led more slaves to freedom but she couldn't convince them that they were indeed slaves. the point of my search is to address the true believers who accept all that their tv and school tells them about the land they live in and what it does, and doesn't do. i've yet to find the quote though i've seen it here and there over the years.
its all pasted here speaking about why julian assange is a journalist and that will fly in the face of the true believers. either you have free speech or you don't;
As we discussed yesterday, whenever Assange is in the news and people are defending him you always see a bunch of hyper-emotional empire loyalists running around online trying to manage the narrative about him. One of the most common talking points which comes up is that Assange is “not a journalist”.
The reason this talking point comes up, of course, is because the WikiLeaks founder is besieged by powerful forces who are attempting to imprison him for publishing inconvenient facts about them, and his defenders often voice their concerns about what this means for the future of press freedoms. The completely baseless claim that Assange is “not a journalist” is used in an attempt to defuse the argument that his prosecution by the US government could lead to the same fate for any news media outlet which publishes leaks on the US government anywhere in the world. If he’s not a journalist, then his prosecution sets no precedent for real journalists.
This argument, if you can call it that, is fallacious for a number of reasons. For starters, as The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald explained last year, there’s not any legal distinction in the US Constitution between news media outlets like the New York Times and an outlet which solely focuses on publishing leaks. If you set the precedent with any publisher, you’re necessarily setting it for all of them. Greenwald writes the following:
You can look at any conventional dictionary definition of the word and come to the same conclusion. Merriam-Webster offers “the public press” and “the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media”. The Oxford English Dictionary offers “The activity or profession of writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or preparing news to be broadcast.” Your Dictionary offers ” the work of finding, creating, editing and publishing news, or material written and presented for a newspaper, magazine or broadcast news source.” These are activities that WikiLeaks is undeniably involved in; they collect and publish newsworthy information to be circulated by themselves and other news sources. The fact that they do their part differently (and better) than other outlets doesn’t change that.
Which explains why the WikiLeaks team has racked up numerous awards for journalism over the years, including the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism (2011), the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (2011), the International Piero Passetti Journalism Prize of the National Union of Italian Journalists (2011), the Jose Couso Press Freedom Award (2011), the Brazillian Press Association Human Rights Award (2013), and the Kazakstan Union of Journalists Top Prize (2014).
The claim that Assange is “not a journalist” is both an irrelevant red herring and a self-evident falsehood. It is made not by people with an interest in maintaining a small and specific linguistic understanding of what the word journalism means, but by people who want to see Julian Assange imprisoned by the same government which tortured Chelsea Manning because he made them feel emotionally upset. It’s a fact-free argument made entirely in bad faith for inexcusable motives: the desire to see a journalist imprisoned for telling the truth.
When someone says “Assange isn’t a journalist”, they aren’t telling you what Assange is. They’re showing you what they are........https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/04/07/assange-is-not-a-journalist-yes-he-is-idiot/
As we discussed yesterday, whenever Assange is in the news and people are defending him you always see a bunch of hyper-emotional empire loyalists running around online trying to manage the narrative about him. One of the most common talking points which comes up is that Assange is “not a journalist”.
The reason this talking point comes up, of course, is because the WikiLeaks founder is besieged by powerful forces who are attempting to imprison him for publishing inconvenient facts about them, and his defenders often voice their concerns about what this means for the future of press freedoms. The completely baseless claim that Assange is “not a journalist” is used in an attempt to defuse the argument that his prosecution by the US government could lead to the same fate for any news media outlet which publishes leaks on the US government anywhere in the world. If he’s not a journalist, then his prosecution sets no precedent for real journalists.
This argument, if you can call it that, is fallacious for a number of reasons. For starters, as The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald explained last year, there’s not any legal distinction in the US Constitution between news media outlets like the New York Times and an outlet which solely focuses on publishing leaks. If you set the precedent with any publisher, you’re necessarily setting it for all of them. Greenwald writes the following:
To begin with, the press freedom guarantee of the First Amendment isn’t confined to “legitimate news outlets” – whatever that might mean. The First Amendment isn’t available only to a certain class of people licensed as “journalists.” It protects not a privileged group of people called “professional journalists” but rather an activity: namely, using the press (which at the time of the First Amendment’s enactment meant the literal printing press) to inform the public about what the government was doing. Everyone is entitled to that constitutional protection equally: there is no cogent way to justify why the Guardian, ex-DOJ-officials-turned-bloggers, or Marcy Wheeler are free to publish classified information but Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are not.Secondly, anyone with a functioning brain can see that Julian Assange is indeed a journalist. Publishing facts so that the citizenry can inform themselves about what’s going on in their world and what’s happening with their government is the thing that journalism is. Duh. The need for an informed citizenry is the entire reason why press freedoms are protected so explicitly under the US Constitution, and publishing facts about the most powerful institutions on earth indisputably does create a more informed citizenry.
You can look at any conventional dictionary definition of the word and come to the same conclusion. Merriam-Webster offers “the public press” and “the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media”. The Oxford English Dictionary offers “The activity or profession of writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or preparing news to be broadcast.” Your Dictionary offers ” the work of finding, creating, editing and publishing news, or material written and presented for a newspaper, magazine or broadcast news source.” These are activities that WikiLeaks is undeniably involved in; they collect and publish newsworthy information to be circulated by themselves and other news sources. The fact that they do their part differently (and better) than other outlets doesn’t change that.
Which explains why the WikiLeaks team has racked up numerous awards for journalism over the years, including the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism (2011), the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (2011), the International Piero Passetti Journalism Prize of the National Union of Italian Journalists (2011), the Jose Couso Press Freedom Award (2011), the Brazillian Press Association Human Rights Award (2013), and the Kazakstan Union of Journalists Top Prize (2014).
The claim that Assange is “not a journalist” is both an irrelevant red herring and a self-evident falsehood. It is made not by people with an interest in maintaining a small and specific linguistic understanding of what the word journalism means, but by people who want to see Julian Assange imprisoned by the same government which tortured Chelsea Manning because he made them feel emotionally upset. It’s a fact-free argument made entirely in bad faith for inexcusable motives: the desire to see a journalist imprisoned for telling the truth.
When someone says “Assange isn’t a journalist”, they aren’t telling you what Assange is. They’re showing you what they are........https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/04/07/assange-is-not-a-journalist-yes-he-is-idiot/
here is your daily serving of 'our thin blue line' protecting you from evildoers;
Centerville, IL — On Thursday, Darius Hinkle’s one-year-old daughter—like so many other children do every year—grabbed a penny and put it in her mouth. While most parents are able to remove the loose change from their child’s mouth before anything bad happens, Hinkle was unable to do so and his daughter started to choke. His first reaction was to get her to the hospital as soon as possible.
Hinkle—like so many other folks who cannot afford to pay exorbitant fines that target the poor—did not have a valid driver’s license when he got in the car to drive his daughter to the hospital. However, no one in their right mind would sit by and let their daughter choke to death because their driver’s license is invalid. So, Hinkle made the split second decision to break the law and drive his daughter to the hospital anyway.
“The first thing in my mind was to get her to the hospital,” Hinkle said.
Because time was of the utmost importance, Hinkle exceeded the speed limit to get his daughter to the hospital as soon as possible. Naturally, he was quickly targeted for revenue collection by police.
Not caring about the fact that police were targeting him for revenue collection, and only caring about his daughter’s life, Hinkle did not stop for the cops. So, more and more cops started in on the chase.
According to Hinkle, by the time he got to the hospital, more than a handful of police officers from multiple agencies were behind him. When Hinkle and his wife Donecia Pittman finally arrived at the hospital, they were told to put their hands in the air as cops held them at gunpoint.
“I just told them that our daughter is choking,” Pittman said. But she says cops were only concerned with arresting Hinkle.............https://thefreethoughtproject.com/dad-arrested-bailed-out-hospital/
Centerville, IL — On Thursday, Darius Hinkle’s one-year-old daughter—like so many other children do every year—grabbed a penny and put it in her mouth. While most parents are able to remove the loose change from their child’s mouth before anything bad happens, Hinkle was unable to do so and his daughter started to choke. His first reaction was to get her to the hospital as soon as possible.
Hinkle—like so many other folks who cannot afford to pay exorbitant fines that target the poor—did not have a valid driver’s license when he got in the car to drive his daughter to the hospital. However, no one in their right mind would sit by and let their daughter choke to death because their driver’s license is invalid. So, Hinkle made the split second decision to break the law and drive his daughter to the hospital anyway.
“The first thing in my mind was to get her to the hospital,” Hinkle said.
Because time was of the utmost importance, Hinkle exceeded the speed limit to get his daughter to the hospital as soon as possible. Naturally, he was quickly targeted for revenue collection by police.
Not caring about the fact that police were targeting him for revenue collection, and only caring about his daughter’s life, Hinkle did not stop for the cops. So, more and more cops started in on the chase.
According to Hinkle, by the time he got to the hospital, more than a handful of police officers from multiple agencies were behind him. When Hinkle and his wife Donecia Pittman finally arrived at the hospital, they were told to put their hands in the air as cops held them at gunpoint.
“I just told them that our daughter is choking,” Pittman said. But she says cops were only concerned with arresting Hinkle.............https://thefreethoughtproject.com/dad-arrested-bailed-out-hospital/
here is some news for those of you who believe trump and his promises;
As President Donald Trump threatened to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border in recent days, his Department of Homeland Security nearly doubled the number of temporary guest worker visas available this summer.
DHS and the Labor Department plan to grant an additional 30,000 H-2B visas this summer on top of the 33,000 H-2B visas they had planned to give out, the agencies confirmed.
The H-2B visa is for foreign workers to come to the United States and work for several months at a company such as a landscaper, amusement park or hotel. About 80 percent of these visas went to people from Mexico and Central America last year, government data show.
Trump says there is a national emergency at the southern border because too many people are trying to come to the United States. On Friday, he implored migrants to turn around and go home.
“We can’t take you anymore,” Trump said Friday while standing at the border in California. “Our country is full.”
But his administration is giving a different message to some short-term workers. With the additional visas, the Trump administration is on track to grant 96,000 H-2B visas this fiscal year, the most since 2007, when George W. Bush was president.
“It’s ironic that Trump is demagoguing and railing against a so-called dangerous and scary flood of migrants and caravans from Mexico and Central America, and even threatening to shut down the border, while at the same time using his legal authority to grow a guest worker program by nearly 50 percent,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
A major theme of Trump’s presidential campaign was that foreign workers were stealing U.S. jobs, but lately he has said it might be necessary to bring in more guest workers because the economy is doing so well that companies can’t find enough people to fill jobs. The unemployment rate, at 3.8 percent, is near a 50-year low....https://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/trump-administration-nearly-doubles-h-2b-guest-visa-program-which-brings-many-mexican-workers/244526
As President Donald Trump threatened to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border in recent days, his Department of Homeland Security nearly doubled the number of temporary guest worker visas available this summer.
DHS and the Labor Department plan to grant an additional 30,000 H-2B visas this summer on top of the 33,000 H-2B visas they had planned to give out, the agencies confirmed.
The H-2B visa is for foreign workers to come to the United States and work for several months at a company such as a landscaper, amusement park or hotel. About 80 percent of these visas went to people from Mexico and Central America last year, government data show.
Trump says there is a national emergency at the southern border because too many people are trying to come to the United States. On Friday, he implored migrants to turn around and go home.
“We can’t take you anymore,” Trump said Friday while standing at the border in California. “Our country is full.”
But his administration is giving a different message to some short-term workers. With the additional visas, the Trump administration is on track to grant 96,000 H-2B visas this fiscal year, the most since 2007, when George W. Bush was president.
“It’s ironic that Trump is demagoguing and railing against a so-called dangerous and scary flood of migrants and caravans from Mexico and Central America, and even threatening to shut down the border, while at the same time using his legal authority to grow a guest worker program by nearly 50 percent,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
A major theme of Trump’s presidential campaign was that foreign workers were stealing U.S. jobs, but lately he has said it might be necessary to bring in more guest workers because the economy is doing so well that companies can’t find enough people to fill jobs. The unemployment rate, at 3.8 percent, is near a 50-year low....https://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/trump-administration-nearly-doubles-h-2b-guest-visa-program-which-brings-many-mexican-workers/244526
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