Really guys, no one can put a one hour show together, once a week? Jimmy is sick, so!? I do wish you to feel better Jimmy but when I am sick at work, someone replaces me! Steve?? Malcolm?? What about Cenk?? Hope to see someone tomorrow because when it comes to gettin my news…THIS is all I got left…thanks for caring…
Jimmy! Don’t stay sick on us, feel better soon! Pop us an update on how you are doing.
Steve did you gamble a little on Jimmy’s behalf? Please give us an update on how you survived Vegas ( or vice versa). Take care of yourself Steve, luv ya loads!
Holy Crap, Steve is right, we are moving toward a 2-tiered system driven by Big Geed for everything (air, water, land ownership, justice, rules, dwellings, taxes, rights, medicine, healthcare, energy, education, entertainment, technology, internet, access, propaganda, spying, wages, new wealth, stocks, policing, jails, wars, …).
This is so Damn unfair & unjust & in fact Criminal.
Big Greed is truly waging WAR on people & nature for the benefit & protection of their own ‘Criminal Class’.
Jordan’s report – outstanding – this needs to have an hour long special show with folks asking question & follow-ups to really discuss this INSIDIOUS strategy by Big Criminal Greed (donors & corporations & the politician sellouts).
The terrible Syrian War proves that Corporations are more powerful than Governments/Media, which they are using/hiding behind, in order to see which multi-national corporation wins the never-ending fossil fuel & natural resource monopoly ‘ownership’ war.
Corporations are using gov’t, politics, media to tell a different story – to confuse & disguise their real destructive & deplorable goals – while inhumanely decimating people, animals & environments. Their views of us are as disposable pawns while playing ‘Chess’ or ‘Risk’ against their corporate foes.
I am very happy to see that our donations are helping TYT putting more ‘watchers on the wall’ – Nomiki & Shaun – real progressives who won’t back down in a fight against those with power & authority & money.
I have been amazed at the stories that Jordan & Emma have been breaking and all their good difficult work.
I’m looking forward to seeing who’s next. Who’s the next Carl Bernstein or Chris Hedges or Amy Goodman or Glenn Greenwald?
There’s gotta be hundreds of courageous journalists to choose from, who we haven’t heard of because of the corporate owned media works tirelessly to suppress there voice.
Someone mentioned Greg Palast – that would be great.
Thanks for highlighting this Steve (round ’bout 42:50). This is the most toxic effect of the “free-market-is-a-wonderland” snake oil that has been sold to us by political and media establishments, bought by and serving the rich. It has successfully produced a situation where a class of people wouldn’t really care about poisoning fellow citizens for half a dollar. The Young Turks are typically positive about millennials being in the right direction politically, but my personal experience is that ruthlessness of have mores towards have less and have nots is wider than ever before with the 25-30 age demographic. Being in favor of gender and marriage equality has not translated into enough compassion and empathy to defeat the persistent fiscal extremism propaganda.
We have to launch an unapologetic and uncompromising attack on this normalization of greed. If we cannot teach our children to despise the greed that makes it ok to harm fellow humans as absolute, radical evil – we are looking at a day till all of the country is turned into Flint.
With all the holiday hullabaloo, did Obama EVER get to make his supreme court replacement for Scalia?
So, Obama … how did your primary presidential goal of making Rethugs like you turn out?
What a fuckin waste of 8 years.
Will he be the only president to have a SCOTUS nominee blocked to the point that he will never make it? Besides Roosevelt trying to completely change the court.
I think if enough of us pushed long and hard enough, we could keep the SCOTUS seat open. After all, the Repubs don’t have a super majority. It would take work from us regular citizens pressuring our representatives in a concerted effort that we would have to maintain for years, but I believe we can do it. We can make Democrats more fearful of us than they are of their donors. Given that Trump Tiny Hands did NOT win the popular vote, it’s an easy argument to make that the American people don’t want him to fill such an important vacancy.
Did Jordan mention Bordetella as a water contaminant?
I know that Bordetella vaccine is to protect dogs from kennel cough. Most good kennels won’t allow you to board your dog without it. It’s a severe upper respiratory disease, causes a honky, spasm-y cough, green phlegm, etc.
Oh, and ALL forms of Bordetella can infect humans.
Awesome, Gov. Snyder, not only lead-poisoning, but contagious diseases as well!
Snyder and his Corporate-cronies belong in prison. Too bad it will NEVER happen.
Besides, Snyder still has to figure out a way to privatize Michigan’s Great Lakes.
Again, the Aggressive Progressives spread nonsense about gold, oil, the dollar and Saudi Arabia without asking professionals:
1. The average daily foreign exchange volume done in US dollars is 5 trillion. The daily average exported oil value in US dollars (since local consumption is denominated with local currency) is about 5 billion (with a B, assuming 100 million barrels/day at 50 dollars/barrel), that is 0.1% of all trade denominated by dollar. Switching to Euro or any other fucking currency won’t even dent the value of the dollar not to mention the fact that it will destroy the local economies of the countries that would use their own currency to sell oil because it will strengthen their currencies and cause a deflationary shock.
2. With respect to the gold standard, the gold standard was actually imposed by the US in Bretton Woods agreements which also established the World Bank and the IMF. No European country had the Gold standard before WWII having abandoned it due to the great depression. Bretton Woods helped the US hoard the gold of the World because after WWII the US was responsible for 52% of the entire global GDP. Once the rest of the world got on its feet and realised that US manufacturing sucked the US began to have its trade deficit which under the gold standard meant that the US had to send gold, physical gold, to the country it had a trade deficit with. The US abandoned the gold standard because in 1971 the US, thanks to a 10 year running trade deficit, ran out of gold. Either the US manufacture gold out of nothing, declare bankruptcy or decouple the dollar and guess what, as Keynes told us the dollar value held up because the dollar takes its value from the economy not from a useless metal. We could have had a cow manure standard after WWII and it would have been just as effective.
3. The US intervention in Kuwait began almost immediately sending the first troops to Saudi Arabia as early as Aug. 5th (the invasion was on Aug 2nd). Kuwait exported more oil to the US than Saudi Arabia at the time (part of a defense deal relating to Iranians bombing oil tankers during the Iran-Iraq war) and while Iraq guaranteed the exports there were legal trouble in the US. In any case Iraq only began to threaten Saudi Arabia in September, after tens of thousands of troops have arrived.
Finally, this obsession with mainstream media makes AP not much different than infowars. The mainstream media that you attack is the source of every story you use to denounce the government. If that media was in cahoots with the government they would not have even bothered reporting. There are professionals out there who are no friends of the government and actually side with you on a lot of issues. If they disagree with you do not dismiss them like you dismissed Krugman, checkout why did they say what they said.
Krugman spent his life studying trade dynamics and got a Nobel for it that is why he defends free trade not because he is a hack or a Dem.
Most of what you say is right but when you say, “Switching to Euro or any other fucking currency won’t even dent the value of the dollar,” that has never happened, and you can’t say it won’t dent the dollar. I know what you mean in that the USD dominates the market and Oil makes up so little of that dominance regarding currency that it would do little to devalue the dollar. But you’re viewing it as an isolated system, if the fossil fuels are not sold in dollars anymore it will affect the pocketbooks of Oil Companies tremendously, the uncertainty would have a ripple effect. And as you know all the oil fields of Exon, BP and Shell have PMCs (Private Military Contractors) aka the US military and others (Black Water or whatever they changed their name to), and this is the part that spills into Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan soon Chad and Somalia, etc.
Your mainstream media argument has to be a mistake, just last week CNN said that Russia was going to close a school in Russia to retaliate against the sanctions, but then the people at the school released a statement saying it was a lie. Guess where CNN got that story? An unnamed US official (Surprise, surprise). Also, the eight-year-old girl tweeting in Syria (Aleppo) with no Internet and a fluent knowledge of English. Those are just two stories that came up this month that prove that the media is in cahoots with the government. Not to mention the narrative they ran with during the Iraq war. There’s millions of examples dating back to before Vietnam, so don’t put Info Wars and AP in the same sentence please, the difference is like night and day.
Using foreign currency to sell iPhones did not reduce Apple’s profits (and Apple is the world’s most profitable company, more profitable than any Oil company) and using a currency or a basket of currencies to trade in oil other than the dollar won’t affect Oil companies profits either. Indeed it might lead to an increase in profits if the oil companies enter the foreign exchange market to play with currencies now that they are not tied to a specific one.
And defense contractors have nothing to do with oil. They sell their equipment by the denomination of the country they are in and their sales are independent of foreign struggles. The biggest military consumption of US weaponry is from the mandated NATO 2% of GDP defense spending of NATO members an most of it goes to US companies. Middle East states pay little and most of it is actually a way for their rulers to steal from their respective treasuries in a quasi-legal fashion.
Finally about mainstream media and “unnamed” sources, Seymour Hersch used “unnamed sources” in his reporting about Syria and refused to reveal those sources to his editors who published his previous work on Abu-Ghraib (back then he shared the sources and the photos of course) yet surprisingly everything he said is taken as gospel and clowns here in TYT heavily criticised the New Yorker for not publishing his story which was published in an extreme leftist London rag with no history of any investigative journalism. And don’t say this time is different, the identity of Deep Throat was known to the entire editorial board of WaPo as well as their counsel and no one peeped and the subpoenas to them to reveal the source were rejected in court.
The use of unnamed sources is at the heart of journalism because most likely those people who talk commit felonies by speaking and a good journalist explores two independent sources to confirm what he heard. It is the reaction, or lack there of, that determines what happened next.
And the way things are running, AP is just the leftist version of infowars.
I’m sorry I was silly, I didn’t mean defense contractors I meant Private Military Contractors, and you’re right about Hersh’s sources. But the people that leak information to so-called “main-stream” always get away with leaking it if it’s pro-government information, as has been the case for Obama’s historical use of the Patriot Act to target everyone that shows the ugly truth about the government, but leaving the ones that leaked pro-government information. Hersh’s story (Abu Grahib) won multiple awards, but now his sources (Syria) are private, the government has done nothing to win over the public’s trust, whereas Seymour Hersh has won numerous journalistic awards including the Pulitzer Prize. Abu Ghraib and Syria are very different tiered stories, Abu Ghraib revealed a secret prison, the Syria story, if it’s true that the US is just there for the Oil, would be a Pentagon Papers-type of a scandal involving the first black president of the United States. It would undermine the government’s position and in Syria ultimately opening up the government to lawsuits for their actions…although I doubt anyone could stand up to the US it would be a weak sauce attempt the same way the International Court found Bush guilty of war crimes. If Hersh revealed his sources they’d be thrown in prison instantly, because the government would see it as the ultimate betrayal. The government doesn’t go after him because of his record and the people he knows from inside the Government, plus it would look ugly although Obama has passed a Ministry of Truth type of law recently so maybe they will go after him. Info wars pull stories out of their ass, whereas the AP has evidence to back it up and even though sometimes they may have the facts misunderstood their intentions are pure, it’s not like they want everything to be shitty. Infowars wants everything to be crap because it would prove their narrative, their intentions are bad. You used the word “leftist” don’t do that (maybe use extreme left or leftwing); people might think you’re from the “alt-right” which I very much doubt you are. You seem like a reasonable centrist who doesn’t like the idea of people saying his government is corrupt and in bed with the press, although this is my shallow opinion and I do think you make some very valid points.
National Defense is like 3.3% of GDP and 57% of discretionary funding, although that 57% number always confused me and I will have to research it a bit.
– https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals
So you are saying that what our govt & MSM tells us is true, and that we are NOT fighting for oil interests & defense contractors. We are fighting for “freedom” and to defeat the evil Russia & Syria bad guys?
“Free trade” is not real. It is global trade without borders only benefits corporations & not workers or citizens.
It is a snake that is eating itself.
If workers can’t afford the products they are making, there will be no market for the products.
MSM is an honest actor, in your eyes, and never-ending war is good … how?
As for Krugman, who wanted a job in a Clinton admin, winning a Nobel ….
Obama also won a Nobel “Peace” prize, btw, and what a joke that turned out to be.
NeoLib Clintoncrats are HI-larious! So what is your reasoning for continuous war?
No. What I am saying is that every ran TYT or the AP launch on the government or the MSM is based out of a story that originally came from the investigative efforts of MSM. If MSM were stenographers as Cenk and the AP claim then why the fuck are they waiting their time breaking stories that Cenk ends up ranting about?
As for foreign interventions, the US uses human rights as a selling point because if they told the American people that the reason why they went to Kuwait in 91 was because Saddam expressed his intent on consolidating 30% of all the world’s oil and imposing a new price target that would be 8 times the price in Aug. 1990 causing mayhem and an economic recession no one will buy the argument for war. Indeed the war resolution barely passed the senate in 1990 (52-47). If the US told the American people that the reason it keeps 100k troops in SEA and still keeps a massive base in Japan is because China has territorial claims on both Japan ad Korea and will act upon them plunging the world into mayhem the American people won’t buy it. If the US told them that the reason for all the interventions in Latin America was to keep the canal zone safe because 40% of the US trade flows there the American people won’t buy into it and the USSR was hell bent in the 80s on wresting the control of the canal zone.
See, the world is not simple and dictatorial countries are not run by the fairy godmother dancing kombaya around the camp fire. In Rwanda when the US announced it has no intention of intervening 800k people died in 100 days. In Congo 5 million people died in the 1st and 2nd Congo wars also because the US did not intervene. By merely implying that they will go into Sudan a 40 year civil war that killed 3 million people ended in 1 year. In Cambodia 3 million people died because the US decided to let the Khmer Rouge roam free when it withdrew from Vietnam.
Not all interventions are good but not all are bad either.
Finally about trade. Free trade is what made 600 million Chinese now classified as middle class, it is what made 300 million Indians rise from abject poverty to having running water and indoor pluming, it is what made Turkey turn from a country that exported people to Europe by the millions into a country that begs its former citizens to get back because birth rates in Turkey are low and the economy is growing at a 5% rate. It is what made Eastern European dumps after the cold war have a western European life style and stability, it is what made Russia come back from the brink and become a stable economic power-house. Free trade even helped the US end structural unemployment.
In the Reagan recession, which was nothing compared to the 2007-2009 recession, the unemployment rate was 11%, it barely passed the 10% mark in the last recession and even in the growth years an unemployment rate below 5% was rarer than unicorns. The reason is because industrial economies have a built in structural unemployment problem (checkout France which has a stubborn unemployment rate above 10% or even Germany which has a 5% unemployment rate). Free trade is wholly responsible for this because inefficient industries prone to recessions were outsources while actual recession proof industries not only stayed but thrived.
Did free trade damage the lives of millions? Of course. My trip to Buffalo haunts me to this day seeing the dying towns on the Mohawk river from Albany going west. Sad towns with sad people and unspeakable suffering from drugs and unemployment but that does not mean that millions of others did not benefit. Atlanta (and the rest of Georgia) is 10 times richer today than before NAFTA, in Virginia there are entire counties where Black people are richer than the white people in those counties and these are not part of the DC metro-area but closer to the industrial bases near the coast where many live. NC was joke of state and now it is thriving thanks to massive R&D investments as well as a growing manufacturing base. Those states adapted to NAFTA and did not complain and got rich off of it while the Rust belt is wallowing in its misery.
Bush Jr. tried to save the steel industry once. He imposed a 40% tariff on all imported steel to save Pennsylvania steel and guess what? Manufacturers in the US preferred to pay extra and import steel than to buy US steel because as I said earlier US manufacturing in the Rust belt sucked. If it did not suck it would have grown not shrink and the steel industry collapsed despite the tariff. The biggest factory Toyota is building right now is in Tupelo, MS not Reading, PA. VW is building a factory in Chattanooga, TN not Akron, OH.
Say what you may say about free trade but facts are not on your side.
Your so brilliant & knowledgeable! We are SO lucky to be graced with your clarifying wisdom!
Since we are just poor, barely literate hippies who need your clarifying guidance.
As for kum ba ya & holding hands …. I believe it is you who are the fairyduster.
American politicians & their MSM lapdogs are only thinking of the bigger picture and the good of the world as a whole? The machinations & twisting vines of the rich & powerful are too complex for the worker bees to understand. If only we had spent more money on the correct college education, we would understand this as well. Bullshit.
They, like their Corporate Overlords, are thinking of how to line their pockets.
It has NEVER been about anyone other than themselves & how much cash they can grab.
They don’t care about climate change.
They don’t care whose water is polluted (because they plan to own all the clean water).
They don’t care who has jobs & who doesn’t, in this country or the next.
They don’t care who dies, who gets bombed or who doesn’t, for that matter. As long as it isn’t one of them, and maybe not even that, if they can make a dollar & a dime.
They have convinced themselves, as you have, that there is a “greater good.”
Again, Bullshit.
Doing a document dump may look impressive, but it only makes me wonder why you even bother with TYT?
Since you are so consistent in your disdain for all things progressive.
Don’t you have homework? Or a book report to write?
I, also, believe that these Criminal-Greedy Corporate Overlords are using the media & politicians to disguise and normalize criminal greed, who have disdain for everyday people & nature; because they sit in their ivory towers playing virtual ‘chess’ against their corporate foes.
If everyday people & nature around the world can’t significantly increase Corporate profits & power for the long term, then we are seen as refuse in their way to building a successful winning enterprise. They have divided us all into the sub-human class of lepers, the Dalits of India, the worthless. Even the so-called Upper Class, who is serving them well, is a facade and aren’t guaranteed protection from their ruthlessness & disdain, especially when they are no longer useful.
Some people politely say that we’re in a ‘RACE to the BOTTOM’ – I call it War against Humanity & Nature!
Unlike the AP people who have no clue how the fucking world works, I do. I have been to many parts of the world and lived in an international hot spot for nearly 15 years. I speak the language perfectly and know the people first hand. Whether you like what I said earlier or not is irrelevant to me because I know what I saw, what I read and what I heard and it has nothing to do with the nonsense that AP and the rest of people peddling conspiracy nonsense is. What I said earlier is the truth as I experienced it. Take it as you like.
Now to the responses, unfortunately chetzmom gave no coherent intelligible response to what I said earlier. No stats, no counter-arguments based on rigorous research. Just a rant and rants are exactly what guys in infowars do. Ranting never did anything.
As for SeaBoyd’s, there are no “greedy-criminal Overlords”, this is just the latest excuse progressives use to justify why Zephyr Teachout, the progressive lioness who outspent and outgunned her pro-Trump republican opponent, lost the election in an area carried out by Hillary.
Finally for anesh’s response, my view as I said is based on extensive travels, actual life experiences (including a brief moment at a war-zone) and actual research.
FYI Congo is just as rich in minerals (especially nuclear materials) and oil as Iraq, in fact more so since it is not a desert and it has a strategic location. The US refrained from intervention there for a genuine isolationist. The US chose Iraq for multiple reasons part of which was oil but oil is just the cherry on the top. There were other strategic considerations chief among them Israel which wanted the war even more so than the Americans and its former senior lobbyist, Paul Wolfowitz, was instrumental in the fuck up that happened later beginning with firing of Jay Garner and ending with the sectarian division of power.
As for Rwanda, the US did not intervene at all. Belgium was the primary factor in the war and the war was an ethnic revolt by the majority Hutu against minority dictatorial rule by the Tutsi (who were put there by the Belgians) and of course in such wars it immediately descend into genocide. The US intervention stablised Rwanda to this day by imposing a power-sharing government still run b a Tutsi dictator (Paul Kagame) but limited by a powerful Hutu faction.
Finally, all what I said earlier and my reply here was not to justify anything, it is simply to put things into context. The binary world view of AP and others here is wrong. Not everything the US does is for money or for corporations for that matter. Just look at Iran and their 10s of billions of dollars of blocked purchases from American companies and their offers for exclusive exploitation contracts of Iranian national resources at terms which would make the terms that Mousaddagh demanded in 52 look harsh. It did not matter because the US has strategic concerns, rightly or wrongly, that no business or corporation can bend.
Again, since you have SO much disdain for AP, and TYT in general, you still haven’t answered my question on why you continue to watch? Or right long dissertations on how ignorant other posts are because they don’t seem to agree that Govt has everyone’s best interests at heart.
As you describe, you have traveled the world over, and have seen wonderful examples of NeoLib-Clintoncrat policy successes. Corporate interests intertwined with governments in a way that, while producing some hardships (the incidental death & destruction of people & natural resources), is far outweighed by the benefits bestowed on the few who “make the right life choices” and join the New World Order.
So, since AP (and those who share their view) have “no clue how the fuck the world works,” why on earth do you waste your time here writing long dissertations on how the fuck the world works?
Since I’m so incoherent & unintelligible … why aren’t you putting your talents to better use somewhere else?
Don’t you have an international conference to attend?
Or another book report to write?
:^)
I have already answered this on many occasions but here is my response again to refresh memories:
I support TYT because I also think money should be out of politics.
I support it because I want a good government regulated healtcare market that is stable whether it was an NHS style system or a typical European system or even the current Obamacare system with tweaks that makes it affordable for people who are not as fortunate as I am.
I want fair taxation not unlimited taxation as some progressives want or no taxation as some libertarians want and definitely not the current system where people making 300 times more than what I do end up paying a third of my rate which is not that high.
I am scared shitless about climate change having seen its effects first hand in the current calamity in Syria in dilapidated refugee camps in Turkey and elsewhere.
I am 110% behind a full merciless regulation regime on everything from Wall Street to the safety specs on my smart phone as well as prosecuting offenders and criminals with the same zealousness as local prosecutors prosecute petty criminals.
I am against all wars period but do not expect me to stay idle seeing genocide unfold and seeing my government in cahoots with genociders or not taking the left to task on their tacit (in the case of AP overt) support of war criminals.
In many other respects I do have differences with TYT, some substantial, but in the end there is no one on the other side who agrees with me on the things above which will define my future. In what I wrote above was criticism of rabid leftism that has gone native as the Brits say adopting the same conspiracy shit that the rabid right used so successfully. This won’t help the left nor will help their cause.
Disdain for experts and intellectuals is what the left criticise about the right and correctly noted that it lead to the current horrendous policies that we saw but a glimpse of yesterday. If the left starts to disdain their very own champions 8 years ago just because they have another opinion then the left is committing suicide because the leaders of the right wing anti-intellectual movement are themselves some of the smartest right wing intellectuals out there but who are the leaders of the left wing anti-intellectual movement?
To Sec863… [As for SeaBoyd’s, there are no “greedy-criminal Overlords”] – Follow the money Lebowski! Multi-national corporations don’t want you to believe its them.
You have a disturbing view of history; you’ve clearly only read the US neoliberal version; you think not all interventions are bad? Governments are amoral like corporations, the reason the US didn’t intervene in Congo was that they’d gain nothing. They propped up the Shiites against Saddam and then let them die because if they intervened they’d gain nothing.
The US intervenes in First Congo War(Clinton) a genocide happens. I have friends from Rwanda, and they would tell me how fucked up it is that they lived in the village and then all of a sudden their neighboring village would get a tank from the fucking US, and they wouldn’t know what to do because the tanks would just kill everyone. This was before the genocide in Rwanda. And since we’re in Africa; The US (CIA) gave Nelson Mandela’s location to the apartheid government of South Africa; Mandela spends 27 years in jail thanks, US. You sat by while South Africa lost 27 years of democracy just as you do now when it comes to Palestine. To this day, Dickless Cheney thinks this was a great idea.
You said, “In Cambodia 3 million people died because the US decided to let the Khmer Rouge roam free when it withdrew from Vietnam.”- WTF 3 million people were killed because the US decided to lie about the war and started the War and created an enemy. If the US didn’t attack Vietnam, there would be nobody to kill those 3 million people. The US then let those Vietnamese die. Look up the “The Gulf of Tonkin incident.”
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HODxnUrFX6k
The US is currently messing around in Ecuador and Honduras; the US is undermining all of their democracies.
You bitch and whine about AP not treating the mainstream fairly; I’m honestly shocked, how about you treat your fellow man as human beings.
During the civil war, if Hungry had attacked the South and killed them because slavery was evil, would you be looking at Hungry now and going “Thanks, foreign government of Hungry!” No, OFCOURSE NOT!!! You’d be pissed because they are fucking with your countries history, but somehow this escapes all the neocons and neoliberals because they are devoid of empathy. Every country you touch turns to shit, either that or you exploit the population to make billions. It gets me so upset talking to people that believe war is ever a good thing, because I’ve seen people suffering and it rips my god damn soul out to see children dying because you want to make a buck or play global chess.
chetzmom, I have a minor distraction for you. Robert E Howard’s most famous creation, Conan the Barbarian, had a recurring nemesis: the cult of Set. Set was a snake god. Its symbol: a giant snake, spanning the circumference of the world, with its tail in its mouth. Obviously, both you and REH are using the ouroboros from mythology to make effective visual allusions. In mythology, the snake eating itself represents the infinite cycle of life and death, which does not characterize neoliberalism. The quote, “The weak are meat, and the strong do eat”, seems to be more appropriate, but less colorful (see, http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/297979/origins-of-the-weak-are-meat-and-the-strong-do-eat).
chetzmom, I also have a question that is not a distraction. I would like to see, from a trusted expert, the economic sustainability of continuous war. It seems to me that continuous war would eventually bankrupt our nation, or it would impoverish our standard of living by drastically reducing social and infrastructure spending.
Beg to differ, Strong eating weak meat, is entirely colorful and most appropriate for what we have going on here! In fact, more accurate than the snake, since “circle of life” only applies to continuous war in the starkest way.
I know Rome is the most over-used example of continuous war bleeding a country of its resources, but it may only partly apply to the US. Here, the War machine is becoming the only thing we produce, so the Oligarchy has no interest in it being unsustainable. It must continue for them to stay in power.
Other industries & jobs are built around making weapons. Food is grown to feed the workers & soldiers. The US exports War. The public is told we are “fighting terrorists” or “spreading Democracy.” Then it is encouraged to flag-wave and shame those who disagree with “Freedom.”
Nationalism before Rationalism.
Theocracy before democracy.
Will the masses tire of it? I think we are tired of it now! But if working at a munitions plant, tank factory or becoming a soldier is the only “good” job around, you’ll take it to feed your family.
Btw, the Arnold crushed it in the Conan the Barbarian movie, the original.
He was an air-brushed , fantasy Van art come to life, pure craptastic camp … love it!
sec86379, I’m glad you posted item #3. I knew Steve had his history incorrect because I watched events unfold at the time and read subsequent histories. Regardless of the Congressional testimony hoax and big oil motivations, Saddam’s naked aggression against Kuwait needed to be addressed by the world community and it was. I distinctly remember the Mainstream Media showing maps, general troop locations, and reported Iraqi movements. As you report, the Iraqi threats towards Saudi Arabia occurred after our troop build-up.
apologies for copy-and-paste, I also posted this under Hour 1:
Just want to wish everyone at TYT including us members a safe and happy new year.
Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with commenters here, I learn something every day from you, and I thank you for that.
Here’s hoping that progressives make real progress taking back the Democratic Party in 2017, beginning with getting Keith Ellison elected chair of the DNC, and getting progressives elected to all 50 state chairs, etc. And, if the Dem Party cannot be saved from the Elites who have ruined it… then we move on to create a third party that will unite the majority of Americans who are sick of both parties.
Parting thought for 2016:
Which caused more damage to our electoral process in 2016 — unethical rigging and corruption by the DNC, Clinton Campaign and the White House during the primaries in order to put down Bernie’s insurgent campaign and thus deprive the people of the ability to choose a good candidate… or revelations via the email hack that these things really did happen?
The only way we are going to get the hope and change you guys are talking about is to vote in a Bernie with fascist powers to make the things happen and to put all of those who have participated in stealing our democracy up against a wall and give them Castro justice and take all their assets.
At the root of all the war, is nothing makes profit like war. History is full of bankers financing BOTH sides a war. In the USA the bankers and Wall street gives us our representatives in Washington. Why else would the government have a perpetual war policy?
Hey Steve and Jimmy,
I live in a progressive city in the scary state of NC with a vibrant segment of over-62 people like me still out there marching and fighting. Thanks for your coverage of Nic Smith (Virginia coal country) and the current power grab by the NC legislature. You guys complement each other so well: your explanation of Syria and the history of the “conflict” was spot on and brilliant.
The Aggressive Progressive fills a growing need for truth and outrage— you guys are THE antidote for corporate media gas lighting! Please keep shining your very bright light into all those dark corners, so we won’t think the oligarchs are making sense and we are going crazy.
First, we said that Channel 4 is part of the BBC. Not sure why we said that. At the moment it sounded right to me, but obviously that is not the case. So sorry for any confusion that may have caused.
Second, I said that Eric Cantor was Speaker of the House. Obviously, John Boehner was SOTH, not Cantor. Cantor was House Majority Leader, which is different than SOTH. Again, I apologize for these mistakes.
More importantly, thank you for watching the show and supporting TYT. We literally can’t do this without you guys! As we close out 2016 and usher in 2017, thank you for your support and being a part of this ever-growing TYT family. Love you guys!!!
jimmy and Steve – I love Aggressive Progressives, it’s one of the main reasons I became a TYT member, but please watch out for errors. I’m in the UK, and Channel 4 is *not* part of the BBC. Channel 4 News is the flagship news show on UK’s Channel 4 and is probably the most progressive mainstream TV news source we have. Channel 4 news is produced by ITN, a totally different organisation to the BBC.
Saying that, keep up the fantastic work. TYT are one of the few sources of reality-based news these days!
You talked about your Bully Pulpit, and I think we need to have a comedian start the Green Revolution. Why not raise the price of gasoline to at least $10/gallon, but don’t give the money to Exxon. The extra money should go to local communities so that they can invest in renewable energy. They can buy solar PV, wind turbines, batteries, EV’s (cars and buses) and community gardens. Won’t this have an effect on our lifestyle? Of Course it will, that’s the idea. We are all addicts and the pushers are giving us cheap drugs. We can’t handle it. How can you afford all that cheap gasoline? Every story about Syria or the Middle East or the terrorist attacks is just the price we pay. If you don’t want to pay $10, why not make it $20.
Did you see this week that Russia and Syria stopped the rebels in Aleppo and we almost had peace break out. But thankfully, the USA did an emergency shipment of weapons and the rebels were able to keep fighting.
Can you find the story (NY Times I think) about when the Russians came into the conflict, the US did an airdrop of 50 tons of weapons. they didn’t drop this for any group, they just dropped the weapons in the middle of the countryside.
You should also look into every attack in Europe and see if they were trained by the CIA in Jordan. The country, not the investigative journalist.
Jimmy, you are an acquired taste, I grant you that! (how generious of me.)
No. Man. I absolutely love you. You know, Dave Koller was recently on a programme, and he talked about how Six Feet Under and The Sopranos were the last tv shows he followed? Well, I happen to coincide with Dave on that.
By comparison, the last rapper I ever listened to and liked was Eminem, in 2000 (I went with Kanye but abandoned him pretty quickly). I was like, this guy Eminem meinme whatever Marshall matters thing is the next Shakespeare, no way someone will surpass him in my lifetime.
Listening to you last AP shows Jimmy, I am changing my mind!
In my area, BBC News is broadcast on channel 7. I could be wrong but it looks to me as if BBC News was simply broadcasting on channel 4 in whatever area that clip was filmed.
It’s definitely not the BBC. It’s got the Channel 4 News logo watermarked on the video the whole way through, and it cuts to the Channel 4 thing at the end but is slightly cut off when Jimmy stops the video. If it were anything to do with BBC News it’d say “BBC News”, not “4 News”. It’d be like showing a clip from CNN and saying it’s Fox. They’re two totally separate organisations.
I remember reading about water wars in Latin America. Bechtel privatizing the water and jacking up the prices for polluted water. What has happened to America, we shop at Banana Republic and now we are a banana republic today. I remember when Obama came to the Gulf Coast after the BP spill to show that the water was just fine. He and his family kicked their feet in the water on the bay side of Florida but not on the gulf side where the oil spill was. So it was nothing more than a fixed photo op and this governor in Michigan took his cues from Obama. What has happened to America? Democratic and Republican administrations have sold this country out from under neath us and gentrified our towns on a mass scale.
My only joy these days is AP and Old School.. I need my TYT!!
There’s bordetella in the water… that’s a thing we worry about for dogs because they drink from puddles, and it’s a cheap vaccine that’s given for free to strays in shelters. God bless America, the land of the free (but only if you’re a dog).
Have you heard a single Hillary supporter admit that maybe nominating someone under investigation by the FBI was a bad idea ? nah, Comey’s a bad guy. Nominating someone under investigation is perfectly sensible.
Put this under the Agressive Progressives tag seriously! Took me a long time 2 find and please put a alert if the day changes!!! The best show Agressive Progressives!!!
The video from Channel Four is not quite accurate:
1. There were only few cases of local fights between Kurdish and Syrian army forces, it is not a real line of conflict, unlike others described in the video.
2. Syrian government is not Alawite. While Assad himself is Alawite, in reality he is secularist, and almost everyone else in the power is a Sunni, including the head of the army as well as about 70% of army in total, prime minister, grand mufti, and even Assad’s own wife.
3. There were literally no “moderate” rebels in Aleppo. On-camera recorded beheadings and torture of children was performed by the CIA-vetted “rebel” groups al-Zinki, not by Al-Qaeda’s formal affiliate. The mass killings of prisoners and burnings of evacuation buses was carried out by Ahrar al-Sham, which is also not formally an al-Qaeda affiliate. And yet all of those groups are Wahhabi/Salafi terrorists in reality; there is nothing “moderate” about them.
4. the USA did attack Syrian army forces few times, killing up to hundreds of soldiers during prolonged attack, effectively helping both Daesh/ISIS and Al-Qaeda to capture territory, though Pentagon does say it was done by “mistake”.
5. Syria does not buy oil form Daesh/ISIS in general (local case of the criminal trade notwithstanding); otherwise it would be easily videodocumented with surveillance drones (just as oil trade between Daesh/ISIS and Turkey is videodocumented).
6. There was never “popular revolution” in Syria, there were popular protests, which pro-Assad protests being just as popular or even bigger, even though this was never shown by the Western MSM. And the war has started with 7 (seven) policemen versus 4 (four) “peaceful protesters” show on March of 2011.
7. Also, Assad, unlike his father, was never a “dictator”, he is authoritarian. There is a meaning to the words, there is definition to the terms, and those are distinctly different due to criteria. In the latest years, though, Assad has started reforms, so he is even less authoritarian than was before the war.
Jordan was superb, as always. I just can not stop saying that having him on TYT is one of Cenk’s biggest achievements, one of the biggest inputs in media and real journalism.
Comments
^^^ Found the Clinton Supporter
They don’t hide very well…
I was referring to user sec86379.
Not sure why a reply to him went to the top instead.
Really guys, no one can put a one hour show together, once a week? Jimmy is sick, so!? I do wish you to feel better Jimmy but when I am sick at work, someone replaces me! Steve?? Malcolm?? What about Cenk?? Hope to see someone tomorrow because when it comes to gettin my news…THIS is all I got left…thanks for caring…
Love the show guys! It would be awesome to see a segment about Brand New Congress.
Jimmy! Don’t stay sick on us, feel better soon! Pop us an update on how you are doing.
Steve did you gamble a little on Jimmy’s behalf? Please give us an update on how you survived Vegas ( or vice versa). Take care of yourself Steve, luv ya loads!
Holy Crap, Steve is right, we are moving toward a 2-tiered system driven by Big Geed for everything (air, water, land ownership, justice, rules, dwellings, taxes, rights, medicine, healthcare, energy, education, entertainment, technology, internet, access, propaganda, spying, wages, new wealth, stocks, policing, jails, wars, …).
This is so Damn unfair & unjust & in fact Criminal.
Big Greed is truly waging WAR on people & nature for the benefit & protection of their own ‘Criminal Class’.
If it is a war they want, ….
…it is war they will get.
Let me dust off my medals & suit up …
Put on the jet pack with the gatlings brother! (seriously, have you got on of those? Been trying to get my hands on one…)
Jordan’s report – outstanding – this needs to have an hour long special show with folks asking question & follow-ups to really discuss this INSIDIOUS strategy by Big Criminal Greed (donors & corporations & the politician sellouts).
On the so called “secularity of” the Assad regime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft2YEQK8oWc
Loved the show, just wanted to let you know that the BBC is not affiliated with Channel 4 news
Yea it’s disappointing when they make such silly mistakes. Doesn’t do much for my confidence in them.
Can someone please post a link to the Channel 4 Syria video?
Excellent show as usual. I too am looking to a longer show.
The terrible Syrian War proves that Corporations are more powerful than Governments/Media, which they are using/hiding behind, in order to see which multi-national corporation wins the never-ending fossil fuel & natural resource monopoly ‘ownership’ war.
Corporations are using gov’t, politics, media to tell a different story – to confuse & disguise their real destructive & deplorable goals – while inhumanely decimating people, animals & environments. Their views of us are as disposable pawns while playing ‘Chess’ or ‘Risk’ against their corporate foes.
I am very happy to see that our donations are helping TYT putting more ‘watchers on the wall’ – Nomiki & Shaun – real progressives who won’t back down in a fight against those with power & authority & money.
I have been amazed at the stories that Jordan & Emma have been breaking and all their good difficult work.
I’m looking forward to seeing who’s next. Who’s the next Carl Bernstein or Chris Hedges or Amy Goodman or Glenn Greenwald?
There’s gotta be hundreds of courageous journalists to choose from, who we haven’t heard of because of the corporate owned media works tirelessly to suppress there voice.
Someone mentioned Greg Palast – that would be great.
Glenn Greenwald was interviewed recently on the Jimmy Dore Show, you ought to check that out if you haven’t already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd6iz43Or-8
Thanks, I have and they were great. I wanted more to watch more Jimmy & Glenn, but I’ll settle for Jimmy’s next interview.
Thanks for highlighting this Steve (round ’bout 42:50). This is the most toxic effect of the “free-market-is-a-wonderland” snake oil that has been sold to us by political and media establishments, bought by and serving the rich. It has successfully produced a situation where a class of people wouldn’t really care about poisoning fellow citizens for half a dollar. The Young Turks are typically positive about millennials being in the right direction politically, but my personal experience is that ruthlessness of have mores towards have less and have nots is wider than ever before with the 25-30 age demographic. Being in favor of gender and marriage equality has not translated into enough compassion and empathy to defeat the persistent fiscal extremism propaganda.
We have to launch an unapologetic and uncompromising attack on this normalization of greed. If we cannot teach our children to despise the greed that makes it ok to harm fellow humans as absolute, radical evil – we are looking at a day till all of the country is turned into Flint.
Very Well said – I, too, believe that we, Progressives, need to realize how severe these greedy deplorable elites are oppressing us.
With all the holiday hullabaloo, did Obama EVER get to make his supreme court replacement for Scalia?
So, Obama … how did your primary presidential goal of making Rethugs like you turn out?
What a fuckin waste of 8 years.
Will he be the only president to have a SCOTUS nominee blocked to the point that he will never make it? Besides Roosevelt trying to completely change the court.
Amazing.
I think if enough of us pushed long and hard enough, we could keep the SCOTUS seat open. After all, the Repubs don’t have a super majority. It would take work from us regular citizens pressuring our representatives in a concerted effort that we would have to maintain for years, but I believe we can do it. We can make Democrats more fearful of us than they are of their donors. Given that Trump Tiny Hands did NOT win the popular vote, it’s an easy argument to make that the American people don’t want him to fill such an important vacancy.
Did Jordan mention Bordetella as a water contaminant?
I know that Bordetella vaccine is to protect dogs from kennel cough. Most good kennels won’t allow you to board your dog without it. It’s a severe upper respiratory disease, causes a honky, spasm-y cough, green phlegm, etc.
Oh, and ALL forms of Bordetella can infect humans.
Awesome, Gov. Snyder, not only lead-poisoning, but contagious diseases as well!
Snyder and his Corporate-cronies belong in prison. Too bad it will NEVER happen.
Besides, Snyder still has to figure out a way to privatize Michigan’s Great Lakes.
Keep on keepin’ on, Jordan. We love you; we need you.
Again, the Aggressive Progressives spread nonsense about gold, oil, the dollar and Saudi Arabia without asking professionals:
1. The average daily foreign exchange volume done in US dollars is 5 trillion. The daily average exported oil value in US dollars (since local consumption is denominated with local currency) is about 5 billion (with a B, assuming 100 million barrels/day at 50 dollars/barrel), that is 0.1% of all trade denominated by dollar. Switching to Euro or any other fucking currency won’t even dent the value of the dollar not to mention the fact that it will destroy the local economies of the countries that would use their own currency to sell oil because it will strengthen their currencies and cause a deflationary shock.
2. With respect to the gold standard, the gold standard was actually imposed by the US in Bretton Woods agreements which also established the World Bank and the IMF. No European country had the Gold standard before WWII having abandoned it due to the great depression. Bretton Woods helped the US hoard the gold of the World because after WWII the US was responsible for 52% of the entire global GDP. Once the rest of the world got on its feet and realised that US manufacturing sucked the US began to have its trade deficit which under the gold standard meant that the US had to send gold, physical gold, to the country it had a trade deficit with. The US abandoned the gold standard because in 1971 the US, thanks to a 10 year running trade deficit, ran out of gold. Either the US manufacture gold out of nothing, declare bankruptcy or decouple the dollar and guess what, as Keynes told us the dollar value held up because the dollar takes its value from the economy not from a useless metal. We could have had a cow manure standard after WWII and it would have been just as effective.
3. The US intervention in Kuwait began almost immediately sending the first troops to Saudi Arabia as early as Aug. 5th (the invasion was on Aug 2nd). Kuwait exported more oil to the US than Saudi Arabia at the time (part of a defense deal relating to Iranians bombing oil tankers during the Iran-Iraq war) and while Iraq guaranteed the exports there were legal trouble in the US. In any case Iraq only began to threaten Saudi Arabia in September, after tens of thousands of troops have arrived.
Finally, this obsession with mainstream media makes AP not much different than infowars. The mainstream media that you attack is the source of every story you use to denounce the government. If that media was in cahoots with the government they would not have even bothered reporting. There are professionals out there who are no friends of the government and actually side with you on a lot of issues. If they disagree with you do not dismiss them like you dismissed Krugman, checkout why did they say what they said.
Krugman spent his life studying trade dynamics and got a Nobel for it that is why he defends free trade not because he is a hack or a Dem.
Most of what you say is right but when you say, “Switching to Euro or any other fucking currency won’t even dent the value of the dollar,” that has never happened, and you can’t say it won’t dent the dollar. I know what you mean in that the USD dominates the market and Oil makes up so little of that dominance regarding currency that it would do little to devalue the dollar. But you’re viewing it as an isolated system, if the fossil fuels are not sold in dollars anymore it will affect the pocketbooks of Oil Companies tremendously, the uncertainty would have a ripple effect. And as you know all the oil fields of Exon, BP and Shell have PMCs (Private Military Contractors) aka the US military and others (Black Water or whatever they changed their name to), and this is the part that spills into Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan soon Chad and Somalia, etc.
Your mainstream media argument has to be a mistake, just last week CNN said that Russia was going to close a school in Russia to retaliate against the sanctions, but then the people at the school released a statement saying it was a lie. Guess where CNN got that story? An unnamed US official (Surprise, surprise). Also, the eight-year-old girl tweeting in Syria (Aleppo) with no Internet and a fluent knowledge of English. Those are just two stories that came up this month that prove that the media is in cahoots with the government. Not to mention the narrative they ran with during the Iraq war. There’s millions of examples dating back to before Vietnam, so don’t put Info Wars and AP in the same sentence please, the difference is like night and day.
Using foreign currency to sell iPhones did not reduce Apple’s profits (and Apple is the world’s most profitable company, more profitable than any Oil company) and using a currency or a basket of currencies to trade in oil other than the dollar won’t affect Oil companies profits either. Indeed it might lead to an increase in profits if the oil companies enter the foreign exchange market to play with currencies now that they are not tied to a specific one.
And defense contractors have nothing to do with oil. They sell their equipment by the denomination of the country they are in and their sales are independent of foreign struggles. The biggest military consumption of US weaponry is from the mandated NATO 2% of GDP defense spending of NATO members an most of it goes to US companies. Middle East states pay little and most of it is actually a way for their rulers to steal from their respective treasuries in a quasi-legal fashion.
Finally about mainstream media and “unnamed” sources, Seymour Hersch used “unnamed sources” in his reporting about Syria and refused to reveal those sources to his editors who published his previous work on Abu-Ghraib (back then he shared the sources and the photos of course) yet surprisingly everything he said is taken as gospel and clowns here in TYT heavily criticised the New Yorker for not publishing his story which was published in an extreme leftist London rag with no history of any investigative journalism. And don’t say this time is different, the identity of Deep Throat was known to the entire editorial board of WaPo as well as their counsel and no one peeped and the subpoenas to them to reveal the source were rejected in court.
The use of unnamed sources is at the heart of journalism because most likely those people who talk commit felonies by speaking and a good journalist explores two independent sources to confirm what he heard. It is the reaction, or lack there of, that determines what happened next.
And the way things are running, AP is just the leftist version of infowars.
I’m sorry I was silly, I didn’t mean defense contractors I meant Private Military Contractors, and you’re right about Hersh’s sources. But the people that leak information to so-called “main-stream” always get away with leaking it if it’s pro-government information, as has been the case for Obama’s historical use of the Patriot Act to target everyone that shows the ugly truth about the government, but leaving the ones that leaked pro-government information. Hersh’s story (Abu Grahib) won multiple awards, but now his sources (Syria) are private, the government has done nothing to win over the public’s trust, whereas Seymour Hersh has won numerous journalistic awards including the Pulitzer Prize. Abu Ghraib and Syria are very different tiered stories, Abu Ghraib revealed a secret prison, the Syria story, if it’s true that the US is just there for the Oil, would be a Pentagon Papers-type of a scandal involving the first black president of the United States. It would undermine the government’s position and in Syria ultimately opening up the government to lawsuits for their actions…although I doubt anyone could stand up to the US it would be a weak sauce attempt the same way the International Court found Bush guilty of war crimes. If Hersh revealed his sources they’d be thrown in prison instantly, because the government would see it as the ultimate betrayal. The government doesn’t go after him because of his record and the people he knows from inside the Government, plus it would look ugly although Obama has passed a Ministry of Truth type of law recently so maybe they will go after him. Info wars pull stories out of their ass, whereas the AP has evidence to back it up and even though sometimes they may have the facts misunderstood their intentions are pure, it’s not like they want everything to be shitty. Infowars wants everything to be crap because it would prove their narrative, their intentions are bad. You used the word “leftist” don’t do that (maybe use extreme left or leftwing); people might think you’re from the “alt-right” which I very much doubt you are. You seem like a reasonable centrist who doesn’t like the idea of people saying his government is corrupt and in bed with the press, although this is my shallow opinion and I do think you make some very valid points.
National Defense is like 3.3% of GDP and 57% of discretionary funding, although that 57% number always confused me and I will have to research it a bit.
– https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals
So you are saying that what our govt & MSM tells us is true, and that we are NOT fighting for oil interests & defense contractors. We are fighting for “freedom” and to defeat the evil Russia & Syria bad guys?
“Free trade” is not real. It is global trade without borders only benefits corporations & not workers or citizens.
It is a snake that is eating itself.
If workers can’t afford the products they are making, there will be no market for the products.
MSM is an honest actor, in your eyes, and never-ending war is good … how?
As for Krugman, who wanted a job in a Clinton admin, winning a Nobel ….
Obama also won a Nobel “Peace” prize, btw, and what a joke that turned out to be.
NeoLib Clintoncrats are HI-larious! So what is your reasoning for continuous war?
No. What I am saying is that every ran TYT or the AP launch on the government or the MSM is based out of a story that originally came from the investigative efforts of MSM. If MSM were stenographers as Cenk and the AP claim then why the fuck are they waiting their time breaking stories that Cenk ends up ranting about?
As for foreign interventions, the US uses human rights as a selling point because if they told the American people that the reason why they went to Kuwait in 91 was because Saddam expressed his intent on consolidating 30% of all the world’s oil and imposing a new price target that would be 8 times the price in Aug. 1990 causing mayhem and an economic recession no one will buy the argument for war. Indeed the war resolution barely passed the senate in 1990 (52-47). If the US told the American people that the reason it keeps 100k troops in SEA and still keeps a massive base in Japan is because China has territorial claims on both Japan ad Korea and will act upon them plunging the world into mayhem the American people won’t buy it. If the US told them that the reason for all the interventions in Latin America was to keep the canal zone safe because 40% of the US trade flows there the American people won’t buy into it and the USSR was hell bent in the 80s on wresting the control of the canal zone.
See, the world is not simple and dictatorial countries are not run by the fairy godmother dancing kombaya around the camp fire. In Rwanda when the US announced it has no intention of intervening 800k people died in 100 days. In Congo 5 million people died in the 1st and 2nd Congo wars also because the US did not intervene. By merely implying that they will go into Sudan a 40 year civil war that killed 3 million people ended in 1 year. In Cambodia 3 million people died because the US decided to let the Khmer Rouge roam free when it withdrew from Vietnam.
Not all interventions are good but not all are bad either.
Finally about trade. Free trade is what made 600 million Chinese now classified as middle class, it is what made 300 million Indians rise from abject poverty to having running water and indoor pluming, it is what made Turkey turn from a country that exported people to Europe by the millions into a country that begs its former citizens to get back because birth rates in Turkey are low and the economy is growing at a 5% rate. It is what made Eastern European dumps after the cold war have a western European life style and stability, it is what made Russia come back from the brink and become a stable economic power-house. Free trade even helped the US end structural unemployment.
In the Reagan recession, which was nothing compared to the 2007-2009 recession, the unemployment rate was 11%, it barely passed the 10% mark in the last recession and even in the growth years an unemployment rate below 5% was rarer than unicorns. The reason is because industrial economies have a built in structural unemployment problem (checkout France which has a stubborn unemployment rate above 10% or even Germany which has a 5% unemployment rate). Free trade is wholly responsible for this because inefficient industries prone to recessions were outsources while actual recession proof industries not only stayed but thrived.
Did free trade damage the lives of millions? Of course. My trip to Buffalo haunts me to this day seeing the dying towns on the Mohawk river from Albany going west. Sad towns with sad people and unspeakable suffering from drugs and unemployment but that does not mean that millions of others did not benefit. Atlanta (and the rest of Georgia) is 10 times richer today than before NAFTA, in Virginia there are entire counties where Black people are richer than the white people in those counties and these are not part of the DC metro-area but closer to the industrial bases near the coast where many live. NC was joke of state and now it is thriving thanks to massive R&D investments as well as a growing manufacturing base. Those states adapted to NAFTA and did not complain and got rich off of it while the Rust belt is wallowing in its misery.
Bush Jr. tried to save the steel industry once. He imposed a 40% tariff on all imported steel to save Pennsylvania steel and guess what? Manufacturers in the US preferred to pay extra and import steel than to buy US steel because as I said earlier US manufacturing in the Rust belt sucked. If it did not suck it would have grown not shrink and the steel industry collapsed despite the tariff. The biggest factory Toyota is building right now is in Tupelo, MS not Reading, PA. VW is building a factory in Chattanooga, TN not Akron, OH.
Say what you may say about free trade but facts are not on your side.
Your so brilliant & knowledgeable! We are SO lucky to be graced with your clarifying wisdom!
Since we are just poor, barely literate hippies who need your clarifying guidance.
As for kum ba ya & holding hands …. I believe it is you who are the fairyduster.
American politicians & their MSM lapdogs are only thinking of the bigger picture and the good of the world as a whole? The machinations & twisting vines of the rich & powerful are too complex for the worker bees to understand. If only we had spent more money on the correct college education, we would understand this as well. Bullshit.
They, like their Corporate Overlords, are thinking of how to line their pockets.
It has NEVER been about anyone other than themselves & how much cash they can grab.
They don’t care about climate change.
They don’t care whose water is polluted (because they plan to own all the clean water).
They don’t care who has jobs & who doesn’t, in this country or the next.
They don’t care who dies, who gets bombed or who doesn’t, for that matter. As long as it isn’t one of them, and maybe not even that, if they can make a dollar & a dime.
They have convinced themselves, as you have, that there is a “greater good.”
Again, Bullshit.
Doing a document dump may look impressive, but it only makes me wonder why you even bother with TYT?
Since you are so consistent in your disdain for all things progressive.
Don’t you have homework? Or a book report to write?
Chetzmom – I agree with your great post.
I, also, believe that these Criminal-Greedy Corporate Overlords are using the media & politicians to disguise and normalize criminal greed, who have disdain for everyday people & nature; because they sit in their ivory towers playing virtual ‘chess’ against their corporate foes.
If everyday people & nature around the world can’t significantly increase Corporate profits & power for the long term, then we are seen as refuse in their way to building a successful winning enterprise. They have divided us all into the sub-human class of lepers, the Dalits of India, the worthless. Even the so-called Upper Class, who is serving them well, is a facade and aren’t guaranteed protection from their ruthlessness & disdain, especially when they are no longer useful.
Some people politely say that we’re in a ‘RACE to the BOTTOM’ – I call it War against Humanity & Nature!
This is to all.
Unlike the AP people who have no clue how the fucking world works, I do. I have been to many parts of the world and lived in an international hot spot for nearly 15 years. I speak the language perfectly and know the people first hand. Whether you like what I said earlier or not is irrelevant to me because I know what I saw, what I read and what I heard and it has nothing to do with the nonsense that AP and the rest of people peddling conspiracy nonsense is. What I said earlier is the truth as I experienced it. Take it as you like.
Now to the responses, unfortunately chetzmom gave no coherent intelligible response to what I said earlier. No stats, no counter-arguments based on rigorous research. Just a rant and rants are exactly what guys in infowars do. Ranting never did anything.
As for SeaBoyd’s, there are no “greedy-criminal Overlords”, this is just the latest excuse progressives use to justify why Zephyr Teachout, the progressive lioness who outspent and outgunned her pro-Trump republican opponent, lost the election in an area carried out by Hillary.
Finally for anesh’s response, my view as I said is based on extensive travels, actual life experiences (including a brief moment at a war-zone) and actual research.
FYI Congo is just as rich in minerals (especially nuclear materials) and oil as Iraq, in fact more so since it is not a desert and it has a strategic location. The US refrained from intervention there for a genuine isolationist. The US chose Iraq for multiple reasons part of which was oil but oil is just the cherry on the top. There were other strategic considerations chief among them Israel which wanted the war even more so than the Americans and its former senior lobbyist, Paul Wolfowitz, was instrumental in the fuck up that happened later beginning with firing of Jay Garner and ending with the sectarian division of power.
As for Rwanda, the US did not intervene at all. Belgium was the primary factor in the war and the war was an ethnic revolt by the majority Hutu against minority dictatorial rule by the Tutsi (who were put there by the Belgians) and of course in such wars it immediately descend into genocide. The US intervention stablised Rwanda to this day by imposing a power-sharing government still run b a Tutsi dictator (Paul Kagame) but limited by a powerful Hutu faction.
Finally, all what I said earlier and my reply here was not to justify anything, it is simply to put things into context. The binary world view of AP and others here is wrong. Not everything the US does is for money or for corporations for that matter. Just look at Iran and their 10s of billions of dollars of blocked purchases from American companies and their offers for exclusive exploitation contracts of Iranian national resources at terms which would make the terms that Mousaddagh demanded in 52 look harsh. It did not matter because the US has strategic concerns, rightly or wrongly, that no business or corporation can bend.
Again, since you have SO much disdain for AP, and TYT in general, you still haven’t answered my question on why you continue to watch? Or right long dissertations on how ignorant other posts are because they don’t seem to agree that Govt has everyone’s best interests at heart.
As you describe, you have traveled the world over, and have seen wonderful examples of NeoLib-Clintoncrat policy successes. Corporate interests intertwined with governments in a way that, while producing some hardships (the incidental death & destruction of people & natural resources), is far outweighed by the benefits bestowed on the few who “make the right life choices” and join the New World Order.
So, since AP (and those who share their view) have “no clue how the fuck the world works,” why on earth do you waste your time here writing long dissertations on how the fuck the world works?
Since I’m so incoherent & unintelligible … why aren’t you putting your talents to better use somewhere else?
Don’t you have an international conference to attend?
Or another book report to write?
:^)
I have already answered this on many occasions but here is my response again to refresh memories:
I support TYT because I also think money should be out of politics.
I support it because I want a good government regulated healtcare market that is stable whether it was an NHS style system or a typical European system or even the current Obamacare system with tweaks that makes it affordable for people who are not as fortunate as I am.
I want fair taxation not unlimited taxation as some progressives want or no taxation as some libertarians want and definitely not the current system where people making 300 times more than what I do end up paying a third of my rate which is not that high.
I am scared shitless about climate change having seen its effects first hand in the current calamity in Syria in dilapidated refugee camps in Turkey and elsewhere.
I am 110% behind a full merciless regulation regime on everything from Wall Street to the safety specs on my smart phone as well as prosecuting offenders and criminals with the same zealousness as local prosecutors prosecute petty criminals.
I am against all wars period but do not expect me to stay idle seeing genocide unfold and seeing my government in cahoots with genociders or not taking the left to task on their tacit (in the case of AP overt) support of war criminals.
In many other respects I do have differences with TYT, some substantial, but in the end there is no one on the other side who agrees with me on the things above which will define my future. In what I wrote above was criticism of rabid leftism that has gone native as the Brits say adopting the same conspiracy shit that the rabid right used so successfully. This won’t help the left nor will help their cause.
Disdain for experts and intellectuals is what the left criticise about the right and correctly noted that it lead to the current horrendous policies that we saw but a glimpse of yesterday. If the left starts to disdain their very own champions 8 years ago just because they have another opinion then the left is committing suicide because the leaders of the right wing anti-intellectual movement are themselves some of the smartest right wing intellectuals out there but who are the leaders of the left wing anti-intellectual movement?
To Sec863… [As for SeaBoyd’s, there are no “greedy-criminal Overlords”] – Follow the money Lebowski! Multi-national corporations don’t want you to believe its them.
You have a disturbing view of history; you’ve clearly only read the US neoliberal version; you think not all interventions are bad? Governments are amoral like corporations, the reason the US didn’t intervene in Congo was that they’d gain nothing. They propped up the Shiites against Saddam and then let them die because if they intervened they’d gain nothing.
The US intervenes in First Congo War(Clinton) a genocide happens. I have friends from Rwanda, and they would tell me how fucked up it is that they lived in the village and then all of a sudden their neighboring village would get a tank from the fucking US, and they wouldn’t know what to do because the tanks would just kill everyone. This was before the genocide in Rwanda. And since we’re in Africa; The US (CIA) gave Nelson Mandela’s location to the apartheid government of South Africa; Mandela spends 27 years in jail thanks, US. You sat by while South Africa lost 27 years of democracy just as you do now when it comes to Palestine. To this day, Dickless Cheney thinks this was a great idea.
You said, “In Cambodia 3 million people died because the US decided to let the Khmer Rouge roam free when it withdrew from Vietnam.”- WTF 3 million people were killed because the US decided to lie about the war and started the War and created an enemy. If the US didn’t attack Vietnam, there would be nobody to kill those 3 million people. The US then let those Vietnamese die. Look up the “The Gulf of Tonkin incident.”
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HODxnUrFX6k
The US is currently messing around in Ecuador and Honduras; the US is undermining all of their democracies.
You bitch and whine about AP not treating the mainstream fairly; I’m honestly shocked, how about you treat your fellow man as human beings.
During the civil war, if Hungry had attacked the South and killed them because slavery was evil, would you be looking at Hungry now and going “Thanks, foreign government of Hungry!” No, OFCOURSE NOT!!! You’d be pissed because they are fucking with your countries history, but somehow this escapes all the neocons and neoliberals because they are devoid of empathy. Every country you touch turns to shit, either that or you exploit the population to make billions. It gets me so upset talking to people that believe war is ever a good thing, because I’ve seen people suffering and it rips my god damn soul out to see children dying because you want to make a buck or play global chess.
chetzmom, I have a minor distraction for you. Robert E Howard’s most famous creation, Conan the Barbarian, had a recurring nemesis: the cult of Set. Set was a snake god. Its symbol: a giant snake, spanning the circumference of the world, with its tail in its mouth. Obviously, both you and REH are using the ouroboros from mythology to make effective visual allusions. In mythology, the snake eating itself represents the infinite cycle of life and death, which does not characterize neoliberalism. The quote, “The weak are meat, and the strong do eat”, seems to be more appropriate, but less colorful (see, http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/297979/origins-of-the-weak-are-meat-and-the-strong-do-eat).
chetzmom, I also have a question that is not a distraction. I would like to see, from a trusted expert, the economic sustainability of continuous war. It seems to me that continuous war would eventually bankrupt our nation, or it would impoverish our standard of living by drastically reducing social and infrastructure spending.
Beg to differ, Strong eating weak meat, is entirely colorful and most appropriate for what we have going on here! In fact, more accurate than the snake, since “circle of life” only applies to continuous war in the starkest way.
I know Rome is the most over-used example of continuous war bleeding a country of its resources, but it may only partly apply to the US. Here, the War machine is becoming the only thing we produce, so the Oligarchy has no interest in it being unsustainable. It must continue for them to stay in power.
Other industries & jobs are built around making weapons. Food is grown to feed the workers & soldiers. The US exports War. The public is told we are “fighting terrorists” or “spreading Democracy.” Then it is encouraged to flag-wave and shame those who disagree with “Freedom.”
Nationalism before Rationalism.
Theocracy before democracy.
Will the masses tire of it? I think we are tired of it now! But if working at a munitions plant, tank factory or becoming a soldier is the only “good” job around, you’ll take it to feed your family.
Btw, the Arnold crushed it in the Conan the Barbarian movie, the original.
He was an air-brushed , fantasy Van art come to life, pure craptastic camp … love it!
sec86379, I’m glad you posted item #3. I knew Steve had his history incorrect because I watched events unfold at the time and read subsequent histories. Regardless of the Congressional testimony hoax and big oil motivations, Saddam’s naked aggression against Kuwait needed to be addressed by the world community and it was. I distinctly remember the Mainstream Media showing maps, general troop locations, and reported Iraqi movements. As you report, the Iraqi threats towards Saudi Arabia occurred after our troop build-up.
Can you hire Greg Palast or is he too old for TYT and Cenk?
Hi Steve thank you for responding
Of course we know Channel 4 is not BBC.
Happy New Year, hi to Jimmy!
888
apologies for copy-and-paste, I also posted this under Hour 1:
Just want to wish everyone at TYT including us members a safe and happy new year.
Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with commenters here, I learn something every day from you, and I thank you for that.
Here’s hoping that progressives make real progress taking back the Democratic Party in 2017, beginning with getting Keith Ellison elected chair of the DNC, and getting progressives elected to all 50 state chairs, etc. And, if the Dem Party cannot be saved from the Elites who have ruined it… then we move on to create a third party that will unite the majority of Americans who are sick of both parties.
Parting thought for 2016:
Which caused more damage to our electoral process in 2016 — unethical rigging and corruption by the DNC, Clinton Campaign and the White House during the primaries in order to put down Bernie’s insurgent campaign and thus deprive the people of the ability to choose a good candidate… or revelations via the email hack that these things really did happen?
Cheers!
Deb in Northern California
The only way we are going to get the hope and change you guys are talking about is to vote in a Bernie with fascist powers to make the things happen and to put all of those who have participated in stealing our democracy up against a wall and give them Castro justice and take all their assets.
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Looking forward to the 90 minute show. You guys are great!
Sean King or Shaun, forgot how it was spelled. His name sounds so familiar to me. Does he write for the daily news in New York?
What a messy pot of soup in the middle east!
First, MOVE THE COMMENT BOX TO THE TOP!!!
At the root of all the war, is nothing makes profit like war. History is full of bankers financing BOTH sides a war. In the USA the bankers and Wall street gives us our representatives in Washington. Why else would the government have a perpetual war policy?
Hey Steve and Jimmy,
I live in a progressive city in the scary state of NC with a vibrant segment of over-62 people like me still out there marching and fighting. Thanks for your coverage of Nic Smith (Virginia coal country) and the current power grab by the NC legislature. You guys complement each other so well: your explanation of Syria and the history of the “conflict” was spot on and brilliant.
The Aggressive Progressive fills a growing need for truth and outrage— you guys are THE antidote for corporate media gas lighting! Please keep shining your very bright light into all those dark corners, so we won’t think the oligarchs are making sense and we are going crazy.
I agree whole-heartily with your assessment that the Aggr-Progs fill a growing need for TRUTH & OUTRAGE … – thanks for your post.
Hi folks,
OK, Jimmy and I made a couple of errors here.
First, we said that Channel 4 is part of the BBC. Not sure why we said that. At the moment it sounded right to me, but obviously that is not the case. So sorry for any confusion that may have caused.
Second, I said that Eric Cantor was Speaker of the House. Obviously, John Boehner was SOTH, not Cantor. Cantor was House Majority Leader, which is different than SOTH. Again, I apologize for these mistakes.
More importantly, thank you for watching the show and supporting TYT. We literally can’t do this without you guys! As we close out 2016 and usher in 2017, thank you for your support and being a part of this ever-growing TYT family. Love you guys!!!
– Steve
Thank you Steve. You and Jimmy have given many of us reason to continue membership with TYT.
I appreciate Cenk, but he is too keen on Red Baiting and endless trump stories, both of which can be found on MSM.
jimmy and Steve – I love Aggressive Progressives, it’s one of the main reasons I became a TYT member, but please watch out for errors. I’m in the UK, and Channel 4 is *not* part of the BBC. Channel 4 News is the flagship news show on UK’s Channel 4 and is probably the most progressive mainstream TV news source we have. Channel 4 news is produced by ITN, a totally different organisation to the BBC.
Saying that, keep up the fantastic work. TYT are one of the few sources of reality-based news these days!
Thank you for the correction.
You talked about your Bully Pulpit, and I think we need to have a comedian start the Green Revolution. Why not raise the price of gasoline to at least $10/gallon, but don’t give the money to Exxon. The extra money should go to local communities so that they can invest in renewable energy. They can buy solar PV, wind turbines, batteries, EV’s (cars and buses) and community gardens. Won’t this have an effect on our lifestyle? Of Course it will, that’s the idea. We are all addicts and the pushers are giving us cheap drugs. We can’t handle it. How can you afford all that cheap gasoline? Every story about Syria or the Middle East or the terrorist attacks is just the price we pay. If you don’t want to pay $10, why not make it $20.
Did you see this week that Russia and Syria stopped the rebels in Aleppo and we almost had peace break out. But thankfully, the USA did an emergency shipment of weapons and the rebels were able to keep fighting.
Can you find the story (NY Times I think) about when the Russians came into the conflict, the US did an airdrop of 50 tons of weapons. they didn’t drop this for any group, they just dropped the weapons in the middle of the countryside.
You should also look into every attack in Europe and see if they were trained by the CIA in Jordan. The country, not the investigative journalist.
Are Emma and Jordan sharing the same room while travelling together? If not, shame shame shame
Do I need to go like cenk, just kidding, calm down everybody
“Zero vision” : that is powerful
Jimmy, you are an acquired taste, I grant you that! (how generious of me.)
No. Man. I absolutely love you. You know, Dave Koller was recently on a programme, and he talked about how Six Feet Under and The Sopranos were the last tv shows he followed? Well, I happen to coincide with Dave on that.
By comparison, the last rapper I ever listened to and liked was Eminem, in 2000 (I went with Kanye but abandoned him pretty quickly). I was like, this guy Eminem meinme whatever Marshall matters thing is the next Shakespeare, no way someone will surpass him in my lifetime.
Listening to you last AP shows Jimmy, I am changing my mind!
Barack NoChange Obama
Channel 4 news is NOT the BBC. That would be BBC News. Come on this is unbelievably basic…
In my area, BBC News is broadcast on channel 7. I could be wrong but it looks to me as if BBC News was simply broadcasting on channel 4 in whatever area that clip was filmed.
It’s definitely not the BBC. It’s got the Channel 4 News logo watermarked on the video the whole way through, and it cuts to the Channel 4 thing at the end but is slightly cut off when Jimmy stops the video. If it were anything to do with BBC News it’d say “BBC News”, not “4 News”. It’d be like showing a clip from CNN and saying it’s Fox. They’re two totally separate organisations.
I remember reading about water wars in Latin America. Bechtel privatizing the water and jacking up the prices for polluted water. What has happened to America, we shop at Banana Republic and now we are a banana republic today. I remember when Obama came to the Gulf Coast after the BP spill to show that the water was just fine. He and his family kicked their feet in the water on the bay side of Florida but not on the gulf side where the oil spill was. So it was nothing more than a fixed photo op and this governor in Michigan took his cues from Obama. What has happened to America? Democratic and Republican administrations have sold this country out from under neath us and gentrified our towns on a mass scale.
My only joy these days is AP and Old School.. I need my TYT!!
Report #2, Greg Palast, an aggressive progressive!
Oooo, good idea! I support that.
There’s bordetella in the water… that’s a thing we worry about for dogs because they drink from puddles, and it’s a cheap vaccine that’s given for free to strays in shelters. God bless America, the land of the free (but only if you’re a dog).
Obama=amnesia
Have you heard a single Hillary supporter admit that maybe nominating someone under investigation by the FBI was a bad idea ? nah, Comey’s a bad guy. Nominating someone under investigation is perfectly sensible.
*This week’s AP was filmed during Hour 4 of Watchers on the Wall*
Put this under the Agressive Progressives tag seriously! Took me a long time 2 find and please put a alert if the day changes!!! The best show Agressive Progressives!!!
Just want to say that it was weird to see Jimmy and Steve switch places.
The video from Channel Four is not quite accurate:
1. There were only few cases of local fights between Kurdish and Syrian army forces, it is not a real line of conflict, unlike others described in the video.
2. Syrian government is not Alawite. While Assad himself is Alawite, in reality he is secularist, and almost everyone else in the power is a Sunni, including the head of the army as well as about 70% of army in total, prime minister, grand mufti, and even Assad’s own wife.
3. There were literally no “moderate” rebels in Aleppo. On-camera recorded beheadings and torture of children was performed by the CIA-vetted “rebel” groups al-Zinki, not by Al-Qaeda’s formal affiliate. The mass killings of prisoners and burnings of evacuation buses was carried out by Ahrar al-Sham, which is also not formally an al-Qaeda affiliate. And yet all of those groups are Wahhabi/Salafi terrorists in reality; there is nothing “moderate” about them.
4. the USA did attack Syrian army forces few times, killing up to hundreds of soldiers during prolonged attack, effectively helping both Daesh/ISIS and Al-Qaeda to capture territory, though Pentagon does say it was done by “mistake”.
5. Syria does not buy oil form Daesh/ISIS in general (local case of the criminal trade notwithstanding); otherwise it would be easily videodocumented with surveillance drones (just as oil trade between Daesh/ISIS and Turkey is videodocumented).
6. There was never “popular revolution” in Syria, there were popular protests, which pro-Assad protests being just as popular or even bigger, even though this was never shown by the Western MSM. And the war has started with 7 (seven) policemen versus 4 (four) “peaceful protesters” show on March of 2011.
7. Also, Assad, unlike his father, was never a “dictator”, he is authoritarian. There is a meaning to the words, there is definition to the terms, and those are distinctly different due to criteria. In the latest years, though, Assad has started reforms, so he is even less authoritarian than was before the war.
Jordan was superb, as always. I just can not stop saying that having him on TYT is one of Cenk’s biggest achievements, one of the biggest inputs in media and real journalism.
I love the longer discussions and Steve Oh’s perspective on AP.
Great job guys! Looking forward to a longer show. These things fly by! Glad to be a member!