#deep state’s oligarchs

[awesomecooperlove]

😈🇨🇦😈

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

[wilwheaton]

Frederick Douglass, who was born into Southern slavery, described the South as “a little nation by itself, having its own language, its own rules, regulations, and customs.” Fewer than 2000 families — six-tenths of one percent of the Southern population — owned more than 50 enslaved people and ruled the oligarchy that we call the Confederacy with an iron fist. The 75 percent of white people in the South during that era who did not own any enslaved persons generally lived in deep poverty. Women had no rights, queer people were routinely tortured and murdered, education for both enslaved Africans and poor whites was generally outlawed, religious attendance was often mandated, and hunger and disease stalked all but those in the families of the two thousand morbidly rich planter dynasties. Modern-day Red states are doing their best to recreate that old Confederacy, right down to state Senator Kathy Chism’s new effort to return the Confederate battle flag to Mississippi's state flag. Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence have both emphasized their presidential pledges to restore the names of murderous Civil War traitors to American military bases, celebrating their armed defense of the “values” of the Old South. Today’s version of yesteryear’s plantation owners are called CEOs, hedge and vulture fund managers, and the morbidly rich. They use the power of political bribery given them by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court — with Clarence Thomas’ tie-breaking Citizens United vote on behalf of his sugar daddy Harlan Crow — to lord over their Red states, regardless of the will of those states’ citizens.

Why are red state 'welfare queen' oligarchs allowed to mooch off of blue states?

[reality-detective]

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Biden admin’s power to influence Big Tech oligarchs.

They've given platforms like Facebook, coerced by the Deep State, the power to decide what speech is "acceptable" instead of protecting the free exchange of ideas.

A very dangerous precedent has been set today. 🤔

[socialjusticeinamerica]

“The Oversight Project — part of the powerful right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation — claimed this week that it used mobile ad data from cell phones to track the movements of Thomas Crooks in the year leading up to his attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally earlier this month.

“We found the assassin’s connections through our in-depth analysis of mobile ad data to track movements of Crooks and his associates,” the Oversight Project wrote on social media on Monday, explaining that it had identified nine “devices that were located at Crook’s home and his work within the past year.”

The organization suggested that Crooks may have had some connection to the FBI before the shooting, writing: “Someone who regularly visited Crooks home and work also visited a building in Washington, DC located in Gallery Place. This is in the same vicinity of an @FBI office on June 26, 2023. Who’s device is this?”

The post was catnip for MAGA conspiracy theorists who believe the “deep state” — entrenched bureaucrats in federal agencies and law enforcement — has been trying to sabotage, arrest and now kill Trump.”

😡☝️

The technology and expenditure of cash by far right groups like the Heritage Foundation is frightening to say the least. If you recall a few months back a right-wing group used CIA level intelligence to uncover the identity of a Texas teacher who had her voice scrambled by a local tv station as she was blowing the whistle on her school district. That was previously thought to be impossible and yet they spent millions using tech not commercially available to seek revenge on a public school teacher. Now they are back tracking ad data from the devices of private citizens to track movements. The oligarchs are operating on a level beyond national intelligence agencies to manipulate elections. That’s the conspiracy we should be worried about.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Prominent right-wing influencers Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson and Tim Pool have huge followings on YouTube and a fondness for the Trumpist talking point that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election on the former president’s behalf are a “hoax.” That’s not all they have in common: They also reportedly enjoyed lucrative deals with a content creation company that was a front for Russian propagandists. The Justice Department indicted two employees of the Russian propaganda outlet RT on Wednesday, charging them with laundering almost $10 million through foreign shell companies and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The DOJ alleges this was done “to covertly fund and direct” a media company that produced videos whose content and subject matter were “often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests.” The company’s description matches that of Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based firm co-founded by Lauren Chen, a creator for Glenn Beck’s Blaze TV (which fired Chen on Thursday) and a contributor to Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. Tenet Media publishes content by Rubin, Johnson, Pool and other less-prominent influencers. According to the indictment, the production companies of three unnamed commentators were paid $8.7 million through the scheme. The indictment states two of the commentators were deceived about the source of the funding; the trio all described themselves as unwitting “victims” of the operation in separate statements on social media. But the Tenet Media saga demonstrates once again that Russian election interference is not, as these commentators and their allies have insisted, a “hoax.” It is a fact, a deliberate and ongoing operation by the Kremlin to sway U.S. politics. And the Trumpist right’s yearslong quest to rebut that reality have ended up ensuring that their entire information ecosystem is honeycombed with Russian propaganda. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 final report conclusively documented the Russian government’s systematic effort to influence the 2016 presidential election in order to help Trump and the many ways Trump’s associates participated in that endeavor. This was an inconvenient finding for Trump and his political and media allies, who had spent years fabricating a complex alternate reality in which claims of Russian election interference or corrupt ties between Russia and Trump and his associates were “deep state” lies. They responded by falsely claiming Mueller’s report had found “no collusion” between Trump and Russia, and used that lie to brand the entirety of the probe as a “hoax.” [...] No one on the right has done more to push pro-Russia talking points than former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a longtime defender of Russian president Vladimir Putin and opponent of U.S. support for Ukraine. Russian propaganda channels sought to gin up Western support for its 2022 invasion by highlighting Carlson’s nightly screeds against U.S. aid to Ukraine, and in turn served as a source for Carlson’s program. A Russian state TV host even suggested on-air that Carlson take a job at his network after Fox dropped him the following year. [...] But Russia-friendly narratives about the country’s invasion of Ukraine ultimately spread far beyond Carlson. It became widely accepted orthodoxy on the MAGA right that sending military aid to Ukraine is a waste of money, that the United States is responsible for Russia’s invasion, and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the real villain of the conflict. [...] Russian interests and Kremlin-connected sources also fueled the right’s obsession with Hunter Biden’s business interests and the absurd related allegation that Joe Biden accepted a bribe from a Ukrainian oligarch — both of which right-wing media and politicians treated as major stories, with House Republicans making it the heart of their impeachment case against the president..

MMFA's Matt Gertz for MSNBC.com on MAGA media pundits being on the Kremlin payroll via TENET Media (09.06.2024).

Matt Gertz wrote in MSNBC’s opinion section that MAGA influencers such as Tim Pool and Benny Johnson have only themselves to blame for the TENET Media debacle in which they pumped out pro-Russia propaganda.

See Also:

MMFA: How MAGA pundits who mocked the Russia “hoax” ended up the Kremlin’s payroll

Public Notice: Russia's useful idiots

[darkmaga-retard]

This article was originally published by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead at The Rutherford Institute. 

“The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear… They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else… It’s called the American Dream, ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.”—George Carlin

Who owns America?

Is it the government? The politicians? The corporations? The foreign investors? The American people?

While the Deep State keeps the nation divided and distracted by a presidential election whose outcome is foregone (the police state’s stranglehold on power will ensure the continuation of endless wars and out-of-control spending, while disregarding the citizenry’s fundamental rights and the rule of law), America is literally being bought and sold right out from under us.

Consider the facts.

We’re losing more and more of our land every year to corporations and foreign interests. Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land has increased by 66% since 2010. In 2021, it was reported that foreign investors owned approximately 40 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, which is more than the entire state of Iowa. By 2022 that number had grown to 43.4 million acres. The rate at which U.S. farmland is being bought up by foreign interests grew by 2.2 million acres per year from 2015 to 2021. The number of U.S. farm acres owned by foreign entities grew more than 8% (3.4 million acres) in 2022.

We’re losing more and more of our businesses every year to foreign corporations and interests. Although China owns a small fraction of foreign-owned U.S. land at 380,000 acres (less than the state of Rhode Island), Chinese companies and investors are also buying up major food companies, commercial and residential real estate, and other businesses. As RetailWire explains, “Currently, many brands started by early American pioneers now wave international flags. This revolution is a direct result of globalization.” The growing list of once-notable American brands that have been sold to foreign corporations includes: U.S. Steel (now Japanese-owned); General Electric (Chinese-owned); Budweiser (Belgium); Burger King (Canada); 7-Eleven (Japan); Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge (Netherlands); and IBM (China).

[republikkkanorcs]

His wife killed herself after reading the detailed journal of his affairs. In one year alone he had 37 affairs. RFK Jr is not a Democrat. His friends and associates are Republican oligarchs, right-wing media personalities, Qanon assholes, and Republican politicians. He attends Republican events and is often a guest speaker where he rambles on about Covid anti-vax conspiracies, the deep state, being oppressed by the liberal media, and other MAGA nonsense. He is funded by Republican oligarchs and his campaign has been organized by Republican political operatives whose goal is to confuse uniformed Democrats and get them to vote for RFK Jr instead of Biden, thus helping Trump. Feel free to do your own research.

Republicans can’t win without cheating.

Republicans lie about everything.

Republican clown show.

[beautiful-basque-country]

A foreshadowing message by Basque representative in the Spanish Congress Mertxe Aizpurua the first day of Sánchez's term in office.

It sadly serves for many many countries around the world nowadays.

A third ingrediente will be necessary, one that represents the third great challenge that your Government and the political parties that will make it possible have before us: the deep democratization of this state. A democratization that reaches all that is known as deep state. A democratization that includes all the systems in this state, all of them, Mr. Sánchez. Because the political, judiciary, media, policial, corporate, or oligarchical scheme that is today revolving and acting against popular will - all of it with the blessing of the Crown itself - will not accept, today or anytime, to give up the privileges and power that the regime of '78 granted them. To defend these privileges is the goal of that perfectly orchestrated strategy by all of the right wings that we are witnessing these days against the popular and democratic expression in the elections. I will say it clearly: the regime of '78 in its whole antidemocratic dimension is trying to prevent a term in office of national and social progress, trying to prevent any democratizing shadow. This is what we are witnessing these days.

[san-demetrio-corone]

Ralf Beste of Germany’s Foreign Office said the Russians were ‘looking for cracks of doubt or feelings of unease and trying to enlarge them’.

It is absolutely a threat we have to take seriously.

A network of more than 50,000 fake accounts posting as many as 200,000 posts a day sought to convince Germans that the government’s help for Ukraine was undermining German prosperity and risking nuclear war.

Russian disinformation campaigns to undermine support for Ukraine in Europe have grown significantly in scale, skill and stealth, one of Germany’s most senior diplomats has warned.

“It is absolutely a threat we have to take seriously,” Ralf Beste, head of the department for culture and communication at Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, told the Financial Times. “Overall, [there] is an increase in sophistication and impact to what we have seen before.”

Russia is combining greater subtlety and plausibility in its messaging with automation to make its disruptive attacks more effective and harder to combat, he said.

“There is probably a lot going on we can’t even see. More and more conversations are happening in private . . . channels on Telegram and WhatsApp. It is very difficult to understand what is happening there.” Beste’s department has a dedicated cell that leads the German government’s efforts to track and stop Russia’s information operations overseas.

Germany has emerged as one of the Kremlin’s main targets for disinformation over the war in Ukraine. Under the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Berlin has dramatically revised its security and defence policy and become the second-largest donor of military aid to Kyiv after Washington.

Disagreements over the shift run deep — particularly among supporters of Scholz’s own Social Democratic Party — and many Germans are concerned over economic growth and the impact of the country weaning itself from Russian gas supplies.

Beste said: “[The Russians] are looking for cracks of doubt or feelings of unease and trying to enlarge them.”

His department this year uncovered one of the biggest attempts to manipulate German public opinion yet, on the social media platform X.

A network of more than 50,000 fake accounts posting as many as 200,000 posts a day sought to convince Germans that the government’s help for Ukraine was undermining German prosperity and risking nuclear war.

The network sought to “launder” such claims by making them look as if they had been published as opinions in reputable news outlets such as Der Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung. But it also simply sought to amplify existing anti-Ukrainian views and make them appear to be more widespread.

Last week the Czech government, acting with other European states, accused the Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk of secretly cultivating a network of influence among European politicians to spread pro-Russian narratives and undermine support for Kyiv.

Countering such efforts is hard, Beste said, and indicates the extent to which Russia has moved on from the days of running infamous “troll farms”, which employed real people to spread dissent, often in a clumsy and obvious manner.

Beste said: “[Now] it’s not just a question of information that is verifiably true or false. It’s more than that. It’s about skewing opinions. Trying to tilt the balance of debate. Or to convince people that the frame of the debate is different to what it is in reality.”

The techniques being used were more like “nudging”, he said, referring to the concept in behavioural science of using small social and informational cues to subtly shift opinion or action.

“If you say, for example, ‘there is increasing doubt that XYZ . . . ’ then you will make people more receptive to doubts about that topic,” Beste said. “They are taking elements of reality in these campaigns and then warping them to create a different impression.”

Trying to rebut such campaigns is hard because the basic elements are often unfalsifiable, and engaging can often counterproductively lend claims to credibility.

Artificial intelligence tools are also a serious concern because of their ability to mimic human behaviour.

“AI is clearly something we have to watch very carefully,” Beste said. “What I worry about is how it will be used to create the impression of interaction . . . You enter a de facto second world, not just fake pieces of information or fake films or pictures but an entire alternative information ecosystem.”

[awesomecooperlove]

JUST A REMINDER‼️‼️‼️PLEASE WATCH AND SHARE IF YOU HAVEN’T YET 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

🐉👿🐉

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

Project2025 #CorpMedia #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #FeelTheBern

JinJiyanAzadi #BijiRojava Islamic State defeated in its Syrian capital Raqqa [UPDATES]

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/islamic-state-defeated-in-its-syrian-capital-raqqa-idUSKBN1CM0VX/

U.S.-backed militias in Syria declared victory over Islamic State in its capital Raqqa on Tuesday, raising flags over the last jihadist footholds after a four-month battle…

RELATED: WATCH Life Inside the ISIS Home Base of Raqqa, Syria

https://www.wsj.com/video/life-inside-the-isis-home-base-of-raqqa-syria/AA8CB9E3-B6A9-49AB-A2C9-F8E843413B85

RELATED UPDATE: "Jin, jiyan, azadi” is not a hashtag

RELATED UPDATE: HI clears a hidden bomb factory in Raqqa

https://www.hi.org/en/news/hi-clears-a-hidden-bomb-factory-in-raqqa

RELATED UPDATE: An office opened in Raqqa to "protect" the properties of Christians in north-east Syria

RELATED UPDATE: Nerîman Evdikê: The real literature of this revolution will emerge

RELATED UPDATE: Sheikhs, notables: We will repel the occupiers of our lands

RELATED UPDATE: Last 10 kilometres in the ‘Respect for the Will’ march from Van to Hakkari

RELATED UPDATE: Kurdish political prisoner denied contact with family, lawyers

RELATED UPDATE: Raqqa Canton opens special education program for 110 children of martyrs

[warsofasoiaf]

So regarding the Fallout tv series, do you think the NCR is well and truly gone, or can it still survive? Because I always thought there was a story in askinf if the NCR can and will learn from the mistakes from the past, or just repeat the cycle.

In Fallout canon (the games, not the show), by 2 and New Vegas, the NCR is far larger than just Shady Sands and the surrounding environs - they've grown to include Vault City, the LA Boneyard, etc. With the resource crises that New Vegas has been talking about with the NCR, nuking a major capital city could easily cause the NCR to fracture into smaller settlements.

Of course, Shady Sands was nuked, and the show retconned Shady Sands to be in LA so that they could be destroyed in the Boneyard as well, which does not exactly strike me as sound stewardship of the Fallout canon. So the NCR can easily collapse just because the writers say it needs to, rather than expanding the resource crisis. Because research is hard.

The question of whether the NCR can learn from the mistakes of the past is a valid one. Caesar talks about plutocratic corruption of the NCR and despite the fact that he's a slaving expansionist, he's not altogether wrong to say that corruption in the NCR is leading it down the same path that the United States did when its leadership became the Enclave. He's not right either, of course, because Caesar's conception of "civic virtue" is a nation devoted entirely to him that falls apart after his death. More appropriately, the resource crisis that the NCR has is pushing them along the similar path to the Resource Wars of the United States. They're conscripting their younger generation and throwing them into the fire just like the United States did, in order to expand into the Mojave.

This message is muddled. Mr. House says "If you want to see the results of democracy, look out the window," but in practice, the Great War was actually fired by an autocratic world power (China) and the United States had long become an oligarchic deep state under control of the Enclave. Another issue of retcon comes with House being a member of the nefarious Business Council at the end of the TV show, which means that the House of Fallout: New Vegas makes the statement knowing full well it's a transparent lie, because writing coherent settings is hard.

Finally, the downfall of the NCR doesn't happen because of their refusal to learn the lessons of the past, it happens because Hank is big sad Rose left him for Shady Sands. Perfectly fine for the message of the Vault-Tec executive who saw other people as little more that guinea pigs for social experiments to destroy an entire civilization in a fit of pique, but that undermines the message of the NCR pursuing the same relentless jingoism that the United States to have them be destroyed. Because providing a satisfying payoff is hard.

Thanks for the question, Ikac.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[haxyr3]

The book Putin's People by Catherine Belton is now available for free - in Russian.

Amazon: In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB’s revanche―a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad. Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach―and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match―Putin’s People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

They don’t even know of a time when life was better in America. Actually Gen X was the first generation in America not to do better than their parents. The same being true for the last few years of the Boomer generation. Y also is struggling.

The lady Boomers and X’ers remember what it was like before Reagan took over and busted unions in 1980. Wages dropped, factory owners took their shops to the Deep South where unions had long since been busted or never allowed to set up in the first place. Then the oligarchs outsourced their work and shuttered factories nationwide.

Before Reagan one parent working 40 hrs a week at a union job could afford a mortgage, a new car, medical insurance, and college for their 2.5 kids. That also applied to “minorities” or marginalized people who benefitted from union protections and negotiated standard pay scales.

With Reagan a home went from two years salary to 10+ years salary. Tuition did the same. Cars that cost a month’s salary soared to a year’s salary. Wages have remained stagnant for about 40 years. The wealthy paid high taxes and we had everything. Now the remnants of the middle class pay the bulk of taxes while multimillionaires and billionaires pay little or even nothing. Credit card interest soared to over 20% in some cases while Republikkkans passed laws making it easier for those card companies to sue you whilst making it nearly impossible for you to sue them. Mentally disabled people were literally dumped into the streets causing widespread homeless which is criminalized in affluent areas and red states. Guns and drugs flooded the streets. Bigoted white nationalists became radicalized when Reagan granted Australian Rupert Murdoch citizenship so he could open Fox News and then shut down the Fairness Doctrine so propaganda could be spread under the guise of news.

All the societal problems we suffer today began with the birth of the modern RepubliKKKan party led by their racist Dotard Ronald Reagan in 1980. The GOP became an organized crime syndicate and the government became a tool for the rich. The middle class shrunk from a sizeable percentage of the population to a handful of areas in the north and along the west coast. Many foolish people believe themselves to be in the middle class but in fact they are just perpetual debtors.

If you’re young your first reaction might be to blame the Boomers because that’s incorrectly become a marketed belief. The Boomer generation fought against the GOP and its wars, racism, pollution, big oil, corporate welfare, and black hole military industrial complex. They were the hippies and political activists that marched on Washington and other places. They booted the racist Dixiecrats (southern conservative racist Dems) from the Democratic Party while shifting educated liberals left. Sadly the GOP under Nixon and his colleagues welcomed the racists and conservative nut jobs. Don’t fight a generational war when you should be fighting a class/culture/political war.

The younger generation needs to educate itself about the political parties and how life was better just a few decades back and begin to vote. Vote, then organize in the workplace through unions and in the streets to attract more young voters and to counter protest the Republikkkan right-wing oligarch take-over of America. Complaining and taking refuge in the internet won’t turn things around. Become politically active, become stoke, bring back lower tuition, affordable health care, labor unions, workers rights, voters rights, etc.