Liars, Criminals, Profiteers and Perverts

The great commentator from the Middle Ages, where politics was a blood sport, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in his book of advice for prospective rulers, ‘The Prince’; “The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”

Words we should look at very closely in this advanced year of 2022. Advanced in numbers but not in ethics.

This past half-decade has been anything but edifying for Democracy and the Western, English-speaking world.

The USA, Great Britain and Australia have all fallen under the sway of dictatorial leaders who, while they enjoyed popular support at the beginning, were found to be completely unsuitable for the positions they held.

Let us begin with the USA. A nation which prides itself on being the leader of the Democratic world.

The promotion and election of Donald Trump was masterfully done by the right wing Republican media.

The quality of the people he surrounded himself with was worrying at the beginning and down-right terrifying by the end of his term. Liars, criminals, profiteers and perverts proliferated in his administration. So much so that the end of the Trump era was seen as a catastrophe by not only by those around him but by Trump himself. He had painted himself into such a guilty corner that he preferred to destroy the democracy of the USA to being replaced.

And the election loss in 2020 has still not been accepted by the Right Wing Media!

Then there was Australia.

The Right-Wing Media paved the way for the promotion of a self-promoted marketing genius into the top job in Australia very carefully ignored the fact that he had been sacked from every job he had held prior to entering politics. He surrounded himself with liars, criminals, profiteers and perverts who proliferated in his Cabinet and we saw the poison seep down to those who working in close proximity to those who led the Nation for their own benefit!

The election loss in 2022 has not yet been fully accepted by the Right Wing Media and the planning for the return of their favoured party is already underway, despite the obvious lack of ability in the ranks.

And now Great Britain.

The Right Wing Media found a buffoon to promote into the Tory Leadership. One who was known to be unstable and unpredictable but who, once in power, surrounded himself with liars, criminals, profiteers and perverts. Sadly, the very basis of Great Britain’s wealth had just been destroyed by a few people in power who saw a personal profit in that destruction. A stupid plan and it ended with a stupid leader coming into power.

Now, with his political demise, the Right Wing Media has gone into meltdown!

Three leaders with disturbingly common characteristics.

What is the common denominator in their rise to power? Perhaps it comes down to one person.

Rupert Murdoch.

Owner of the media and setter of the agenda in each of the three major English speaking countries. (Canada is safe from Murdoch as many of its citizens speak French!). Machiavelli also said; ‘Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.’ This has been the dictum for all those who use advertising to promote their cause. And Rupert Murdoch is a past master of this arcane art.

Hidden in the background, barely noticed even by the gossip mongers, perhaps it is time we applied Machiavelli’s first dictum to him. He chose each of those three leaders! The first method for estimating the intelligence (character) of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

Trump and Morrison and Johnson.

Liars, criminals, profiteers and perverts!

Are there any true investigative reporters out there willing to ruin their careers by doing an honest expose on the Murdoch family? Would such an investigation reveal that the instigator of these three democracy destroying evil minions is himself a liar, a criminal, a profiteer and a pervert?

We Still Live in a Humane World

Going through some old computer files I came across this and I thought to myself, ‘This is what I am living through at the moment.’

Then I realised I had found it somewhere in 2006. Which is interesting because 2006 to 2018 is a shorter length of time as from 1933 to 1943.

Think about that for a minute, then read what is was I found. I wish I could remember where I found it back in 2006.

******************************************************

It was the formula Hitler used, and it still works today. It is, in fact, the most consistently reliable way for demagogues to gain power. It works because it’s gradual but relentless, and progressively absorbs – and then intimidates or co-opts – both government and the media.

For example, Milton Mayer, an American Jew and writer who extensively interviewed German Jews who survived Hitler’s era in his book They Thought They Were Free, noted that:

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security….

As a friend of Mayer’s noted, and Mayer recorded in his book:

This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. …

To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it – please try to believe me – unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, “regretted,” that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these “little measures” that no “patriotic German” could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

In this conversation, Mayer’s friend suggests that he wasn’t making an excuse for not resisting the rise of the fascists, but simply pointing out an indisputable reality. This, he suggests, is how fascism will always take over a nation.

“Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing: and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something – but then it was too late.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not? – Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

“And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. …

“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked – if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jew swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in – your nation, your people – is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.” …

Trump and Australia

So the Donald thinks the Asylum Seeker’s deal with Australia is the worst deal he has ever seen and intends to ignore it.

That’s fine.

We can match that dislike with our disapproval of the Pine Gap Nuclear Target.

Take that back, Mr Trump.

Then there is Port Szechuan Beef where you have marine and air force bases and personnel.

Please remove them, Mr Trump as this, for the next 99 years, is Chinese territory.

Come to think of it, there are some other place we would like returned to our own Australian sovereignty.

Here is a map for you to let your staff think about since you are so concerned with the personal profits you are already making from your Nation’s traditional opponent, Russia.  (H/T to http://www.anti-bases.org)

Of course this is a bit of a dream as the entire Australian Government has as many balls as its Foreign Minister has! does not have the testicular courage to- does not have the guts to stand up to a nation which is rapidly becoming an ex-friend.

Oh, Mr Trump, while we are at it, you know those paper planes your nation is trying to flog off at several billion dollars each? We don’t want them either!

What the Golden Showers Obscured

Yonatan Zunger is a blogger and activist with a following measured in the hundreds of thousands.

Yesterday he wrote a post ‘Trial Balloon for a Coup?Analyzing the news of the past 24 hours‘.    Here is an excerpt and I encourage you to read the rest of the post.

“(6) Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed. On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown. This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for it was originally loaned out to the shell layers by VTB (the government’s official bank), even though it’s highly unclear who, if anyone, would be paying that loan back; and the recipients have been traced as far as some Cayman Islands shell companies.

Why is this interesting? Because the much-maligned Steele Dossier (the one with the golden showers in it) included the statement that Putin had offered Trump 19% of Rosneft if he became president and removed sanctions. The reason this is so interesting is that the dossier said this in July, and the sale didn’t happen until early December. And 19.5% sounds an awful lot like “19% plus a brokerage commission.”

Conclusive? No. But it raises some very interesting questions for journalists to investigate.’

Now do read the rest -it is just as scary – especially since the Armed Forces have been removed from the Presidential Security Council (whatever it is officially called).

Is this the way Russia will win the Cold War?

 

(H/T to Lorraine Murphy)

Find the Ball Under the Cup

(Found on facebook and it sounds frightenly possible!)

Stay alert, maintain vigilance, find the ball under the cups…

This is important to read, and is very true. We need to be vigilant as to what the REAL goal is…I think this woman is right…Trump’s unexpected “immigration ban” is a smokescreen for something bigger going on behind the scenes. While this is a horrible move, we must keep our eyes closely on the shill’s quick-moving hands…the big move is yet to come. Let’s not be divided and surprised by it!

From Heather Richardson, professor of History at Boston College:
“I don’t like to talk about politics on Facebook– political history is my job, after all, and you are my friends– but there is an important non-partisan point to make today.
What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night’s ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries– is creating what is known as a “shock event.”
Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order.
When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.
Last night’s Executive Order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it.
Predictably, chaos has followed and tempers are hot.
My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one’s interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won’t like.
I don’t know what Bannon is up to– although I have some guesses– but because I know Bannon’s ideas well, I am positive that there is not a single person whom I consider a friend on either side of the aisle– and my friends range pretty widely– who will benefit from whatever it is.
If the shock event strategy works, though, many of you will blame each other, rather than Bannon, for the fallout. And the country will have been tricked into accepting their real goal.
But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines. We could just as easily reorganize into a different pattern that threatens the people who sparked the event.
A successful shock event depends on speed and chaos because it requires knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines. This, for example, is how Confederate leaders railroaded the initial southern states out of the Union.
If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings. This was Lincoln’s strategy when he joined together Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, anti-Nebraska voters, and nativists into the new Republican Party to stand against the Slave Power.
Five years before, such a coalition would have been unimaginable. Members of those groups agreed on very little other than that they wanted all Americans to have equal economic opportunity. Once they began to work together to promote a fair economic system, though, they found much common ground. They ended up rededicating the nation to a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Confederate leaders and Lincoln both knew about the political potential of a shock event. As we are in the midst of one, it seems worth noting that Lincoln seemed to have the better idea about how to use it.”

For No Trumps

21st Century Caesar

Trump team seeks top-secret security clearances for Trump’s children

 

This is how dynastic succession is organised!

King Donald the 1st. The first King in the USA since Mad George the Hanoverian.

To be followed by his eldest son, Donald Junior, as King Donald the 2nd.

UNLESS Donald Jnr is removed from the scene by his ambitious sibling, Eric the Hunter. A long established and respected method of gaining a crown.

So the Republic looks like dying as a new monarchy is being born.

Unless some lean and hungry man begins plotting.

Trump is Not – – –

Trump is not the voice of an oppressed class. He is the voice of abusers who are angry at their victims pushing back.
The racists, sexists and homophobes ARE NOT VOICELESS. They just don’t like being told that they’re shit humans and what they’re voicing is wrong.
Racism, sexism, homophobia is all LEARNED BEHAVIOUR. These are not natural instincts that “civilised” society is trying to suppress. They are maladaptive, harmful behaviours and they need to be unlearned. Society needs to be more educated so that these ignorant behaviours aren’t learned in the first place.
IT’S NOT OK to be a predator.
IT’S NOT OK to make women, children or minorities the outlet for your antisocial urges
If that makes you feel angry, TOO FUCKING BAD.
You need THERAPY, not a president who validates your PATHOLOGY!

(written by my friend, Cat A,  on Facebook)