The Post-Partisan Emporium

Never forget the Pentagon Papers & the importance of brave resistance now Mickey Z. “The Pentagon Papers are mesmerizing, not as documentation of the history of the U.S. war in Indochina, but as insight into the minds of the men who planned and executed it.” (Arundhati Roy) On June 13, 1971, the  New York Times  published an article by Neil Sheehan called, “Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U.S. Involvement.” It was the first installment of a 7000-page document that came to be forever known as the “Pentagon Papers.”  ( Can you imagine a corporate media outlet doing something like this today? ) How important was the public airing of a secret government study of decision-making about the Vietnam War? None other than Henry Kissinger labeled the man who leaked that study — Daniel Ellsberg — “the most dangerous man in America.”  (Projection much?) Author H. Bruce Franklin called Ellsberg, “That young man with boundless promise who graduated t...

The Monopoly - Labor "Let It Rot" Death Spiral Charles Hugh Smith The only rational response to this reality is to  opt out, lay flat and let it rot. In my previous post,  The Bubble Economy's Credit-Asset Death Spiral ,  I described the self-reinforcing feedback of expanding credit and soaring asset valuations  and how the only possible result of this  financial perpetual motion machine  was a death spiral of collapsing debt service, collateral and credit impulse. But this didn't exhaust the destructive dynamics of this  self-reinforcing wealth-creation machine for the few  who own the vast majority of the assets.  As longtime correspondent T.D. explains, this concentration of the benefits of financialization in the hands of the few also concentrates political power and the wealth to distort every function of the economy to enrich the few at the expense of the many. This concentration of wealth and corruption isn't cost-free.  As I've d...

The Tool of Tools James Howard Kunstler “The DNC and Biden Team knew they had friends at Twitter who would do their bidding during the election. And Twitter lied to the FEC about that influence…. But that’s just at the surface….” —TechnoFog on Substack James A. Baker         At what point in his arduous take-over of Twitter did Elon Musk realize that the package came with a joker in the deck: James A. Baker, formerly general counsel of the FBI? Did he wonder:  what is  this  guy doing here ? Were there any conversations between the two? Or did Mr. Musk just quietly observe his presence at a remove in nervous wonder, as one might, say, upon discovering a scorpion in the corner of his hotel room?     Mr. Baker, you understand, was notoriously at the center of the FBI’s FISA court fuckery that got the ball rolling in the Crossfire Hurricane operation, Act One of RussiaGate, as well as the Alpha Bank caper concocted by Hillary Clin...