Distant Early Warning

One of the first lessons most self-supporting labor class adults learn in life is the importance of vigilantly cleaning up after oneself; after all, once you're out on your own in the world, nobody is going to do it for you. For most of us, the apathy, inattentiveness and delay of today, will invariably come back to bite us in the backside tomorrow - and I'm as much a prisoner of this reality as anyone else who actually works for a living. Thus after procrastinating for the first three weeks of May, I finally paid the piper and spent most of this past weekend doing a little housekeeping; both in a very literal sense, and in terms of getting some long-brewing observations and criticisms off my chest over on my Patreon blog. During that time, I also wrapped up my six part look at Matt Taibbi's 2010 anti-Wall Street masterpiece "Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History“ - you can find that article (and links to the previous five installments) here.

I mention this now because throughout all of my writing about Griftopia, I've consciously attempted to highlight what I feel is the enduring takeaway from the book: the persistent culture of overt criminality in the global financial industry and the complicity of bought-and-paid-for gate guardians who continue to enable that criminality. Although it is not commonly understood, the truth is that  decades of deregulation, state-subsidized conglomeration and the absolute dominance of American financial institutions have turned the entire global economy into a sort of ponzi scheme - a rigged game where market profits are privatized, while the losses are passed on to the people in a system that serves to funnel untold trillions of dollars from public coffers directly into the pockets of elite investors and banking institutions. Once you understand this you start to see the 2008 financial crisis for what it truly was; not a "thousand year flood" but rather a predictable (and reoccurring) side effect of allowing largely unaccountable mega-banks to gamble freely with other people's money. 

In other words - it's not really a question of "if" there will be another financial crisis, by rather a question of when the bubble is going to pop and precisely who will be holding the bag when it comes time to pay off Wall Street's gambling debts. That's why stories like this May 15, 2019 piece by Pam and Russ Martens over at Wall Street on Parade should gravely concern you:

JPMorgan Chase Owns $2.2 Trillion in Stock Derivatives; Two-Thirds the Total for All Banks

I'm sorry; did I accidentally say this article should merely concern you? As it turns out, that was a grossly negligent understatement - what I meant is that this article should scare the living sh*t out of you. Unfortunately because it's written by financial industry observers for an audience of banking scandal junkies who're extremely plugged into "the Street" it may not be readily apparent to the casual observer why all of this is extremely bad. Let's look at some individual quotes from the article which I'll try to place in context, before looking to sum up the situation in layman's terms at the end:

"According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks, as of December 31, 2018 JPMorgan Chase Bank NA (the Federally-insured bank backstopped by U.S. taxpayers) held $2,212,311,000,000 ($2.2 trillion) in equity derivatives. Equity is another name for stock. The OCC also reported that all commercial banks in the U.S. held a total of $3.374 trillion in equity derivatives at the end of last year, meaning that for some very strange reason, JPMorgan Chase holds a 65.5 percent market share of bank trading in this derivatives market.
Those trillion dollar figures are notional amounts, meaning the face value. The OCC defines “notional” like this: “The notional amount of a derivative contract is a reference amount that determines contractual payments, but it is generally not an amount at risk. The credit risk in a derivative contract is a function of a number of variables, such as whether counterparties exchange notional principal, the volatility of the underlying market factors…, the maturity and liquidity of the contract, and the creditworthiness of the counterparty.”

Translation: one of the largest banks on the planet has 2.2 trillion dollars worth of potentially sketchy stock derivatives parked in its regular banking portfolio; effectively meaning JPMorgan Chase is gambling with a metric f*ck ton of money that's insured by the U.S. government. This is not an auspicious start, but onward we go:

"According to the OCC report, JPMorgan Chase lost $644 million on its equity positions in the fourth quarter of 2018. We don’t yet know what happened in the first quarter of this year because the OCC has not yet released its report.

Not only is JPMorgan Chase Bank NA engaging in risky stock derivative trades, but according to the OCC just 31 percent of these trades are centrally cleared. The other 69 percent are what are called over-the-counter or OTC derivative trades, meaning they are “bilateral,” or secret contracts between JPMorgan Chase and a counterparty with little daylight available to Federal regulators. That also would suggest that they are highly illiquid."

Here we discover three things; the massively overexposed bank is in fact already losing a significant amount of money on these risky wagers, the majority of these trades are being conducted with zero regulatory oversight and there's good reason to believe the underlying stock derivatives themselves are junk. This is all starting to feel a little familiar:

"At this point, we should pause for a moment to explain what a “derivative” actually is. The OCC defines it this way: “A financial contract in which the value is derived from the performance of underlying market factors, such as interest rates, currency exchange rates, commodity, credit, and equity prices.”

Another definition of a derivative might be this: a type of trade where Wall Street mega banks, with far superior market knowledge from trillions of bits of internal trading data, can sell sh**t packaged as a solid investment to the dumb tourists who manage public pensions, municipal funds, and school district bond issuance, to name just a few. We apologize for the pejorative “dumb tourist,” but compared to the Ph.D. computer geeks, artificial intelligence software, and algorithmic trading that dominate Wall Street trading floors, we’re all dumb tourists. (See JPMorgan Employs 30,000 Programmers.)"

Yeap, the derivatives are dogsh*t and to make matters worse, these risky bets are almost certainly being pushed on small time institutional investors who represent cities, towns, school districts and working class retirees or hopeful retirees. If this isn't at least starting to give you a sense of déjà vu, you certainly haven't been clicking on the links as we go.

As bad as all of that is however, we're still looking at a situation which is merely alarming, predatory and immoral. Sure, JPMorgan Chase has accepted $2.2 trillion worth of obfuscated, unregulated and absurdly complex wagers on volatile stock markets through a bank that's backed up by public funds. Yes, the bank has packaged those bets into an undesirable investment vehicle to theoretically offset a potential loss. Yes, these risky derivatives are crappy and yes, it's objectively sh*tty that Jamie Dimon is pawning them off on complicit yokel government administrators and pension fund managers whose clients likely believe their investments are much safer than they are. So far, that's a pretty sad story for working class retirees but it hardly rates as "iceberg ahead" for the global economy. For things to get really out of hand here, the bigwigs at JPMorgan Chase would have to be making uniquely awful, insanely risky bets that are going to explode long before they can pass the risk on to children and the elderly. What are the odds of that eerily familiar situation coming up again this time? Let's turn back to the article and find out.     

At this point in the piece, the authors go into a thorough discussion about the 2012 "London Whale scandal" which is certainly worth reading in its own right. This is however a recap, not a reprint so I'll just sum up the important things you need to know here: several years after the financial crisis, this exact same bank, with this exact same CEO, "was caught trading exotic derivatives in London to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and ended up losing at least $6.2 billion of depositors’ money." The bank (including Jamie Dimon) also appear to have engaged in a little "open fraud" in an effort to cover up their massive losses; all of which earned JPMorgan Chase a $920 million fine in the fall of 2013. How bad was it? From the article:

"Senator Carl Levin, who chaired the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations at the time, said JPMorgan Chase “piled on risk, hid losses, disregarded risk limits, manipulated risk models, dodged oversight, and misinformed the public. (Is that really a bank you want involved in $2.2 trillion of stock derivatives, 69 percent of which are shrouded in darkness?)”   

Well isn't that just lovely? In answer to the author's above question, no that is almost certainly not the type of trading you want the largest federally insured bank in America conducting; especially in light of their objectively criminal history and the laughably permissible regulatory environment Wall Street is operating in under the Trump administration.

Naturally, this terrifying story gets even worse the further you dig:

"Now that Wall Street banks have a deregulatory regime in the White House, it is only natural to wonder if the cowboys are back in charge of trading at JPMorgan Chase. On that point, the OCC reports that at the height of the financial crisis in the fourth quarter of 2008, equity derivative contracts held by commercial banks totaled just $737 billion, or just 22 percent of the $3.374 trillion today, of which JPMorgan controls two-thirds." 

Excellent, so that means the problem is almost certainly more than big enough to sink the entire global economy and absolutely nobody in a position to do anything about it gives a flying f*ck! Don't run away just yet my friends, because the good times just keep on rolling here:

"Adding to the concerns of what’s going on at JPMorgan Chase, is the question as to why the bank isn’t using the multitude of exchange-traded products available to take positions in the stock market, like the popular and liquid futures contract on the Standard and Poor’s 500 index, and why it isn’t making the trades in its investment bank instead of its Federally-insured commercial bank.

The troublesome answer is likely contained in this article at Risk.net which names JPMorgan the “equity derivatives house of the year.” If you read the article to the end, it becomes clear that JPMorgan Chase is customizing (known as “bespoke” contracts) equity derivatives in large amounts and with highly complex terms."

So you caught that right? The largest, most corrupt and "too big to fail" bank in America is almost certainly running massive, volatile, absurdly complex and largely unsupervised "prop bets" on the stock market through its federally insured depository arm, precisely because they're mindbogglingly risky investments. If the bank's "bespoke" wagers pay then the profits go to Jamie Dimon's investors; if on the other hand they bust, then potentially everyone on the planet loses - that is, everyone except the folks at JPMorgan Chase who custom built this financial time bomb in the first place.

Of course, the really f*cked up part about all of this is the fact that playing Russian roulette with the global economy because it'll be pensioners and the public treasury that eats the bullet if you lose, probably isn't illegal - and if it is illegal, you can be damn sure nobody is ever going to jail for it regardless.

Then again maybe I'm wrong; maybe the real icing on this whole sh*tcake is the fact that the US corporate media apparently doesn't consider this stupefyingly awful news even worthy of a blog post. I guess when it comes to screwing over the proles for fun and profit, corporate America really is as "thick as thieves."


- Nina Illingworth



Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.

Updates available on Twitter and Facebook.

Kingmaking II: Confidence Games

Obviously, the best thing about analyzing a horse race is the fact that you have to wade through quite a lot of horse sh*t  to figure anything out - oh, wait, that's not awesome at all actually. Sadly however, manufactured narratives, smears and propaganda in the mainstream media rarely sort themselves out in a timely manner, so here we are again.

In my previous Media Madness article, we talked a little bit about how a neoliberal, anti-Bernie unity ticket under Biden might begin to coalesce under the right conditions and why the Congressional Black Caucus was trying to negotiate a VP slot for Kamala Harris before the first primary even fired. I also briefly touched on the fact that corporate media outlets were hyping-up any sketchy poll with terrible methodology that showed Joe Biden with a big lead over Bernie Sanders; stuff like focusing entirely on landline polling, drawing sweeping conclusions from self-selecting internet surveys or using samples that feature a statistically insignificant number of voters under fifty years of age, and so on.

Even with clear evidence that the mainstream political and media establishments in America are certainly working to inflate the size of Biden's apparent lead over Sanders however, it's important to note that Palooka Joe is in fact still leading over Bernie Sanders in the polls - at least for the moment. Furthermore, this is despite the fact that both the burgeoning US left, and many establishment "center-left" liberals, are fully aware that Joe Biden is objectively hot vomit in a cup as a candidate.

Which then just leaves us with the horrifying but otherwise fairly simple question of... why? To begin to answer that, let's take a look at this May 13th, 2019 post from Nate Silver's vanity "statistical analysis" website, Five-Thirty-Eight:

Biden Is (Still) Leading Cable News Coverage

First and foremost we should note that this article itself is objectively terrible horse racing garbage; most of it focuses on pumping tires for 538's pet project candidate (Liz Warren) and excusing the excessive cable news media coverage of Biden by noting that some of it was negative - a fact that in many ways, is largely meaningless. Let's ignore all that nonsense and look at the important part of the article, the data chart:

Yes indeed, you've read that correctly - last week Joe Biden got almost as much cable news coverage as all of the other nineteen "major" Democratic Party 2020 nomination candidates combined; including well over three times as much coverage as his closest rival in the polls, Bernie Sanders. Furthermore, this is hardly a "new" phenomenon - these numbers have remained pretty constant since Biden announced his candidacy in April, as author Dhrumil Mehta noted in his previous installment of this feature.

Look we can argue until we're blue in the face about age splits, focus group polling and the vastly overstated "anti-Sanders" movement among affluent, mainstream liberals, the reality is that early polling metrics are going to be heavily swayed by familiarity/name recognition and that in turn, is going to be overwhelmingly influenced by the sheer volume of media mentions. This phenomenon will of course be intimately familiar to Bernie Sanders supporters who likely remember the total media blackout the Senator's campaign endured well into the middle portions of the Democratic Party nomination race in 2015 and 2016. In other words, Biden is clearly getting a significantly early boost in the polls, because of corporate cable news coverage.

Okay well, so what right? Biden only officially announced his candidacy at the end of April and he's recently be embroiled in a couple of serious scandals involving inappropriate touching of women and conflict of interest in the Ukraine (the latter of which may not even be true.) To some degree, it's natural that Biden is driving coverage right now, isn't it? In a vacuum, one would have to think that eventually the combination of "bad coverage" and the news cycle moving beyond Biden's entrance into the race, should cause a leveling out of media attention and a corresponding drop in the polls - at least, in theory.

The problem of course is that politics are not conducted in a vacuum and as with all things involving the corporate, for-profit media in America, class interests generate a tremendous amount of gravity when it comes to the media's behavior, both in terms of which candidates they choose to cover, and how they're going to be portrayed in this nomination contest. When you combine Biden's staggeringly disproportionate amount of (often defensive) cable news coverage, constant efforts to disparage Bernie's chances of winning the nomination in the mainstream press and absurdly premature corporate media declarations about the perceived inevitability of Joe Biden, a different and far less innocent picture quickly emerges - a picture that will seem eerily familiar to anyone who wasn't living under a rock during the 2016 Democratic Party nomination contest.

Hey, speaking of gravity; do you think there's any chance the amount of fawning cable news coverage awarded to Biden might have anything to do with the fact that Palooka Joe kicked off his campaign with a "a $2,800 per person fundraiser at the home of David L. Cohen, the executive vice president and chief of lobbying for Comcast" - which owns MSNBC, the country's premier "liberal" cable news network?

Comcast-Owned MSNBC in the Tank for Joe Biden’s Presidential Run

Well then, there's certainly nothing fishy going on here right? Run along citizen, nothing to see behind the yellow tape..

Look, it's no secret that the wealthy owners of large media companies do not like Sanders, and you'd have to be a complete goddamn idiot to believe that didn't affect how the democratic socialist Senator from Vermont is portrayed in the mainstream corporate media. Furthermore, this animus towards Bernie is only matched by the intense, white-hot hatred of Clintonite apparatchiks who have already openly declared their desire to see a mainstream media war against Sanders during this primary process; a wish that seems considerably more ominous when you remember the *cough* "close" relationship between the Clinton campaign and mainstream liberal media in 2016. Throw in "sekret" establishment Democrat meetings about how to stop Sanders and open declarations from the oligarchy that his nomination would be considered unacceptable, and you have more than the makings of a ruling class plot to ratf*ck Bernie Sanders - can you really even call it a conspiracy if all this is being done out in the open?

It is abundantly clear that the elite establishment in America is doing, and will continue to do, everything in their power to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the 2020 Dem Party nomination. As the only candidate in the polls leading or even coming close to matching Bernie's level of support, Joe Biden is the obvious early beneficiary of these machinations - particularly now, long before the debates and while the primary source of information on how the race is going is the same mainstream corporate media that wishes Sanders would f*ck off and die. That Biden is in the lead and received a polling bump from announcing his campaign is hardly novel, or even remotely surprising - the question for Palooka Joe has always been whether or not his lead will "survive contact with an actual campaign."
 
After a whooping three weeks on the hustings, with every possible advantage the elite mainstream establishment could grant him, things are "so far, so good" for Joe Biden - but would-be kingmakers and concerned democratic socialists would be advised to remember that Bernie Sanders has already demonstrated that he can make up a vast amount of ground on the corporate media's anointed candidate, in a very short period of time.

This contest is far from over; frankly, we've only just begun. 


- Nina Illingworth


Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.

Updates available on Twitter and Facebook.

Kingmaking

As those of you who've read my writing on other sites and follow me on Twitter are no doubt already aware, I've spent a great deal of time examining not only the candidates, but the contours of the unfolding Democratic Party 2020 Nomination contest. Although I myself am personally loathe to engage in the sort of discussions I describe derisively as "horse race analysis" and thus I confine most of these conversations to Twitter, there's no question that they're extremely popular conversations. People want to know who is going to win and more importantly, they want to know if or rather how the Democratic Party establishment is going to find a way to screw over Bernie Sanders again.

For essentially the past three years, I've maintain the position that the Democratic Party no longer has the power over its own politicians and internal mandarins to present a united "neoliberal" front against Bernie Sanders. As such, I have been inclined to believe that although it's not going to be a cakewalk, eventually Sanders will emerge from a tough primary battle with Joe Biden as the Dem Party nominee to take on Downmarket Mussolini and the wholly corrupted GOP. Furthermore, despite numerous sketchy polls declaring Biden in the lead by well over 30 points, I'm still fairly comfortable with that prediction - and I'm not particularly concerned about a complicated, Rube Goldberg machine-esque, second ballot Superdelegate coup at the convention either.

Throughout this entire process however, I have always noted that there was indeed one seemingly unlikely scenario by which I thought the Democratic Party establishment and its rich donors could stop Sanders in his tracks. Namely, Tom Perez's DNC, the donors and elite liberal thought leaders would have to come together to pressure more than a dozen declared candidates to drop out early and rally the party's mainstream behind an anti-Bernie "unity ticket" - a ticket that would almost certainly have to be headed by current front-runner and former Obama Vice President, Joe Biden. Of course, in order to do that, internal Democratic Party leadership would have to be strong enough to force multiple, high-profile politicians with their own backers, donors and in-pocket media to "take one for the team" and stop Bernie. This is quite frankly an almost absurd scenario when you realize that there are at least 18 identical mainstream Dem candidates in the field already - if Tom Perez had the power to limit the field like Debbie Wasserman Schultz (with a little help from then-President Obama) did in 2016, why would there be so many mainstream contenders battling for the same anti-Sanders votes in the first place?

Well, despite my scoffing, it would appear that at least some people inside the Democratic Party power structure are seeing the same things I am, at least if this May 12, 2019 Politico piece by Heather Caygle and John Bresnahan is anything more that pure fantasy:

‘A dream ticket’: Black lawmakers pitch Biden-Harris to beat Trump 

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, it should be noted that this entire piece might just be fluff designed to promote cracker-assed Joe Biden as the choice of the Congressional Black Caucus and thus somehow "the choice of African American voters" in the Democratic Primary contest - indeed, some of these quotes genuinely have to be read, to be believed:

"Yet there is no question that Biden — thanks in part to his close relationship with Obama — is popular with African-American voters, according to several polls since he entered the race. That support from within the black community translates into backing from black lawmakers as well.

“But for the fact that we have two of our own who are both quite capable of being president, I’d say probably a lot of the members would’ve already announced for Biden,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.)."

 -----

"Biden has a deep well of support within the influential group of 55 black lawmakers, having served alongside many of them in his 36 years as a senator and eight years as vice president under the first African American president. Biden has already racked up some key endorsements within the caucus, including from former CBC Chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La.).

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking African American in Congress, often speaks fondly of Biden, a longtime friend, though Clyburn has said he won’t endorse anyone before his home state’s primary.

“I said a few weeks ago that if [Biden] were to get in, everybody else would be running for second place. I said that over a month ago. And he got in, and the polls said everyone else is running for second place,” Clyburn said in an interview.
It should also be of no surprise that Biden is polling well among black Democratic primary voters, he noted.

“The data are clear that he has strong support among African Americans,” Clyburn said. “It’s just that simple. He’s had that for a long, long time, and he’s kept it steady so far.”

 -----

"Biden is a creature of Capitol Hill, with relationships that go back decades with some of the most senior members of the caucus. He happily refers to his former boss, the first black president, as “my buddy Barack” on the campaign trail.
 
“I don’t think people should underestimate the significance of this older white guy playing the role of second, a supportive second, to a younger man who is African American,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). “And people felt this was real and authentic, [Biden] wasn't faking it. There was a real friendship there.”

Biden also has a natural ease in the black community in a way that other white Democratic candidates don’t, according to some caucus members.

“Biden is very comfortable in African American circles. Sometimes a white politician in an all-black setting, you can feel the seed of nervousness,” Cleaver said. “With Biden, he’s just right at home. You can see it and feel it.”

Whew; reading all of that you'd be half inclined to think Palooka Joe was the second coming of John Brown, and not a pro-segregationist meathead who once "praised" his future (and African American) President as "clean and articulate."As absurd as the idea might be to anyone who knows anything about Biden's voting record and public positions, it's safe to say that significant portions of the mainstream media have already received marching orders to play up Joe Biden's purported "blackness-by-osmosis from Obama" credentials - and this article is undoubtedly part of that portrayal.

Still, there are reasons to pause and wonder if perhaps this might not be a larger signal of the Democratic establishment's thinking here.

Truthfully, Lock Em Up Kamala Harris's nomination campaign is already finished; after repeated polling showed that she was not performing well with black voters because of her record as a prosecutor and Attorney General, she's reset her campaign by pivoting towards attacking Donald Trump. Overall, Harris is polling third in her own state, and far worse elsewhere in the country; which means that if Lock Em Up Kamala is going to stay in the national picture after the first few primaries, she's probably going to have to accept a VP spot on a stronger candidate's ticket. Logically, since there are literally no strong mainstream neoliberal politicians in this race except Palooka Joe, that would mean joining forces with Biden. Furthermore, Biden himself would likely be receptive to this plan, as it's clear that Palooka Joe's campaign team is actively scouting for an African American woman to "balance the ticket" already. In short, this strategy actually makes sense for both candidates on a purely realpolitik level.

Even more concerning to me however, is the involvement of the Congressional Black Caucus in an article that is all but negotiating Harris's surrender terms months and months before the first debates. This is after all the same political body whose support was not only instrumental in establishing Barrack Obama as a serious presidential contender, but also arranged for Hillary Clinton's belated capitulation in the contentious 2008 Democratic Primary. Although many African American left wing activists are quick to deride the CBC as out of touch sellouts and minions, the truth is that they have demonstrated palpable influence on Dem Primary contests in the recent past - and it certainly wouldn't take much for them to muscle Tom Perez out of the way and seize the role of kingmaker inside the Party this time around.

Is this the beginning of a united neo-liberal front? In my opinion, it's still too early to say - Harris and the Congressional Black Caucus by themselves, do not an anti-Bernie unity ticket make. It is however clear to me that the vast majority of Democratic Party strategists are starting to come around to the realization that their choices are Biden, or Bernie, and I think we all know that means Biden. The beginnings of a coalition are starting to appear in the media, and if they turn into actual bonds on the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders might once again find himself facing down an enemy who won't fight fair and has all the cards in its pockets.


- Nina Illingworth


Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.

Updates available on Twitter and Facebook.

Blast From the Past: Human Rights & Pig Empire Imperialism

Editor's note: as part of the writing I do, I frequently find myself collecting and cataloguing thousands of links for later use when I'm sourcing arguments in my articles. Most of those links really only have value in the moment, but some of them (like today's story) are so important and worthwhile that I thought I'd start sharing them from time to time here on this Media Madness blog.

----- 

While I would certainly be the first person to criticize the suggestion that there is any sort of upside to the Trump presidency, it would be foolish to argue that electing an uncouth, petulant fascist who says the quiet part out loud hasn't altered the behavior of mainstream liberal media in some beneficial ways.

For example: when presented with the riddle of how to engage in a perpetually running war of words with the President of the United States, while still supporting the ongoing (and lucrative) imperial project that President is ostensibly running - mainstream corporate media in the Pig Empire has largely responded by creating two Trumps and refusing to acknowledge the existence of both at the same time. Thus, domestic and economic policy Trump is (rightfully) criticized as an unstable, monstrous amateur whose fascist beliefs represent a very real threat to millions of Americans and their democratic institutions. In contrast, foreign policy Trump is praised as decisive and presidential when he supports aggressive military action, and eviscerated as a pathetic pawn of Russian president Vladmir Putin when he doesn't.

Once in a while however, in their efforts to falsely portray Trump and his administration as aberrant outsiders, the media will get its wires crossed and accidentally allow damaging truths about the Pig Empire to slip briefly into the public discourse. Such was the case on December 19th, 2017 during the waning moments of Rex Tillerson's time as Downmarket Mussolini's Secretary of State, when Politico of all outlets published the following (shockingly candid) piece:

Leaked memo schooled Tillerson on human rights 

Let me start by saying that if the entire sad history of Politico was just a run-up to this article, I'd be forced to admit that it was probably worth it. Here you have a US State Department official, with longstanding ties to the Pig Empire propaganda machine across multiple governments, telling Trump's SecState to shut up about Human Rights because we don't really give a crap and it's just a tool to manipulate our "enemies." This is without a doubt one of the most significant moments in US media history, and yet it largely passed by without much note at the time it was published. 

Let's look at some of the juiciest quotes from the article for a moment:

"The May 17 memo reads like a crash course for a businessman-turned-diplomat, and its conclusion offers a starkly realist vision: that the U.S. should use human rights as a club against its adversaries, like Iran, China and North Korea, while giving a pass to repressive allies like the Philippines, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

“Allies should be treated differently—and better—than adversaries. Otherwise, we end up with more adversaries, and fewer allies,” argued the memo, written by Tillerson’s influential policy aide, Brian Hook."

So - you caught that right folks? The United States absolutely does not give even half a damn about Human Rights except in terms of weaponizing it against state adversaries. Let's keep going:

"Hook’s memo “tells Tillerson that we should do exactly what Russian and Chinese propaganda says we do—use human rights as a weapon to beat up our adversaries while letting ourselves and our allies off the hook,” said Tom Malinowski, who served as an assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in the administration of former President Barack Obama."

We'll talk more about Malinowski and the overall tone in the article in a moment, but let's keep mining this verdant field for the kind of quotes the propaganda machine isn't supposed to let slip:

“The classic dilemma of balancing ideals and interests is with regard to America’s allies. In relation to our competitors, there is far less of a dilemma. We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them,” Hook wrote.

"For this reason," Hook continues, "we should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to U.S. relations with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. And this is not only because of moral concern for practices inside those countries. It is also because pressing those regimes on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically."

-----

"Hook approvingly writes that Ronald Reagan’s "first instinct was always to back allies against adversaries, even in controversial cases, including through his second term." But Jimmy Carter, Hook states, damaged American interests because he "badgered" and undermined U.S. allies like the shah of Iran.

Today, "in the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the [Trump] Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights," Hook writes. "It is not as though human rights practices will be improved if anti-American radicals take power in those countries."

Holy sh*t my friends, this entire piece is a clusterf*ck of truly massive proportions on the propaganda machine's part. Although any fool who observes American foreign policy at work could tell you that the U.S. government doesn't care about human rights, it is truly a rare and momentous occasion to see it laid out so plainly in an official Pig Empire document.

Naturally, the author does provide the war machine with a fig leaf of sorts; the memo is painted as a possible response to a Tillerson speech in which he failed to affirm Pig Empire support for human rights. Furthermore, Politico happily allows Malinowski and an anonymous senior official in the Bush administration to state that Hook's analysis is wrong, or "disappointing" without serious challenge. Finally, the overall tone of the piece seems to strongly imply (as have other media outlets) that the problem is a uniquely Trumpian affair.

This is all, to put it bluntly, utter goddamn hogwash and even a cursory look at US human rights violations or the monstrous behavior of countless Pig Empire allies makes that abundantly clear. Even the piece we're quoting is forced to admit that Hooks is a long time conservative foreign policy wonk who previously served in the Bush II administration:

"Long a familiar face in conservative foreign policy circles, Hook held several positions under President George W. Bush, including assistant secretary of state for international organizations.

Hook's decision to join the Trump administration surprised some in Washington because so many other mainstream conservative foreign policy experts publicly distanced themselves from Trump during the 2016 presidential race. His disproportionate influence at the State Department has unnerved some lawmakers who note that he never had to endure the confirmation process."

In other words, the emperor isn't just naked - he's shaking his testicles up and down Main Street while shouting "I'm a bare-asssed, corpse merchant fraud!" Keep that in mind the next time the US foreign policy establishment (on both sides of the supposed political divide in America) tells you we need to enact regime change in Venezuela and invade Iran to "protect human rights."

- nina illingworth

 

What's Really Troubling Larry Tribe?

Yesterday afternoon, as I found myself engaging in my normal routine of objectively unhealthy sh*tposting on Twitter, the following tweet made its way across my feed and immediately reminded me of two incontrovertible truths - there are still too many people out there who take Laurence Tribe seriously and goddamnit, nobody is doing anything to help them recover from this terrible affliction!

Naturally, the poor intern The Hill keeps chained to Twitter and on the lookout for sizzling hot beef, transcribed the occasion for her "news" agency - if for some reason you wanted to subject yourself to a news story, about the dumbest post on Twitter yesterday, you can check it out here:  

Harvard's Laurence Tribe calls Bernie Sanders a 'phony'

For those of you who are somehow blessed enough not to know who Laurence Tribe is, we turn to Buzzfeed for the impressive part of his resume:

"Tribe is one of the country’s foremost constitutional lawyers, the Carl M. Loeb university professor at Harvard Law School. He has argued dozens of cases in front of the Supreme Court. He’s a major figure in American public life, and in recent months Tribe has devoted much of his activity on Twitter to outraged extrapolation about the Trump administration."

This in and of itself is quite amusing because Buzzfeed has intentionally left out most of the reasons why Tribe is such a "major figure in American life" - namely that in addition to his distinguished role at Harvard and his impressive legal record, he's one of former President Barack Obama's friends and mentors. Tribe also served in Obama's Department of Justice and the rock star legal scholar has long acted as a reliably pro-Democratic Party, pro-liberal establishment law expert for cable news networks. 

Of course it's not all gumdrops and lollipops as Tribe is also well known in "conservative" circles for numerous incidents of scholarly misconduct and at least one ghost written book that featured a little outright plagiarism. Furthermore, it must be noted that Tribe is an unhinged, Russophobic conspiracy theorist who spends most of his time trying to start a New Cold War and retweeting other, even less credible Russophobic conspiracy theorists to his roughly 500K Twitter followers; many of  whom are themselves influential figures in what passes for corporate "liberal" media in America. If you were to make a #Resistance mad wall of online neoliberal hacks still pushing an absurd Cold War spy novel in the media, Larry would almost certainly be right near the center of your poster-board. 

In Tribe's defense, I should also mention that he has recently become a vocal proponent of impeaching Downmarket Mussolini but I'm personally of the opinion that this is essentially a "blind squirrels sometimes find a nut too" situation and it should be noted that Larry only came to this conclusion after publishing a book that cautioned against impeaching Trump.

While all of this should certainly give the reader pause before they take Tribe's "expert and distinguished" opinions as fact, it still doesn't explain Larry's open animosity towards Vermont's Democratic Socialist Senator (and my pick to win the 2020 Dem Party nomination) Bernie Sanders. Tribe's hostility towards Sanders is hardly just a recent phenomenon either; in August, 2017 for example Tribe falsely accused Sanders of sexist attacks against fellow 2020 Dem Party nomination candidates Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren - before being forced to essentially walk the whole thing back when asked to prove Sanders had mentioned either candidate at all.

So why exactly is Larry campaigning as hard against Bernie Sanders as he is against our reality TV show fascist in chief? Class tensions? Typical rich-guy animus? Well, as it turns out the distinguished professor has been doing a little night work for America's largest coal company on the side, a corporation called Peabody Energy Corp - destroying both his professional reputation and numerous friendships in the process. Naturally, Peabody isn't super thrilled about Bernie's aggressive environmental protection platform or his longstanding open support for the New Green Deal and they've already given Larry at least 435,000 reasons to share their disdain for Sanders. Furthermore, in light of the fact that Tribe recently left the company's litigation team during the middle of its challenge against the Clean Power Plan, it was probably time for Larry to start showing his coal baron masters a little more return on their investment again.

As for Tribe's laughable assertion that Sander is somehow a phony, all one has to do is examine Bernie's long-known positions in government, his track record of being on the right side of history and his tireless efforts while fighting for the labor class in America, to expose Larry's pithy commentary for the fraudulent, elitist bullsh*t it is. If phony is fighting for the poor, marginalized people and working class stiffs, while "authentic" is taking $75,000 a month from a coal company to spout lies that protect monsters who're putting all our futures in jeopardy - then the choice is clear; sign me up for "phony" and f*ck Larry Tribe.

- nina illingworth

 

New Directions

As some of you who've been reading my writing for a long while may distantly remember, I originally opened up this blog for two purposes:

1. First and foremost, I wanted to make sure I laid a claim on my own domain title here on Blogger - mostly on the off chance some troll decided to make a fake post under my name to discredit me (the discourse gets pretty viscious in indie political analysis social media.)
2. As online and social media censorship has grown and moved from "ban all the fascists" to "ban everyone who doesn't agree with neoliberal orthodox ideology" I sensed that I was going to need to find a work around. My theory was that if I could spread my online imprint across multiple sites and more importantly, across multiple corporate providers, it would be essentially impossible to completely shut me up.

Obviously, my first objective was reached because you are now reading this post on a website addressed at ninaillingworth.blogspot.com. Which leaves us with the obvious question, did spreading out across the internet actually help me fight censorship? Truthfully? I don't know. It does seem like my work turns up more often on various search engines because there's more websites with my name on them out there, but otherwise I've been unable to properly test the hypothesis in any reasonable sense.

Part of the problem is that until today, I haven't posted any unique content on this blog - it's all been links to articles on other sites. Naturally, a lot of my readers already follow those other sites so they'd have no need to visit this blog unless I was suddenly banned or removed from those platforms. This is perfectly reasonable behavior of course and frankly, it's what I suggested readers do when I told them about the blog; but it does very little for me in terms of branching out and increasing my digital imprint. I realized this quite a long time ago, but in doing so promptly ran myself smack dab into another insurmountable problem in its own right - the fact that Blogger's interface and customization options are to put it politely, inadequate.

For example, I have spent a solid two years trying to find a way to actually change the link color in any of the usable themes so I could mess around with a background color that isn't white. The option exists in every theme and I've changed it dozens and dozens of times - but no matter what, the links always come out blue. As you can see, I just eventually gave up and used a blue theme color set and a white background because the whole process is exhausting. When you combine this sort of thing with the already limited frame options and the whole claustrophobic effect virtually every website on Blogger has when you view it on a phone, I just never found very many opportunities to post something new on this site instead of my own website, my image blog on Tumblr, or my Patreon blog. As a longtime user, what I would say Blogger does best is provide a very easy to master publishing outlet for casual, off the cuff, blog style posts that aren't too link heavy or too long - in other words, the exact opposite of most of the writing I've been doing for the past few years.

Recently however, I've found myself caught in a writing terrible cycle; I produce vast amounts of formal writing for five or six weeks, and then burnout and fall into a downward spiral for weeks, or even months at a time. If you're interested in knowing more, I recently wrote a humorous bit of autobiographical fiction about my last ride on this godawful roller coaster for my Facebook page to try and express the feelings, if not the actual events that direct that process. Getting some sort of handle on this problem and developing coping strategies has been a long and arduous process; I've stumbled, I've fallen flat on my face and I've made promises I would never be able to keep - both to myself and my readers. What I have come to realize throughout all of this however is that hiding is not a strategy, and I'm far better off when I engage across multiple platforms, even if I'm incapable of producing formal writing, than I am when I recede into sh*tposting on Twitter to escape my feelings of irresponsibility and self-loathing.

With that in mind, I've decided to revive this website and re-purpose it towards an informal media observations and critique blog - a task I feel Blogger itself is ideally suited to handle. The basic idea will be that I'm going to share some of the most outrageous propaganda you find in the day to day media, and offer some form of brief commentary. The key feature here will be the informal "blogging" aspect of the work; both because I don't want to detract from my more formal writing about the media on ninaillingworth.com and also because making a big stinking deal out of every article I write while hammering away at it until it's perfect, is clearly burning me out and driving me a little batty. Sometimes, you just want to blog about how awful western corporate media is.

Please note that if you'd like to check out the rest of my writing, you can find links to every site where I publish anything (even tweets) on the right hand side of the page under "Links." Furthermore, I maintain a backup Twitter account pretty much entirely for the purposes of posting links for every single piece of writing I publish online - you can find it here. Finally, yes I am fully aware that it's hard to read the dark blue "spent link" color on the right hand side of the page; there is absolutely nothing I can do about it unless someone decides to fix the edit link color feature on Blogger itself.

Let's hope this is the beginning of a rewarding, and ongoing relationship.

- nina illingworth