DEEP STATE

PHILIP GIRALDI—The most recent “former intelligence agents’” blast against Trump appeared in the Business Insider last month in an article entitled “US spies say Trump’s G7 performance suggests he’s either a ‘Russian asset’ or a ‘useful idiot’ for Putin.” The article cites a number of former government officials, including several from the CIA and FBI, who claimed that Trump’s participation at the recent G7 summit in Biarritz France was marked by pandering to Putin and the Kremlin’s interests, including a push to re-include Russia in the G-7, from which it was expelled after the annexation of Crimea.

PATRICE GREANVILLE—If nothing else I found this episode interesting because it shows how much sharper the mind of a genuine radical is, when compared to that of even a bright semi-establshmentarian liberal, like Taibbi. Let us recall that while Taibbi can be at times a very fine jornalist, he is still politically far more a temperamental rebel, a bourgeois “enfant terrible” than a genuine left social analyst. In that sense he remains ensconced in the old journo illusion that more facts assure a better grasp of the subject, forgetting that this is also a sure formula to miss the forest for the trees, and that context, the historical, cultural and socioeconomic and political contexts of anything being reported is the guarantor of clarity and public mobilisation.

JIMMY DORE—LEE CAMP— The two activists discuss how Facebook and other social media giants are trying to strangle free voices telling it like it is by blocking their communications with their followers and also aggressively demonitising their sites. Their main offfence is of course that Camp and Dore are antiwar, and anti-capitalism. Lee Camp accurately describes the situation as a drip drip approach to the strangling of free speech. It reminds us of the legendary frog in the pot, who is boiled to death so slowly he never realises he must jump out immediately to avoid certain death. As stated in our pages many times and seen on similar anti-establishment orgs, the corporate system, like ghouls scared of the daylight, is frightened by truth. The water keeps getting hotter and hotter in the pot, but the animals are not taling remedial action.

RAINER SHEA—Despite the vague claims that China is suppressing “democracy,” the reality is that the problems in Hong Kong are due not to too much Beijing influence in the island but too little. The island’s government is run by a capitalist kleptocratic oligarchy that’s carried out damaging policies like the deliberate increases in real estate prices, and there’s no substance to the claim that China is in any way exerting its influence to make life worse for Hong Kong’s residents.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—The word “conspire” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement”. No sane person would deny that this is a thing that happens, nor that this is likely a thing that happens to some extent among the powerful in their own nation. This by itself is a theory about conspiracy per definition, and it accurately applies to pretty much everyone. Since it applies to pretty much everyone, the label is essentially meaningless, either as a pejorative or as anything else.