The Digger

By now, the response to such a headline: what else is new?! Two paragraphs deep, however, the lede: " According to  strategy documents obtained   by   The Intercept   and the watchdog group Documented, the private healthcare industry is working aggressively alongside corporate Democrats to spread   anti-single payer propaganda   and "minimize the potential" for Medicare for All as an alternative to the current for-profit status quo. Folks at the  @theintercept  got their hands on some documents that show how private insurers intend to join with centrists who want to confuse what single-payer and, specifically, what Medicare for All mean  https://t.co/fyYGYv7g9l   pic.twitter.com/y5t4CkiRGB — Chris Middleman (@_Middleman)  November 20, 2018 Directed by former Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton staffers and leading insurance industry lobbyists, an alliance called the Partnership for America's Health Care Future worked h...

Excerpts: " On Tuesday, 11 December, the U.S. House of Representatives voted  unanimously (no member objected) , by  voice vote  — unrecorded so that nobody can subsequently be blamed for anything — that President Donald Trump  should  impose penalties, which could amount to billions of dollars, against any EU-based corporation that participates with Russia in Russia’s Nord Stream II Pipeline to supply gas to Europe. This “Resolution,”  H.Res.1035 , is titled “Expressing opposition to the completion of Nord Stream II, and for other purposes,” and it closes by asserting that the U.S. House of Representatives “supports the imposition of sanctions with respect to Nord Stream II under section 232 of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.” With no member objecting, the U.S. House thereby warns corporations to cease doing business with Russia, because the U.S. Government is determined that any such business will be terminated and will mayb...

Break out the Moet. Pop the cork!

Excerpt: "Republicans: The President Frames the Debate On the Republican side, Trump has split conservatives into two camps. The status quo camp — perhaps better described as “status quo ante” — remains staunchly committed to the open internationalism and muscular American leadership of the Reagan era. Rooted in a firm belief in American exceptionalism, this approach emphasizes the defense of democracy and spread of American values. [...]  At present, the president and his allies have the momentum in the battle to define conservative foreign policy. He may have failed to transform American foreign policy completely in his first two years in office, but there is no doubt that he has  changed the terms of debate  within conservative circles. Indeed, Trump’s electoral success drew our attention to the fact that  many voters believe  America’s traditional approach to foreign policy has not worked for them. [...] Democrats: In Search of a Strong Opposit...

Link:  A Movement With a Future Excerpt: "Contradictions Among the “Gilets Jaunes” People One of the singularities of this movement is that it raises the question of power head-on. “Macron resign!” is a unanimous slogan that towers above all others. But the social content of this demand remains indefinite. A battle for this is being played out on social media, in speeches, on yellow sweaters, on posters, on walls. This is obviously a major difficulty. In this movement, left- and right-wing emotions coexist in great confusion — a large mass of people who are not very politicized, anticapitalist activists, and fascists. Besides, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the accession to power of Bolsonaro in Brazil, of the M5S-Lega alliance in Italy, and even of Trump in the United States, were all to varying degrees examples of social mobilization with an initially indefinite content: against the rise in bus fares in Brazil, against corruption and taxes considered unfair i...

Link:    Israelgate? As Russia probe runs dry, Mueller may turn to Middle East to pursue Trump ‘collusion’ Excerpt:  "Special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly preparing to shift the focus of the interminable Russiagate investigation to the Middle East, where at least three countries may have tried their hands at “election meddling.” Claiming indictments will start dropping in early 2019, sources close to the matter say that Mueller’s team has been discussing the possibility of filing charges pertaining to election meddling by Israeli, Emirati, and Saudi nationals. These well-connected figures not only offered US President Donald Trump assistance on his way to the White House – a report by the Daily Beast claims – they also tried to meddle in policies once he was there..."

Link:   Green New Deal Advocates Should Address Militarism  — by Medea Benjamin, Alice Slater Excerpt: " Where is the call for the New Peace Deal that would free up hundreds of billions from the overblown military budget to invest in green infrastructure? Where is the call to close a majority of our nation’s over 800 military bases overseas, bases that are relics of World War II and are basically useless for military purposes? Where is the call for seriously addressing the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons? [...] Environmentalists need to contest the Pentagon’s staggering global footprint. The US military is the world’s largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels and the largest source of greenhouse gasses, contributing about 5 percent of global warming emissions. Almost 900 of the EPA’s 1,300 Superfund sites are abandoned military bases, weapons-production facilities or weapons-testing sites. The former Hanford nuclear weapons facility in Washingto...

Link:   The Abolition of War Requires New Thoughts, Words, and Actions Excerpts: "Across the political spectrum the grandest remaining acceptable form of bigotry is that which considers 96% of humanity to be virtually worthless in comparison with the other 4%. Two weeks ago Senator Elizabeth Warren claimed the war on Iraq had killed 6 thousand people. Of course there are well the over 1 million, possibly 2 million, people who lived there who also died, and we have nothing against them, but they aren’t, you know, people, you know, wink wink... [...] I recently wrote a letter to Senator Bernie Sanders asking him to take on militarism in a serious way. I asked 100 scholars and activists to sign it at first, and many thousands have signed it since. Today, World BEYOND War, RootsAction.org, and CODE PINK launched a petition to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, asking for her Green New Deal to acknowledge the existence of the U.S. military both as a destructive force to scale back t...

Link:   Clinton Foundation Whistleblowers Testify: "It Operated As An Unregistered Foreign Agent"  Excerpt: "Moynihan stated “Foreign agent,” as he began to read from a long list of violations discovered during the course of their investigation. The Clinton Foundation “began acting as an agent of foreign governments ‘early in its life’ and throughout its existence. As such, the foundation should’ve registered under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act),”  he said. “Ultimately, the Foundation and its auditors conceded in formal submissions that it did operate as a (foreign) agent,  therefore the foundation is not entitled to its 501c3 tax exempt privileges as outlined in IRS 170 (c)2. ” Doyle, who was also outlining a litany of violations by the foundation, noted that currently there are approximately 1.75 million nonprofits in the United states that annually generate nearly 2 trillion dollars, which is 9 percent of the U.S. GDP. “ Whose mindi...

Link:   SOTT: Time's Person of the Year Hypocrisy Excerpt: "Jamal Khashoggi  was a posthumous honoree, a longtime Saudi insider/turned critic, a neocon/CIA-connected Washington Post columnist – recognized solely for the international turmoil over his murder. Fiction substitutes for vital facts in the mainstream, news carefully filtered, dissent marginalized. Supporting powerful interests substitutes for full and accurate reporting on issues mattering most. Wars of aggression are called liberating ones. Social justice, human and civil rights are eroding for our own good. Patriotism means going along with government lawlessness – internally and abroad."

Link:   The Broken Chessboard: Brzezinski Gives Up on Empire  — by Mike Whitney Excerpt: "Unfortunately, Brzezinski’s more cautious approach is not likely to be followed by presidential-favorite Hillary Clinton who is a firm believer in imperial expansion through force of arms. It was Clinton who first introduced “pivot” to the strategic lexicon in a speech she gave in 2010 titled “America’s Pacific Century”. Here’s an excerpt from the speech that appeared in  Foreign Policy  magazine: “As the war in Iraq winds down and America begins to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, the United States stands at a pivot point. Over the last 10 years, we have allocated immense resources to those two theaters. In the next 10 years, we need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy, so that we put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership, secure our interests, and advance our values. One of the most important tasks of Ameri...

Link:   Why We Can't Have Nice Things -- Like A Fighting Green Party   — by Bruce Dixon “ I never wanted to be one of those Goldilocks socialists, for whom everything is too hot, too cold, too lumpy or too smooth to be worthy of anything but withering criticism. I’m past 65 and fast running out of time waiting for Red Moses to come down the mountain with those stone tablets and present us with a ready-made socialist party of labor and its allied social and economic organizations for us to climb aboard and ride...” Excerpt: "Fourth, in place of political accountability and democracy the GP has substituted a literal forest of rules, bylaws, policies and procedures which serve to protect its leaders from internal democracy, and from being held responsible for the sorry state of the GP. Fifth, many Greens are confused about the differences between political campaigns and political parties. This is why some other activists justifiably deride Greens as those fo...

Link:   MoA - British Spies Infiltrated Bernie Sanders' Campaign? "It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, “Corbyn and Sanders supporting” Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, “Cold War Then and Now”, for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely  unbalanced panel  of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia." Excerpt: "The Integrity Initiative, a British pseudo-NGO tasked with running anti-Russian propaganda operation, was recently exposed. Further digging into it revealed a much wider operation. It seems to involve a mole British spies inserted into the Bernie Sanders campaign. Three weeks ago internal budget proposals and member lists of the Integrity Initiative were posted anonymously on some website. We discussed those in detail under the headline:  British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns : ...

Link:  ROAR Magazine   — by Jerome Roos "… the most beautiful of all doubts Is when the downtrodden and despondent raise their heads and Stop believing in the strength Of their oppressors." - Bertold Brecht Excerpts: "Four weeks in, the uprising also continues to confound mainstream journalists and experts. “The gilets jaunes have blown up the old political categories,” one French media activist told ROAR on Saturday night, after a long day of riots in the capital. “They reject all political leaders, all political parties and any form of political mediation. No one really knows how to confront or deal with this movement — not the media, not the government, nor anyone else. What we are witnessing is unprecedented in French history.” While the outcome of these dramatic developments remains uncertain, it is clear that France is currently living through a rupture of historic proportions, taking the country onto uncharted terrain. For the left, the emerging scenari...

Link:  It is imperative to construct a 5th International of workers and peoples  — by Samir Amin "We are now in the phase of the ‘autumn of capitalism’ without this being strengthened by the emergence of ‘the people’s spring’ and a socialist perspective. The possibility of substantial progressive reforms of capitalism in its current stage is only an illusion. There is no alternative other than that enabled by a renewal of the international radical left, capable of carrying out – and not just imagining – socialist advances. It is necessary to end crisis-ridden capitalism rather than try to end the crisis of capitalism." Excerpt:  " i)Contemporary capitalism is presented as being ‘open’ to criticism and reform, as innovative and flexible.  Some voices claim to put an end to the abuses of its uncontrolled finance and the permanent austerity policies that accompany it – and thus ‘save capitalism’.  But such calls will remain in vain as present practice...

Link:  ‘Full Extent’ of Russian Meddling on Google in 2016? $4,700 Spent on Ads (VIDEO) "Whenever Russiagate peddlers are confronted w/ the actual facts, it doesn't go so well. Here's @ RepJerryNadler asking Google CEO Sundar Pichai about "the full extent" of Russian meddling activity on its platforms in 2016. The answer: Russian-linked accounts spent $4,700 on ads." — Aaron Maté

Link:  Holland Heats Up, Belgium Burns As French Yellow Vest Protests Spread Across Europe Excerpt: "So Why Are The Protests Taking Place In Belgium? France 24 summed up  a number of Belgian economic grievances when it writes, The demonstrations in both countries come from the same sense of struggling to make ends meet every month. It began, in both countries, with the government increasing the cost of fuel.  Belgians, for instance, pay the highest state taxes on diesel in Europe . The French government backed down on the proposed fuel tax increase, and Belgian ministers did the same, announcing the fuel prices would not be index-linked from 2019. But in both countries, the protests have continued. ... According to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical body,  tax-to-GDP ratio rose across Europe in 2017 . France tops the list, with tax revenue accounting for 48.4% of GDP, and Belgium follows close behind with a tax-to-GDP ratio of 47.3%. ... E...

Link:   The End of the Weekly Standard  — by Justin Raimondo Excerpt:  "The rumored demise of the  Weekly Standard  is yet another of Donald J. Trump’s achievements that will go uncelebrated by his liberal enemies: indeed,  they  are even  now  mourning the death of the neoconservative flagship. [...] Whither the neocons? A long time ago –  1999!  —  I predicted that they would abandon the GOP and go back to where they came from—the left, and the Democratic party. That proved to be correct, but this time around I think I’ll just wait and see what transpires – because, after all, where else can they go after this?"

Link:   USA – The World’s Invasion Nation   — by  Eric Zuesse Excerpt: "On November 29th, Gallup headlined  “Democrats Lead Surge in Belief US Should Be World Leader”  and reported that “Three-fourths (75%) of Americans today think the United States has ‘a special responsibility to be the leading nation in world affairs,’ up from 66% in 2010. The surge is driven by Democrats, whose belief in this idea has increased from 61% eight years ago to 81% now.” This finding comes even after the lie-based and catastrophic US invasions of Iraq in 2003, and of Libya in 2011 (and of so many others, such as Afghanistan, where the US and Sauds  created the Taliban  in 1979). Americans — now even increasingly — want ‘their’ (which is actually  America’s billionaires’)  Government to be virtually the world’s government, policing the world. They want this nation’s Government to be determining what international laws will be enforced around the ...

Link:   On Israel-Palestine, Newly Elected Progressives Vary in Willingness to Walk the Walk  — by Whitney Webb "The temptation of political expediency and help from powerful special-interest lobbies often prove too much for many candidates turned members of Congress." Excerpt: " However, across the board, following their primaries, the rhetoric from these “progressives”  began to soften , sparking concern that statements of pro-Palestinian solidarity were soon to become a thing of the past as these candidates transitioned from progressive primary challengers to candidates for the establishment Democratic Party. Indeed,  Omar ,  Tlaib , and Ocasio-Cortez all seemed to distance themselves from their past comments by backing a two-state solution and distancing themselves from the non-violent Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement. While the post-primary changes sparked concern that pro-Palestine comments would ultimately disappear fro...