The Digger

If Nietzsche was right, and what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, we can thank the global capitalist ruling classes, the Democratic Party, and the corporate media for four more years of Donald Trump. The long-awaited Mueller report is due any day now, or so they keep telling us. Once it is delivered, and does not prove that Trump is a Russian intelligence asset, or that he personally conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton, well, things are liable to get a bit awkward. Given the amount of  goalpost-moving  and focus-shifting that has been going on, clearly, this is what everyone’s expecting. Honestly, I’m a bit surprised. I was sure they were going to go ahead and fabricate some kind of “smoking gun” evidence (like the pee-stained sheets from that Moscow hotel), or coerce one of his sleazy minions into testifying that he personally saw Trump down on his knees “colluding” Putin in the back room of a Russian sauna. After all, if you...

Stupid people would rather live under the Hitler-Putin model of dictatorship and de-development. But not this well informed citizen of Ukraine.

Excerpt: " But, third, something larger than even anti-Trumpism plays a major role in condemnations of the president’s withdrawal decisions: imperial thinking about America’s rightful role in the world. Euphemisms abound, but, if not an entreaty to American empire, what else could the  New York Times ’ David  Sanger  mean when he writes of a  “world order that the United States has led for the 73 years since World War II,”  and complains that Trump is reducing  “the global footprint needed to keep that order together” ? Or when President Obama’s national-security adviser Susan Rice  bemoans  Trump’s failures in  “preserving American global leadership,”  which a  Times  lead editorial insists is an  “ imperative ” ? Or when General James Mattis in his  letter  of resignation   echoes President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state Madeline Albright—and Obama himself—in asserting that  “t...

"In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s evil genius matters less than pressures from the ultrarich, US foreign policy, and the ravages of the neoliberal Yeltsin years" Excerpt: "Wood’s Russia isn’t a reascendant superpower on the march. It’s a relatively weak, isolated nation teetering on the brink of instability and held together by a nationalism that has become newly powerful this decade. Its GDP per capita is around a sixth of the US’s and a quarter of the OECD average, with sluggish growth forecast for the future. Its mortality rate has long outpaced its fertility rate, with its population forecast to plunge in the coming decades. And far from a military threat, its 2015 military budget wasn’t even a tenth of that of NATO’s, let alone that of the US, while more and more of its neighboring states join the Western military alliance and China grows in power on its southern border (though Russia does still possess a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons). Moreover, it’...

Excerpts: " Russiagate—allegations that President Trump is strongly influenced by or even under the sway of the Kremlin, for which there remains no actual evidence—continued to escalate as a dangerous and unprecedented factor in the new Cold War. What began as suggestions that the Kremlin had  “meddled”  in the 2016 US presidential election grew into mainstream insinuations, even assertions, that the Kremlin put Trump in the White House. The result has been to all but shackle Trump as a crisis-negotiator with Russian President Putin. Thus, for attending a July summit meeting with Putin in Helsinki—during which Trump defended the legitimacy of his own presidency—he was widely denounced by mainstream US media and politicians as having committed  “treason.”  And twice subsequently Trump was compelled to cancel scheduled meetings with Putin. Americans may reasonably ask whether the politicians, journalists, and organizations that assail Trump for the same kind of summi...

Excerpt: "After 14 years in the job, the Russian foreign minister has probably heard every question. But then he was asked if Russia should demolish the Katyn war cemetery in retaliation against Poland, or imminently go to war with Ukraine. Sergey Lavrov is used to defending his homeland against international lines of inquiry. But last week he was ambushed by different, supposedly friendlier interlocutors - two correspondents from the country’s tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, led by the former ‘bad girl’ of Russian journalism, war reporter and columnist Darya Aslamova. Their lengthy sit-down chat produced likely the most colorful (and oddest) interview Lavrov has given ever since he was appointed Russia’s envoy to the UN back in 1994. Aslamova suggests that Russia should recognize Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine. Lavrov: And then what? Aslamova : Then we defend our territory that we recognized, help our fraternal nation. Lavrov: And you wan...

" The new Cold War is not a mere replica of its 40-year predecessor, which the world survived. In vital ways, it is more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, as illustrated by events in 2018" Excerpt: "In large part due to such media malpractice, and despite the escalating dangers in US-Russian relations, in 2018 there continued to be no significant anti–Cold War opposition anywhere in mainstream American political life—not in Congress, the major political parties, think tanks, or on college campuses, only a very few individual dissenters. Accordingly, the policy of détente with Russia, or what Trump has repeatedly called  “cooperation with Russia,”  still found no significant supporters in mainstream politics, even though it was the policy of other Republican presidents, notably Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan. Trump has tried, but he has been thwarted, repeatedly again in 2018. Meanwhile, the charge that Russia  “attacked American democracy”  and con...

"Trump decided that to prevent Turkey from leaving NATO, and from joining a deeper alliance with Russia, China and Iran, was more important than to further fool around at the margins of the Middle East. It is the right decision." ••• Dunno why but I suspect ancient war criminal Henry might have had something to do with Trump's steadfastness in the face of all his mad-cap neocon advisors. Link:   MoA - Why Trump Decided To Remove U.S. Troops From Syria followed by:   MoA - First Fallout Of Trump's Decision To Withdraw From Syria

"Why did U.S. authorities bother to pursue a Russian gun-rights activist for activities they could easily have ignored? The answer should worry you." Excerpt: "Two things stand out in this week’s plea deal of Maria Butina, the Russian citizen  branded  by U.S.  media  as an “accused spy.” The description of her offense by federal prosecutors doesn’t mention any link to Russian intelligence services and the plea agreement says she’s willing to cooperate with the U.S. authorities despite knowing she’ll almost certainly be deported to Russia. The 30-year-old gun-rights activist and former graduate student at American University networked so inventively and tirelessly in Washington that she aroused the suspicion of U.S. counterintelligence and was arrested in July. She found herself in the media spotlight as an unlikely femme fatale until prosecutors  walked back  one of the original accusations — that she’d been willing to trade sex for getting...

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...

Link:   Eventually This Had to Happen: France Investigates Russia over Yellow Vest Riots - Global Research                                 

Link:  Bernie Sanders says his team saw Russian election meddling in 2016 Excerpt: " Special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment detailing the Russian social media campaign to aid Donald Trump, undermine Hillary Clinton and sow distrust in American politics describes behavior that aides to Bernie Sanders witnessed firsthand in the waning weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, the senator said Tuesday. In an interview with the Des Moines Register, Sanders described how an aide handling his social media accounts noticed an uptick in “horrific and ugly things” directed at Clinton beginning around September 2016 — long after the Democratic nomination had been decided, and while Sanders himself was traveling the country campaigning on her behalf. “In many respects, what Mueller’s report tells us is not new to us,” Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, said. “We knew that they were trying to sow division within the American people. In my case, it was to tell Bernie supporters tha...

Link:   War Over Ukraine?  by Sheldon Richman " Today, the United States and Allies conducted an extraordinary flight under the Open Skies Treaty. The timing of this flight is intended to reaffirm U.S. commitment to Ukraine and other partner nations.‎ The United States is resolute in our support for the security of European nations. –Department of Defense  news release , Dec. 6, 2018 Who wants to go to war against Russia in defense of Ukraine over the Kerch Strait, which lies between the Black and Azov seas and between Russia’s Taman Peninsula and Russian-annexed Crimea? A show of hands, please. But careful: don’t misconstrue my question. I’m not asking who wants the “United States” to go to war. I’m asking, rather: who is  personally willing to fight the Russian military over the strait? Or: who is willing to see his or her sons and daughters fight, kill, and die in that cause? Now, again, a show of hands, please. Anyone? No one? I didn’t th...

Link:   Trump Regime Arming and Training Ukrainian Forces for War And yet the left-propaganda churning MSM has managed to convince partisan liberals that the Putin-nazi in Moscow has Trump by his short hairs. The yellow journalism of liberal William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal "you furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war"   has nothing on the 21st Century's crowd of liberal "deep state" stenographers.