Sunday, August 20, 2017

Sunday Globe Special: Self-Righteous Slop

It begins with an above the fold 1-2 punch:

"In a city with fraught racial past, a day of protest against hatred and bigotry" by Mark Arsenault Globe Staff  August 19, 2017

A city with a fraught racial past turned out tens of thousands of protesters Saturday for an overwhelming denunciation of racism, anti-Semitism, and religious bigotry, in a demonstration that was largely peaceful though punctuated with scuffles and some edgy nose-to-nose encounters among demonstrators.

On a hot, humid day, sweaty throngs on Boston Common chanted — sometimes angrily, often profanely — against Nazis, racism, the Ku Klux Klan, and fascists.

They held signs calling for peace and waved the rainbow flag of the gay rights movement.....

Then this might be a problem then (the Nazis were like a Jerry Springer crowd! We love lesbians, we love lesbians!)

One guy says he came because a woman was killed last week and, no disrespect intended, but a lot of people died last week all across the planet (and that's giving them the benefit of the doubt and not questioning whenever it was Hollywood fakery. Tried to kill?) and in Massachusetts even! Where are the prayers for them?

Anyhow, I wasn't going to read the rest of the article; however, I will come back to it upon the turn-in because what I found was so intolerant and appalling that the word hypocrisy is too light a criticism. But I will let you make that judgement for yourself later.

Also see: Resolute and ready, Boston marchers made voices heard

Yeah, yeah, hey hey, ho ho, that kind of chant has to go -- and did you notice the link said rallynarrative? 

Can't be any clearer about this staged and orchestrated event. They are literally in your face with it.

When I flip below the fold I find, God help me, that I no longer want to read about N.H. crazies. (those states do have better rest stops by far, though).

A2:

Spain looking for Moroccan man in Barcelona attack probe

You have to ask why Spain, and France is now helping them out.

And get this:

"..... In Russia on Saturday, a man wielding a knife attacked and wounded seven people on the central street in the Siberian city of Surgut, investigators said.

The police later shot and killed the attacker, the authorities said. The attack raised alarms about an expanding wave of terrorism in Europe, even as officials said there was no immediate information on the attacker’s motive.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack through the group’s Amaq News Agency.

And that is a credible news outlet?

In a statement, the Interior Ministry said the suspect, a local man, had been “tentatively identified,” and police said they were investigating the attack as attempted murder. They were also investigating whether the suspect was mentally ill.

The injured were taken to a hospital, where two were in critical condition, the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Witnesses posting updates on Russian social media said a man had walked through a department store in the city, carrying a knife and an ax. One said he appeared to be intoxicated. The man then left the store and attacked pedestrians outside, the posts said.

Surgut, about 1,300 miles east of Moscow, is in the Khanty-Mansiysk area of Siberia and has more than 350,000 people.....

Yeah, really makes you wonder.

--more--"

Oh, it is New York Times garbage, is it?!!!!

"Left-wing groups and Berlin residents prevented more than 500 far-right extremists from marching Saturday to the place where high-ranking Nazi official Rudolf Hess died 30 years ago. Police in riot gear kept the neo-Nazis and an estimated 1,000 counter-protesters apart as the two sides staged competing rallies in the German capital’s western district of Spandau. Far-right protesters had planned to march to the site of the former Spandau prison....."

Two-to-one as opposed to the 200-to-1 show in Bo$ton, and that was one of five briefs my printed paper gave me in the column running down the upper-righthand corner of the page. The others will be included in later posts, if at all.

A3: 

Full page adverstisement for Total Wine


A11:

"A police officer in Florida died from his injuries Saturday, a day after his colleague was killed when a suspect fired at them during a scuffle while they were on patrol. The suspect was later arrested at a bar. Separately, other two officers were injured late Friday in Jacksonville, Fla., after police responded to reports of an attempted suicide at a home where the mother of his child, their 19-month-old toddler, the woman’s mother, and a family friend were thought to be in danger of an armed man....."

None of that makes any sense to me, but I predict cop killings will pick up, and it will be another reason for more oppression. 

A12: 

This is where the front-page turn-in drew my attention:

“I think it’s clear today that Boston stood for peace and love, not bigotry and hate,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh said at a late afternoon news conference.

Nearly all the demonstrators “were here for the right reason,” Police Commissioner William B. Evans said at the news conference, though “we did have people who came here to cause problems.”

Yup, you all got the official stamp of approval from authority -- which should clue you in on the veracity and validity of this staged and orchestrated event -- and I'll let you judge for yourself whether what Walsh said was true.

President Trump, who was ridiculed by protesters throughout the day with profane chants and protest signs portraying him as a Klansman and a Nazi, said on Twitter Saturday afternoon: “Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston. Police are looking tough and smart! Thank you.”

He also commended Walsh and then, about an hour later, “the many protesters in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!”

As it turned out, the Free Speech Coalition rally was a dud. The tiny, unremarkable gathering of what looked to be about 50 people on Boston Common’s Parkman Bandstand was too far away to be seen or heard by an opposition that covered acres.

That is because they are group of government-created and funded agitators. The point of this thing was to show how many people for the new politically-correct paradigm of thought control and censorship. Look at all the people in "counter protest." It looks to me like there was only one protests. These other jokers were having a meeting. 50 people!

Related: "They said they had come to stand up for free speech, but in the end, their invited speakers addressed only a small group of sympathizers, on a bandstand surrounded by barricades, far from the throngs of counterprotesters, who could not hear them at all....."

Yeah, some voices were louder than others, and even if they could hear them, they would not listen.

Though the free speech group was technically free to speak in the public park, security measures denied them an audience as well as press coverage of what they had to say.

Yeah, uh-huh, right. Like the pre$$ is giving equal time.

In a large sense, Saturday’s huge counterprotest was more of a reaction to Charlottesville, its indelible scenes of neo-Nazis marching with patio torches and chanting against Jews, and Trump’s widely condemned comments blaming “both sides” for the violence.

Counterprotesters in Boston gave little credence to claims by organizers of the local “free speech” rally that they did not represent any particular ideology or condone the violence in Charlottesville, repeatedly calling them “Nazis.”

“Excuse me,” one man in the counterprotest innocently asked a Globe reporter. “Where are the white supremacists?”

Exactly!

Debbie Larsen, who traveled from Rhode Island to join the event, blamed Trump for encouraging the far-right, and decried his remarks blaming “both sides” in Charlottesville.

“If Trump came out and condemned the racists and Nazis at that march [in Charlottesville], a lot of us would have said, ‘OK,’ ” Larsen said.

Well, he did call them "evil," but I guess she couldn't hear it. Same with demonstrator Andrea Demuth, 57, of Haverhill, who was “angry.”

Protesters held a large banner that read: “Love thy neighbor. No exceptions.” Men passing out water drily advised, “Stay hydrated to fight Nazis.”

Closer to the fencing, the crowd was far edgier.

They chanted:

“Racists go home.”

“Shame! Shame! Shame!”

“[Expletive] Trump.”

“[Expletive] Nazis.”

And the more sing-songy lyrical, “[Expletive] the Nazis.” Clap-clap. Clap-clap-clap.

So much for loving thy neighbor, but at least you know how to recognize controlled opposition, ho-ho.

Two young men — one in a Trump hat and the other wearing a Trump banner like a cape — who tried to make their way through the crowd were swarmed by dozens of counterprotesters screaming, “Nazis, go home!” The cluster of people surrounding the men moved with them as they walked.

Now THAT is surely loving thy neighbor, huh? 

Look at the LEFTIST THUGS and THEIR INTIMIDATION TACTICS! 

In all honesty, THEY are the ONES behaving like BROWNSHIRTS!!!!!

All approved, of course!

“You’re a scourge on humanity, Nazi scum!” one man screamed. Sensing that the swelling intensity of the crowd was testing self-restraint, a number of voices began screaming, “No violence!’’

Too late.

A short time later, another young man holding a “Trump 2020” sign, was similarly swarmed. “This is my town,” he yelled back. “I have as much right to be here as anyone.”

The crowd mockingly serenaded him:

“Na na na na

Na na na na

Hey hey hey

Goodbye . . .”

That looks to me like a THREAT to his LIFE! 

GOODBYE? 

This isn't some pitcher being removed from the game or some NBA player fouling out! 

Or is it? 

As those gathered for the “free speech” rally left their cordoned-off area, a large crowd surrounded one young man and shouted “Nazis suck” as he walked down a Boston Common path toward Charles Street. He walked onto Charles Street with a police escort until a police van arrived and he was placed in it.

Several dozen Boston police officers with batons and other crowd-control gear held back a gathering crowd of counterprotesters, while other officers loaded the free speech rally supporters into vans for transport out of the area.

Some in the crowd shouted “make them walk!” and challenged police for defending people they called “Nazis.” Hundreds chanted “No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!” and “Off our streets, Nazi scum!”

Related: “I think it’s clear today that Boston stood for peace and love, not bigotry and hate,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh said at a late afternoon news conference.

Really, Marty?

As the vans left the area, with helicopters hovering overhead, protesters booed their occupants and shouted “Who do you serve?” at police, while others ran after the vehicles. Officers restrained several people with plastic zip-ties around their wrists.

They must be the ones Evans was talking about -- but at least they showed up for the RIGHT reason!

Skirmishes continued into the afternoon as the main force of counterprotesters disbanded. Shortly before 4 p.m., Boston police reported that rocks were being thrown at officers on Tremont Street. Moments earlier, the department asked people to refrain from throwing “urine, bottles, and other harmful projectiles at our officers.” 

I guess they took the Washington Post's advice, and that was where the print copy ended. 

Did you learn anything, readers?

A little after 5 p.m., about 100 to 150 protesters crowded onto Washington Street, near Downtown Crossing, one waving a black flag with an antifascist emblem on it. Some were maced, and the crowd ran. Officers yelled “move back” and used their bicycles to block the street.

Later, William Gross, superintendent in chief of the Boston police, praised a large group of protesters gathered at the corner of Washington Street and Temple Place around 6 p.m. for “doing it the right way.”

“Unanimously, we told people with hatred that this is not happening in Boston,” Gross told the protesters.

Among those in the crowd was Bruno Desima, 18, of Peabody.

He had come to protest the Boston Common rally, he said, and throughout the day, it appeared that police and protesters were on opposite sides. Desima credited Gross with helping calm the crowd late Saturday afternoon.

“Being able to walk up and tell a cop how you feel, and being able to interact with police, that’s my first time doing that,” he said.

Gross shook hands with some protesters and took photos with others.

“You deserve it. All of that that was negative, you turned it into a positive,” Gross said. 

Oh, that IS GROSS, and seriously, you think this isn't staged and scripted show for narrative purposes?!!!!!

Of the right-wing groups who were at the Common on Saturday, he said: “You ran them out of town.”

--more--"

Governor Baker didn't have anything to say, and where is the Real Left anyway?

"I thought the Boston optics - a mere handful of 'Nazis' protected by the police from a huge mob of thousands, some of them violent - should have been more troubling than celebrated.  It was essentially a mass demonstration by a mob of thousands of people protesting against freedom of speech.  The 'Nazis' were congratulating themselves over it, as well they should, as it is not often that a group that tiny are granted this much credibility." -- xymphora



A13

People turn out across country to send a message against hate

Yeah, wave children in your face again.

"Israeli forces have shot and killed a Palestinian after he attacked Israeli policemen at a West Bank checkpoint, stabbing one of the officers. The Palestinian Health Ministry says the shooting took place on Saturday at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank. The assailant was identified as 17-year-old Qutaiba Zahran, who died at the scene shortly after being shot....." 

That was at the bottom of the five briefs back on page A2. 

Not waving him at you, and everyone has a knife! Beginning to have the feel of complete fakery and a sickening pokes of mind-manipulating psyops.

They are waving the kids of Syria at you on page A4 and just across the border on page A5..... no, the neocon war machine and its backers were not at all happy with Trump's surrender in Syria, although it's already been carved up. Wasn't full regime change!

Now I'm going to go out of sequence a bit just to make this reading experience flow a bit easier:

A15: 

"Charlottesville and Trump’s response reshape Virginia governor’s race" by Jonathan Martin New York Times   August 19, 2017 

Is this how we are going to be sold a Democratic rig job because they really have nothing to offer anymore except failed identity politics (as if the bankers didn't rip off whites as well as everyone else, war machine didn't take all colors of folks, etc, etc)?

For as crazy and chaotic as the administration has been and for all the failures of the Repuglican Congre$$, the Democraps really offer no alternative. They are just as much a captive of the corporate-Zionist-Deep State as their opponent, only worse because they plunge the knife into you with an arm around your shoulders. At least Repuglicans stab you in the front.

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — The bloody white supremacist rally in Charlottesville has thrust the issue of removing monuments, race, and history to the forefront of this year’s campaign for governor in Virginia, and the president will loom large over the commonwealth in November.

Pfffffft!

After last weekend’s violence, Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam, the Democratic nominee for governor, said in an interview that “an awakening” had taken place in Virginia after the Charlottesville violence. Yet Northam has little appetite to make Virginia’s counties and cities uproot their memorials to the Confederacy, and says the decision should remain up to the localities.

OMG, another talking out of both sides of his mouth scum with coded signals to his supportersand you know where you can stick the monuments, Globe!

In an illustration of Virginia’s complicated politics, and the expectations of each party’s base, it is Northam, a descendant of slaveholders and a product of Virginia’s rural eastern shore, who is calling for the statues to come down, while his Republican opponent, Ed Gillespie, a New Jersey native who moved to northern Virginia after establishing a political career in Washington, is more closely aligned with the old guard.

OMG!! He should be DISQUALIFIED from running for office!

Each, though, hails from the establishment wing of his party.

Some choice then.

Democrats, while encouraged about having a tool to mobilize black voters in an off-year election, are cognizant of national polling that shows opposition to removing Confederate monuments is bipartisan.

Oh, is THAT what this is about? Motivating the black electorate that they otherwise take for granted? Why did things get worse for blacks under Obama anyway?

As for that poll, the margin is more than two-to-one. 

This isn't an issue that is fundamental or important to anyone other than the hatchet-wielding pre$$ and those behind them. We all have other problems and concerns, things like the economy, war and peace, health care.... you know, things that actually matter now.

They also fear that conservative whites may come out in higher numbers to register their opposition.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, spoke for the more reticent in his party this past week when he suggested they were better off keeping the focus on the more politically safe topic of neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.

Democrats worry about Trump’s attempt to shift the debate to Confederate monuments and a slippery slope argument toward tearing down memorials to slaveholding Founding Fathers.

Schumer accused Trump of a ploy “to divert attention away from” his “refusal to unequivocally and full-throatedly denounce white supremacy, neo-Nazism, and other forms of bigotry.”

Why don't you slink back to the sewer you crawled out of, Chuck, and if you think keeping the focus on this side issue of no significance is going to help you win elections, good luck. I suppose the machines have already been rigged, huh?

--more--"

I wonder what advice Finkelstein would have given.

"..... After leaving office Friday, the president’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, said he will be battling for Trump on the outside, but he also asserted that the presidency he fought for “is over.”

‘‘We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency,’’ Bannon told the conservative Weekly Standard magazine. “But that presidency is over. It'll be something else. And there'll be all kinds of fights, and there'll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.’’

‘‘I just think his ability to get anything done — particularly the bigger things, like the wall, the bigger, broader things that we fought for, it’s just going to be that much harder,’’ Bannon continued.

He suggested that the remaining White House advisers would try to steer the president closer to the political center.

‘‘I think they’re going to try to moderate him,’’ Bannon said. ‘‘I think he'll sign a clean debt ceiling. . . . His natural tendency — and I think you saw it this week on Charlottesville — his actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think you’re going to see a lot of constraints on that. I think it'll be much more conventional.’’

--more--"

Oh, more NYT garbage and so much for heroes and White House renovations.

"Trump’s firing of Bannon: The military asserts control".  The people who were uncomfortable about Trump filling his cabinet with generals had a point.  You have to know you are in serious trouble when the only thing protecting the entire country from utter catastrophe was Steve Fucking Bannon!" --xymphora

I guess the Korean war is back on the burner again:


A5:

"A look at US-S. Korea war games and how North might respond" by KIM TONG-HYUNG, Associated Press  |  August 20, 2017

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- America's annual joint military exercises with South Korea always frustrate North Korea.

The war games set to begin Monday may hold more potential to provoke than ever, given President Donald Trump's "fire and fury" threats and Pyongyang's as-yet-unpursued plan to launch missiles close to Guam.

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills, will run through Aug. 31, and despite some calls to postpone or drastically modify drills to ease the hostility on the Korean Peninsula, U.S. and South Korean military officials say that the long-scheduled exercises will go ahead as planned.

Why, a false flag in the works?

The drills, which began in the 1970s and will involve 17,500 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers this year, consist mainly of computer simulations aimed at honing joint-decision making and planning and improving command operations.

(SIGH! What is the point of this? This isn't journalism, this isn't reporting, this is swill and slop)

About 25,000 U.S. service members joined last year's UFG drills. An official from U.S. Forces Korea, who didn't want to be named citing office rules, said that the number of participating American troops can marginally change depending on how training events are designed and that the lower number this year doesn't represent an effort to downsize the drills.

Oh, not rattling the saber as loudly, yay.

The United States and South Korea also hold larger war games in the spring, called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, which involve live-fire exercises and training with tanks, aircraft and warships.

There's media speculation that the allies might try to keep this year's drills low-key by not dispatching long-range bombers and other U.S. strategic assets to the region, but that possibility worries some, who say it would send the wrong message to both North Korea and the South.

"If anything, the joint exercises must be strengthened," Cheon Seongwhun, who served as a national security adviser to former conservative South Korean President Park Geun-hye, said in an interview.

OMG! 

We can do without the media speculation or the message, thank you, and why did the AP turn to a member of the former president who was impeached for corruption for its expert analysis?

Impoverished North Korea hates the drills in part because it must frequently respond with its own expensive displays of military might.

More hate. Maybe they should talk to the white supremacists.

During this year's war games in March, North Korea launched four extended-range Scud missiles into the sea in what it described as a rehearsal for striking U.S. military bases in Japan. It's almost certain that this year's drills will trigger some kind of reaction from North Korea. The question is how strong it will be.

Some experts say North Korea is mainly focused on the bigger picture of testing its bargaining power against the United States with its new long-range missiles and likely has no interest in letting things get too tense during the drills.

It's called serving your national interest, and I wish my government would do the same.

If this is right, expect the usual propaganda belligerence in state media or low-level provocations like artillery and short-range missile drills.  

IF? 

IF?

And if that is not the propaganda pre$$ calling the Korean kettle black, I don't know what is.

Or perhaps "North Korea has already flight-tested ICBMs twice this year and will probably take a wait-and-see approach to assess the impact of stronger pressure from the United States and China and maybe even seek an opportunity for talks, rather than quickly move forward with another test," said Moon Seong Mook, a former South Korean military official and current senior analyst for the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, but others think the North might use the drills as an excuse to conduct another ICBM test or maybe even act on its threat to lob missiles into the waters near Guam.

That is where I stopped reading the print copy.

There are calls in both the United States and South Korea for the allies to pause or downsize the joint military exercises to reduce strain and potentially persuade North Korea into talks to freeze its nuclear program.

David Wright, a U.S. analyst from the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an emailed statement that the United States should "postpone or significantly restructure" the exercises to reduce the risk of military confrontation.

"Smart military planning means ensuring that exercises do not enflame an already tense situation," Wright said.

South Korea's Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper said in an Aug. 11 editorial that the allies could gain a bargaining chip in efforts to persuade the North into meaningful nuclear talks by halting or scaling down the joint drills.

"The U.S.-South Korean drills aren't a sacred realm," the newspaper said, referring to the time that Washington and Seoul agreed to cancel their large-scale Team Spirit drills in the early 1990s to induce the North to join denuclearization talks.

These arguments might not win over South Korean conservatives whose main fear is that a fully functional ICBM in Pyongyang would eventually force the United States to consider a peace treaty with the North and also the removal of the tens of thousands of American soldiers stationed in South Korea. 

Yeah, who doesn't want peace on the peninsula (and my pre$$ tried to tell me it was China).

While expressing a desire to reach out to the North, South Korea's liberal President Moon Jae-in has also ordered his military officials to schedule talks with the United States to increase the warhead limits on South Korean missiles, and his prime minister said recently that the country should also consider acquiring nuclear-powered submarines to better cope with North Korean threats.

Some conservatives want more strength, however, and are calling for the United States to bring back the tactical nuclear weapons that were withdrawn from the South in the 1990s.....

--more--"

Somebody said something about nuclear war and the framers, and I thought they were all racists and none know it better than the Native Americans.

Related:

"All five crew members aboard a Black Hawk helicopter that crashed over the Pacific had life vests and an air bottle for underwater breathing, but rescuers searching the turbulent waters off Hawaii for days have seen no signs of life. The Coast Guard said Friday it is searching up to 50 miles off the remote point where the copter crashed."

That is like the fourth "accident" in the last month regarding U.S. training exercises in the Pacific. This nation is in no way ready to fight a war in Asia!

The chaos in Venezuela is on page A4, while in Afghanistan.....

A14:

"Corporate America increasingly asserts moral voice" by David Gelles New York Times   August 19, 2017

NEW YORK — The nation has split into political tribes. The culture wars are back, waged over transgender rights and immigration. White nationalists are on the march.

Amid this turbulence, a surprising group of Americans is testing its moral voice more forcefully than ever: CEOs.

OMG! 

The great moral voices of our times, the NYT and BG tell us. 

Can ANYTHING be more SELF-SERVING? 

After Nazi-saluting white supremacists clashed with protesters in Charlottesville, Va., and President Trump offered a widely criticized response, a chorus of business leaders rose up this past week to condemn hate groups and espouse tolerance and inclusion.

How many worked in the war industry? 

What is with the ever-increasing yawn of wealth inequality, too? 

That hasn't entered into this false and divisive debate being presented to us by.... those with all the wealth via their mouthpiece pre$$!!!

And as lawmakers in Texas tried to restrict the rights of transgender people to use public bathrooms, corporate executives joined activists to kill the bill.

I'll hold it.

These and other actions are part of a broad recasting of the voice of business in the nation’s political and social dialogue, a transformation that has gained momentum in recent years as the country has engaged in fraught debates over everything from climate change to health care.

I could make some snide comment here, but I think I'll just lay low and go pound sand

I gue$$ the agenda-pushing lying will end when there is no longer a propaganda pre$$.

In recent days, after the Charlottesville bloodshed, the chief executive of General Motors, Mary T. Barra, called on people to “come together as a country and reinforce values and ideals that unite us — tolerance, inclusion and diversity.”

GM, OMG!!!!

So what about those faulty ignition switches and cover-up over decades that led to over 100 deaths?!! 

Just a slap on wrist fine and settlements, and I never saw a racial breakdown of those died in those crashes. 

That's your corporate morality on display, too!

Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan said, “The equal treatment of all people is one of our nation’s bedrock principles.”

(SIGH) 

That all sounds well coming from that $cum, but when one looks at the history of this country.... it's not a bedrock principle. The founders excluded women from voting and considered a slave 3/5 of a person for representation purposes. Those groups had to fight for over 100 years to get some measure of equality. Never mind the Native Americans!

The misconception and fart mist coming from him is not surprising. Those guys are so full of themselves the shit is leaking out their ears.

I suppose one could look at it this way: the bankers do treat us all equally when it comes to their debt $lavery schemes and usurious interest rates. Who can forget the predatory loan schemes against minorities?

I wonder what Tim Geithner is up to now.

Walmart’s chief executive, Doug McMillon, criticized Trump by name for his handling of the violence in Charlottesville, and called for healing.

And in a rebuke to the president, who suggested that both the racist groups and the counterprotesters marching in Charlottesville were to blame for the violence there, a wave of chief executives who had agreed to advise Trump quit his business advisory councils, leading to the dissolution of two groups.

This is no defense of Trump, but both sides did commit violence. You just can't say that, and the pre$$ has legitimized violence against certain people.

The forthright engagement of these and other executives with one of the most charged political issues in years — the swelling confidence of a torch-bearing, swastika-saluting, whites-first movement — is “a seminal moment in the history of business in America,” said Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation and a board member at PepsiCo.

“In this maelstrom, the most clarifying voice has been the voice of business,” he said. “These CEOs have taken the risk to speak truth to power.” 

OMG!!!!

They are SO FULL of THEMSELVES with SELF-ADDULATING and SELF-AGGRANDIZING ADORATION it is DISGUSTING!!

Btw, that is a sham phrase. Power already knows the truth, and they want to keep you from discovering it.

This transformation didn’t happen overnight. Chief executives face a constellation of pressures, and speaking up can create considerable uncertainty. Customers can be offended, colleagues can feel isolated and relations with lawmakers can suffer.

Words and actions can backfire, resulting in public relations disasters. All this as a chief executive is expected to constantly increase sales.

What are they walking to back now?


You know, it just occurred to me that the Globe told us most bosses are a-holes, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

And now they are the MORAL COMPASS of AmeriKa!! 

Puh-leeeze!!

Even this past week, it was easy to discern careful calculations made by executives who chose to speak out against Trump. Many faced calls to resign from the presidential advisory councils, and the prospect of boycotts if they did not, but they also faced notable and new kinds of pressure from withinfrom employees who expect or encourage their company to stake out positions on numerous controversial social or economic causes, and from board members concerned with reputational issues. In the past week, business leaders have responded with all-staff memos and town hall-style meetings. 

Since when?

In short, while companies are naturally designed to be moneymaking enterprises, they are adapting to meet new social and political expectations in sometimes startling ways.

!!!!!!!!!!!! 

They are trying to TRANSFORM the CULTURE with their POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!!!!!!!!

“Not every business decision is an economic one,” said Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks, who was one of the country’s first company leaders to proactively address social issues. “The reason people are speaking up is that we are fighting for what we love and believe in, and that is the idealism and the aspiration of America, the promise of America, the America that we all know and hold so true.”

Yeah, whatever. How those coffee sales in China going?

“When I went to business school, you didn’t see anything like this,” said Marc Benioff, founder and chief executive of Salesforce. “Nobody talked about taking a stand or adopting a cause.”

Now, Benioff is at the vanguard of a group of executives who are more connected — to customers, employees, investors and other business leaders — than ever before and who are unafraid to use their influence.....

OMG! 

He's part of the New Vanguard, huh?

It's a CEO REVOLUTION!

Those are the real fa$ci$ts!

--more--"

RelatedTrump criticized at Martha’s Vineyard event

Maybe they can have a beer summit

Just don't drink Heineken (of course, it's a well known fact that Trump does not drink alcohol -- although I wouldn't blame him if he started).

Also see:

"First daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, embattled presidential adviser Jared Kushner, are, or at least were, vacationing in Vermont, and residents reported seeing a helicopter bearing the name “Trump” in all caps landing at Twin Farms, an exclusive resort and spa in the southeastern town of Barnard. The New York Times had previously reported that President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law would be spending a few days in the Green Mountain State, though it wasn’t clear exactly where....." 

Now Kushner is embattled? 

Glad to see the New York Times is on top of their movements, though. Real important stuff.

UPDATE:

I was going through my blog roll after posting this article and for some reason Blogger has made it impossible to connect to the Black Agenda Report. It is now at the bottom of my roll with a changed link.

What gives?

"Left, You Have Been Duped

 by Richard Hugus | August 20, 2017

On August 19, a week after a heavily publicized clash over a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, an estimated 8,000 people converged on Boston Common to protest a speaking event organized by a group calling itself the Boston Free Speech Movement. Who are the Boston Free Speech Movement and what do they stand for? We’ll never know because antifascists, leftists, anti-racists, and progressives of Boston prevented them from even speaking. Some might say this was a good thing — no one wants to hear from bigots (if that’s who they were) — but in fact the left in all its self-righteousness was duped into an assault on the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right of free speech, for everyone. The left have been the pawns of much more powerful forces who, if they aren’t organizing these news events and provocations outright, are certainly happy to see precedents set for publicly shutting down free speech by the use of force. First it will be the speech of fascists, then it will be the speech of anybody the authorities don’t like, including leftists.

Suddenly we are being confronted with organizations who claim to know what is or is not appropriate for the rest of us to hear. Now that sides have been established — one which can decide what is and isn’t acceptable speech, and another which is forbidden to speak on pain of attack, all that remains is for the powerful to make sure their narrative is the one that’s allowed. Isn’t this fascism? Aren’t people who claim to be anti-fascist actually doing what classic fascists do?

It’s not a coincidence that just prior to these speaking events being shut down, Google, Inc. asserted its right to decide what is and is not a legitimate news source. At the same time the US Congress is considering legislation that would make it illegal for US citizens to support boycott, divestment, or sanctions against Israel. Not surprisingly, the pro-Israel Anti Defamation League (ADL) has been brought on by Google to advise them on which news sources are legitimate and which are not. Google now has such a monopoly on information on the Internet that it is in a position to bury unapproved news sources forever. The ADL will therefore be able to effectively censor any negative news about what Israel is doing in Palestine and the middle east, just as AIPAC, through its ownership of the US Congress, will be able to censor free speech of American citizens when it comes to, once again, Israel.

In the ‘50s the ADL monitored “pinkos” for the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. In the ‘90s ADL monitored activists working to end apartheid in South Africa, in the 2000s the ADL began monitoring Arab American organizations and mosques. Today the ADL monitors pro-Palestine groups on college campuses. In each case the ADL has gone after “extremism and hate speech” in the US, as defined by Israel.

One wonders, why does Israel, a foreign country, have such a say on what people in the US can and can’t talk about?

There is no way to censor speech without a point of view or agenda. The agenda is usually dictated by whoever has power. Thus censorship serves those in power. When we take part in it, we serve the power.

People are apparently upset about an upsurge of Nazism. Why weren’t they in the streets when neocon Victoria Nuland and the US State Department organized a coup in Ukraine with the overt assistance of neo-Nazis? Why were Nazis okay during Obama’s presidency but not during Trump’s?

Where was the outrage when Hillary Clinton and the US State Department attacked and destroyed Libya? The liberal left considered this a “humanitarian intervention,” just as it did when the US decimated Yugoslavia.

Why is it that after six years of siege and murder committed by US proxy forces in Syria, the only national demonstration that could be mustered in Washington was on the issue of private remarks Trump once made about grabbing women — the famous “pussy hat” demonstration?

Why is it that the liars in the mainstream press could get away with false stories of chemical attacks in Syria being carried out by the Syrian government when it was obvious that the attacks were carried out as false flags by US proxy forces? Why are Syrians still being bombed and killed every day by US “coalition” forces with no protest?

Why is it that Iraq is no longer a concern, after 26 years of genocidal assault by Uncle Sam, with efforts now being made to balkanize Iraq through support for “Kurdistan”? Why are US troops still there? Why are they still in Afghanistan? Where are the masses taking to the streets to shout down the liars making these policies?

Why is it the business of the US to interfere in Venezuela’s internal affairs, even to the point of military intervention? Has Venezuela harmed the US in some way? Has the left swallowed yet again the lie that the US is concerned about human rights in another country?

Why is it that Palestinians have been forgotten, as Israel, the US’s closest ally, transparently conducts genocide against them, year after year, so that today Israel can talk openly of forced transfer of the entire Arab population of Palestine. Isn’t terror also being committed when Israeli settlers routinely ram their cars into Palestinians in the street, or is it just terror when this happens in Europe?

Why is it that the US supports a state for Jewish people only that necessarily discriminates again non-Jewish Christians and Muslims? Isn’t discrimination on the basis of religion a hate crime? Isn’t the ADL in a conflict of interests when it claims to be an authority on hate crimes while representing such a state? Has the left ever repudiated its long record of blocking for Israel and Israel’s crimes?

Why is it that the virtuous left has nothing better to do than face off with a few obvious provocateurs with their over-the-top nazi slogans while the US — their country, in their name — is actively supporting Saudi Arabia in its destruction of a practically defenseless Yemen?

Where has the left been in its opposition to US government and media “hate speech” and war-baiting against Russia, China, and Iran? Is World War III not a problem? Did something lead leftists to believe that life on earth was not important right now?

Is the US threat of a nuclear attack on North Korea a side issue — something to be dealt with only after facing off with the Klan?

What about the murder of millions of Arabs and Muslims since 9-11 on the basis of a false story about who did 9-11? Surely there is a case to be made here for discrimination on the basis of religion, if not serial mass murder, based on a pretext which itself was an open crime for all the world to see. Why does the left consider discussion of this crime unimportant and passé?

That the left has mobilized to stomp on a handful of people in Charlottesville and Boston only proves its impotence. It’s like the man who has been frustrated at work all day who comes home and kicks his dog.

The worst of it all is that both the left and right have been suckered into a division which will use up all their energy and get plenty of attention from the press while the real crimes and the real criminals roll steadily along, laughing at the stupidity of everyone involved and the ease with which they were manipulated.

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They have literally become cartoons.