truthout--2020-06-16--Police Departments Attempt a Charm Offensive Amid Uprisings

As uprisings ignite across the United States in response to decades of racist and biased policing that exacerbates an unjust social order , police departments are going on the offensive .
To complement nationwide violent tactics of unnecessary and excessive force roundly condemned by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch , police departments have adopted a more subtle charm offensive .
Reports of police kneeling with protesters , for instance , have surfaced in numerous precincts and cities around the U.S. : from Oakland and Santa Cruz to Central New Jersey , Saint Paul and Ferguson .
These reports are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kneeling officer , whose head droops in an apparent show of solidarity with protesters .
But what ’ s in these photographs ?
Images alone , as any photographer knows , rarely tell a full truth .
The late Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography that “ photographs are a way of imprisoning reality , ” meaning , as she argues earlier in the book , “ photographs can not create a moral position , but they can reinforce one — and can help build a nascent one.
” If we follow Sontag @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social media and cable news take a “ moral position ” often quite favorable to police : absolving police departments for the actions of their recalcitrant “ few bad apples ” ( as many like to say ) .
However , in multiple cases , activists and protesters have taken to Twitter to criticize these visuals of kneeling officers because when the cameras left , police redeployed in riot gear armed with tear gas canisters .
In another case , police officers in Washington , D.C. , dragged their colleague up to his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ solidarity with protesters .
The video of Ferguson Police Department officers kneeling raises similar red flags .
Wasn ’ t this the same department that murdered the unarmed Michael Brown in 2014 ?
That allowed a police dog to urinate on a teddy bear memorial for Brown before police ran a separate flower petal memorial over twice with squad cars ?
That bled the city ’ s residents dry and plundered municipal coffers to balance its budget ?
What ’ s the deal with the jarring incongruity ?
For a viewer , these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ moral position ” of the photographs of police kneeling : Was this all for optics ?
Choosing between the stick of harsh repression and the carrot of vacuous charm , police have long tried to play both sides .
They hedge their bets : exploiting photo ops with a child in one locale ( Houston ) at the same time as they mace a child in the face in another ( Seattle ) .
Recent events , however , have betrayed the motives behind this double-dealing .
Law enforcement agencies , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about aesthetics more than they let on : how they look , how they dress , what military-influenced rank they achieve , and how hard they work to make law enforcement seem “ cool.
” Some of this aesthetic inclination has its roots in trainings that international and domestic militaries offer to U.S. police departments .
During these trainings , police often learn “ crowd dispersal ” techniques alongside counterinsurgency methods meant to quell military campaigns by enemy forces and to win “ hearts and minds ” in an occupied territory .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ military-led — does not limit itself to artillery or sorties .
Indeed , according to scholar-activists Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore , “ the most notable innovations in ” urban policing models like Los Angeles ’ s Community Safety Partnership “ directly incorporate up-to-date military counterinsurgency tactics ” : co-opting women with high standing in communities and distributing desperately needed supplies to give policing a kinder , gentler sheen .
All of this , Gilmore and Gilmore continue , is about mitigating “ perceived bias ” and shifting perceptions of biased police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ themselves .
Police seduce with the promise of “ safety , ” “ security ” and “ aid ” to the communities they serve but rarely make good on those promises .
When brutal repression fails , which it so often does , a smiling Officer Friendly finds a latchkey to sneak through the back door of our “ hearts and minds.
” This is textbook “ cynical opportunism ” in the words of political scientist George Ciccariello-Maher .
As activists and their allies shine an unflattering spotlight on the everyday brutalities of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ condemn U.S. police , departments across the country desperately grope in the dark for any footage , images or stories that they can offer as window dressing .
But as young people and centrists see the realities on social media and educate themselves about police , this turns out to be quite a significant and difficult-to-surmount problem for officers in the almost 18,000 departments across the U.S. And few know bad optics quite like the police do .
Tear gassing unarmed protesters who are airing their decades-long grievances against policing is bad optics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medics at protests is bad optics .
The spree of officers in New Mexico , Seattle , San Francisco and elsewhere kneeling on necks after law enforcement officials proclaimed the technique illegal is bad optics .
It ’ s bad optics to push elderly men in Salt Lake City and in Buffalo to the ground , the latter of whom lay on the ground concussed as police stood by .
It ’ s all terribly bad optics for police who are already trying to ham-fistedly restore their rapidly crumbling legitimacy .
But in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unperturbed by the horrific and lawless hooliganism of their peers .
Hewing to this line of “ optics , ” police will themselves to see differently than the rest of us .
This is particularly evident in how police view ongoing protests : What are they seeing ?
The President of the Minneapolis police union Bob Kroll , for one , has referred to the unarmed , prone George Floyd as a “ violent criminal ” and to protesters showing solidarity with his and countless others ’ deaths as part of a “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( LAPD ) Chief Michael Moore , for another , blamed looters and Minnesota officers equally for Floyd ’ s death , even though looting began long after Floyd ’ s death : Floyd ’ s “ death is on their [ the looters ’ ] hands , as much as it is those officers , ” he stated .
Since the object of policing is “ order ” — and not justice — this shouldn ’ t come as a huge surprise .
In the eyes of the police , crowds of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ peaceful they may be — are disturbances “ always about to explode ” into violence and , therefore , ought to be crushed , as scholars David Correia and Tyler Wall write .
Long before these uprisings took off , some officers made their thoughts even clearer .
In the Frontline documentary , “ Policing the Police , ” professor and journalist Jelani Cobb interviews James Stewart , who was , at the time of filming , the president of Newark ’ s largest police union : the Fraternal Order of Police .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the “ prospects for reform ” in corrupt police departments , Stewart responds affirmatively but quickly pivots toward an analysis of “ where the problem started.
” As he sees it : “ there is an animosity or a lack of trust ” from community members .
“ You know , ” he continues , “ as soon as there ’ s any sort of physical force exerted by a police officer , everybody ’ s got their cellphones out .
You know , they want to catch us doing something wrong.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ implying citizens merely want to “ catch ” police red-handed , rather than admitting that these videos could function as a way to hold police accountable when they so seldom are .
Earlier in the segment , dripping with woe , Stewart bemoans criticisms of police conduct : “ Somewhere along the line we have become the bad guy .
Everybody ’ s against us , ” admitting his Newark Police Department is under federal oversight but failing to explain why .
( As it turns out , it was because “ a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found Newark officers frequently used excessive force and made unconstitutional street stops , engaged in rampant property theft and acted with little oversight ” as David Porter reports . )
Police become victims of violence and harm in this tortured logic , even as all signs point to them being perpetrators .
As Stewart testifies , police imagine themselves as the victims of a conspiracy of unwarranted hatred of police , when it ’ s only ever those proverbial few bad apples .
The “ few bad apples ” argument has been peddled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defend the indefensible : This time around , a white man in Minneapolis murdered an unarmed , subdued and compliant Black man by asphyxiation .
This is a verified fact , as anyone who has seen the video of Floyd ’ s death can ascertain .
But the Minneapolis Police Department has attempted to obfuscate this behind the medical language of an autopsy , which was used to protect officer Derek Chauvin by placing blame on Floyd for his own murder .
( This victim-blaming follows in the footsteps of the LAPD , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of asphyxiation-related murders at the hands of officers in the 1970s and 1980s , blamed the Black body .
Former Chief Daryl Gates in 1982 claimed that , “ We may be finding that in some blacks when [ the chokehold ] is applied , the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do in normal people , ” as The New York Times reported . )
Time and again , police chiefs pluck rotten excuses out of thin air for those perennial “ few bad apples ” who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ barrel.
” Then there ’ s the problem of “ the knee ” itself .
At its face , taking the knee is also an odd choice of showing solidarity with protesters , as it ’ s difficult to determine intentions : the knee taken against police brutality looks disturbingly similar to the knee that Chauvin selected as his weapon of choice in murdering George Floyd .
There ’ s an unsettling irony here that police seem to not see .
In the media blitz surrounding protests , news outlets have been quite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Likewise , most police — and some news agencies for that matter — play down the reality that Floyd ’ s murder — the straw that broke the camel ’ s back — is only one of hundreds .
Reporting from Oakland , California , offers a strong case study .
In their often-obsequious reporting , outlets failed to remind viewers that in 2003 , the “ Oakland Police Department was placed under federal oversight for police misconduct and civil rights abuses , ” as detailed in the Netflix documentary The Force .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ department , ” and “ after five chiefs , the reform process stalled and the department ” was told it had to undergo major organizational shifts .
That same year , the department paid $ 11 million in damages after more than 100 reports of misconduct , manufactured evidence , illegal arrest and iron-fisted enforcement swirled around a group of corrupt cops who called themselves the “ Rough Riders.
” The long arm of federal oversight swooped in to ostensibly right these wrongs .
Yet the Oakland Police Department ( OPD ) did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under federal oversight , Oakland became known as what Ferguson is to many today : the epitome of racist policing .
As “ a legal advocate for victims of police abuse ” told journalist Scott C. Johnson of Politico , Oakland ’ s Police Department “ might just be ‘ the worst department in the country.
’ ” Still untreated , the rot spread .
After 13 years under federal oversight , the OPD was found to have tampered with evidence in a 2016 case of officer-led statutory rape and human trafficking , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Celeste Guap ” ) was trafficked and raped by OPD officers .
The Department ’ s own 252-page heavily redacted report found “ sufficient evidence to determine that Smith [ an OPD officer ] committed attempted forcible sodomy.
” The four involved officers were fired , seven were suspended and one committed suicide ; the thinnest semblance of justice was nowhere served .
Today , one page of the City of Oakland ’ s website reassures visitors to its site that “ the Oakland Police Department wants to help people who are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ victims and arrest the traffickers , ” they write .
“ We team up with advocacy groups so that victims can get help.
” One wonders what “ Celeste Guap ” would make of a partnership like this .
Or , for that matter , sex workers who are often targets of police violence and are harmed by so-called anti-trafficking laws that place them in increased danger .
In response to this kind of charm offensive , “ The Only Solution ” sociologist Alex S. Vitale writes in The Nation ( and others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Defund the Police.
” But stories like Guap ’ s raise the specter of co-optation and deracination , uprooting the Black Lives Matter-backed campaign to defund the police and the # 8ToAbolition campaign from their progressive , abolitionist politics .
As longtime activist Kate Jessica Raphael warns , we may expect to see municipalities across the U.S. co-opt the language of “ defund the police ” and weaken its message of shrinking the size and power of police to empower and increase funding to police through different avenues .
Indeed , the race @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has already begun , as activist Mariame Kaba and journalist Marissa Gira Grant point out .
It ’ s no mistake that the “ friendly ” police officers on our social media platforms look almost unrecognizable to the police we come face-to-face with at protests .
Visuals of charming officers offer breadcrumbs to community members as a conciliatory prize , blocking attempts to even address the institutional , individual and murderous conduct of all police departments across the U.S .

Part of the Series The Road to Abolition
As uprisings ignite across the United States in response to decades of racist and biased policing that exacerbates an unjust social order, police departments are going on the offensive. To complement nationwide violent tactics of unnecessary and excessive force roundly condemned by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, police departments have adopted a more subtle charm offensive.
Reports of police kneeling with protesters, for instance, have surfaced in numerous precincts and cities around the U.S.: from Oakland and Santa Cruz to Central New Jersey, Saint Paul and Ferguson. These reports are typically accompanied by a photograph of the kneeling officer, whose head droops in an apparent show of solidarity with protesters. But what’s in these photographs? Images alone, as any photographer knows, rarely tell a full truth. The late Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography that “photographs are a way of imprisoning reality,” meaning, as she argues earlier in the book, “photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one — and can help build a nascent one.” If we follow Sontag, it seems these images circulating through social media and cable news take a “moral position” often quite favorable to police: absolving police departments for the actions of their recalcitrant “few bad apples” (as many like to say). However, in multiple cases, activists and protesters have taken to Twitter to criticize these visuals of kneeling officers because when the cameras left, police redeployed in riot gear armed with tear gas canisters. In another case, police officers in Washington, D.C., dragged their colleague up to his feet after taking a knee in apparent solidarity with protesters.
The video of Ferguson Police Department officers kneeling raises similar red flags. Wasn’t this the same department that murdered the unarmed Michael Brown in 2014? That allowed a police dog to urinate on a teddy bear memorial for Brown before police ran a separate flower petal memorial over twice with squad cars? That bled the city’s residents dry and plundered municipal coffers to balance its budget? What’s the deal with the jarring incongruity? For a viewer, these facts raise a disturbing question about the “moral position” of the photographs of police kneeling: Was this all for optics?
Choosing between the stick of harsh repression and the carrot of vacuous charm, police have long tried to play both sides. They hedge their bets: exploiting photo ops with a child in one locale (Houston) at the same time as they mace a child in the face in another (Seattle). Recent events, however, have betrayed the motives behind this double-dealing.
Law enforcement agencies, as a general rule, tend to care about aesthetics more than they let on: how they look, how they dress, what military-influenced rank they achieve, and how hard they work to make law enforcement seem “cool.” Some of this aesthetic inclination has its roots in trainings that international and domestic militaries offer to U.S. police departments. During these trainings, police often learn “crowd dispersal” techniques alongside counterinsurgency methods meant to quell military campaigns by enemy forces and to win “hearts and minds” in an occupied territory. In practice, counterinsurgency — whether police- or military-led — does not limit itself to artillery or sorties. Indeed, according to scholar-activists Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore, “the most notable innovations in” urban policing models like Los Angeles’s Community Safety Partnership “directly incorporate up-to-date military counterinsurgency tactics”: co-opting women with high standing in communities and distributing desperately needed supplies to give policing a kinder, gentler sheen. All of this, Gilmore and Gilmore continue, is about mitigating “perceived bias” and shifting perceptions of biased police activity, not changing those biased activities themselves. Police seduce with the promise of “safety,” “security” and “aid” to the communities they serve but rarely make good on those promises. When brutal repression fails, which it so often does, a smiling Officer Friendly finds a latchkey to sneak through the back door of our “hearts and minds.”
This is textbook “cynical opportunism , ” in the words of political scientist George Ciccariello-Maher. As activists and their allies shine an unflattering spotlight on the everyday brutalities of policing and as international human rights organizations condemn U.S. police, departments across the country desperately grope in the dark for any footage, images or stories that they can offer as window dressing. But as young people and centrists see the realities on social media and educate themselves about police, this turns out to be quite a significant and difficult-to-surmount problem for officers in the almost 18,000 departments across the U.S. And few know bad optics quite like the police do. Tear gassing unarmed protesters who are airing their decades-long grievances against policing is bad optics. The national pattern of police targeting medics at protests is bad optics. The spree of officers in New Mexico, Seattle, San Francisco and elsewhere kneeling on necks after law enforcement officials proclaimed the technique illegal is bad optics. It’s bad optics to push elderly men in Salt Lake City and in Buffalo to the ground, the latter of whom lay on the ground concussed as police stood by. It’s all terribly bad optics for police who are already trying to ham-fistedly restore their rapidly crumbling legitimacy. But in each of these cases, police seem unperturbed by the horrific and lawless hooliganism of their peers.
In the eyes of the police, crowds of people — no matter how small or peaceful they may be — are disturbances and ought to be crushed.
Hewing to this line of “optics,” police will themselves to see differently than the rest of us. This is particularly evident in how police view ongoing protests: What are they seeing? The President of the Minneapolis police union Bob Kroll, for one, has referred to the unarmed, prone George Floyd as a “violent criminal” and to protesters showing solidarity with his and countless others’ deaths as part of a “terrorist movement.” Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Michael Moore, for another, blamed looters and Minnesota officers equally for Floyd’s death, even though looting began long after Floyd’s death: Floyd’s “death is on their [the looters’] hands, as much as it is those officers,” he stated. Since the object of policing is “order” — and not justice — this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. In the eyes of the police, crowds of people — no matter how small or peaceful they may be — are disturbances “always about to explode” into violence and, therefore, ought to be crushed, as scholars David Correia and Tyler Wall write.
Long before these uprisings took off, some officers made their thoughts even clearer. In the Frontline documentary, “Policing the Police,” professor and journalist Jelani Cobb interviews James Stewart, who was, at the time of filming, the president of Newark’s largest police union: the Fraternal Order of Police. When Cobb came to a question regarding the “prospects for reform” in corrupt police departments, Stewart responds affirmatively but quickly pivots toward an analysis of “where the problem started.” As he sees it: “there is an animosity or a lack of trust” from community members. “You know,” he continues, “as soon as there’s any sort of physical force exerted by a police officer, everybody’s got their cellphones out. You know, they want to catch us doing something wrong.” It’s a telling admission: implying citizens merely want to “catch” police red-handed, rather than admitting that these videos could function as a way to hold police accountable when they so seldom are.
Earlier in the segment, dripping with woe, Stewart bemoans criticisms of police conduct: “Somewhere along the line we have become the bad guy. Everybody’s against us,” admitting his Newark Police Department is under federal oversight but failing to explain why. (As it turns out, it was because “a lengthy probe by the Department of Justice found Newark officers frequently used excessive force and made unconstitutional street stops, engaged in rampant property theft and acted with little oversight” as David Porter reports.) Police become victims of violence and harm in this tortured logic, even as all signs point to them being perpetrators. As Stewart testifies, police imagine themselves as the victims of a conspiracy of unwarranted hatred of police, when it’s only ever those proverbial few bad apples.
Most police — and some news agencies for that matter — play down the reality that Floyd’s murder — the straw that broke the camel’s back — is only one of hundreds.
The “few bad apples” argument has been peddled day in and day out to again defend the indefensible: This time around, a white man in Minneapolis murdered an unarmed, subdued and compliant Black man by asphyxiation. This is a verified fact, as anyone who has seen the video of Floyd’s death can ascertain. But the Minneapolis Police Department has attempted to obfuscate this behind the medical language of an autopsy, which was used to protect officer Derek Chauvin by placing blame on Floyd for his own murder. (This victim-blaming follows in the footsteps of the LAPD, which, in response to a string of asphyxiation-related murders at the hands of officers in the 1970s and 1980s, blamed the Black body. Former Chief Daryl Gates in 1982 claimed that, “We may be finding that in some blacks when [the chokehold] is applied, the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do in normal people,” as The New York Times reported.) Time and again, police chiefs pluck rotten excuses out of thin air for those perennial “few bad apples” who somehow never seem to “spoil the barrel.”
Then there’s the problem of “the knee” itself. At its face, taking the knee is also an odd choice of showing solidarity with protesters, as it’s difficult to determine intentions: the knee taken against police brutality looks disturbingly similar to the knee that Chauvin selected as his weapon of choice in murdering George Floyd. There’s an unsettling irony here that police seem to not see.
In the media blitz surrounding protests, news outlets have been quite servile in pandering to police departments. Likewise, most police — and some news agencies for that matter — play down the reality that Floyd’s murder — the straw that broke the camel’s back — is only one of hundreds. Reporting from Oakland, California, offers a strong case study. In their often-obsequious reporting, outlets failed to remind viewers that in 2003, the “Oakland Police Department was placed under federal oversight for police misconduct and civil rights abuses,” as detailed in the Netflix documentary The Force. “They were mandated to reform the department,” and “after five chiefs, the reform process stalled and the department” was told it had to undergo major organizational shifts. That same year, the department paid $11 million in damages after more than 100 reports of misconduct, manufactured evidence, illegal arrest and iron-fisted enforcement swirled around a group of corrupt cops who called themselves the “Rough Riders.”
The long arm of federal oversight swooped in to ostensibly right these wrongs. Yet the Oakland Police Department (OPD) did not repent. While the department was under federal oversight, Oakland became known as what Ferguson is to many today: the epitome of racist policing. As “a legal advocate for victims of police abuse” told journalist Scott C. Johnson of Politico, Oakland’s Police Department “might just be ‘the worst department in the country.’”
Visuals of charming officers offer breadcrumbs to community members as a conciliatory prize, blocking attempts to even address the institutional murderous conduct of all police departments.
Still untreated, the rot spread. After 13 years under federal oversight, the OPD was found to have tampered with evidence in a 2016 case of officer-led statutory rape and human trafficking, in which an underage girl (alias “Celeste Guap”) was trafficked and raped by OPD officers. The Department’s own 252-page heavily redacted report found “sufficient evidence to determine that Smith [an OPD officer] committed attempted forcible sodomy.” The four involved officers were fired, seven were suspended and one committed suicide; the thinnest semblance of justice was nowhere served. Today, one page of the City of Oakland’s website reassures visitors to its site that “the Oakland Police Department wants to help people who are being trafficked.” “We rescue the victims and arrest the traffickers,” they write. “We team up with advocacy groups so that victims can get help.” One wonders what “Celeste Guap” would make of a partnership like this. Or, for that matter, sex workers who are often targets of police violence and are harmed by so-called anti-trafficking laws that place them in increased danger.
In response to this kind of charm offensive, “The Only Solution” sociologist Alex S. Vitale writes in The Nation (and others have argued elsewhere ) , “Is to Defund the Police.” But stories like Guap’s raise the specter of co-optation and deracination, uprooting the Black Lives Matter-backed campaign to defund the police and the #8ToAbolition campaign from their progressive, abolitionist politics. As longtime activist Kate Jessica Raphael warns, we may expect to see municipalities across the U.S. co-opt the language of “defund the police” and weaken its message of shrinking the size and power of police to empower and increase funding to police through different avenues. Indeed, the race to redefine “defund the police” has already begun, as activist Mariame Kaba and journalist Marissa Gira Grant point out.
It’s no mistake that the “friendly” police officers on our social media platforms look almost unrecognizable to the police we come face-to-face with at protests. Visuals of charming officers offer breadcrumbs to community members as a conciliatory prize, blocking attempts to even address the institutional, individual and murderous conduct of all police departments across the U.S.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
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truthout--2020-06-17--Bolton’s New Book Alleges Trump Asked China’s Xi to Help Him Win 2020 Election

According to a book written by former National Security Advisor John Bolton , set to be made public next week , President Donald Trump sought the help of China ’ s President Xi Jinping to benefit politically in this year ’ s presidential race .
Bolton makes the startling allegations in his book , The Room Where It Happened : A White House Memoir .
The alleged interaction between Xi and Trump took place at the Group of 20 Summit last year .
As Bolton tells it , Xi had complained to Trump about critics of China in the U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talking about a more specific group of people : Democrats .
That ’ s when the U.S. president tried to capitalize , according to Bolton .
Trump “ then , stunningly , turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election , alluding to China ’ s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns , pleading with Xi to ensure he ’ d win , ” the former national security advisor asserted in his book .
“ He stressed the importance of farmers , and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he was unable to print Trump ’ s exact words in the conversation because “ the government ’ s prepublication review process ” wouldn ’ t allow him to do so .
But saying so also implies that Bolton knows , word-for-word , how exactly the president had implored Xi to help him in the 2020 presidential race .
Though the book is set to be released soon , it may face legal problems in the next few days or so .
Trump ’ s legal team is reportedly attempting to either @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all , or , failing that , receiving monetary compensation from its sales .
Bolton ’ s assertions could have likely contributed to the case made against the president last year and earlier this year , when Democrats in Congress tried to impeach him over what appeared to be an attempt to get leaders from Ukraine to investigate his 2020 presidential election rival , Democrat Joe Biden .
House impeachment managers alleged that Trump refused to allow aid to go to Kiev unless President Volodymyr Zelensky announced an inquiry into Biden and his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Leaks from Bolton ’ s book in February seemed to verify the allegations being made by Democrats .
Bolton , however , refused to voluntarily testify and vowed to fight any subpoena attempts from Democrats to speak on the matter during the entirety of the impeachment process , which began last fall .
After the impeachment trial ended in February , resulting in Trump ’ s acquittal from a Republican-majority Senate , Bolton also claimed that his testimony wouldn ’ t have helped any .
“ I would bet you a dollar right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have made no difference to the ultimate outcome , ” he said at the time .
Bolton ’ s book appears to make many other scandalous claims .
The former national security adviser described Trump as “ erratic ” and “ stunningly uninformed ” on foreign policy issues .
For example , Bolton claimed that Trump didn ’ t know the United Kingdom was a nuclear power .
He also asked advisers whether Finland was a part of Russia or not .
Bolton wasn ’ t the only person who questioned Trump ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo handed Bolton a note during a 2018 summit between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un .
“ He is so full of shit , ” Pompeo ’ s message allegedly read .
There are additional statements in the book that suggest Trump sought to halt criminal investigations involving companies from other countries , including China and Turkey , to “ give personal favors to dictators he liked.
” Bolton also says in his book that Trump advised Xi to continue engaging in human rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Uyghurs , a primarily Muslim ethnic group from Northwestern China .
“ According to our interpreter , Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps , which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do , ” Bolton wrote .

Trump’s former national security adviser also claims that he endorsed Xi’s concentration camps for ethnic Uyghurs.
According to a book written by former National Security Advisor John Bolton, set to be made public next week, President Donald Trump sought the help of China’s President Xi Jinping to benefit politically in this year’s presidential race.
Bolton makes the startling allegations in his book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir. The alleged interaction between Xi and Trump took place at the Group of 20 Summit last year.
As Bolton tells it, Xi had complained to Trump about critics of China in the U.S. Trump, however, thought Xi was talking about a more specific group of people: Democrats. That’s when the U.S. president tried to capitalize, according to Bolton.
Trump “then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” the former national security advisor asserted in his book. “He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.”
Bolton then explains that he was unable to print Trump’s exact words in the conversation because “the government’s prepublication review process” wouldn’t allow him to do so. But saying so also implies that Bolton knows, word-for-word, how exactly the president had implored Xi to help him in the 2020 presidential race.
Though the book is set to be released soon, it may face legal problems in the next few days or so. Trump’s legal team is reportedly attempting to either block the book from being sold at all, or, failing that, receiving monetary compensation from its sales.
Bolton’s assertions could have likely contributed to the case made against the president last year and earlier this year, when Democrats in Congress tried to impeach him over what appeared to be an attempt to get leaders from Ukraine to investigate his 2020 presidential election rival, Democrat Joe Biden. House impeachment managers alleged that Trump refused to allow aid to go to Kiev unless President Volodymyr Zelensky announced an inquiry into Biden and his son’s dealings with Ukraine.
Leaks from Bolton’s book in February seemed to verify the allegations being made by Democrats.
Bolton, however, refused to voluntarily testify and vowed to fight any subpoena attempts from Democrats to speak on the matter during the entirety of the impeachment process, which began last fall. After the impeachment trial ended in February, resulting in Trump’s acquittal from a Republican-majority Senate, Bolton also claimed that his testimony wouldn’t have helped any.
“I would bet you a dollar right here and now, my testimony would have made no difference to the ultimate outcome,” he said at the time.
Bolton’s book appears to make many other scandalous claims. The former national security adviser described Trump as “erratic” and “stunningly uninformed” on foreign policy issues.
For example, Bolton claimed that Trump didn’t know the United Kingdom was a nuclear power. He also asked advisers whether Finland was a part of Russia or not.
Bolton wasn’t the only person who questioned Trump’s intelligence. According to the book, current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo handed Bolton a note during a 2018 summit between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. “He is so full of shit,” Pompeo’s message allegedly read.
There are additional statements in the book that suggest Trump sought to halt criminal investigations involving companies from other countries, including China and Turkey, to “give personal favors to dictators he liked.”
Bolton also says in his book that Trump advised Xi to continue engaging in human rights abuses, including constructing concentration camps for the Uyghurs, a primarily Muslim ethnic group from Northwestern China.
“According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do,” Bolton wrote.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


truthout--2020-06-17--Pelosi Pushes Rule Requiring Masks at Congressional Hearings

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is hoping to establish firm rules on wearing facial coverings in committee hearings , and giving the sergeant-at-arms the authority to remove from the chamber lawmakers who do not abide by the standards .
Late on Tuesday , Pelosi asked House committee chairs to tighten rules on masks in order to reduce the potential spread of coronavirus within the lawmaking body ’ s chambers .
Under the new rules , the sergeant-at-arms would be empowered to remove from the room anyone not complying with the requirement to wear a mask , including lawmakers .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ could result in committee members being denied the ability to speak in important meetings as well , an aide to Pelosi told The Washington Post .
“ Ultimately , Chairs will have the option of not recognizing Members in committee proceedings that fail to comply with the mask requirement , ” that aide said .
While many members of Congress and their staff have worn masks or facial coverings without being prompted , a small number of Republican lawmakers is refusing to do so .
Those not adhering to the standard so far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who has said the six-foot rule for social distancing established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) is adequate enough .
CDC guidelines , however , urge a six-foot distancing standard in addition to wearing a mask or facial covering , not one or the other .
Another Republican , Rep. Clay Higgins ( R-Louisiana ) , has previously asserted that wearing a mask is an affront to religious principles , and has wrongly suggested masks don ’ t even work in the first place .
“ Can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ re not stopping any sort of a virus , ” Higgins said late May .
“ It ’ s part of the dehumanization of the children of God .
You ’ re participating in it by wearing a mask.
” Higgins ’ s words , however , are not backed by science .
Republicans may be taking a cue from President Donald Trump , who has refused to wear a mask in public settings on a number of occasions .
Trump has also ridiculed political opponents for wearing a mask or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difficulty hearing a reporter ’ s question , for example , Trump derided the individual for wanting to keep their mask on .
“ Oh okay , you want to be politically correct , ” Trump said .
The debate on wearing masks in Congress this week comes as nine states across the country are seeing record-high increases in either their single-day coronavirus numbers or in their seven-day COVID-19 new case averages .
Among those states is Oklahoma , which will play host to Trump on Saturday at his first campaign rally since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make masks available for participants at that rally , there will be no requirement to wear a facial covering during the event .
Attendees will have to agree , however , not to hold the campaign liable if they contract coronavirus because of the event .
Close to 120,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 since the start of March , and more than 2.2 million have been infected so far this year .
One health model predicts that 85,000 more Americans could die of COVID-19 between now and October .

The new rules could allow the sergeant-at-arms to expel those not wearing masks from committee hearings.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is hoping to establish firm rules on wearing facial coverings in committee hearings, and giving the sergeant-at-arms the authority to remove from the chamber lawmakers who do not abide by the standards.
Late on Tuesday, Pelosi asked House committee chairs to tighten rules on masks in order to reduce the potential spread of coronavirus within the lawmaking body’s chambers. Under the new rules, the sergeant-at-arms would be empowered to remove from the room anyone not complying with the requirement to wear a mask, including lawmakers.
Refusal to adhere to the new rules could result in committee members being denied the ability to speak in important meetings as well, an aide to Pelosi told The Washington Post.
“Ultimately, Chairs will have the option of not recognizing Members in committee proceedings that fail to comply with the mask requirement,” that aide said.
While many members of Congress and their staff have worn masks or facial coverings without being prompted, a small number of Republican lawmakers is refusing to do so. Those not adhering to the standard so far include Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who has said the six-foot rule for social distancing established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is adequate enough.
CDC guidelines, however, urge a six-foot distancing standard in addition to wearing a mask or facial covering, not one or the other.
Another Republican, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-Louisiana), has previously asserted that wearing a mask is an affront to religious principles, and has wrongly suggested masks don’t even work in the first place.
“Can you smell through that mask? Then you’re not stopping any sort of a virus,” Higgins said late May. “It’s part of the dehumanization of the children of God. You’re participating in it by wearing a mask.”
Higgins’s words, however, are not backed by science.
Republicans may be taking a cue from President Donald Trump, who has refused to wear a mask in public settings on a number of occasions. Trump has also ridiculed political opponents for wearing a mask or facial coverings
In May when he had difficulty hearing a reporter’s question, for example, Trump derided the individual for wanting to keep their mask on. “Oh okay, you want to be politically correct,” Trump said.
The debate on wearing masks in Congress this week comes as nine states across the country are seeing record-high increases in either their single-day coronavirus numbers or in their seven-day COVID-19 new case averages. Among those states is Oklahoma, which will play host to Trump on Saturday at his first campaign rally since March.
Though the Trump campaign will make masks available for participants at that rally, there will be no requirement to wear a facial covering during the event. Attendees will have to agree, however, not to hold the campaign liable if they contract coronavirus because of the event.
Close to 120,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 since the start of March, and more than 2.2 million have been infected so far this year. One health model predicts that 85,000 more Americans could die of COVID-19 between now and October.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


truthout--2020-06-17--Post-COVID Economy May Have More Robots, Fewer Jobs and Intensified Surveillance

Spurred on by the coronavirus pandemic , global capitalism is on the brink of a new round of worldwide restructuring based on a much greater digitalization of the entire global economy and society .
This restructuring began in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession but the changing social and economic conditions brought about by the pandemic will vastly accelerate the process .
It is likely to heighten the concentration of capital worldwide and worsen social inequality .
Enabled by digital applications , the ruling groups — unless they are pushed to change course by mass pressure from below — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police state to contain the coming social upheavals .
The emerging post-pandemic capitalist paradigm is based on a digitalization and application of so-called fourth industrial revolution technologies .
This new wave of technological development is made possible by a more advanced information technology .
Led by artificial intelligence ( AI ) and the collection , processing and analysis of immense amounts of data ( “ big data ” ) , the emerging technologies include machine learning , automation and robotics , nano- and biotechnology , the Internet of Things ( IoT ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , new forms of energy storage and autonomous vehicles , among others .
Computer and information technology ( CIT ) , first introduced in the 1980s , provided the original basis for globalization .
It allowed the emerging transnational capitalist class , or TCC , to coordinate and synchronize global production and therefore to put into place a globally integrated production and financial system into which every country has become incorporated .
Just as the original introduction of CIT and the internet in the late 20th century profoundly transformed world capitalism , this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leading to a new round of worldwide restructuring that promises to have another transformative impact on the structures of the global economy , society and polity .
If the first generation of capitalist globalization from the 1980s involved the creation of a globally integrated production and financial system , the new wave of digitalization and the rise of platforms have facilitated since 2008 a very rapid transnationalization of digital-based services .
By 2017 , services accounted for some 70 percent of the total gross world product and included communications , informatics , digital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ services , professional and technical work , and a host of other non-tangible products such as film and music .
It is hard to underestimate just how rapid and extensive the current digital restructuring of the global economy and society is .
According to United Nations data , the “ sharing economy ” — that is , activity mediated by platforms — will surge from $ 14 billion in 2014 to $ 335 billion by 2025 .
Worldwide shipments of 3D printers more than doubled in 2016 , to over 450,000 , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end of 2020 .
The global value of e-commerce is estimated to have reached $ 29 trillion in 2017 , which is equivalent to 36 percent of global GDP in that year .
Digitally deliverable service exports amounted in 2018 to $ 2.9 trillion , or 50 percent of global services exports .
By 2019 , global internet traffic was 66 times the volume of the entire global internet traffic in 2005 , whereas global Internet Protocol ( IP ) traffic , a proxy for data flows , grew from about 100 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1992 to more than 45,000 GB per second in 2017 .
And yet the world is only in the early days of the data-driven economy ; by 2022 , global IP traffic is projected to reach 150,700 GB per second , fueled by more and more people coming online for the first time and by the expansion of the IoT .
The coronavirus pandemic has spotlighted how central digital services have become to the global economy .
But more than shine this spotlight , the pandemic and its aftermath , to the extent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be expected to result in a vast expansion of reduced-labor or laborless digital services , including all sorts of new telework arrangements , drone delivery , cash-free commerce , digitized finance ( or fintech ) , tracking and other forms of surveillance , automated medical and legal services , and remote teaching involving pre-recorded instruction .
The pandemic has boosted the efforts of the giant tech companies and their political agents to convert more and more areas of the economy into these new digital realms .
The giant tech companies have flourished during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essential to the pandemic economy , as hundreds of millions of workers worldwide moved to remote work at home or through enhanced platforms , or became engaged in digitally driven service work , and as in-person services were replaced by remote digital services .
The post-pandemic global economy will involve a more rapid and expansive application of digitalization to every aspect of global society , including war and repression .
New Capital Bloc Led by Tech , Finance and the Military-Industrial Complex Digitalization has been spurred on by the capitalist crisis .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the combustibility of a global economy that never fully recovered from the 2008 financial collapse and has been teetering on the brink of renewed crisis ever since .
But the underlying structural causes of the 2008 debacle , far from resolved , have been steadily aggravated .
Frenzied financial speculation , unsustainable debt , the plunder of public finance , overinflated tech stock , and state-organized militarized accumulation have kept the global economy sputtering along in recent years in the face of chronic stagnation and concealed its instability .
( Militarized accumulation refers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is , profit-making , through ever-more expansive systems of warfare , transnational social control and repression . )
There are three types of capitalist crises .
The first type is cyclical , or the business cycle , involving economic downturns or recessions approximately once a decade .
There were recessions in the early 1980s , the early 1990s and at the turn of the century .
The second type is structural and appears about once every 40 to 50 years , and the third is systemic , which I will refer to by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ structural or restructuring crises , because their resolution involves restructuring the capitalist system .
The restructuring crisis of the 1930s Great Depression was resolved through the rise of a new type of capitalism based on redistribution and state intervention to regulate the market , and led to the social welfare systems of the 20th century .
The next structural crisis hit in the 1970s and led to globalization and the rise of a TCC from the 1980s and on .
A new restructuring crisis began with the 2008 financial collapse .
Leading the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tech companies — among them Microsoft , Apple , Amazon , Tencent , Alibaba , Facebook and Google , and to which are now added Zoom and other companies boosted by the pandemic .
These companies have experienced astonishing growth over the past decade .
Apple and Microsoft registered an astounding market capitalization of $ 1.4 trillion each in 2020 , followed by Amazon with $ 1.04 trillion , Alphabet ( Google ’ s parent company ) with $ 1.03 trillion , Samsung with $ 983 billion , Facebook with $ 604 trillion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 600 billion and $ 500 billion , respectively .
To give an idea of just how rapidly these tech behemoths have grown , Google ’ s market capitalization went from under $ 200 billion at the end of 2008 to over $ 1 trillion at the start of 2020 , or a 500 percent increase .
Meanwhile , in just two years , from 2015 to 2017 , the combined value of all platform companies with a market capitalization of more than $ 100 million jumped by 67 percent , to more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of largely U.S.-based tech firms that generate , extract and process data have absorbed enormous amounts of cash from transnational investors from around the world who , desperate for new investment opportunities , have poured billions of dollars into the tech and platform giants as an outlet for their surplus accumulated capital .
Annual investment in CIT jumped from $ 17 billion in 1970 , to $ 65 billion in 1980 , then to $ 175 billion in 1990 , $ 465 billion in 2000 , and $ 654 billion in 2016 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 .
As capitalists invest these billions , the global banking and investment houses become interwoven with tech capital , as do businesses across the globe that are moving to cloud computing and AI .
By the second decade of the century , the global economy came to be characterized above all by the twin processes of digitalization and financialization .
The rise of the digital economy involves a fusion of Silicon Valley with transnational finance capital and the military-industrial-security complex , giving rise to a new bloc of capital that appears to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emerging post-pandemic paradigm .
This new bloc will emerge even more powerful than it was going into the health emergency , spurring a vast new centralization and concentration of capital on a global scale .
At the head of this bloc , the tech behemoths are larger financial entities than most countries in the world and are able to wield enormous influence over capitalist states .
New York Gov .
Andrew Cuomo showcased this emerging capital-state relation when , in early May , he appointed three tech billionaires — Eric Schmidt of Google @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Michael Bloomberg — to head up a Blue Ribbon Commission to come up with plans to outsource public schools , hospitals , policing and other public services to private tech companies .
Such “ public-private partnerships ” privatize to capital traditional state functions while converting public funds into corporate subsidies .
The third leg in this triangulated bloc of capital is the military-industrial-security complex .
As the tech industry emerged in the 1990s , it was conjoined to the military-industrial-security complex and the global police state .
Over the years , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ used by the U.S. Army in Iraq , hosted data for the CIA , indexed the National Security Agency ’ s vast intelligence databases , built military robots , co-launched a spy satellite with the Pentagon and leased its cloud computing platform to help police departments “ predict ” crime .
Amazon , Facebook , Microsoft and other tech giants are thoroughly intertwined with the military-industrial and security complex .
The rise of the digital economy blurs the boundaries between military and civilian sectors of the economy and brings together finance , military-industrial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of financial speculation and militarized accumulation .
Worldwide , total defense outlays grew by 50 percent from 2006 to 2015 , from $ 1.4 trillion to $ 2.03 trillion , although this figure does not take into account secret budgets , contingency operations and “ homeland security ” spending .
By 2018 , private military companies employed some 15 million people around the world , while another 20 million people worked in private security .
The new systems of warfare , social control and repression are driven by digital technology .
The market @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by digital technology runs into the hundreds of billions .
The global biometrics market , for instance , was expected to jump from its $ 15 billion value in 2015 to $ 35 billion by 2020 .
Crises provide transnational capital with the opportunity to restore profit levels by forcing greater productivity out of fewer workers .
The first wave of CIT in the latter decades of the 20th century triggered explosive growth in productivity and productive capacities , while the new digital technologies promise to multiply such capacities many times over .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ political economists , following Marx , refer to as the organic composition of capital , meaning that the portion of fixed capital in the form of machinery and technology tends to increase relative to variable capital in the form of labor .
In layman ’ s terms , digitalization greatly accelerates the process whereby machinery and technology replace human labor , thus expanding the ranks of those who are made surplus and marginalized .
One National Bureau of Economic Research report found that each new robot introduced in a locale results in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In 1990 , the top three carmakers in Detroit had a market capitalization of $ 36 billion and 1.2 million employees .
In 2014 , the top three firms in Silicon Valley , with a market capitalization of over $ 1 trillion , had only 137,000 employees .
This increase in the organic composition of capital aggravates overaccumulation and social polarization , which has reached unprecedented levels worldwide .
As is now well-known , just 1 percent of humanity owns over half of the world ’ s wealth and the top 20 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while the remaining 80 percent have to make do with just 5.5 percent .
The apologists of global capitalism claim that the digital economy will bring high-skilled , high-paid jobs and resolve problems of social polarization and stagnation .
Yet many so-called cognitive labor and gig workers face low wages , dull repetitive tasks and precariousness .
As “ big data ” captures data on knowledge-based occupations at the workplace and in the market and then converts it into algorithms , this labor could itself be replaced by AI , autonomous vehicles and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Digital-driven production ultimately seeks to achieve what the Nike Corporation refers to as “ engineering the labor out of the product.
” The end game in this process , although still far away , is laborless production .
A 2017 United Nations report estimated that tens if not hundreds of millions of jobs would disappear in the coming years as a result of digitalization .
As an example , the report estimated that more than 85 percent of retail workers in Indonesia and the Philippines were at risk .
The report also said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would accelerate a “ race to the bottom of working conditions with an increasing precarity.
” A series of International Labor Organization ( ILO ) reports documented these conditions .
A 1998 study found already in the late 20th century , some one-third of the global labor force was under- or unemployed .
The ILO then reported in 2011 that 1.53 billion workers around the world were in “ vulnerable ” employment arrangements , representing more than 50 percent of the global workforce .
Seven years later , in 2019 , it concluded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workers in the world “ experienced a lack of material well-being , economic security , equality opportunities or scope for human development.
” Even before the pandemic hit , automation was spreading from industry and finance to all branches of services , even to fast food and agriculture .
It is expected to eventually replace much professional work such as lawyers , financial analysts , doctors , journalists , accountants , insurance underwriters and librarians .
AI-driven technologies are at this time becoming more widely adopted worldwide as a result of the conditions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic allows the TCC to massively push forward capitalist restructuring that it could not previously accomplish because of resistance to the digital takeover .
With heightened digitalization brought about by the pandemic , there will be tens or even hundreds of millions who lost their jobs but will not be reabsorbed into the labor force as technology takes over their former tasks .
One University of Chicago study estimated that 42 percent of pandemic layoffs in the United States would result in permanent job loss .
Moreover , large corporations will snatch up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Capitalists will use this mass unemployment as a lever to intensify exploitation of those with a job , to heighten discipline over the global working class and to push surplus labor into greater marginality .
The pandemic lockdowns served as dry runs for how digitalization may allow the dominant groups to restructure space and to exercise greater control over the movement of labor .
Governments around the world decreed states of emergency and violently repressed those who violated stay-at-home orders .
The lockdowns may have been necessary from the perspective of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the TCC and capitalist states may more tightly control the distribution of labor power , especially surplus labor , by controlling movement and by locking labor into cyberspace and therefore making it disaggregated and isolated .
As new digital technologies expand the cognitive proletariat and the ranks of workers in the gig economy , they also allow for a stringent surveillance and control of this proletariat through cyberspace .
Capitalist states face spiraling crises of legitimacy after decades of hardship and social decay wrought by neoliberalism , aggravated now by these states ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the economic collapse .
The pandemic will leave in its wake more inequality , conflict , militarism and authoritarianism as social upheaval and civil strife escalate .
As the pandemic aggravates the structural crisis , the ruling groups will turn to expanding the global police state to contain mass discontent from below .
Well before the contagion , the agents of this emerging global police state had been developing new modalities of policing and repression made possible by applications of digitalization and fourth industrial revolution technologies .
There has been a rapid political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an insurgent far right and an insurgent left .
The crisis is animating far right and neo-fascist forces that have surged in many countries around the world and will now seek to capitalize politically on the health calamity .
But it is also rousing popular struggles from below , as we have seen in a wave of strikes and protests around the world .
Capitalist crises are times of intense social and class conflict .
Depending on how these struggles play out , structural crises may expand into the third type of crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the crisis must be resolved by moving beyond the existing socioeconomic system — in this case , capitalism .
Whether a structural crisis becomes a systemic one depends on a host of political and subjective factors that can not be predicted beforehand .
What is clear is that mass popular struggles against the depredations of global capitalism will now become conjoined with those around the fallout from the health emergency .
As the world emerges from the pandemic , it will be remade , for better or worse .
The battle is now @ @ @ @ @ @

Part of the Series Despair and Disparity: The Uneven Burdens of COVID-19
Spurred on by the coronavirus pandemic, global capitalism is on the brink of a new round of worldwide restructuring based on a much greater digitalization of the entire global economy and society. This restructuring began in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession but the changing social and economic conditions brought about by the pandemic will vastly accelerate the process. It is likely to heighten the concentration of capital worldwide and worsen social inequality. Enabled by digital applications, the ruling groups — unless they are pushed to change course by mass pressure from below — will turn to ratcheting up the global police state to contain the coming social upheavals.
The emerging post-pandemic capitalist paradigm is based on a digitalization and application of so-called fourth industrial revolution technologies. This new wave of technological development is made possible by a more advanced information technology. Led by artificial intelligence (AI) and the collection, processing and analysis of immense amounts of data (“big data”), the emerging technologies include machine learning, automation and robotics, nano- and biotechnology, the Internet of Things (IoT), quantum and cloud computing, 3D printing, new forms of energy storage and autonomous vehicles, among others.
Computer and information technology (CIT), first introduced in the 1980s, provided the original basis for globalization. It allowed the emerging transnational capitalist class, or TCC, to coordinate and synchronize global production and therefore to put into place a globally integrated production and financial system into which every country has become incorporated. Just as the original introduction of CIT and the internet in the late 20th century profoundly transformed world capitalism, this second generation of digital-based technologies is now leading to a new round of worldwide restructuring that promises to have another transformative impact on the structures of the global economy, society and polity.
If the first generation of capitalist globalization from the 1980s involved the creation of a globally integrated production and financial system, the new wave of digitalization and the rise of platforms have facilitated since 2008 a very rapid transnationalization of digital-based services. By 2017, services accounted for some 70 percent of the total gross world product and included communications, informatics, digital and platform technology, e-commerce, financial services, professional and technical work, and a host of other non-tangible products such as film and music.
It is hard to underestimate just how rapid and extensive the current digital restructuring of the global economy and society is. According to United Nations data, the “sharing economy” — that is, activity mediated by platforms — will surge from $14 billion in 2014 to $335 billion by 2025. Worldwide shipments of 3D printers more than doubled in 2016, to over 450,000, and were expected to reach 6.7 million by the end of 2020. The global value of e-commerce is estimated to have reached $29 trillion in 2017, which is equivalent to 36 percent of global GDP in that year. Digitally deliverable service exports amounted in 2018 to $2.9 trillion, or 50 percent of global services exports. By 2019, global internet traffic was 66 times the volume of the entire global internet traffic in 2005, whereas global Internet Protocol (IP) traffic, a proxy for data flows, grew from about 100 gigabytes (GB) per day in 1992 to more than 45,000 GB per second in 2017. And yet the world is only in the early days of the data-driven economy; by 2022, global IP traffic is projected to reach 150,700 GB per second, fueled by more and more people coming online for the first time and by the expansion of the IoT.
The coronavirus pandemic has spotlighted how central digital services have become to the global economy. But more than shine this spotlight, the pandemic and its aftermath, to the extent that it accelerates digital restructuring, can be expected to result in a vast expansion of reduced-labor or laborless digital services, including all sorts of new telework arrangements, drone delivery, cash-free commerce, digitized finance (or fintech), tracking and other forms of surveillance, automated medical and legal services, and remote teaching involving pre-recorded instruction. The pandemic has boosted the efforts of the giant tech companies and their political agents to convert more and more areas of the economy into these new digital realms.
The giant tech companies have flourished during the contagion, their digital services becoming essential to the pandemic economy, as hundreds of millions of workers worldwide moved to remote work at home or through enhanced platforms, or became engaged in digitally driven service work, and as in-person services were replaced by remote digital services. The post-pandemic global economy will involve a more rapid and expansive application of digitalization to every aspect of global society, including war and repression.
New Capital Bloc Led by Tech, Finance and the Military-Industrial Complex
Digitalization has been spurred on by the capitalist crisis. The coronavirus was but the spark that ignited the combustibility of a global economy that never fully recovered from the 2008 financial collapse and has been teetering on the brink of renewed crisis ever since. But the underlying structural causes of the 2008 debacle, far from resolved, have been steadily aggravated. Frenzied financial speculation, unsustainable debt, the plunder of public finance, overinflated tech stock, and state-organized militarized accumulation have kept the global economy sputtering along in recent years in the face of chronic stagnation and concealed its instability. (Militarized accumulation refers to the accumulation of capital — that is, profit-making, through ever-more expansive systems of warfare, transnational social control and repression.)
The post-pandemic global economy will involve a more rapid and expansive application of digitalization to every aspect of global society, including war and repression.
There are three types of capitalist crises. The first type is cyclical, or the business cycle, involving economic downturns or recessions approximately once a decade. There were recessions in the early 1980s, the early 1990s and at the turn of the century. The second type is structural and appears about once every 40 to 50 years, and the third is systemic, which I will refer to by way of conclusion. They are called structural or restructuring crises, because their resolution involves restructuring the capitalist system. The restructuring crisis of the 1930s Great Depression was resolved through the rise of a new type of capitalism based on redistribution and state intervention to regulate the market, and led to the social welfare systems of the 20th century. The next structural crisis hit in the 1970s and led to globalization and the rise of a TCC from the 1980s and on.
A new restructuring crisis began with the 2008 financial collapse. Leading the way in this restructuring were the giant tech companies — among them Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Tencent, Alibaba, Facebook and Google, and to which are now added Zoom and other companies boosted by the pandemic. These companies have experienced astonishing growth over the past decade. Apple and Microsoft registered an astounding market capitalization of $1.4 trillion each in 2020, followed by Amazon with $1.04 trillion, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) with $1.03 trillion, Samsung with $983 billion, Facebook with $604 trillion, and Alibaba and Tencent with some $600 billion and $500 billion, respectively. To give an idea of just how rapidly these tech behemoths have grown, Google’s market capitalization went from under $200 billion at the end of 2008 to over $1 trillion at the start of 2020, or a 500 percent increase. Meanwhile, in just two years, from 2015 to 2017, the combined value of all platform companies with a market capitalization of more than $100 million jumped by 67 percent, to more than $7 trillion.
A handful of largely U.S.-based tech firms that generate, extract and process data have absorbed enormous amounts of cash from transnational investors from around the world who, desperate for new investment opportunities, have poured billions of dollars into the tech and platform giants as an outlet for their surplus accumulated capital. Annual investment in CIT jumped from $17 billion in 1970, to $65 billion in 1980, then to $175 billion in 1990, $465 billion in 2000, and $654 billion in 2016, and then topped $800 billion in 2019. As capitalists invest these billions, the global banking and investment houses become interwoven with tech capital, as do businesses across the globe that are moving to cloud computing and AI. By the second decade of the century, the global economy came to be characterized above all by the twin processes of digitalization and financialization.
The rise of the digital economy involves a fusion of Silicon Valley with transnational finance capital and the military-industrial-security complex, giving rise to a new bloc of capital that appears to be at the very core of the emerging post-pandemic paradigm. This new bloc will emerge even more powerful than it was going into the health emergency, spurring a vast new centralization and concentration of capital on a global scale. At the head of this bloc, the tech behemoths are larger financial entities than most countries in the world and are able to wield enormous influence over capitalist states. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo showcased this emerging capital-state relation when, in early May, he appointed three tech billionaires — Eric Schmidt of Google; former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates; and Michael Bloomberg — to head up a Blue Ribbon Commission to come up with plans to outsource public schools, hospitals, policing and other public services to private tech companies. Such “public-private partnerships” privatize to capital traditional state functions while converting public funds into corporate subsidies.
The third leg in this triangulated bloc of capital is the military-industrial-security complex. As the tech industry emerged in the 1990s, it was conjoined to the military-industrial-security complex and the global police state. Over the years, for instance, Google has supplied mapping technology used by the U.S. Army in Iraq, hosted data for the CIA, indexed the National Security Agency’s vast intelligence databases, built military robots, co-launched a spy satellite with the Pentagon and leased its cloud computing platform to help police departments “predict” crime. Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and other tech giants are thoroughly intertwined with the military-industrial and security complex. The rise of the digital economy blurs the boundaries between military and civilian sectors of the economy and brings together finance, military-industrial and tech companies around a combined process of financial speculation and militarized accumulation.
Tech behemoths are larger financial entities than most countries in the world and are able to wield enormous influence over capitalist states.
Worldwide, total defense outlays grew by 50 percent from 2006 to 2015, from $1.4 trillion to $2.03 trillion, although this figure does not take into account secret budgets, contingency operations and “homeland security” spending. By 2018, private military companies employed some 15 million people around the world, while another 20 million people worked in private security. The new systems of warfare, social control and repression are driven by digital technology. The market for new social control systems made possible by digital technology runs into the hundreds of billions. The global biometrics market, for instance, was expected to jump from its $15 billion value in 2015 to $35 billion by 2020.
Laborless Production and Surplus Humanity
Crises provide transnational capital with the opportunity to restore profit levels by forcing greater productivity out of fewer workers. The first wave of CIT in the latter decades of the 20th century triggered explosive growth in productivity and productive capacities, while the new digital technologies promise to multiply such capacities many times over. Specifically, digitalization vastly increases what radical political economists, following Marx, refer to as the organic composition of capital, meaning that the portion of fixed capital in the form of machinery and technology tends to increase relative to variable capital in the form of labor.
In layman’s terms, digitalization greatly accelerates the process whereby machinery and technology replace human labor, thus expanding the ranks of those who are made surplus and marginalized. One National Bureau of Economic Research report found that each new robot introduced in a locale results in a loss of three to 5.6 jobs. In 1990, the top three carmakers in Detroit had a market capitalization of $36 billion and 1.2 million employees. In 2014, the top three firms in Silicon Valley, with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion, had only 137,000 employees. This increase in the organic composition of capital aggravates overaccumulation and social polarization, which has reached unprecedented levels worldwide. As is now well-known, just 1 percent of humanity owns over half of the world’s wealth and the top 20 percent own 94.5 percent of that wealth, while the remaining 80 percent have to make do with just 5.5 percent.
The apologists of global capitalism claim that the digital economy will bring high-skilled, high-paid jobs and resolve problems of social polarization and stagnation. Yet many so-called cognitive labor and gig workers face low wages, dull repetitive tasks and precariousness. As “big data” captures data on knowledge-based occupations at the workplace and in the market and then converts it into algorithms, this labor could itself be replaced by AI, autonomous vehicles and the other fourth industrial revolution technologies. Digital-driven production ultimately seeks to achieve what the Nike Corporation refers to as “engineering the labor out of the product.” The end game in this process, although still far away, is laborless production.
A 2017 United Nations report estimated that tens if not hundreds of millions of jobs would disappear in the coming years as a result of digitalization. As an example, the report estimated that more than 85 percent of retail workers in Indonesia and the Philippines were at risk. The report also said that the spread of online labor platforms would accelerate a “race to the bottom of working conditions with an increasing precarity.” A series of International Labor Organization (ILO) reports documented these conditions. A 1998 study found already in the late 20th century, some one-third of the global labor force was under- or unemployed. The ILO then reported in 2011 that 1.53 billion workers around the world were in “vulnerable” employment arrangements, representing more than 50 percent of the global workforce. Seven years later, in 2019, it concluded that a majority of the 3.5 billion workers in the world “experienced a lack of material well-being, economic security, equality opportunities or scope for human development.”
Crises provide transnational capital with the opportunity to restore profit levels by forcing greater productivity out of fewer workers.
Even before the pandemic hit, automation was spreading from industry and finance to all branches of services, even to fast food and agriculture. It is expected to eventually replace much professional work such as lawyers, financial analysts, doctors, journalists, accountants, insurance underwriters and librarians. AI-driven technologies are at this time becoming more widely adopted worldwide as a result of the conditions brought about by the contagion. The pandemic allows the TCC to massively push forward capitalist restructuring that it could not previously accomplish because of resistance to the digital takeover.
With heightened digitalization brought about by the pandemic, there will be tens or even hundreds of millions who lost their jobs but will not be reabsorbed into the labor force as technology takes over their former tasks. One University of Chicago study estimated that 42 percent of pandemic layoffs in the United States would result in permanent job loss. Moreover, large corporations will snatch up millions of small businesses forced into bankruptcy. Capitalists will use this mass unemployment as a lever to intensify exploitation of those with a job, to heighten discipline over the global working class and to push surplus labor into greater marginality.
The Coming Upheavals
The pandemic lockdowns served as dry runs for how digitalization may allow the dominant groups to restructure space and to exercise greater control over the movement of labor. Governments around the world decreed states of emergency and violently repressed those who violated stay-at-home orders. The lockdowns may have been necessary from the perspective of the health emergency. Yet they showcased how the TCC and capitalist states may more tightly control the distribution of labor power, especially surplus labor, by controlling movement and by locking labor into cyberspace and therefore making it disaggregated and isolated. As new digital technologies expand the cognitive proletariat and the ranks of workers in the gig economy, they also allow for a stringent surveillance and control of this proletariat through cyberspace.
Capitalist states face spiraling crises of legitimacy after decades of hardship and social decay wrought by neoliberalism, aggravated now by these states’ inability to manage the health emergency and the economic collapse. The pandemic will leave in its wake more inequality, conflict, militarism and authoritarianism as social upheaval and civil strife escalate. As the pandemic aggravates the structural crisis, the ruling groups will turn to expanding the global police state to contain mass discontent from below. Well before the contagion, the agents of this emerging global police state had been developing new modalities of policing and repression made possible by applications of digitalization and fourth industrial revolution technologies.
As the world emerges from the pandemic, it will be remade, for better or worse.
There has been a rapid political polarization in global society since 2008 between an insurgent far right and an insurgent left. The crisis is animating far right and neo-fascist forces that have surged in many countries around the world and will now seek to capitalize politically on the health calamity. But it is also rousing popular struggles from below, as we have seen in a wave of strikes and protests around the world. Capitalist crises are times of intense social and class conflict. Depending on how these struggles play out, structural crises may expand into the third type of crisis, a systemic one, meaning that the crisis must be resolved by moving beyond the existing socioeconomic system — in this case, capitalism.
Whether a structural crisis becomes a systemic one depends on a host of political and subjective factors that cannot be predicted beforehand. What is clear is that mass popular struggles against the depredations of global capitalism will now become conjoined with those around the fallout from the health emergency. As the world emerges from the pandemic, it will be remade, for better or worse. The battle is now underway for the post-pandemic world.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
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truthout--2020-06-17--It’s Trump vs. Bolton, and I’m Rooting for a Meteor

I thought it was over in September 2019 , when Donald Trump and his third national security adviser , the execrable John Bolton , got into a “ You ’ re Fired/I Quit !
” fight on the front page of all the papers .
“ Maybe he ’ s really gone now , ” I thought wistfully of Bolton , the war-humping neoconservative ghoul who has haunted U.S. foreign policy in one form or another since the Reagan administration , lo these 40 long years .
No such luck .
Now he has a book poised for release that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ details on the Ukraine debacle that he should have shared under oath before Rep. Adam Schiff ’ s impeachment hearings .
He didn ’ t , Trump was acquitted , and now the president has filed suit to upend Bolton ’ s publication party .
Of course , Trump is proceeding in perfect Trumpian style .
Block the book ’ s release outright ?
Nah , go for the loot instead .
“ The lawsuit filed on Tuesday gestured at blocking publication , but it seemed more squarely focused on seizing Mr. Bolton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York Times .
“ Filed against Mr. Bolton — not Simon & Schuster — it asked for the court to take control of the money he made from the book.
” Trump brought Bolton on in the first place for a variety of reasons , not the least of which was to show Fox News that he was a foreign policy tough guy .
Bolton has made a career out of promoting the killing of people in wars and other profitable enterprises — though he did avoid his own opportunity to see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he of course supported ) because he “ had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy.
” The friction began almost immediately , though for a time it seemed Bolton would get the war with Iran he has yearned for since before the Iran-Contra scandal , another lethal endeavor with his fingerprints on it .
Soon enough , however , it became clear to Bolton that Trump was unwilling to turn Tehran and Pyongyang into smoldering craters .
The falling out between them was as inevitable as the tide , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and retreated into ( alas ) temporary obscurity .
Bolton , like male pattern baldness , is incredibly difficult to be rid of .
He didn ’ t have an active hand in the foreign policy of the Obama administration , but he was there all the same .
His Project for a New American Century ( PNAC ) agenda , fully adopted by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney , turned the smoldering kindling of the Middle East into a pillar of fire that rained soot on Obama from the day he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Bolton wasn ’ t there , but yeah , he was there , and the dead piled up like cordwood .
Before Obama , there was Bush and WMD in Iraq , and Bolton ’ s tireless efforts to manipulate and obfuscate the weapons data so he could get the region-wide war he and his PNAC buddies had always wanted .
It was in this context that perhaps the most notorious Bolton story , until recently unreported in English , unfolded .
In his charge toward war in Iraq , Bolton sought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could credibly dispute his baseless WMD claims .
One such was José Bustani , a Brazilian diplomat who was head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons ( OPCW ) , a 145-nation body dedicated to thwarting the acquisition and spread of such deadly weapons .
Bustani was widely respected , and had just been unanimously re-elected to his post when Bolton came calling .
Bustani was not buying what the Bush administration was peddling on Iraq , so Bolton arrived at OPCW headquarters in the Hague in March 2002 with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detailed report by The Intercept , Bolton told Bustani , “ Cheney wants you out .
We can ’ t accept your management style .
You have 24 hours to leave the organization , and if you don ’ t comply with this decision by Washington , we have ways to retaliate against you .
We know where your kids live .
You have two sons in New York.
” So , yeah , let ’ s all line up to buy a book written by that guy .
Few thought anyone would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Henry Kissinger a run for its money , but here we are .
In the U.S. , war criminals write books , go on television and never see the inside of a courtroom .
Bolton continues the vicious tradition .
In April of 2005 , former State Department intelligence chief Carl Ford told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Bolton was “ a quintessential kiss-up , kick-down kind of guy .
He ’ s got a bigger kick , and it gets bigger and stronger the further down the bureaucracy he ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I don ’ t have any other example to give you of someone who acts this way.
” That about sums it up .
Now , Bolton wants to kick Trump while he ’ s down , and Trump is kicking back by trying to grab Bolton ’ s money .
Two of the worst people ever to foul the skin of the Earth are at each other ’ s throats , and all I want for Christmas is a meteor to make it stop .
There is a line credited to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you wait by the river long enough , the bodies of your enemies will float by .
”

Sun Tzu said, “If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.” I’m still waiting.
I thought it was over in September 2019, when Donald Trump and his third national security adviser, the execrable John Bolton, got into a “You’re Fired/I Quit!” fight on the front page of all the papers. “Maybe he’s really gone now,” I thought wistfully of Bolton, the war-humping neoconservative ghoul who has haunted U.S. foreign policy in one form or another since the Reagan administration, lo these 40 long years.
No such luck. Now he has a book poised for release that is allegedly filled with all the scurrilous details on the Ukraine debacle that he should have shared under oath before Rep. Adam Schiff’s impeachment hearings. He didn’t, Trump was acquitted, and now the president has filed suit to upend Bolton’s publication party.
Of course, Trump is proceeding in perfect Trumpian style. Block the book’s release outright? Nah, go for the loot instead. “The lawsuit filed on Tuesday gestured at blocking publication, but it seemed more squarely focused on seizing Mr. Bolton’s profits,” reports The New York Times. “Filed against Mr. Bolton — not Simon & Schuster — it asked for the court to take control of the money he made from the book.”
As I said: Perfect.
Trump brought Bolton on in the first place for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was to show Fox News that he was a foreign policy tough guy. Bolton has made a career out of promoting the killing of people in wars and other profitable enterprises — though he did avoid his own opportunity to see war first-hand in Vietnam (a conflict he of course supported) because he “had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy.”
The friction began almost immediately, though for a time it seemed Bolton would get the war with Iran he has yearned for since before the Iran-Contra scandal, another lethal endeavor with his fingerprints on it. Soon enough, however, it became clear to Bolton that Trump was unwilling to turn Tehran and Pyongyang into smoldering craters. The falling out between them was as inevitable as the tide, and Bolton took his notoriously copious notes and retreated into (alas) temporary obscurity.
Bolton, like male pattern baldness, is incredibly difficult to be rid of. He didn’t have an active hand in the foreign policy of the Obama administration, but he was there all the same. His Project for a New American Century (PNAC) agenda, fully adopted by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, turned the smoldering kindling of the Middle East into a pillar of fire that rained soot on Obama from the day he took office to the day he left. Bolton wasn’t there, but yeah, he was there, and the dead piled up like cordwood.
Before Obama, there was Bush and WMD in Iraq, and Bolton’s tireless efforts to manipulate and obfuscate the weapons data so he could get the region-wide war he and his PNAC buddies had always wanted. It was in this context that perhaps the most notorious Bolton story, until recently unreported in English, unfolded.
Trump is proceeding in perfect Trumpian style. Block the book’s release outright? Nah, go for the loot instead.
In his charge toward war in Iraq, Bolton sought to clear the field of those who could credibly dispute his baseless WMD claims. One such was José Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat who was head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a 145-nation body dedicated to thwarting the acquisition and spread of such deadly weapons. Bustani was widely respected, and had just been unanimously re-elected to his post when Bolton came calling.
Bustani was not buying what the Bush administration was peddling on Iraq, so Bolton arrived at OPCW headquarters in the Hague in March 2002 with a pointed message. According to a detailed report by The Intercept, Bolton told Bustani, “Cheney wants you out. We can’t accept your management style. You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you. We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York.”
So, yeah, let’s all line up to buy a book written by that guy. Few thought anyone would come along to give the rampant bloodlust of Henry Kissinger a run for its money, but here we are. In the U.S., war criminals write books, go on television and never see the inside of a courtroom. Bolton continues the vicious tradition.
In the U.S., war criminals write books, go on television and never see the inside of a courtroom. Bolton continues the vicious tradition.
In April of 2005, former State Department intelligence chief Carl Ford told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Bolton was “a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down kind of guy. He’s got a bigger kick, and it gets bigger and stronger the further down the bureaucracy he’s kicking. And he stands out. I don’t have any other example to give you of someone who acts this way.”
That about sums it up. Now, Bolton wants to kick Trump while he’s down, and Trump is kicking back by trying to grab Bolton’s money. Two of the worst people ever to foul the skin of the Earth are at each other’s throats, and all I want for Christmas is a meteor to make it stop.
There is a line credited to Sun Tzu that reads, “If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”
I’m still waiting.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.