Andrew Koryko — A Venezuelan Coup Could Challenge OPEC+ And Build “Fortress America”

I have been saying something like this for some time. The American Empire is overextended and the strategic need is to withdraw to the core, which is the Western Hemisphere. Owing to logistics, and war is largely determined by the parties with logistical advantage, the US is disadvantaged by operating away from the Western Hemisphere, but it can easily control its own hemisphere militarily owing to logistical advantage. This is especially the case now that both Russia and China have "carrier killers."

There are two alternatives here, however, and the one that the US employs will make the difference.

The first is domination and the second is benevolent cooperation out of self-interest. The US can easily dominate its region but that would result in mere compliance. On the other hand, cooperation based on mutual advantage would benefit everyone and result in a a bigger pie. 

Could the US elite forgo their own advantage to secure a higher goal that would in the end benefit them more? Not likely.

So on toward WWIII.

Oriental Review

A Venezuelan Coup Could Challenge OPEC+ And Build “Fortress America”

Andrew Koryko

Paul Robinson — The Inability To See

I spend most of my time on this blog mocking all the exaggerated nonsense which passes for political commentary nowadays. It’s a rare day that I come across something which is both stimulating and well-written. Fortunately, this is one of those days. Via Facebook (which has its uses), I was pointed in the direction of an excellent article by Patrick Lawrence in this summer’s edition of the magazine Raritan Quarterly, of which I had not previously been aware. I can recommend it to you all, and you can find it here....

This criticism also applies to American commentary on China and most other things foreign. It is a consequence of the "context" issue that Paul Robinson discusses in this post. There are different cultural worldviews that imply group preference for institutional arrangements that are different among groups, especially nations with long traditions. Human understanding and appreciation are context-dependent.

The only overarching context globally is provided by formal logic, mathematics, and science. Most of the rest is culturally relative. Hence, understanding the world system requires taking this into account. This means determining where others are coming from, as well as as knowing where one's own culture and its biases came from and how they were shaped by historical circumstances.

From this standpoint it is clear why trying to export "American democracy and values" even to Great Britain is folly, or assuming that the British system and the American system are essentially the same. This being the case, how silly is it to presume that "the American way" can be exported, let alone imposed on alien cultures.

It is also interesting seeing a former diplomat and a professor agreeing on this point. Unfortunately, at this point such people have no voice and therefore no influence in US policy or the American corporate media. Without the Internet and social media, they would be unavailable, as long as the Internet and social media escape censorship, that is.

Irrussianality

The Inability To See

Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

See also
Raritan (Volume 38, Number 1, Summer 2018)

Putin: From Soulmate to Archenemy

David S. Foglesong

See also

Valdai Club
Tradition and Future: National Identity in a Changing World
Alexey Kasprzhak

Michael Hudson — Monetary Imperialism

This article is adapted from the German edition of Super-Imperialism (2017).…

It's a fairly long article. Here are some highlights in summary.

The U.S. response has been to extend the new Cold War into the financial sector, rewriting the rules of international finance to benefit the United States and its satellites – and to deter countries from seeking to break free from America’s financial free ride.

Aiming to isolate Russia and China, the Obama Administration’s confrontational diplomacy has drawn the Bretton Woods institutions more tightly under US/NATO control. In so doing, it is disrupting the linkages put in place after World War II.
The U.S. plan was to hurt Russia’s economy so much that it would be ripe for regime change (“color revolution”). But the effect was to drive it eastward, away from Western Europe to consolidate its long-term relations with China and Central Asia.…

To U.S. strategists, what made changing IMF rules urgent was Ukraine’s $3 billion debt falling due to Russia’s National Wealth Fund in December 2015. The IMF had long withheld credit to countries refusing to pay other governments. This policy aimed primarily at protecting the financial claims of the U.S. Government, which usually played a lead role in consortia with other governments and U.S. banks. But under American pressure the IMF changed its rules in January 2015. Henceforth, it announced, it would indeed be willing to provide credit to countries in arrears other governments – implicitly headed by China (which U.S. geostrategists consider to be their main long-term adversary), Russia and others that U.S. financial warriors might want to isolate in order to force neoliberal privatization policies.…

Since World War II the United States has used the Dollar Standard and its dominant role in the IMF and World Bank to steer trade and investment along lines benefiting its own economy. But now that the growth of China’s mixed economy has outstripped all others while Russia finally is beginning to recover, countries have the option of borrowing from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and other non-U.S. consortia.

At stake is much more than just which nations will get the contracting and banking business. At issue is whether the philosophy of development will follow the classical path based on public infrastructure investment, or whether public sectors will be privatized and planning turned over to rent-seeking corporations.…

 American strategists evidently hoped that the threat of isolating Russia, China and other countries would bring them to heel if they tried to denominate trade and investment in their own national currencies. Their choice would be either to suffer sanctions like those imposed on Cuba and Iran, or to avoid exclusion by acquiescing in the dollarized financial and trade system and its drives to financialize their economies under U.S. control.

The problem with surrendering is that this Washington Consensus is extractive and lives in the short run, laying the seeds of financial dependency, debt-leveraged bubbles and subsequent debt deflation and austerity. The financial business plan is to carve out opportunities for price gouging and corporate profits.…

This policy threat is splitting the world into pro-U.S. satellites and economies maintaining public infrastructure investment and what used to be viewed as progressive capitalism. U.S.-sponsored neoliberalism supporting its own financial and corporate interests has driven Russia, China and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into an alliance to protect their economic self-sufficiency rather than becoming dependent on dollarized credit enmeshing them in foreign-currency debt.

At the center of today’s global split are the last few centuries of Western social and democratic reform. Seeking to follow the classical Western development path by retaining a mixed public/private economy, China, Russia and other nations find it easier to create new institutions such as the AIIB than to reform the dollar standard IMF and World Bank. Their choice is between short-term gains by dependency leading to austerity, or long-term development with independence and ultimate prosperity.

This policy threat is splitting the world into pro-U.S. satellites and economies maintaining public infrastructure investment and what used to be viewed as progressive capitalism. U.S.-sponsored neoliberalism supporting its own financial and corporate interests has driven Russia, China and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into an alliance to protect their economic self-sufficiency rather than becoming dependent on dollarized credit enmeshing them in foreign-currency debt. 

At the center of today’s global split are the last few centuries of Western social and democratic reform. Seeking to follow the classical Western development path by retaining a mixed public/private economy, China, Russia and other nations find it easier to create new institutions such as the AIIB than to reform the dollar standard IMF and World Bank. Their choice is between short-term gains by dependency leading to austerity, or long-term development with independence and ultimate prosperity.

This policy threat is splitting the world into pro-U.S. satellites and economies maintaining public infrastructure investment and what used to be viewed as progressive capitalism. U.S.-sponsored neoliberalism supporting its own financial and corporate interests has driven Russia, China and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into an alliance to protect their economic self-sufficiency rather than becoming dependent on dollarized credit enmeshing them in foreign-currency debt. 

At the center of today’s global split are the last few centuries of Western social and democratic reform. Seeking to follow the classical Western development path by retaining a mixed public/private economy, China, Russia and other nations find it easier to create new institutions such as the AIIB than to reform the dollar standard IMF and World Bank. Their choice is between short-term gains by dependency leading to austerity, or long-term development with independence and ultimate prosperity.

This policy threat is splitting the world into pro-U.S. satellites and economies maintaining public infrastructure investment and what used to be viewed as progressive capitalism. U.S.-sponsored neoliberalism supporting its own financial and corporate interests has driven Russia, China and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into an alliance to protect their economic self-sufficiency rather than becoming dependent on dollarized credit enmeshing them in foreign-currency debt. 

At the center of today’s global split are the last few centuries of Western social and democratic reform. Seeking to follow the classical Western development path by retaining a mixed public/private economy, China, Russia and other nations find it easier to create new institutions such as the AIIB than to reform the dollar standard IMF and World Bank. Their choice is between short-term gains by dependency leading to austerity, or long-term development with independence and ultimate prosperity.

The price of resistance involves risking military or covert overthrow. …

This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to evolve. The industrial takeoff of Germany and other European nations involved a long fight to free markets from the land rents and financial charges siphoned off by their landed aristocracies and bankers. That was the essence of classical 19th-century political economy and 20th-century social democracy. Most economists a century ago expected industrial capitalism to produce an economy of abundance, and democratic reforms to endorse public infrastructure investment and regulation to hold down the cost of living and doing business. But U.S. economic diplomacy now threatens to radically reverse this economic ideology by aiming to dismantle public regulatory power and impose a radical privatization agenda….

 Counterpunch
Monetary Imperialism
Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

See also

The Obama administration sparked controversy in Congress and the national security world when it announced in late 2016 that it would spend more than $8 million dollars to purchase Iranian heavy water, a nuclear byproduct, in a bid to keep the Islamic Republic in line with restrictions on these materials imposed under the nuclear agreement....

After leaving the door open to additional purchases, senior Trump administration officials confirmed to the Free Beacon on Wednesday that the U.S. government would no longer engage in these nuclear transactions with Iran, a major policy shift that sources say is part of an effort to crackdown on Iran's access to U.S. funds.

Lawmakers and other insiders had viewed the $8.6 million payment to Iran as a scheme to give Iran access to U.S. currency as part of an incentive package aimed at keeping it in compliance with the nuclear deal....

Trump administration officials told the Free Beacon they have informed Iran that it is now solely responsible for maintaining compliance with the nuclear deal.

"No, the United States is not planning to purchase any Iranian heavy water," a White House National Security Council spokesperson told the Free Beacon. "We have made it clear to Iran that it is their responsibility to remain under their heavy water limit in the JCPOA," or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the official title of the nuclear agreement....

So, in addition to continuing economic warfare against Iran, the Trump administration is making it harder for Iran to conform to the nuclear deal.

Washington Free Beacon

Trump Admin Halts Taxpayer-Funded Purchases of Iranian Nuclear Materials

Adam Kredo

See also

RT reports that Siluanov warned if the west include the seizure of Russia's foreign exchange reserves, it would be regarded as a "declaration of a financial war."

The budget "has a margin of safety in case of restrictions and sanctions." It also includes losses incurred by a probable ban on investment in Russian government bonds for foreign funds. The US Treasury is currently considering such penalties.

"If we did not have a margin of safety, then it would be easy to weaken us. And then, our so-called friends would say – if you want to get help from the International Monetary Fund, you must do this and that," said Siluanov.

If sanctions include the freezing of foreign accounts of the central bank, it would be equal to declaring financial war on Russia, Siluanov said.

Zero Hedge

Russia Warns Washington: Confiscating Gold Reserves Would Be "Declaration Of Financial War"

Tyler Durden

Bill McBride — Policy Mistakes

Add the Trump tax cuts to the list of policy mistakes if it becomes law.

Calculated Risk
Policy Mistakes
Bill McBride

Robert Parry — How Netanyahu Pulls Trump’s Strings

If indeed Clinton were right that Trump was Putin’s “puppet,” then he would have agreed to negotiations to address the North Korean crisis; would have accepted constructive diplomacy toward Iran; and would have ended all U.S. support for the Syrian militants and encouraged a quick end to the bloodletting.

Instead, Trump is moving in opposite directions, lining up with Netanyahu and the neocons, whom some European allies refer to as “America’s Israeli agents.” Although dressing up his capitulation to Netanyahu in tough-guy phrasing, Trump is doing what most U.S. politicians do – they grovel before Bibi Netanyahu.

And, if you have any doubts about that reality, you can watch how often both Republicans and Democrats jump to their feet when Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress, an honor that he has received three times, tying him with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Those moments of American humiliation – as almost all 535 members of Congress act like puppets on invisible strings – represent the actual subservience of the U.S. government to a foreign power. And that power is not Russia.

President Trump is just the latest American politician to have his strings yanked by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Consortium News
How Netanyahu Pulls Trump’s Strings

Robert Parry

Also

By offering a propagandistic tirade on Iran’s role in the Mideast – a classic neocon screed – President Trump has demonstrated his inability to bring any fresh or honest thinking to the regional crises, as Kathy Kelly explains.

Trump Ignores Israeli/Saudi Abuses

Also

Sooner or later, I see a blowup coming between Trump and Netanyahu, and the U.S. President's brief moment of candor with the UN Secretary General should be lodged in the back of your mind, as it is in mine.

Sic Semper Tyrannis 

Harper: Trump Called Netanyahu Obstacle To Peace

William J. Astore — The Climate Change War

It seems Americans can’t rally support for something without declaring a “war” on it. The war on poverty. On drugs. On gangs and crime. On terror. And these wars have become open-ended, or “generational” in Pentagon-speak, with a dynamic of crisis-surge-“progress”-new crisis-new surge-repeat that sustains large bureaucracies and huge government spending.

To these “wars” we must add a new one, notes Michael Klare at TomDispatch.com: the climate change war....

So, two things are most definitely certain: the climate change war will be generational. And, much like that other generational war — the war on terror — our military won’t win it. For no one wins a war against Mother Nature — not when we’re going out of our way to piss her off.

Bracing Views

The Climate Change War

William J. Astore, Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) USAF, Professor of History, Pennsylvania College of Technology, Williamsport, PA

Robert Parry — Why Not a Probe of ‘Israel-gate’?

The question that must not be asked.

As Official Washington fumes about Russia-gate, Israel’s far more significant political-influence-and-propaganda campaigns are ignored. No one dares suggest a probe of Israel-gate, says Robert Parry.

An exploration of the heart of the snake pit.

Consortiums News
Why Not a Probe of ‘Israel-gate’?

Robert Parry

Nicolas J S Davies — Duping Americans on Healthcare and War

The American people have been sold a deadly bill of goods both for their lousy healthcare system and for their perpetual war machine – and there’s no end in sight, as Nicolas J S Davies explains.

Consortium News
Duping Americans on Healthcare and War

Nicolas J S Davies

Alastair Crooke — Deep State vs. Donald Trump

The door is indeed “open,” and it is possible that the two leaders may indeed conjure up a détente. But it is no “slam dunk” (certainty). And Moscow certainly does not regard it to be “slam dunk” – at all. On the contrary, they are aware that whereas there are areas of common approach, there are also areas of obvious difference – and possible disagreement – between the new U.S. administration and Moscow. The hope for détente ultimately may prove to lie just beyond reach. We shall have to see.

Insightful.

Trump not as either Hitler or Mussolini on one hand, or Reagan or Andrew Jackson on the other, but rather as America's Oliver Cromwell.

Will Trump succeeded in remaking America, which is what he means by making America great again, and will it stick?

Cromwell was successful during his lifetime but shortly after his death his revolution was largely reversed with the restoration of the monarchy, the force of the revolt apparently having been spent and in the absence of a successor of his stature.

High stakes game. And everyone at the table is armed.

Consortium News
Deep State vs. Donald Trump

Alastair Crooke | Founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, and former British diplomat and senior figure in British intelligence and European Union diplomacy

Alan Nasser — Hillary’s Agenda Here and Abroad Intertwined: “Full Spectrum Dominance” Around the Globe, A Swelling Precariat at Home

Nails it. Must read in its entirety. 'Nuff said.

Counterpunch
Hillary’s Agenda Here and Abroad Intertwined: “Full Spectrum Dominance” Around the Globe, A Swelling Precariat at Home
Alan Nasser | professor emeritus of Political Economy and Philosophy at The Evergreen State College

Mike Lofgren — When Donald Trump Makes Sense

The Washington establishment dismisses Donald Trump as a buffoon who doesn’t understand the intricacies of national security policies, but some of his comments underscore how foolish those policies are, writes Mike Lofgren.

Consortium News
When Donald Trump Makes Sense
Mike Lofgren, former GOP congressional staff member who served on the House and Senate budget committees

Murtaza Hussain — GOP Candidates Compete Over Who Will Commit Most War Crimes Once Elected

Disgusting display and a sorry indication of the level of collective consciousness in the US. Note that in sociology, "collective conscience" is sometimes used for "collective consciousness."

The Intercept
GOP Candidates Compete Over Who Will Commit Most War Crimes Once Elected
Murtaza Hussain

Elias Isquith — Controlled by shadow government: Mike Lofgren reveals how top U.S. officials are at the mercy of the “deep state”

A corrupt network of wealthy elites has hijacked our government, ex-GOP staffer and best-selling author tells Salon.

Salon
Controlled by shadow government: Mike Lofgren reveals how top U.S. officials are at the mercy of the “deep state”
Elias Isquith

Ira Chernus — Six Mistakes on the Road to Permanent War

Putting it all in perspective. Yikes!

The dream of a war of annihilation against evil has a long, long history in white America. It began in 1636 when Puritans in New England wiped out the Pequot tribe, promising that such a lesson would prevent further attacks by other tribes. In fact, it created a spiral of violence and counter-violence, and a war-against-evil template that the country still follows nearly four centuries later in its “war on terror.” The current conflict in Iraq and Syria seems only to be locking us into that template and its guaranteed cycle of violence ever more firmly.…

National myths are, however, invented by human beings, and we are always capable of changing our minds. Who knows? Maybe someday the Islamic State will figure out that brutal killing and other acts of horror in the name of the caliphate are not such a good idea after all. And maybe the United States will figure out that depending on an eternal, self-defeating war against evil for our national identity is a huge mistake after all. Maybe.

Tom Dispatch
Tomgram: Ira Chernus, Six Mistakes on the Road to Permanent War
Ira Chenus | Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder

RT — US-backed forces have right to self-defense, but others do not - State Department

More double-speak from the US. Pitiful.

RT
US-backed forces have right to self-defense, but others do not - State Department

Jesse Hamilton — Trump Says He Would Return to Waterboarding for Interrogations

Donald Trump, the leading Republican contender for U.S. president, says he would return to strong interrogation techniques such as waterboarding if he were elected because their severity pales against Islamic State practices.

“You know, they don’t use waterboarding over there; they use chopping off people’s heads,” Trump said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” Waterboarding, a method of torture in which water is poured over the face of an immobilized prisoner to simulate drowning, is “peanuts” compared with that, Trump said. He said he “would absolutely bring back interrogation and strong interrogation.”
Ben Carson, running 4 percentage points behind Trump in the latest Bloomberg Politics national poll, taken Nov. 15-17, declined to say whether he’d favor waterboarding, during an appearance on the same program.

“I’m not one who is real big on telling the enemy what we’re going to do and what we’re not going to do,” Carson said.…

Bloomberg
Trump Says He Would Return to Waterboarding for Interrogations

Jesse Hamilton

On Sunday morning, Fox News host Ed Henry asked Trump about the incident: "of an African-American protester from Black Lives Matter who appears to have gotten roughed up." At first, Trump appeared to be ambivalent about the term "roughed up," but then he warmed up to it:"Maybe he should have been roughed up."

Here's a transcript of the relevant part of Trump's response, via Media Matters….

Vox
Protester gets punched at Trump rally. Trump: “Maybe he deserved to get roughed up”

Dara Lind

Also 

Mark Deen, Hollande Popularity Jumps After Terrorist Attacks, Poll Shows

Ginger Gibson — After Paris, Americans want U.S. to do more to attack Islamic State - poll

A majority of Americans want the United States to intensify its assault on the Islamic State following the Paris attacks, but most remain opposed to sending troops to Iraq or Syria, where the militant group is based, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.…

The new Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 60 percent of Americans think the United States should be doing more to attack Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. A small majority said they support using airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, but about 65 percent oppose sending special forces to the region, a move that has already been taken by Obama.

When asked about regular ground troops, the opposition grew stronger with 76 percent opposing deploying troops.…

The poll also found that 52 percent of Americans think nations which accept refugees fleeing the strife in Syria are less safe.…

Reuters

Exclusive: After Paris, Americans want U.S. to do more to attack Islamic State - poll

Ginger Gibson

Robert Parry — Bush-41 Finally Speaks on Iraq War

Robert Parry traces the history of the worst crime(s) thus far in the 21st century, and one for which there has been zero accountability. Now Poppy Bush tries to hang the blame on Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for misleading his son. In fairness, though, Parry details how it was Cheney that engineered consent through lies and propaganda, and how the rest of the players were too weak to stand up to him and call him on it publicly.

The question lingers: why did Zinni not go public when he first heard Cheney lie? After all, he was one of the very few credible senior officials who might have prevented a war he knew was unnecessary. A tough, widely respected Marine intimidated by a Vice President with five draft deferments? It happens.  It happened.

Secretary of State Powell was also blindsided, but there is no sign he summoned the courage to voice any objections directly to the President about Cheney’s version of the threat from Iraq and what had to be done about it.

Even the nation's top warriors could not summon the courage to confront a draft dodger. Really!

Robert Parry tells us of his take on unfolding events while serving as an analyst.

Despite the propaganda and more tangible signs of incipient war in Iraq, my former intelligence analyst colleagues and I – with considerable professional experience watching other countries prepare for aggression against others – were finding it difficult to believe that the United States of America would be doing precisely that.

Still harder was it to digest the notion that Washington would do so, absent credible evidence of any immediate threat and would “fix” intelligence to “justify” it. But that, sadly, is what happened. On March 19, 2003, U.S. “shock and awe” lit the sky over Baghdad.

And they got away with it!

That was more than 12 ½ years ago. That not one of the white-collar crooks responsible for the war and ensuing chaos has been held accountable is an indelible blot not only on our country, but also on international law and custom. After all, the U.S./U.K. attack on Iraq fits snugly the definition given to a “war of aggression” as defined by the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal. Nuremberg labeled such a war “the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

And the evil continued to accumulate: torture, kidnapping, black prisons, extrajudicial killing, massive invasions of privacy, and even the annulment of such basic human rights as the great writ of habeas corpus that was wrested from England’s King John 800 year ago. And, in the wake of this criminality, bedlam now reigns across large swaths of the Middle East driving millions of refugees into neighboring countries and Europe.

That the U.S. and U.K. leaders who launched the Iraq war have so far escaped apprehension and prosecution might be seen as a sad example of “victor’s justice.” But there are no victors, only victims. The reality that President George W. Bush and his co-conspirators remain unpunished makes a mockery of the commitment to the transcendent importance of evenhanded justice as expressed on Aug. 12, 1945, by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the chief U.S. representative at Nuremberg:

“We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it.”
Maybe it is partly because I know the elder Bush personally, but it does strike me that, since we are all human, some degree of empathy might be in order. I simply cannot imagine what it must be like to be a former President with a son, also a former President, undeniably responsible for such trespass on law – for such widespread killing, injury and abject misery.…

With his current modified, limited hangout – especially (his richly deserved) criticism of Cheney and Rumsfeld – Bush the elder may be able to live more comfortably with himself and to get past what I believe must be his regret now over having made no public effort to stop the madness back then.

Worst still, if Bush-43 is to be believed, Bush senior had guilty foreknowledge of the war-crime attack on Iraq….

In any event, Bush-43 includes the following sentences about informing his father about plans to attack Iraq: ”We both knew that this was a decision that only the president can make. We did talk about the issue, however. Over Christmas 2002, at Camp David, I did give Dad an update on our strategy.” …

Simple. Putin did it.

Consortium News
Bush-41 Finally Speaks on Iraq War

Robert Parry

“A Turning Point for Obama”: How the President Learned to Love the National Security State — Elias Esquith interviews Charlie Savage

Snippets.

Bush and Cheney were CEOs by background. They did not put a lot of lawyers in policymaking roles around them. The lawyers they did pick, especially in their first term, tended to have these pretty idiosyncratic views of executive power; and, as a result, they’re able to put in these wide-ranging changes, to have the the government run like a business. Overnight, it’s like, “we’re going to have military commissions”; no further ado; no second-guessing.

Obama and his administration are quite the opposite. Obama and Joe Biden, of course, are both lawyers and showed a clear tendency to put lawyers into policymaking roles around them. And this has consequences, having government-by-lawyer and not government-by-CEO. Lawyers are very incremental; lawyers have to really engage with the other side, because they have to prepare for everybody’s argument; they have to value process. That means they are going to be cautious about changing the status quo. They’re going to be cautious about dislodging what Bush has equipped to them.…

I definitely think it’s an interesting factor that people who are out in the world don’t fully understand.

I think there’s a very [mistaken] understanding of how the government works — which is that the president just does these things. Obama just does it. Once you work [in D.C.] for a while, you understand that that’s widely oversimplified. Most of the time, the president never knows about what’s going on. It could appear [so] at the most superficial level, but it’s really the 150 or so senior and mid-level executive branch officials that he’s appointed who are making these decisions and grappling with these dilemmas.

What you’re adding to that when you bring up [the deep state] is that, underneath, there’s this permanent state of security officials who have their own sort of world and expertise and turf and bureaucratic interests. All these forces encounter each other in ways that don’t reduce to “Bush did this” and “Obama did that.”

Salon
“A Turning Point for Obama”: How the President Learned to Love the National Security State Elias Esquith interviews Charlie Savage, author of Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency

The Saker interviews Cynthia McKinney

An insider's view of the Deep State.

The Vineyard of the Saker
The Saker interviews Cynthia McKinney
The Saker

See also

Cynthia McKinney four part post on capitalism at RT

Don’t be fooled by “Inclusive Capitalism” It’s still a disaster!

American capitalism: A disaster with no ‘moral center’

Time to imagine: From ‘Disaster Capitalism’ to a system of our own

'We need a vision of transformational change' - ex-US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney

She also mentions Seymour Hersh's The Sampson Option, and the works of her dissertation committee member, Dr. Peter Dale Scott,