NAZZ: The North Atlantic Zombie Zone
NAZZ: The North Atlantic Zombie Zone
For over 70 years the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom has been a force for stability in Europe. In every crisis that has faced that continent since the end of World War 2, they worked together, even when differing national interests might have pulled them apart. For much of that time they were the backbone of NATO. If one of them experienced a short term political crisis, be it The Profumo Affair or Watergate, the stability of the other partner remained, until now, when both have lapsed into government by the walking dead.
With the election of what can only be an unstable government in the UK there is now uncertainty on both sides of The Atlantic. The unpredictable and ever changing policies of Donald Trump have paralysed US foreign policy, while the new coalition government of the UK is unlikely to be able to formulate meaningful foreign policy until it demonstrates a quality it is most unlikely to ever possess, a degree of longevity. Neither France nor Germany can realistically be expected to fill the security gap this has created.
More profoundly, what both Trump and the resurgent Corbyn represent is a widespread loss of faith in the policies that have dominated the governance of their nations in recent decades. To call these policies neoliberalism implies a firm philosophy as well as a continuity and rationality that they have never possessed. They are better characterised as an opportunistic return to the age of the robber barons. The term refers to the unscrupulous industrialists of the late 19th Century who increased their wealth by ruthless, often illegal, means.
The robber barons of our time are more sophisticated. By using a combination of outright bribes to politicians and control of mass media, they simply ensured that government policy would, wherever conceivably possible, increase their wealth with no regard for the well being of their workers, individually or collectively. The Koch brothers vast investment in disinformation about climate change is only the latest, and most obscene example, of this process. The appalling behaviour of the tobacco industry over many decades is also well known but there are numerous other examples including the history of lead pollution.
The natural result of bending all policy to the interests of the wealthy is the observed decrease in the equitable distribution of the nation's wealth and the increasingly recognised flow on effects of that on the nation's health. These trends could pass almost unobserved during periods of significant economic growth and were able to persist as a delusion as long as the middle class, home of the commentariat, were largely unaffected. The downturn of 2008 changed that in both countries. Too many saw their standards of living fall and keep falling. Pockets of a poverty so deep it is rarely seen outside developing nations, developed in the US. In the UK many experienced drastic declines in their standard of living. It is not those at the bottom who initiate political change. It occurs when the effects of poor policy hit the middle class. That is where both countries now stand.
It is impossible to see anything positive in the current political situation in the US. In the U.K. the signs are more hopeful. Another election could easily result in a Corbyn government and lead to significant change. By swinging to the left instead of the right the electorate has shown greater awareness of the causes of their problems than their US equivalents, but that trend needs to continue and strengthen if anything positive is to emerge from the wreckage of the recent election.
In the interim, the risk is that Russia will resume its revanchist policies and step up its repressive domestic policies ahead of next year's Presidential election. From Putin's perspective there could hardly be a better opportunity to promote himself as a nationalist strong man. This raises the risk, not so much of a deliberate war with NATO, but of a miscalculation on his part leading to escalating conflict. The Baltic States provide a ready made flash point.
Meanwhile Australia, more by good fortune than good management, continues to stumble along the path that led our two longest standing allies into political crisis. The craven cowardice of the current government to speak out, like virtually every other developed nation, against Trump's ever expanding idiocy, combined with their increasingly ridiculous attempts to create a future for coal, make them little more than an international laughing stock. It is only to be hoped some sort of leadership emerges from one party or the other before, inevitably, we fall once more on our substantial arses.
Isn't Bob Carr putting forward a solution ?
Guffaw !!!
Are you still with us blindboy?
A mad democrat supporter was shot & killed in Washington DC today after going sandy hook at baseball practice. Thought I'd better do a headcount!
"Isn't Poh-Lin Han-Sun putting forward a [final] solution ?
Parp!"
There fixed it for ya, Blowie. I'm a fixer.
Who's worse Turkey ?
Pauline or Xi Jinping ?
Typical Blowie frame. The fallacy of false choice.
Worse, what?
Politician? Rorter? Australian? Choice as an Australian politician?
I get it! Who's got the worse supporters??
And Gazzy you know Sandy Hook was a 'false-flag' operation conducted by Obama's administration to change gun laws and curtail gun ownership so 'they' can take away the freedoms without a fight, dagnabbit!
As this smart fella said, it was, “synthetic, completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn’t believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are that they clearly used actors.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/06/13/here-exactly-what-alex-jone...
I'd say that as an Australian politician Pauline Hanson is probably worse than Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping somehow manages to be both ALP & LNP and has representation in both houses of parliament despite never campaigning in his life. Not a bad effort.
http://www.afr.com/news/chinese-political-influence-sparks-espionage-for...
Oliver stone talking to that odd odd ball tucker carlson on fox news about his new documentary
" I am a part of the fractured left"
"Putin wants a rules based system"
"All is not as it seems"
(a part of) the left has literally lost the plot
Sippy, is that the transcript or the news ticker or your very own cherry-picked highlights?
Fuck, dude, you watch Fox news? Or just a big Oliver Stone fan?
Hang on, are you a Seppo?
Wowee! The penny has dropped! Sorry, dime or whatever. That's why all the Yank shit all of the time. Roger, roger (not Ailes BTW).
Over n out.
That's the quotes I could remember, from the snippets of the interview, that a fox news dude heard about, and wrote on a napkin, which a reporters friend saw....
We'll see when the docco comes out turkeyman
He also dropped the "deep state"
Stone's a good guy isn't he? Challenges the war machine and stuff, no?
Meanwhile the russia thing turns from a charge of collusion to obstruction as the assumed evidence vapourises
Is it possible to obstruct something about something that didn't happen?
These dudes have either full looney bin lost it, or indulging in some really dark dealings
https://m.
Yes, the whole thing.
This chick fucken nails it
on everything!
Probably because she's a bernie bros...or sis...or not cis...or something...
"There seems to be a huge conceptual gap between Trump and his most implacable critics on the left. Many highly educated, upper-middle-class Democrats regard themselves as exemplars of "compassion" (which they have elevated into a supreme political principle) and yet they routinely assail Trump voters as ignorant, callous hate-mongers. These elite Democrats occupy an amorphous meta-realm of subjective emotion, theoretical abstractions, and refined language. But Trump is by trade a builder who deals in the tangible, obdurate, objective world of physical materials, geometry, and construction projects, where communication often reverts to the brusque, coarse, high-impact level of pre-modern working-class life, whose daily locus was the barnyard. It's no accident that bourgeois Victorians of the industrial era tried to purge "barnyard language" out of English.
Last week, that conceptual gap was on prominent display, as the media, consumed with their preposterous Russian fantasies, were fixated on former FBI director James Comey's maudlin testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. (Comey is an effete charlatan who should have been fired within 48 hours of either Hillary or Trump taking office.) Meanwhile, Trump was going about his business. The following morning, he made remarks at the Department of Transportation about "regulatory relief," excerpts of which I happened to hear on my car radio that afternoon. His words about iron, aluminum, and steel seemed to cut like a knife through the airwaves. I later found the entire text on the White House website. Some key passages:...."
"...Of course this rousing speech (with its can-do World War Two spirit) got scant coverage in the mainstream media. Drunk with words, spin, and snark, middle-class journalists can't be bothered to notice the complex physical constructions that make modern civilization possible. The laborers who build and maintain these marvels are recognized only if they can be shoehorned into victim status. But if they dare to think for themselves and vote differently from their liberal overlords, they are branded as rubes and pariahs."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/camille-paglia-on-trump-democrats-transgen...
Every point she's all over it
And, its nice to finally see some reasonable thoughts on transgenderism after the ridiculousness coming from the guardian and the clinton and co. campaign
Gordon Bennett, you don't know who Camille Paglia is? Do some fucken homework.
Or just stick to this dude, dude. ALL 4 PARTS.
Actually, everyone should watch it. Fucken funny.
Except he's got Trump's ear????????????????????????????????????????
Then again, over here, who's chatting to Ray Hadley and Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt and...
Ha ha ha
ha ha
ha
Try to keep up with the times sypkan, the Russian links are probably the least of Trump's problems. Obstruction of justice, shady financial dealings from his past, illegally using his position to increase profits from his family company. The White House stinks of death.
The White House has stunk of death since FDR.
It's more down to your tolerance to the stench of bleach and air freshener.
"But Trump is by trade a builder who deals in the tangible, obdurate, objective world of physical materials..."
Sypkan that quote and the others that follow are some demented, revisionist shit and a thousand metric miles - they're the longest kind you understand - from being "all over it". She makes it sound like Trumpy is rocking up on site in his Triton ute, cursing the Slovakian concretors 'cos the slab ain't laid and he's got the brickies coming in tomorra.
Where's me fucken tool belt?
Maaaaate...it's called the art of the deal. Trump himself said so. What they do with the lucre afterwards has nought to do with how they acquired it.
Going back to the quote from Paglia, it is hard to understand how anyone with her experience in politics could be so absolutely deluded. I suppose she has always taken pride in being a contrarian, but to take Trump's reading of a speech, obviously prepared for him, as something of substance is just too naive. Given a decent speech writer talking the talk is easy, putting the words into action is something else. Something that, so far, Trump has conspicuously failed to achieve. Even worse is her assertion about middle class Democrats assailing Trump voters. I have read a huge amount about Trump over the last few months, most of it written, I would guess, by middle class Democrats. I cannot recall a single vitriolic comment aimed at those who voted for him. Most commentary has demonstrated a clear understanding of the issues that caused people to support him. The well deserved vitriol has been reserved for the man himself and his appalling conduct.
I think youse are missing the point.
She's not saying that trump turns up to site in his triton. She's saying that trump has literally spent decades dealing with the workers (unscrupulously no doubt) while the 'experts' have spent the same decades working in the abstract, pontificating their visions of what is important for the people, and how the people should live their lives. Whilst trump has kept his ear to the ground, his opponents have seered to the lofty hieghts of postmodernist idealism. Both have their place.
But these positions and places are worlds apart, and are drifing further apart, and now are so distant they cannot understand each other.
Yes the speech was written by someone else (as I'm sure has been the case for previous presidents) but it was a good speech, a pertinent speech, and a very timely one. It may be full of hollow rhetoric (much like obama shutting down G bay etc. I guess) but it captures the zietgheist of the time. But the establishment just continues with the "he said she said" bullshit, all the while not developing policy and positions to address the issues they clearly have. It really is like watching a snake eating itself.
It was the same through the debates. While each side claimed their side to have won each and every debate, many (almost) objective observers seemed to think trump captured the mood and won two out of three debates (one he was abysmal). He didn't win them in a technical sense - you know politics debate analysis 101 - but he sure seemed to capture the mood of the nation and raise the issues people were concerned about.
No vitriol? Really blindboy? (very apt). Pundits might be doing a great job post election concealing their comtenpt for the electorate, but they are certainly not containing it. Even with their best behaviour and efforts the snide remarks slip out here and there, you and others on here are prime examples. I can see and appreciate your efforts at kerbing your perceived holyness but really it"s a bigger labour and lie to fulfill than trump's good guy persona .
You don't see any vitriol at CNN, NYT or WAPO? Or the video where a balaclava clad college professors darts out of the shadows to smash a guys head open with a bike lock then runs back into the shadows like a gutless turd?
Yeh they may be trying to conceal it, but it is still there, and you don't need a college degree to guage 'the vibe'....but all the better if you do have one
It was quite entertaining watching CNN coverage of the baseball game. It was a beautiful moment of staged bi partisanship, but even just 24 hours after the shooting the CNN crew couldn't control their unhingedness, veering off on rants and having to rein themselves in. That pelosi chick was working so hard to appear normal and civil she looked ill.
Remind me sypkan where, in any of my posts I have expressed contempt towards Trump voters. The points you make are fair enough, but hardly in dispute. The real issues are not why he was elected or that the Democrats are not much better, but that his conduct during the campaign, and since he was elected, has been appalling and, if the rapidly amassing evidence is to be believed, illegal in numerous ways.
Its a general theme blindboy. I'm not going looking for examples, you've concealed your contempt post election but its still there, simmering away. It shows itself in the tone you took with indod on the treaty thread, or the belittlings you gave on multiple other threads like climate change. Its cool that you're passionate but alternative opinions are allowed, in fact they're kinda required for shit to work.
He's behaviour is appalling to you blindboy. For many people he's just overcoming the ridiculous bubble you've built to address some pretty pressing issues.
As to the rest...amassing evidence...
You crack me up!
I cop as much as I give sypkan and the big idea with differing points of view is that you put them out there and support your position. Of course, if you make ridiculous unsubstantiated claims, like Trump, then you will be ridiculed, and if you break the law, as he appears to have done in several ways, then you run the risk of being charged, impeached or forced to resign. So by all means do your worst but don't expect me to shut up or change my mind without some actual real factual evidence against my view. As I have said before the best thing about these forums is that they are not an echo chamber for one set of views and that robust comment is encouraged. Maybe not a good place for the weak of heart or the easily offended!
From what I've seen - I could be wrong - but the entire 'Russian collusion with Trump ' idea is completely unsubstantiated, so it's a bit rich to use that as an example. Particularly as the media sources your often quoting place the tactic as their stock in trade.
And the approach of attempting to dispose of a democratically elected President over the fact he may / may not have attempted to obstruct an investigation that remains unsubstantiated is tenuous to say the least .
But that's politics.
So the accusations of collusion with Russia are some sort of conspiracy between the Democrats, numerous news outlets, the US Justice Department (whose leadership was chosen by Trump) and numerous Republican Congressmen. Of course the photos of various Trump associates with Russian Ambassadors and bankers were all photoshopped and Trump's comments about Putin were just an attempt to improve US relationships with Russia. Believe what you like Blowin but the reality is that there is substantial evidence of contact between Trump campaign workers before the election and Trump associates after the election.
When you think back to the time that Trump and Hillary were campaigning, the media well and truly seemed skewed towards supporting Hillary. I get my news from quite a few different sources and if I can recall, painted Hillary as good, Trump as bad, right down to the photos they would use- Hillary, smiling, benevolent, Trump, snarling, evil.
I am in no way supporting Trump, I think he is arrogant, foolish and dangerous (Hillary no better mind you) but to say that the Russions colluded with the Americans to influence the outcome of the election? They did a magnificent job if they did, because right up to the end everybody said Hillary had it in the bag (except those that bothered to vote of course).
I just think it comes down to, for the most part, that the Democrats lost the unloseable, the Republicans won the unwinnable and the ignorant and apathetic were left wondering what the hell happened.
.........you're right Zen, the Russians would never dare interfere in another country. Further evidence of the Trans-Atlantic weakness.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-...
I think the democrats might not want to dig too deep though, they might come up with the hijinks of John Podesta or how the Clinton foundation became fabulously wealthy from accepting donations from Uranium1 and their links to Russian energy.
No time to read the link now but thankyou BB, will do so tonight.
Can't say the Americans of any stripes never slapped on the latex gloves to silence any of their detractors?
Unless there is evidence produced , which after 10 (?) months there is NONE , then yes I'd say it was a conspiracy.
Unless you don't believe that the Democrats , Trump hating media and backstabbing politicians would have any reason to try and sink him ?
Maybe you should send your evidence to Mueller , because as of right now his armies of detractors have accumulated a grand total of Fuck All .
Do you think the election was actually rigged , BB ?
Can't blame the Russians for trying , but really in this day and age you'd have to realise that 95 percent of trans national power plays are to benefit the status quo of each country .
If you think that Putin or Trump or virtually any politician would ever do anything for their nations that wasn't an inadvertent consequence of enriching or empowering themselves then you're sleepwalking.
Just look at the Australian political parties associations with China.
Point being any potential - though highly unlikely - associations between Trump and Russia are no more treasonous than the Clintons dealings with China etc . In fact they'd probably be less treasonous than the publicly acknowledged arms deal with Saudi Arabia that has numerous conflicts of interest with the welfare of US citizens.
But this ain't about national welfare , it's about usurpation of power.
The Russian story is so over the top it is embarrassing for the USA as a country and its media. Reds under the bed hysteria. Agendas? Keep poor old Trump punch drunk with endless crisis, create the russian enemy the MIC have been missing, distract from what the leaks showed about the democrats, etc.
The cost ? Further slides in their standing as a country and credibility as leaders.
Blowin that really is the most ridiculous post you have ever made. It sounds like the loonier side of these forums is your only source of information. No evidence? That's hilarious. Go read something!
Would you do me the favour of posting a link to the secret cache of evidence that has so far revealed nothing that Trump's 2,000,000,000 detractors have been able to successfully use against him in any way other than to muddy his ability to govern ?
It would be appreciated.
You may as well forward it to the FBI as well , cause if they're attempting to pin him with obstruction of justice it tells me that they have nothing else.
Awaiting your reply.
Imagine if it was all just cooked up by clinton (which I think is looking increasingly probable)
Good ol' putun must be having a great old laugh to himself.
And yes, embarrassing is the word
Blowin, try a range news outlets. Consider the potential for bias across the spectrum, then tell me there is no evidence. Meanwhile sypkan sinks ever deeper into his own delusional universe of alternative facts, stop now mate, it's not too late. Seek professional help, psychotherapy, brain surgery, transcendental meditation, or childhood regression therapy (hmm maybe not appropriate). Try anti-psychotics, opioids, barbiturates, just promise me no uppers of any kind. Join the Hare Krishnas, give Scientology a whirl. What about mindfulness, reiki, hot yoga, cold yoga, a cold shower, a friend in the hot tub? Time to change up!
I'll take 'a friend in the hot tub' with a bit of 'opiod hare krishna' on the side.
I'll also take an apology from you when the truth comes out.
Or vice versa....
An apology in whatever direction is fine with me sypkan.
This is worth a read.....
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/16/donald-trump-rupert-murd...
How confident ya feelin blindboy?
I'll put $100 on it
And I'm not even a gamblin man
Very confident sypkan, but are we talking real world dollars or those ones you make yourself on the photocopier?
Real ones
Make it the charity of your choice if gambling's a bit low brow for you
As long as it's not the clinton foundation
Or the guardian!!!
Surfaid.....and you are on, but you need to define the bet more clearly.
Ok
It has to involve russia. And it has to be something he did dodgy enough to get your little impeachment witch burning ceremony going, or a conviction of a crime - which would lead to impeachment anyway, I guess?
Sypkan, you might want to avoid the entire area of impeachment.
Pretty sure it doesn't require a guilty verdict in any forum , save the attainment of a critical mass of political opponents.
Maybe you should bet on the outcome of an actual guilty verdict against Trump for acts of treason ?
That's the stage that has been implied.
Anything less than treason ie an act against the best interests of the nation , is an attempted coup d'état , No less.
Blindboy assumes that a coup d'état is a natural and appropriate justice in this instance and believes that the ends will justify the means.
Not to say he won't be convicted on any such charge. Just that the charge will be probably inappropriate and / or convoluted to fit a crime of no genuine gravity.
Maybe that's how it will play out . It won't be fair , but that's politics . In a fair world would Donald Trump be president ?
Mail fraud?
John Grisham couln't have written it better.
Yeh I thought about that too blowin, and you're right, a critical mass can get rid of him with no real cause - and it will probably happen eventually.
So our bet is about russia
And trump actually doing something dodgy with russia
Not for being a fuckwit.
So if he goes down with russia dealings as the cause I'm happy to pay
Just as I will be happy to take blindboys money if there is nothing enforceable about his russia dealings
My prediction is it will be just like clinton, ie. so much smoke it fucken stinks!! but nothing to put it over the line. Though trump won't have done anything nearly as dodgy as clinton
I'm kinda hoping they do get him. So we can see some real anarchy in the streets when they try and de-throne him. With those pussy lefty anarchists - you ain't seen nothing yet!!
Then all those nice middle class snowflakes can have a good hard think about what they've unleashed...as their houses are burnt and looted, while some much needed redistribution of wealth takes place
Sorry, make that Aldous Huxley.
Now if the media in the US focused on what Trump has actually done right in front of their cameras that matters (and promised but not done) it might serve a useful purpose and get some traction and save their diminishing credibility.
Example: His first overseas visit was to Saudi Arabia to brown nose to them and help sell billions in sophisticated weaponry - to a country that he criticised often during his campaign for valid reasons that are easy to find if you read a bit. The mainstream media thinks that is all okay, not hypocritical, not potentially dangerous whereas some possible, maybe , vague skinny links to Russia are the end of the world as we know it.
But ooops, sorry, I forget, SA has lots of oil, buys huge subscriptions to some influential US
magazines and donates big dollars to favoured US presidential candidates and so can do no wrong.
Its an important point frog
They could have slaughtered him considering his rhetoric pre election
Quite interesting that these supposed moral high grounders have no morals or conviction at all when it comes to dollars.
Boygirls using girl bathrooms is claerly much more important
.