The Digger

First Posted December 30, 2014 March 28, 2019 " Information Clearing House "   -  " - Some people enjoy having the Big Picture laid out in front of them—the biggest possible—on what is happening in the world at large, and I am happy to oblige. The largest development of 2014 is, very broadly, this: the Anglo-imperialists are finally being forced out of Eurasia. How can we tell? Well, here is the Big Picture—the biggest I could find. I found it thanks to  Nikolai Starikov  and  a recent article of his. Now, let's first define our terms. By Anglo-imperialists I mean the combination of Britain and the United States. The latter took over for the former as it failed, turning it into a protectorate. Now the latter is failing too, and there are no new up-and-coming Anglo-imperialists to take over for it. But throughout this process their common playbook had remained the same: pseudoliberal pseudocapitalism for the insiders and military domination and economic exploit...

A humorous take on all this nonsense from James Corbett.  Thanks to Sharon Marlowe for bringing it to our attention.

Bill Martin’s latest article on Counterpunch,  "Watershed Moment on the Mall," revisits the Washington Square/Covington Catholic schoolboys incident. Oh that kerfuffle again? Yes, that again. Another long, sprawling piece in which Martin again voices his problems with what he calls the IdPol Left (that is, the identity politics left) as seen through the reaction to that little incident. I put up his previous article, "The Fourth Hypothesis: the Present Juncture of the Trump Clarification and the Watershed Moment on the Washington Mall," last February , offering my opinions and pasting in a healthy excerpt that explains why he sees the IdPol Left failing. Essentially, his critique is this: The horrible attacks on a smiling male teenager, Nicholas Sandmannn, speak to the essence of the Left now—that it has no ideas, that it has subordinated itself completely to anti-universalist and anti-working class Identity Politics, that its “methods” are snark, name-callin...

Here’s something that might surprise you. In the last few days, three separate surveys have been released showing that a majority (or near-majority) of Americans still think Donald Trump colluded with Russia. As you know, this does not square with the findings of the Mueller Report which were released (in part) over the weekend by Attorney General William Barr. The critical passage we are referring to is this: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? No conspiracy, no coordination, no collusion. End of story, right? Wrong. For some reason, the probe has failed to change people’s minds even though the “investigation employed 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, issued 2,800 subpoenas, executed 500 search warrants, and took 2 years. And even though special counsel Robert Mueller is widely regarded as a first-rate prosecutor and a man ...

This is viewer supported news. Please do your part today. DONATE More from this Interview Part 1: U.N. Finds Israel Intentionally Shot Children, Journalists & the Disabled During Gaza Protests Part 2: It Is Time to Indict Israel: Norman Finkelstein on Growing Push for  ICC  to File War Crimes Charges TOPICS Gaza GUESTS Norman Finkelstein scholar and author of  Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom . Sara Hossain member of the U.N. independent commission that led the Gaza investigation. Transcript This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY   GOODMAN :  I want to go to the acting Israeli foreign minister, Yisrael Katz, responding to the U.N. Human Rights Council’s  report . YISRAEL   KATZ :  [translated] This report is another chapter in the theater of the absurd produced occasionally by the United Nations Human Rights Council, another hostile, menda...

"When some four decades ago, Thatcher arrogantly asserted “there is no alternative,” a confident left might have turned that declaration on its head by adding “yes, there is indeed no real alternative — under capitalism.” But no such left existed. The radical left was too small to matter, and social-democratic parties had by then long retreated from advocating socialism as a systemic option. Over the intervening decades steps towards a radically egalitarian and democratic transformation of society have, in general and in spite of the advent of a vague “anticapitalism,” further receded. Of the two central tasks the making of socialism demands — convincing a skeptical populace that a society based on public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and communication could in fact work, and acting to end capitalist rule — the overwhelming focus of those still committed to socialism has been on the political battle to defeat capitalism. What the society at the end of the ...

Russiagate has imploded, but the Democratic Party still wants to stifle dissent and make certain that there will be no Wikileaks in the future. “The plights of Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange reveal the hypocrisy and hollowness of liberal America.” The investigation known as Russiagate has officially wrapped up. Special counsel Robert Mueller submitted his report to the Attorney General who promptly announced that it contained no proof of Trump campaign collusion with the Russian government. The daily onslaught of misleading and in some cases false assertions will diminish. But Russiagate will never truly go away. The Democrats will milk it for as long as they can.  The faux scandal was kept alive by lies which the misinformed public were exposed to for more than two years. One of those lies was a claim that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange worked with the Russian government to hack Democratic National Committee emails in 2016. Th...