Saturday, November 26, 2016

Media Silent as House Passes Resolution for Syrian No-Fly Zone — Provoking War with Russia

ORIGINAL LINK

Hillary Clinton’s loss was a shock to the purveyors of U.S. military hegemony, who saw in her an easier path to keep the Syria conflict going. Secretary of State Clinton was instrumental in the early days of Syria intervention, in 2010 making a series of demands for Syria to get in line behind the U.S. vision for the Middle East. When Bashar al-Assad refused to roll over, regime change became the talking point of Washington think tanks and mainstream media echo chambers. Clinton promised during her campaign to ramp up action in Syria, to the delight of the same neocons who brought the Iraq invasion. She acknowledged that many civilians would die if the U.S. set up a no-fly zone.



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The Washington Post: Useful-Idiot Shills for a Failed, Frantic Status Quo That Has Lost Control of the Narrative

ORIGINAL LINK
Don't you think it fair and reasonable that anyone accusing me of being a shill for Russian propaganda ought to read my ten books in their entirety and identify the sections that support their slanderous accusation?
I was amused to find my site listed on the now-infamous list of purportedly Russian-controlled propaganda sites cited by The Washington Post. I find it amusing because I invite anyone to search my 3,600-page archive of published material over the past decade (which includes some guest posts and poems) and identify a single pro-Russia or pro-Russian foreign policy entry.
If anything, my perspective is pro-US dollar, pro-liberty, pro-open markets, pro-local control, pro-free-press, pro-innovation, and pro-opportunities to rebuild America's abandoned, decaying localized economies: in other words, the exact opposite of Russian propaganda.
My "crime" is a simple one: challenging the ruling elite's narrative. Labeling all dissent "enemy propaganda" is of course the classic first phase of state-sponsored propaganda and the favorite tool of well-paid illiberal apologists for an illiberal regime.
Labeling everyone who dissents or questions the ruling elite's narrative as tools of an enemy power is classic McCarthy-era witch-hunting, i.e. a broad-brush way of marginalizing and silencing critics with an accusation that is easy to fabricate but difficult to prove.
Such unsupported slander is a classic propaganda technique. It has more in common with Nazi propaganda than with real journalism.
The real useful-idiot shills are the editors and hacks paid by the Washington Post, who are busy penning articles such as "Why the electoral college should choose Hillary Clinton". Isn't this fundamentally a call to over-ride the Constitutional framework of the republic's democracy?
In other words, the ruling elite's candidate lost, so let's subvert democracy to "right this terrible wrong" that was wrought by fed-up debt-serfs.
Substitution is a useful technique to reveal propaganda: if Trump had lost by a thin margin, would the The Washington Post publish an article "Why the electoral college should choose Donald Trump"?
Any site suggesting such an outlandish subversion of American democracy would of course by labeled Russian-controlled propaganda by The Washington Post. In other words, it's OK for the organs of Imperial Propaganda to call for the subversion of the Constitution, but if someone else dares to do so, you know the drill: they're labeled a tool of Russian propaganda.
Just as a reminder, this is the status quo / ruling elite's handiwork The Washington Post shills/propagandists support: a status quo of institutionalized privilege, corruption and systemically soaring wealth and income inequality:
The institutionalized impoverishment of non-elite students:
student-loans5-16a.png
The institutionalized impoverishment of the bottom 99.9%:
wealth-distribution10-15.jpg
The institutionalized impoverishment of everyone below the protected technocrat-insider class of shills, apparatchiks and professionals:
wage-inequality3-16a.jpg
This is what The Washington Post is pushing: a parasitic, predatory, exploitive, ruinously corrupt and venal ruling class and its army of apologists/lackeys/factotums.
The fundamental source of the Post's hysterical accusations is the ruling elite has lost control of the narrative. This is the source of the mainstream media's angst-tinged hysteria and frantic efforts to marginalize and discredit any dissenting narratives that undermine or question the power of a corrupted, self-serving ruling elite that has failed the nation and its citizens.
This is why Donald Trump was routinely labeled a Russian shill by the mainstream media during the campaign. Regardless of what you think of Trump or Clinton, what can we say about a supposedly responsible media that so cavalierly spews fact-free accusations of foreign control? This is the height of irresponsible propaganda being passed off as "journalism."
Free speech implicitly carries the responsibility of the reader/listener/viewer to make a critical assessment of the content, its source and its aim: who benefits if we accept the narrative being pushed?
The delicious irony of The Washington Post's hysterical campaign to smear dissenters as tools of Russian propaganda is that it only serves to discredit the Post itself. For my part, I invite you to read all ten of my books and make your own critical assessment of the content and answer these questions:
1. Did you find even a single passage in the thousands of pages that favored Russian policies?
2. Did you find any passages that favored domestic resilience and self-reliance, localized economic development, and the promotion of innovations that favored the many rather than the few?
3. Don't you think it fair and reasonable that anyone accusing me of being a shill for Russian propaganda ought to read my ten books in their entirety and identify the sections that support their slanderous accusation?
If they can't support it, then isn't their accusation the very propaganda they claim to be identifying?
Just as a reminder: here's my chart of the Ministry of Propaganda (from 2007):
propaganda-ministry.png
My new book is #8 on Kindle short reads -> politics and social science: Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle ebook, $8.95 print edition) For more, please visit the book's website.

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.
Thank you, Dave B. ($10/month), for your fabulously generous pledge to this site-- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.
Go to my main site at www.oftwominds.com/blog.html for the full posts and archives.


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If You Question the Establishment You Are Guilty of Espionage, Says Corporate Media — Because Russia

ORIGINAL LINK
russianWaPost's reporting on an arbitrary list of alternative media outlets as a coordinated Russian propaganda campaign is a dangerous travesty.

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Friday, November 25, 2016

In Brazil, Major New Corruption Scandals Engulf the Faction that Impeached Dilma

ORIGINAL LINK

A primary argument made by opponents of impeaching Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff was that removing her would immediately empower the truly corrupt politicians in Brasília – the ones who were the driving force behind her impeachment – and they would then use that power to kill ongoing corruption investigations and shield themselves from consequences for their own law-breaking. In that regard, Dilma’s impeachment was not designed to punish corruption but to protect it. The last two weeks have produced new corruption scandals that have vindicated that view beyond what even its proponents imagined was possible.

In his short time in office, Temer has already lost three ministers to scandal, but these new controversies are the most serious yet. One major scandal involves an effort in Congress – led by the very parties that impeached Dilma, with the support of some in Dilma’s party – to pass a law that vests themselves full legal amnesty for their crimes involving election financing. In late September, a bill appeared in Congress, seemingly out of nowhere, that would have retroactively protected any member of Congress from being punished for the use of so-called “caixa dois” (second box) monies in campaigns, whereby politicians receive under-the-table contributions from oligarchs and corporations that they do not declare.

Many of Brazil’s most powerful politicians – including its Foreign Minister, a majority of members of the lower House, and installed President Michel Temer himself (pictured above) – are implicated in this scheme and are thus threatened with the possibility of prosecution. “Caixa dois” has been a key tactic used to bribe politicians. The issue has taken on particular urgency because the imprisoned billionaire CEO of the nation’s construction giant Odebrecht, Marcelo Odebrecht, is about to finalize his plea agreement, and it will identify numerous key figures as having received millions of dollars in such undeclared donations.

It has already been reported that Temer’s Foreign Minister, José Serra, received R$ 23 million ($7 million) in such illegal funds from Odebrecht, much of which was deposited into a Swiss Bank account to avoid detection (those funds were for his losing 2010 presidential campaign against Dilma, showing how those who lost democratically and are mired in serious corruption are the ones who have now seized power due to Dilma’s impeachment).

When this amnesty bill first appeared in September, it was done in such a way to prevent anyone from noticing, or finding out who was responsible. At the time, The Intercept Brasil described it as a move that “shocked even the most longtime, jaded observers of corrupt Brasília plotting.” That effort failed when two left-wing parties, PSOL and Rede, blew the whistle and impeded parliamentary efforts that would have enabled quick enactment (as disclosure: my husband, David Miranda, was elected to Rio’s City Council last month on a PSOL ticket). But as we ended our September article by noting: “Convinced of their own entitlement and ability to act without consequence, there is no doubt they will try again to lavish themselves with amnesty while nobody is looking.”

That time is now, except that they are doing it out in the open. Because virtually every party has major figures implicated by this illegal campaign scheme, most parties are openly united in support of this amnesty, on the theory that if they all act together, it won’t be pinned on any one of them and nobody can be politically punished (while most large parties are overwhelmingly behind it, PT’s delegation is split almost evenly on it, and the same two left-wing parties that impeded it the first time are fully opposed).

But the dominant group in the Congress is the one that led the impeachment battle and is now loyal to Temer, and they – composed of a huge number of members endangered by this “caixa dois” lawbreaking – can ensure that this amnesty will pass. Temer himself has signaled that he will not veto it, and his party, PMDB, is largely supportive of it. The vote was scheduled for last week but, as public pressure mounted, the vote was delayed to this coming Tuesday.

The judge leading the corruption investigation, Sérgio Moro, warned this week that this amnesty bill could seriously impede his investigation – which is, of course, its central purpose. He warned more generally that retroactive amnesty measures that benefit the politicians who enact them are exactly the sort of thing that has destroyed faith in Brazil’s political institutions.

So here we have the very same people who impeached the democratically elected president in the name of punishing corruption and upholding the rule of law, using their ill-gotten power to shield themselves from accountability for their own political crimes. From the start, this was the fraud at the heart of Dilma’s impeachment, and it is hard to put into words how clear and obvious it has now become. Even the star columnist for O Globo – the newspaper that most agitated for impeachment – is now admitting that the central anti-impeachment argument is being proven correct, tweeting yesterday: “Approval of caixa dois amnesty reinforces PT’s argument that Dilma was removed so that the Lava Jato corruption investigation could be stymied.”

A aprovação da anistia do caixa 2 reforça o discurso do PT de q Dilma foi derrubada p/q a Lava-Jato pudesse ser estancada.

— Blog do Noblat (@BlogdoNoblat) November 24, 2016

That this was the true goal of impeachment all along was beyond obvious. In May, one of Temer’s closest allies, Romero Jucá, was forced to resign as Temer’s minister after tapes were disclosed in which Jucá admitted as clearly as possible that Dilma’s impeachment was necessary in order to kill the corruption investigation, and that only once Dilma was gone would the media, the courts, the military and the public enter into a “national pact” to leave Brasília’s corrupt politicians alone.

But while Jucá was forced by the fallout to resign as minister in May, he was just named this month as leader of the Temer government in the Senate – because, obviously, Jucá’s corrupt scheme is shared by Temer and those who now rule Brazil. So Brazil’s big media outlets are only now being forced to admit what was completely clear all along: that by demanding impeachment, they were empowering Brazil’s most corrupt politicians and ensuring that the corruption investigation would be impeded.

 

But now an entirely new scandal directly threatens Temer himself. Last week, Temer’s Minister of Culture, Marcelo Calero, flamboyantly resigned, announcing he was doing so because one of Temer’s closest allies, the Minster of Government Geddel Vieira Lima, had been aggressively pressuring Calero to take action to benefit a construction project in which Geddel had a personal interest. Specifically, Geddel pressured Calero to secure approval for construction of a luxury high-rise in a historic beachfront preservation area, a building in which Geddel had purchased an apartment.

At first, Temer defended Geddel, adamantly insisting that he would not be fired. Temer’s appointee on a Congressional Ethics Committee blocked a vote to investigate whether Geddel violated ethical rules. Temer sought to downplay the controversy in every way possible in order to protect his close ally.

But that has now become impossible. Yesterday, Calero, the minister-turned-whistleblower, gave a sworn statement to the Federal Police in which he said that not only was he pressured by Geddel to secure approval for this construction project, but that Temer himself spoke with him on two occasions and similarly pressured him. As a result, the front page of every major newspaper this morning has screaming headlines that Temer himself is now implicated in this scandal, and opposition parties have already instituted impeachment proceedings against Temer himself for this.

(Geddel resigned just this morning as this article was being published: the fourth minister Temer has lost to scandal.)

All of this comes as the leading figures in Temer’s party, the centrist PMDB, are not just engulfed by political scandal but are going to prison. The House Speaker who presided over and was the driving force behind Dilma’s impeachment, Eduardo Cunha, is now in prison as he awaits trial on charges of money laundering and bribery after being discovered with millions hidden away in Swiss bank accounts, while the former Governor of Rio de Janeiro state, Sérgio Cabral, last week was arrested on charges of overseeing a massive corruption scheme. This has always been one of the towering ironies of Dilma’s impeachment: that the party most empowered by it, Temer’s PMDB (formerly in alliance with PT), not only single-handedly destroyed Rio de Janeiro through ineptitude and corruption, but is filled with the continent’s most blatantly criminal political leaders.

In some ways, to Brazil’s oligarchical class, served (as always) by its media, it does not much matter what happens to Temer. Like Cunha before him, Temer has served his purpose: he just oversaw passage of a radical austerity measure that – in the face of Brazil’s negative growth – literally amended the Constitution to bar spending increases beyond the rate of inflation for 20 years. Since entering office, he has overseen an orgy of privatization, austerity and spending freezes that Brazil’s oligarchical class has long craved. And, most of all, he was the tool used to remove Dilma.

Recall that Temer himself, when speaking in New York in September to foreign investors and foreign policy elites, admitted that Dilma’s impeachment was due in large part to her refusal to accept his party’s austerity program, a stunning admission which Brazil’s big media completely ignored. Whether he is impeached in favor of new elections or is permitted to stumble through the remainder of his term as a widely despised figure matters little to them. They got what they wanted.

Nonetheless, the true purpose of impeachment now stands so nakedly revealed that even the prime media authors of impeachment are being forced to acknowledge what, until very recently, they viciously mocked: that the real purpose was to protect and empower the corrupt. But as vindicated as they now are, impeachment opponents can feel no sense of celebration, as these latest events simply yet again mean that the Brazilian people will continue to suffer greatly from a political and elite class that has failed them through the most glaring deceit and oozing corruption imaginable. The greatest fraud of all was that Dilma’s impeachment was sold to the population as a means of ridding the country of mismanagement and corruption when, from the start, it was designed to do exactly the opposite.

The post In Brazil, Major New Corruption Scandals Engulf the Faction that Impeached Dilma appeared first on The Intercept.



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Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Startling Look At How Much Money Food Stamp Recipients Spend On Junk Food

ORIGINAL LINK

A new study just released by the USDA, offers a very detailed look at exactly how participants in the "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program" (SNAP, aka Food Stamps) spend their taxpayer-funded subsidies.  Unfortunately for taxpayers, the amount of money spent on soft drinks and other unnecessary junk foods/drinks is fairly staggering.  But, we suppose it's a nice taxpayer funded subsidy for the soda industry...so score one for Warren Buffett and the Coca Cola lobbyists.

Per the study, nearly $360mm, or 5.4% of the $6.6BN of food expenditures made by SNAP recipients, is spent on soft drinks alone.  In fact, soft drinks represent the single largest "commodity" purchased by SNAP participants with $100mm more spent on sodas than milk and $150mm more than beef.

Soft drinks were the top commodity bought by food stamp recipients shopping at outlets run by a single U.S. grocery retailer.

 

That is according to a new study released by the Food and Nutrition Service, the federal agency responsible for running the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as the food stamp program.

 

By contrast, milk was the top commodity bought from the same retailer by customers not on food stamps.

 

In calendar year 2011, according to the study, food stamp recipients spent approximately $357,700,000 buying soft drinks from an enterprise the study reveals only as “a leading U.S. grocery retailer.”

 

That was more than they spent on any other “food” commodity—including milk ($253,700,000), ground beef ($201,000,000), “bag snacks” ($199,300,000) or “candy-packaged” ($96,200,000), which also ranked among the top purchases.

SNAP

 

Even worse, when we added up all of the commodities that would typically be considered "junk food" (i.e. soft drinks, candy, cakes, energy drinks, etc.), we found that roughly $950mm, or just over 14% of the aggregate $6.6BN of food expenditures made by SNAP recipients, is spent on unnecessary, unhealthy products.

SNAP

 

As CNS News points out, the study was conducted by IMPAQ international and analyzed the sales of a single national retail chain back in 2011. 

The dollar amount that food stamp recipients spent on soft drinks and other commodities comes from data a retailer provided to a data analysis company the federal government hired to find out what kind of foods people on foods stamps—and Americans not on foods stamps—were buying.

 

“The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) awarded a contract to IMPAQ International, LLC, to determine what foods are typically purchased by households receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP) benefits,” the study explained. “This study examined point-of-sale (POS) food purchase data to determine for what foods SNAP households have the largest expenditures, including both SNAP benefits and other resources, and how their expenditures compare to those made by non-SNAP households.”

 

“POS transaction data from January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2011 from a leading grocery retailer were examined for this study,” the report said.

It's a good thing democrats re-branded Food Stamps as the "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program"....otherwise we would have confused it for a blatant waste of taxpayer money on sodas and energy drinks.



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Kellogg paid 'independent' breakfast experts to promote cereal, according to a copy of a contract and leaked emails obtained by The Associated Press

ORIGINAL LINK

On its website, Kellogg touted a distinguished-sounding “Breakfast Council” of “independent experts” who helped guide its nutritional efforts. Nowhere did it say this: The maker of Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes paid the experts and fed them talking points, according to a copy of a contract and emails obtained by The Associated Press.



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"Ed-Exit" - Ron Paul Urges Americans To Secede From The Centrally-Planned School System

ORIGINAL LINK

Submitted by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan recently signed an executive order forbidding Maryland public schools from beginning classes before Labor Day. Governor Hogan’s executive order benefits businesses in Maryland’s coastal areas that lose school-aged summer employees and business from Maryland families when schools start in August. However, as Governor Hogan’s critics have pointed out, some Maryland school districts, as well as Maryland schoolchildren, benefit from an earlier start to the school year.

Governor Hogan’s executive order is the latest example of how centralized government control of education leaves many students behind. A centrally planned education system can no more meet the unique needs of every child than a centrally planned economic system can meet the unique needs of every worker and consumer.

Centralizing education at the state or, worse, federal level inevitably leads to political conflicts over issues ranging from whether students should be allowed to pray on school grounds, to what should be the curriculum, to what food should be served in the cafeteria, to who should be allowed to use which bathroom.

The centralization and politicization of education is rooted in the idea that education is a right that must be provided by the government, instead of a good that individuals should obtain in the market. Separating school from state would empower parents to find an education system that meets the needs of their children instead of using the political process to force their idea of a good education on all children.

While many politicians praise local and parental control of education, the fact is both major parties embrace federal control of education. The two sides only differ on the details. Liberals who oppose the testing mandates of No Child Left Behind enthusiastically backed President Clinton’s national testing proposals. They also back the Obama administration’s expansion of federal interference in the classroom via Common Core.

Similarly, conservatives who (correctly) not just opposed Clinton’s initiatives but called for the abolition of the Department of Education enthusiastically supported No Child Left Behind. Even most conservatives who oppose Common Core, federal bathroom and cafeteria mandates, and other federal education policies, support reforming, instead of eliminating, the Department of Education.

Politicians will not voluntarily relinquish control over education to parents. Therefore, parents and other concerned citizens should take a page from the UK and work to “Ed-Exit” government-controlled education. Parents and other concerned citizens should pressure Congress to finally shut down the Department of Education and return the money to American families. They also must pressure state governments and local school boards to reject federal mandates, even if it means forgoing federal funding.

Parents should also explore education alternatives, such as private, charter, and religious schools, as well as homeschooling. Homeschooling is the ultimate form of Ed-Exit. Homeschooling parents have the freedom to shape every aspect of education — from the curriculum to the length of the school day to what their children have for lunch to who can and cannot use the bathroom — to fit their child's unique needs.

20161123_education.jpg

Parents interested in providing their children with a quality education emphasizing the ideas of liberty should try out my homeschooling curriculum. The curriculum provides students with a well-rounded education that includes courses in personal finance and public speaking. The government and history sections of the curriculum emphasize Austrian economics, libertarian political theory, and the history of liberty. However, unlike government schools, my curriculum never puts ideological indoctrination ahead of education.

Parents interested in Ed-Exiting from government-run schools can learn more about my curriculum at ronpaulcurriculum.com.



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When It Comes to Fake News, the U.S. Government Is the Biggest Culprit

ORIGINAL LINK
“We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.”—Former New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg Let’s talk about fake news stories, shall we? There’s the garden variety…

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Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Post-Truth and Fake News

ORIGINAL LINK

Yes, by all means, do something about the fake news that is propagating through Facebook and Twitter. But let's not forget that we have been in the post-truth era for some time (indeed, one wonders whether we ever entered the truth era in the first place).

After all, the rise of the post-truth era is made possible by the failures of the education system to prepare people to identify truth for themselves, and the failure of traditional media to present the news in an honest and forthright manner.

It's true, Facebook could easily cut down on the torrent of fake news stories circulating through social media simply by blocking access to a few sites. We could begin with the obvious: the

Beaverton

, the

Onion

, the

Manatee

. That would prevent sites like

Infowars

from portraying their parody as

fact

. And we could also cut off blatant miscreants like

the Rightists

.

Some of the more prominent election memes were instigated by

abcnews.com.co

for example: "I was paid $3000 to protest a Trump Rally"). No, it's not the ABC network. That's

abcnews.go.com

- the 'go.com' is in there because the news was lumped in with Disney's other properties for cross-promotion purposes.

But these 'fake news' sites are actually pretty funny. And it would be a shame to censor them. And if people can't tell the fake news from the real news, it's mostly because the real news does such an excellent job of parodying itself.

We would

like

to believe the real news can be trusted. But time and again it proves the opposite. Let's look at exactly the sort of thing we are faced with when truing to fine the 'truth' in traditional media:

  • Polls and Surveys. Yes we all love 538 (and in Canada, 308). But that doesn't make up for the plastering of almost-daily poll results in every media outlet in the country (along with the usual made-up 'expanations' of why the polls went up or down). Polls are not news; punditry about pools is barely disguised fiction.
  • Anniversaries. How much of traditional media 'news' content is filled with the observation that it was '50 years since...' or '100 years ago on this day...' and so on. We have holidays for that! But of course, the traditional media also reports that it's a holiday, same time, every year, as though it's news.
  • Endorsing the corporate candidate. In an article quoting Barack Obama as criticizing fake news the Providence Journal does not even not the irony of its lede: "Hillary Clinton was the choice of nearly every American newspaper editorial board. It didn't matter." In Canada, we had a similar case where every newspaper endorsed former prime minister Stephen  Harper. These newspapers are looking out for their corporate owners - and their readers see it plainly.
  • Uncritical reporting. It's not just Donald Trump who was allowed to say pretty much anything without correction. The news media is full of people making preposterous claims. Where is the filter that allows us to screen out claims that Mexico will pay for the wall, or that corporate tax cuts will create jobs? 
  • Reliable sources. They aren't. When factcheck.org analyzed the election, it found that the sources of most of the lies weren't the campaigns themselves, but the supposedly trustworthy institutions like the parties' national committees. We have to learn that institutions lie, they lie frequently, and they lie very well, and the traditional media actually helps them do this.
  • Media hype. Why do we even have a hype cycle?  It's driven by the traditionmal media's propensity to make (or repeat) outlandish claims for often dubious technologies. Even inventions of some value fall victim (and are therefore unfairly criticized). The hype has a predictable pattern than should make it clear it's not news: "a hotbed topic; a sexy, futuristic, ‘cyberpunk’ technology; and the potential for financial returns."
  • Fear. Irrational fear. I just got email from Forbes saying "what are you going to do when you lose your job in 6 months?" Never mind that this will happen to a small percentage of us (and that Forbes readers are generally able to bounce back). The purpose here is to make us terrified and afraid. Just as are the crime stories, the immigrant stories, etc.
  • Supermoon and other misleading trivia. To read the traditional media, it was a once-in-a-lifetime event to see a 'supermoon'. Not counting the supermoons of 2011, 2013, and 2014, to name a few. Glorifying even the most trivial (non-controversial) thing seems to be what the traditional media do. Even then, they get many of the details wrong. But it's far easier than reporting the news.
  • Advertorial - not to be confused with advertisements that look like news stories, these are news stories that are advertisements. You see them on your evening television news every day - a promotion for a new restaurant, a plug for a movie, a story about the next new Christmas toy 'craze'. Or those Black Friday stories (which are really odd coming from Canadian television).
  • Obsessively chasing non-scandals. For example, spending more time talking about Hillary Clinton's emails than all policy issues combined.Even it it were a scandal (and it genuinely wasn't) it wouldn't have deserved this much coverage. What wasn't covered? Anything to do with policy.
  • Unnamed sources. As Jeff Jarvis says, "the source matters". Yet in so many cases, the source in the traditional media is not named. We don't know whether it's a campaign insider or someone posing as a campaign insider.
  • The echo chamber. We hear many complaints about social media being an echo chamber. But traditional media are the biggest echo chamber of them all. We hear from the same sources, the same spokesmen, the same suits and the same pundits. 
  • Fake experts. Who are the experts called upon by traditional media? Often, they are sources provided by lobbyists and speakers' bureaus. As this article notes, "Being published in the media sometimes provides commentators with “expert” status even if they lack expertise on the subject matter being discussed and have no relevant research on the topic." 
  • Reposting press releases - when I ran the Moncton Free Press I would see the exact same content coming from the local newspaper site and Canada NewsWire. There's nothing inherently wrong with a press release, but the newspaper was attributing it to 'STAFF' and passing it off as news, which is blatantly dishonest. The practice never slowed, not even when they were called out on it.
  • Sloppy sloppy sloppy reasoning. The traditional media commits logical fallacies on a regular basis. Surprisingly, when I pointed this out to them, they changed nothing.
  • Poor design. We get reams of old articles shared through social media pretending to be articles from today. OK, sure, it was wrong of the conservative news site to promote this article on changing the electoral college vote in Maryland. But if NBC News made the date much more prominent, it would be impossible to fool people. But that would cut down on archive views.
  • Nationalism. Being Canadian, I am exposed to a lot of nationalism in media - not only our home-grown nationalism, but also from the U.S. (of course) and even from places like Britain, China and Russia. It just underlines to me how far at odd are nationalism and truth.And just how much it is relied upon by traditional media.
  • Think tanks. These supposedly 'independent' voices are not. They are funded by various interests (historically from the far right but now from across the spectrum) to spead misleading research and (sometimes) outright lies. In Canada we have the Fraser Institute, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies and many more. These should never be given an uncritical platform. But this is what the traditional media gives them every day. 
  • Institution envy. There are a few sources that make the traditional media go gaga. Thus we get 'The Harvard Study...', the 'Oxford report...', a 'Yale analysis...' and so on. There's nothing about the source of these items that makes them more likely to be true, nor more important, yet traditional media can't get enough of them, even though they collectively exhibit a pronounced slant.

As Jessi Hempel

writes

, "In the past, the sources of accurate information were recognizable enough that phony news was relatively easy for a discerning reader to identify and discredit. The problem, (Snopes managing editor Brooke) Binkowski believes, is that the public has lost faith in the media broadly — therefore no media outlet is considered credible any longer"

We won't solve our problems with the truth by suppressing fake news. We see this in less democratic regimes, and it's never successful. We solve the problem only by having some news agencies that

get it right

- that are trustworthy, and can be

known

to be trustworthy.

And note: it's not enough to create a news media that

I

think can be trusted. The disaffected inhabit all sides of the political spectrum. The media needs to win back the Sanders supporters, the Trump supporters, and sceptical readers in Moscow and Beijing.

Yes, the failure of education and growth of inequality have been reported elsewhere. As Ben Williamson writes, " the statistics from the EU referendum indicate that the vote for leaving the EU was concentrated in geographical areas already most affected by growing economic, cultural and social inequalities, as well as by physical pain and mental

ill-health

and rising mortality rates."

And as he notes, "

Jamie Bartlett and Carl Miller

of the think tank Demos wrote a report 5 years ago that highlighted a need to teach young people critical thinking and scepticism online to ‘allow them to better identify outright lies, scams, hoaxes, selective half-truths, and mistakes.’"

But let's not blame the less-educated. The most educated people in society have

made

this the environment we're living in.

Reading

Backchannel -

According to Snopes, fake news is not the problem

Code Acts in Education -

Social media and public pedagogies of political mis-education

Digital Digs -

Pluralism and the nonmodern, nonliberal society

FactCheck.org -

How to spot fake news

Fast Company -

How We Got to Post-Truth

Fast Company -

Fake U.S. News is a Global Problem

Medium -

A Call for Cooperation Against Fake News

Quartz -

Oxford Dictionaries declare 'Post'Truth' the word of the year

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the Conversation (

Andina Dwifatm)

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Everyone’s an expert: in the digital era, fakes need to be exposed

Washington Post.

Donald Trump is crashing the system. Journalists need to build a new one


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Breitbart is really mad at Donald Trump for his “broken promise” to pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton

ORIGINAL LINK

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(Credit: Photo Illustration by Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast)

The chants of “Lock her up” were a familiar refrain at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies, as his right-wing demanded to see criminal charges against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server. But now that Trump’s defeated his opponent and is set to take the White House, in an apparent shock even to himself, he is already signaling that he fully intends to break that campaign pledge.

This is not going over well with the base.

Broken Promise: Trump ‘Doesn’t Wish to Pursue’ Clinton Email Charges,” reads the headline at Trump’s most loyalist website, Breitbart:

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Despite its former executive chairman, Steve Bannon, serving as CEO of Trump’s campaign and recently being named as a senior advisor in his White House, Breitbart finally broke away from its unwavering support to slam Trump’s sudden change of heart.

And it’s not just Breitbart that’s mad at Trump. Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog agency that sued to get more of Clinton’s State Department emails released, ,was swift to react to Team Trump’s shift. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton urged Trump on Tuesday to “commit his administration” to investigating Clinton, saying a refusal to do so “would be a betrayal of his promise to the American people to ‘drain the swamp’ of out-of-control corruption in Washington, DC.”

“President-elect Trump should focus on healing the broken justice system, affirm the rule of law and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Clinton scandals,” the statement read.

Whoa! I thought we elected @realDonaldTrump president. Did we make him the FBI, & DOJ? His job is to pick those guys, not do their jobs. https://t.co/8JCQOO0dSF

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 22, 2016

@realDonaldTrump
No to put Clinton in jail in YOUR FIRST MISTAKE!
You ran on that, & some of us voted on it. LOCK HER UP!

— wendy r lacy (@wendylacy3) November 22, 2016

@KellyannePolls ITS NOT TRUMP'S DUTY TO HELP CRIMINAL CLINTON TO HEAL!! #LOCKHERUP

— BLS Adam (@bls_sdmf_77) November 22, 2016

Earlier Tuesday, former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway went on MSNBC, where she indicated Trump was going to back off his pledge.

“Look, I think he’s thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign aren’t among them,” she said. “I think when the President-elect, who’s also the head of your party, tells you before he’s even inaugurated that he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone, and content. And I think Hillary Clinton still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don’t find her to be honest or trustworthy, but if Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing.”

Even top Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, who was perhaps most fervent in his insistence that Clinton should be held criminally liable even though the FBI declared it found no actual law breaking, backed off his hardline stance Tuesday.

“Look, there’s a tradition in American politics that after you win an election, you sort of put things behind you,” he told reporters inside Trump Tower after Conway made her comments. “And if that’s the decision he reached, that’s perfectly consistent with sort of a historical pattern of things come up, you say a lot of things, even some bad things might happen, and then you can sort of put it behind you in order to unite the nation.”

 



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U.K. Parliament Approves Unprecedented New Hacking and Surveillance Powers

ORIGINAL LINK

A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for the British government to admit that it was hacking into people’s computers and collecting private data on a massive scale. But now, these controversial tactics are about to be explicitly sanctioned in an unprecedented new surveillance law.

Last week, the U.K.’s parliament approved the Investigatory Powers Bill, dubbed the “Snoopers’ Charter” by critics. The law, which is expected to come into force before the end of the year, was introduced in November 2015 after the fallout from revelations by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden about extensive British mass surveillance. The Investigatory Powers Bill essentially retroactively legalizes the electronic spying programs exposed in the Snowden documents – and also expands some of the government’s surveillance powers.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the new law is that it will give the British government the authority to serve internet service providers with a “data retention notice,” forcing them to record and store for up to 12 months logs showing websites visited by all of their customers. Law enforcement agencies will then be able to obtain access to this data without any court order or warrant. In addition, the new powers will hand police and tax investigators the ability to, with the approval of a government minister, hack into targeted phones and computers. The law will also permit intelligence agencies to sift through “bulk personal datasets” that contain millions of records about people’s phone calls, travel habits, internet activity, and financial transactions; and it will make it legal for British spies to carry out “foreign-focused” large-scale hacks of computers or phones in order to identify potential “targets of interest.”

“Every citizen will have their internet activity – the apps they use, the communications they send and to who – logged for 12 months,” says Eric King, a privacy expert and former director of Don’t Spy On Us, a coalition of leading British human rights groups that campaigns against mass surveillance. “There is no other democracy in the world, possibly no other country in the world, doing this.”

“There is no other democracy in the world, possibly no other country in the world, doing this.”

King argues that the new law will cause a chilling effect, resulting in fewer people feeling comfortable communicating freely with each other. He cites a Pew survey published in March 2015, which found that 30 percent of American adults had altered their phone or internet habits due to concerns about government surveillance. “It’s going to change how people communicate and express their thoughts,” King says. “For a society that’s supposed to be progressive, that encourages open debate and dialogue, it’s awful.”

Other civil liberties advocates are concerned that the new law will be viewed by governments across the world as a green light to launch similar sweeping surveillance regimes. “The passing of the IP Bill will have an impact that goes beyond the U.K.’s shores,” says Jim Killock, executive director of the London-based Open Rights Group. “It is likely that other countries, including authoritarian regimes with poor human rights records, will use this law to justify their own intrusive surveillance powers.”

Despite the broad scope of the Investigatory Powers Bill, it generated little public debate in U.K., and did not receive a great deal of scrutiny in the mainstream press. One reason for this was undoubtedly the U.K.’s shock vote in June to leave European Union – known as Brexit – which has dominated news and discussion in recent months. But there was another major factor for the swift passage of the law in the face of little backlash. The Labour Party, the U.K.’s leading opposition political party, had pledged to fight back against “unwarranted snooping,” but ended up supporting the government and voting in favor of the new surveillance law. “Blame has to be fixed on the Labour Party,” says Killock. “They asked for far too little and weren’t prepared to strongly challenge many of the central tenets of the bill.”

In an effort to placate some of its critics, the government has agreed to strengthen oversight of the surveillance. The Investigatory Powers Bill introduces for the first time a “judicial commissioner” – likely a former senior judge – who will have the authority to review spying warrants authorized by a government minister. It also bolsters provisions relating to how police and spy agencies can target journalists in a bid to identify their confidential sources. New safeguards will mean the authorities will have to seek approval from the judicial commissioner before obtaining a journalist’s phone records; previously they could obtain this data without any independent scrutiny.

The U.K.’s National Union of Journalists, however, believes that the law does not go far enough in protecting press freedom. The union is particularly alarmed that any potential surveillance of media organizations will be kept completely secret, meaning they will not be afforded the chance to challenge or appeal any decisions relating to them or their sources. “The bill is an attack on democracy and on the public’s right to know and it enables unjustified, secret, state interference in the press,” the union blasted in a statement last week, adding that “the lack of protection for sources has an impact on journalists working in war zones or those investigating organized crime or state misconduct.”

Other issues relating to how the law will be applied remain unclear. It contains a provision, for instance, allowing the government to serve a company with a “technical capability notice,” which can include “obligations relating to the removal by a relevant operator of electronic protection applied by or on behalf of that operator to any communications or data.” Earlier this year, technology giants Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo, criticized this power, expressing concerns that it could be used by the government to force companies to weaken or circumvent encryption technology used to protect the privacy of communications and data.

In practice, if the law is used to undermine encryption, it may never come to light. The government included a section in the law that criminalizes “unauthorized disclosures” of any information related to its surveillance orders, which could potentially deter any whistleblowers or leakers from coming forward. The punishment for breaches is a prison sentence of up to 12 months, a fine, or both.

Though the Investigatory Powers Bill will soon to come into force, it is likely to face several lawsuits. There are at least three ongoing cases that could result in changes to some of its provisions. One of these cases is a major challenge in the European Court of Human Rights, which could potentially rule the government’s mass collection and retention of data to be illegal. (Judgments from the European Court of Human Rights remain binding in the U.K., despite its recent vote to leave the European Union.)

Either way, some are not willing to leave it up to the courts to determine how much of their data the government can vacuum up. One recently established British non-profit company, calling itself Brass Horn Communications, says it is planning to build a new internet provider that is based on Tor – a tool used to browse the internet anonymously – in an effort to help people protect themselves from the spying. “We should be able to research an embarrassing medical condition, or ask questions on Google, without having to worry about it being stored on a permanent internet record somewhere,” says a spokesperson for the company. “The government has decided that everyone is a suspect, but you can’t treat an entire society as criminal.”

The post U.K. Parliament Approves Unprecedented New Hacking and Surveillance Powers appeared first on The Intercept.



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Sunday, November 20, 2016

Former CEO Of UBS And Credit Suisse: "Central Banks Are Past The Point Of No Return, It Will All End In A Crash"

ORIGINAL LINK

Remember when bashing central banks and predicting financial collapse as a result of monetary manipulation and intervention was considered "fake news" within the "serious" financial community, disseminated by fringe blogs?

Good times.

In an interview with Swiss Sonntags Blick titled appropriately enough "A Recession Is Sometimes Necessary", the former CEO of UBS and Credit Suisse, Oswald Grübel, lashed out by criticizing the growing strength of central banks and their ‘supremacy over the markets and other banks’. The former chief executive officer claimed that the use of negative interest rates and huge positive balance sheets represent ‘weapons of mass destruction’. He calls for an end to the use of negative interest rates. 

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Oswald Grübel, 72, led both UBS and Credit Suisse.

Sounding more like a "tinfoil" blog than the former CEO of the two largest Swiss banks, Grübel warned that central banks have "crossed the point of no return" which will ultimately “end in a crash."

Joining Deutsche Bank in slamming NIRP, Grubel said that banks are losing hundreds of millions of francs each year to negative interest rates paid to central banks.

Worse, he warned that central banks will eventually lose their credibility in the markets but that this could take 10 years or more, at which point it will "all end in a crash." What happens then? The former CEO believes that the final outcome will be wholesale financial nationalization: “after that all banks could belong to the state”

Grubel also the doubted the wisdom of the Swiss National Bank’s balance sheet: "the Swiss National Bank's balance sheet now accounts for 100 percent of GDP. Japan is also 100%, but mainly invested in its own state paper. The ECB and the Fed are 30%. Switzerland is far, far, far ahead. Is that wise?"

The former CEO also touched on a point we have made ever since 2010 when we said that in a world of unprecedented political polarity, politicians now control the world almost exclusively through monetary policy, to wit: "After the financial crisis, politics has taken power in the banking sector: It has bound the banks into a regulatory corset and now they can no longer move. Politicians have told central banks: now you determine what is going on with the economy."

What are the implications of this power shift? "Previously, the risk was distributed to thousands of banks. They had to pay for their mistakes. The risk lay with the shareholders. Today, more and more the state carries the risk." Which, of course, is another word for taxpayers. In other words, the next crash will be one where central - not commercial - banks are failing, and the one left with the bill will once again be the ordinary person in the street.

In a tangent, Grübel gave his thoughts on what makes a man rich: "rich is a man when he goes to bed in a carefree manner and wakes up without care." He is then asked if, by that definition, a billionaire is rich to which he replied: "No. Money has little to do with wealth. The real rich are carefree. Those who are healthy, are not dependent. The greatest wealth is independence."

Grubel takes issue with the unprovable claim that only trillions in central bank liquidity injections prevented the entire world from sliding into a 1929-type depression: "It is said that without this money we would fall into the worst recession since 1929. This is a typical utopian-socialist interpretation of the economy, which knows no limit of government debt.

His damning summary: "a recession is sometimes necessary to abolish old structures and to bring renewal." Alas, this critical point remains lost on virtually everyone in a position of control, and as a result the delay assures that the day of reckoning will be far worse.



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'Grey Champion' Assumes Command, Part 1

ORIGINAL LINK

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

At each of these great gates of history, eighty to a hundred years apart, a similar generational drama unfolded. Four archetypes, aligned in the same order – elder Prophet, midlife Nomad, young adult Hero, child Artist – together produced the most enduring legends in our history. Each time the Grey Champion appeared marked the arrival of a moment of “darkness, and adversity, and peril,” the climax of the Fourth Turning of the saeculum.The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

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In September 2015 I wrote a five part article called Fourth Turning: Crisis of Trust. In Part 2 of that article I pondered who might emerge as the Grey Champion, leading the country during the second half of this Fourth Turning Crisis. I had the above pictures of Franklin, Lincoln, and FDR, along with a flaming question mark. The question has been answered. Donald J. Trump is the Grey Champion.

When I wrote that article, only one GOP debate had taken place. There were eleven more to go. Trump was viewed by the establishment as a joke, ridiculed by the propaganda media, and disdained by the GOP and Democrats. I was still skeptical of his seriousness and desire to go the distance, but I attempted to view his candidacy through the lens of the Fourth Turning. I was convinced the mood of the country turning against the establishment could lead to his elevation to the presidency. I was definitely in the minority at the time:

Until three months ago the 2016 presidential election was in control of the establishment. The Party was putting forth their chosen crony capitalist figureheads – Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. They are hand-picked known controllable entities who will not upset the existing corrupt system. They are equally acceptable to Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, the military industrial complex, the sickcare industry, mega-corporate America, the moneyed interests, and the never changing government apparatchiks. The one party system is designed to give the appearance of choice, while in reality there is no difference between the policies of the two heads of one party and their candidate products. But now Donald Trump has stormed onto the scene from the reality TV world to tell the establishment – You’re Fired!!!

The linear thinking supporters of the status quo are flabbergasted and outraged by Trump’s popularity. The ruling classes never anticipate the mood shift of the peasants as they look down on the masses from their gated estates and penthouse suites. The country is looking for someone who can tear down the entire fetid, corrupt, rotting structure. The onset of phase two of this Crisis in 2016 will produce a populace more desperate, less trusting of the establishment and likely to turn towards someone like Trump, in despair. – Fourth Turning – Crisis of Trust (Part Two)

Strauss and Howe wrote their prophetic tome two decades ago. Their prognostications have played out exactly as they prophesied. They did not know which events or which people would catalyze this Fourth Turning. But they knew the mood change in the country would be driven by the predictable generational alignment which occurs every eighty years. Our regeneracy is now solidly under way.

“Soon after the catalyst, a national election will produce a sweeping political realignment, as one faction or coalition capitalizes on a new public demand for decisive action. Republicans, Democrats, or perhaps a new party will decisively win the long partisan tug of war. This new regime will enthrone itself for the duration of the Crisis. Regardless of its ideology, that new leadership will assert public authority and demand private sacrifice. Where leaders had once been inclined to alleviate societal pressures, they will now aggravate them to command the nation’s attention. The regeneracy will be solidly under way.” Strauss & Howe The Fourth Turning

Linear thinking pundits, politicians, businessmen, bankers, bureaucrats, and citizens fail to grasp the cyclical nature of history. They think themselves progressives, falsely believing humanity and history move forward in a straight line. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is why they throw hissy fits when their predictions and beliefs are thrown into disarray by events and mood changes in the country.

The linear thinking establishment is losing their proverbial minds over Trump’s landslide electoral victory, they never saw coming. They’re flabbergasted, angry, and living in denial as history tracks a path it travels every eighty years or so. As the Greatest Generation departs this earth, there are few left who lived through the last Fourth Turning. That’s why the living generations are always surprised when another predictable crisis arrives. We never seem to learn the lessons of history.

Perpetual progress is a myth. Average American households haven’t seen economic progress in decades. Education continues to deteriorate, as the young become progressively dumber. Well-paying goods producing jobs have been shipped overseas, replaced by low paying, no benefits service jobs. Government is corrupt, inept, and discredited. Our culture is degraded, decadent, depraved, and despoiled.

Progress has devolved into regression. We’ve entered our saecular Winter and there is no turning back. It arrived with ferocious blizzard like conditions in 2008, and had been in a debt induced lull until this election. A bitter fierce wind has begun to whip across the plains and black swirling clouds portend a tempestuous future. As the gathering storm looms, the Grey Champion appears on the mountaintop.

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“Americans have always been blind to the next turning until after it fully arrives.

Most of today’s adult Americans grew up in a society whose citizens dreamed of perpetually improving outcomes: better jobs, fatter wallets, stronger government, finer culture, nicer families, smarter kids, all the usual fruits of progress. Today, deep into the Third Turning, these goals feel like they are slipping away. Many of us wish we could rewind time, but we know we can’t – and we fear for our children and grandchildren.

Many Americans wish that, somehow, they could bring back a saecular spring now. But seasons don’t work that way. As in nature, a saecular autumn can be warm or cool, long or short, but the leaves will surely fall. The saecular winter can hurry or wait, but history warns that it will surely be upon us.

We may not wish the Grey Champion to come again – but come he must, and come he will.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

To those who have never read the book or understand generational theory, they are appalled I would declare Donald Trump as the Grey Champion. They interpret the word “champion” as having a positive connotation. It has nothing to do with whether the Grey Champion is a good person, moral person, or likeable person. It doesn’t even have to be one person. Ben Franklin and Samuel Adams, both from the Prophet generation, are considered the Grey Champions of the American Revolution Fourth Turning. One was a diplomat who used his guile and cunning to propel the revolution forward. The other was a firebrand, in the mold of our current Donald Trump.

In most cases the Grey Champions are not revered or glorified until decades after the Crisis is resolved. Lincoln was and still is despised by just about everyone living south of the Mason Dixon line. Outraged businessmen attempted to convince Smedley Butler to lead a coup against FDR. Large swaths of Americans believe he is responsible for creating our welfare state and the unfunded liabilities which are playing a large part in this current Fourth Turning. The unintended consequences of decisions made in previous Fourth Turnings often become the catalysts for the next crisis.

The Grey Champion or Champions are Prophet Generation leaders who command respect due to their age, attitude and warlike demeanor. They were born shortly after the previous Great War Crisis and became the narcissistic young crusaders during the Awakening, driven achievers during the midlife Unraveling, and principled moralists summoning great deeds during the next Crisis.

They tend to inspire through their words and rhetoric, rather than through grand deeds. They are human beings, and as with all humans, they exhibit both positive and negative traits. Prominent positive traits include being principled, resolute and creative. Detrimental traits include being narcissistic, presumptuous, and ruthless. The Grey Champion arrives when the situation looks grim and the people need a jolt of courage to meet the frightful challenges ahead.

One afternoon in April 1689, as the American colonies boiled with rumors that King James II was about to strip them of their liberties, the King’s hand-picked governor of New England, Sir Edmund Andros, marched his troops menacingly through Boston. His purpose was to crush any thought of colonial self-rule. To everyone present, the future looked grim.

Just at that moment, seemingly from nowhere, there appeared on the streets “the figure of an ancient man” with “the eye, the face, the attitude of command.” His manner “combining the leader and the saint,” the old man planted himself directly in the path of the approaching British soldiers and demanded that they stop. “The solemn, yet warlike peal of that voice, fit either to rule a host in the battlefield or be raised to God in prayer, were irresistible. At the old man’s word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still.” Inspired by this single act of defiance, the people of Boston roused their courage and acted. Within the day, Andros was deposed and jailed, the liberty of Boston saved, and the corner turned on the colonial Glorious Revolution.

“Who was this Gray Champion?” Nathaniel Hawthorne asked near the end of this story in his Twice-Told Tales. No one knew, except that he had once been among the fire-hearted young Puritans who had first settled New England more than a half century earlier. Later that evening, just before the old priest-warrior disappeared, the townspeople saw him embracing the 85-year-old Simon Bradstreet, a kindred spirit and one of the few original Puritans still alive. Would the Gray Champion ever return? “I have heard,” added Hawthorne, “that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires, the old man appears again.” – The Fourth Turning  Strauss & Howe

The old man has appeared again. Just as he appeared eighty years after the glorious revolution behind the breastworks on Bunker Hill, providing spiritual inspiration to the farmer militia. The greying peer of Samuel Adams and Ben Franklin was just playing his role in the generational alignment which occurs every eighty years like clockwork. As the hour of darkness, adversity and peril arrives, the virtuous, fiery and unrepentant Gray Champion(s) appear through the fog of history like an apparition.

As the clock counted down to 1860, seventy-nine years after the climax of the previous Crisis, ideologues, warriors and righteous politician Grey Champions like John Brown, William Tecumseh Sherman, Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln stepped into the breach, as the terrible swift sword felled over 700,000 citizens.

Seven decades later as financial markets collapsed, the world sank into a global depression, with world war just over the horizon, a moralistic no-nonsense prophet generation leader arose to lead his nation towards their rendezvous with destiny. As ancestral generations entered the constellation that reoccurs every eighty years, elder warriors FDR, Douglas MacArthur, and Winston Churchill appeared to revive the spirits of their countrymen and fight the scourge of fascism.

No one can make the argument these three Crisis leaders were likeable. In fact, their personalities were grating and they were detested by friends and foes alike. What they did was ignore protocol, feelings, and minutia, to focus on the only thing that mattered – prevailing at all costs.

The previous two Grey Champion leaders – Lincoln and Roosevelt – are still reviled by many Americans, as they were by millions during their time. Unconstitutional policies and executive actions during the gloomy ambiguous days of the Civil War, Great Depression, and World War II left a long lasting impression on the country and play a major role in our current crisis.  Both centralized power with the Federal government, drastically weakening the power of the states. Both set the country on a path towards increased taxation, spending and waging war.

Lincoln and FDR were elected Grey Champions, but Lincoln only received 39.9% of the popular vote in a four way race, while FDR won in a landslide with 57% of the vote over Hoover. It was clear Lincoln didn’t have a mandate, as Southern states began seceding after his election.  Lincoln’s support in the North was halfhearted at best.

Lincoln captured only 55% of the vote in the 1864 election, with only northern states voting. His cabinet of rivals despised him. They plotted against him, actively opposed his policies, and gloried in his failures. After four grim years of slaughter and failure, he was assassinated just as his armies’ attained victory. To this day he is still despised by liberty minded states’ rights proponents.

Even though FDR won landslide popular vote victories in 1932 and 1936, his detractors and adversaries were numerous. FDR’s confiscation of gold, antagonism toward big business, and dictatorial style, convinced a number of wealthy businessmen to approach General Smedley Butler to lead a coup against FDR and install a fascist regime to run the country. His New Deal “make work” projects and socialist policies were widely scorned by free market capitalists, as they prolonged the Great Depression.

No one can assert Lincoln or FDR united all Americans in a common cause. Grey Champions are not universally adored or defended. They aggravated societal pressures that had been ignored or deferred by their predecessors. Compromise was not an alternative for these men. They were going to lead in a confrontational style suited to the times, using unyielding principles to vanquish their enemies. Grey Champions have a particular set of personality traits making them well suited to lead during a Crisis. They have the facility to overlook the complexities of life and focus on one simple imperative: society must prevail.

In Part Two of this article I will assess the prospects of success for our new Grey Champion – Donald J. Trump and why this Fourth Turning is about to turn nasty.



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