ANTIMEDIA, “What Everyone is Missing About the Wikileaks Podesta Emails” -  By Alice Salles 17 Oct 2016:

With WikiLeaks’ massive dump of emails tied to John Podesta, the former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton who now serves as Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, most news outlets focused on Podesta’s link to Mrs. Clinton, the current Democratic presidential candidate. But what few noticed is how Podesta’s emails may help us learn how President Barack Obama may have picked individuals for his top administration positions.

According to the emails published by WikiLeaks, Podesta, a former counselor to President Barack Obama who, in 2008, served as co-chair of Obama’s transition team, received an email on October 6, 2008, from Michael Froman, the current U.S. trade representative. At the time, Froman was a top executive at Citigroup.

Just a month before the election, an email from Froman with the subject “Lists” carried three attachments: A list of “African American, Latino and Asian American candidates, … plus a list of Native American, Arab/Muslim American and Disabled American candidates;” “a similar document on women;” and an outline of 31 cabinet-level positions, how they “might be put together,” and who would fill them.

In the email, Froman reassures Podesta the lists “will continue to grow, … but these are the names to date that seem to be coming up as recommended by various sources for senior level jobs.”

But looking back, it’s clear that at least the cabinet list ended up being the most valuable document, considering that most of the names “scoped out” by Citigroup’s Michael Froman went on to be picked by the Obama administration.

As explained by the New Republic:

“The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, et al.”

While this email was sent on October 6th, the exchanges between Podesta and Froman suggest the lists had been floating around long before that, proving that, as many had long suspected, this was just the tip of the iceberg; we now know executives were pulling the strings long before Obama was even elected.

Up until that point, candidate Obama had advertised himself as an anti-corporatist candidate, promising he would arrive at the White House and rid Washington of the “revolving door curse.” Nevertheless, Obama apparently set his promise aside before he was even elected, allowing a top Citigroup executive to pick the top names of his administration long before said executive joined his transition team.

With more revelations coming from the massive WikiLeaks’ dump, this small footnote seems to be getting little attention from mainstream media. This is, perhaps, because it paints President Obama in a bad light. Regardless, it’s important to note that what many call crony capitalism is alive and well in Washington and that the Democratic candidate from 2008 — much like the Democratic candidate of 2016 — may have promised to stand firm against big corporations and their influence while in office, only to act completely differently behind the curtain.

Yes, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is a disaster. But he’s not that different from Mrs. Clinton.

And as we now know, thanks to WikiLeaks, the old batch of Democratic top leaders and cronies continue to run the show, propping up the same politicians of yesteryear whose promises have already been broken repeatedly and whose policy positions remain flexible, just waiting for the highest bidder. Will we fall for it this time?

Can the Daily Mail say “Muslim” ?

Is it so hard to say Islam? How about the fact that all of these rapists come from one notoriously Islamic area in Pakistan. Glossing over that fact by calling them “Asians” is an obvious obfuscation on the part of DM editors.

Mark Duell for MailOnline, 17 October 2016:

‘All white girls are good for is sex. They’re just sl*gs’: Eight members of ‘openly racist’ violent Asian sex gang raped and ‘sexually degraded’ three teenage girls in Rotherham.

WHAT WERE THE 8 GANG MEMBERS CONVICTED OF?

The jury retired to consider verdicts on October 11 and today convicted all eight gang members on all counts after deliberating for almost 18 hours.

Ringleader Sageer Hussain, 30, of Clough Road, Rotherham, was convicted of four rapes and one indecent assault.

Mohammed Whied, 32, of Psalters Lane, Rotherham, was found guilty of one count of aiding and abetting rape.

Ishtiaq Khaliq, 33, of Cherry Brook, Rotherham, was found guilty of one rape and three indecent assaults.

Waleed Ali, 34, of Canklow Road, Rotherham, was found guilty of one rape and one indecent assault.

Asif Ali, 30, of Clough Road, Rotherham, was convicted on one rape.

Masoued Malik, 32, of Bridgewater Way, Rotherham, was found guilty of one rape, one count of conspiracy to commit indecent assault and one of false imprisonment.

Basharat Hussain, 40, from Goole, was convicted of one indecent assault.

And Naeem Rafiq, 33, of Clarendon Road, Rotherham, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit indecent assault and one of false imprisonment.

They were remanded in custody for sentencing on November 4.

Hillary Leaks: Pick Your Outrage

Breitbart 17 Oct 2016:

“Obama and Eric Holder Launch PAC for ‘Fairer’ Redistricting Maps”

President Barack Obama plans to team up after he leaves office with former Attorney General Eric Holder to launch a new political action committee to press for redistricting reform.

According to Politico, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee was “developed in close consultation with the White House” and that Obama himself has identified with the group.

“American voters deserve fair maps that represent our diverse communities—and we need a coordinated strategy to make that happen,” Holder said in a statement. “This unprecedented new effort will ensure Democrats have a seat at the table to create fairer maps after 2020.”

Democratic leadership in statehouses and congress is being decimated by Obama’s policies. The president routinely complains about gerrymandering, saying that is making things unfair for Democrats across the country.

In August 2015, Obama discussed at length his feelings on a system that he suggested was rigged to favor Republicans.

“I think political gerrymandering has resulted in a situation in which — with 80 percent Democratic districts or 80 percent Republican districts and no competition, that that leads to more and more polarization in Congress, and it gets harder and harder to get things done,” he said during an interview with NPR.

During his State of the Union address in 2016, Obama called for an end of the current boundaries, suggesting that the political map was rigged to favor extreme candidates.

”We have to end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters and not the other way around,” he said, vowing to “travel the country to push for reforms” to make it easier for people to vote.

The Dark Side of Self Actualization

..illustrating the inherent instability of the right -

The reflexive reversal of Derek Black - precociously showing early signs to be a leader of White Nationalism, he has done a 180: he renounces anti-Semitism, studies Islamic culture, calling for empathy for this culture which “was advanced of European culture” at a time when Europe was a backwater; says that he agrees with Hillary Clinton’s positions in 97%; claims that he does not believe in the White genocide meme that he helped to popularize because “race is a false concept anyway.”

That comes along with an array of cultural Marxist concepts that he now subscribes-to.

Derek Black pictured Sept. 25, 2016. “It’s scary to know that I helped spread this stuff, and now it’s out there,” he told a friend, alluding to the ideology he once promoted. (Matt McClain/Washington Post)

The Washington Post, “The white flight of Derek Black”, 15 Oct 2016:

“The leading light of our movement,” was how the conference organizer introduced him, and then Derek stepped to the lectern.

“The way ahead is through politics,” he said. “We can infiltrate. We can take the country back.”

[...]

He never used racial slurs. He didn’t advocate violence or lawbreaking. He had won a Republican committee seat in Palm Beach County, Fla., where Trump also had a home, without ever mentioning white nationalism, talking instead about the ravages of political correctness, affirmative action and unchecked Hispanic immigration.

He was not only a leader of racial politics but also a product of them. His father, Don Black, had created Stormfront, the Internet’s first and largest white nationalist site, with 300,000 users and counting. His mother, Chloe, had once been married to David Duke, one of the country’s most infamous racial zealots, and Duke had become Derek’s godfather. They had raised Derek at the forefront of the movement, and some white nationalists had begun calling him “the heir.”

Now Derek spoke in Memphis about the future of their ideology. “The Republican Party has to be either demolished or taken over,” he said. “I’m kind of banking on the Republicans staking their claim as the white party.”

A few people in the audience started to clap, and then a few more began to whistle, and before long the whole group was applauding. “Our moment,” Derek said, because at least in this room there was consensus. They believed white nationalism was about to drive a political revolution. They believed, at least for the moment, that Derek would help lead it.

“Years from now, we will look back on this,” he said. “The great intellectual move to save white people started today.”

[...]

“It’s been brought to my attention that people might be scared or intimidated or even feel unsafe here because of things said about me,” he began. “I wanted to try to address these concerns publicly, as they absolutely should not exist. I do not support oppression of anyone because of his or her race, creed, religion, gender, socioeconomic status or anything similar.”

The forum post, intended only for the college, was leaked to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which kept a public “Intelligence File” on Derek and other racist leaders, and the group emailed Derek for clarification. Was he disavowing white nationalism? “Your views are now quite different from what many people thought,” the email read.

Derek received the message while vacationing in Europe during winter break. He was staying with Duke, who had started broadcasting his radio show from a part of Europe with lenient free-speech laws. “The tea party is taking some of these ideas mainstream,” Duke said on a broadcast one morning. “Whites are finally coming around to my point of view,” he said another day, and even if Derek now thought some of what Duke said sounded exaggerated or even alarming, the man was still his godfather. Derek wrote back to the SPLC from Duke’s couch.

“Everything I said (on the forum) is true,” he wrote. “I also believe in White Nationalism. My post and my racial ideology are not mutually exclusive concepts.”

[...]

But the unstated truth was that Derek was becoming more and more confused about exactly what he believed. Sometimes he looked through posts on Stormfront, hoping to reaffirm his ideology, but now the message threads about Obama’s birth certificate or DNA tests for citizenship just seemed bizarre and conspiratorial. He stopped posting on Stormfront. He began inventing excuses to get out of his radio show, leaving his father alone on the air each morning to explain why Derek wouldn’t be calling in. He was preparing for a test. He was giving those liberal professors hell. Except sometimes what Derek was really doing was taking his kayak to the beach, so he could be alone to think.

He had always based his opinions on fact, and lately his logic was being dismantled by emails from his Shabbat friends. They sent him links to studies showing that racial disparities in IQ could largely be explained by extenuating factors like prenatal nutrition and educational opportunities. They gave him scientific papers about the effects of discrimination on blood pressure, job performance and mental health. He read articles about white privilege and the unfair representation of minorities on television news. One friend emailed: “The geNOcide against whites is incredibly, horribly insulting and degrading to real, actual, lived and experienced genocides against Jews, against Rwandans, against Armenians, etc.”

“I don’t hate anyone because of race or religion,” Derek clarified on the forum.

“I am not a white supremacist,” he wrote.

“I don’t believe people of any race, religion or otherwise should have to leave their homes or be segregated or lose any freedom.”

“Derek,” a friend responded. “I feel like you are a representative of a movement you barely buy into. You need to identify with more than 1/50th of a belief system to consider it your belief system.”

He was taking classes in Jewish scripture and German multiculturalism during his last year at New College, but most of his research was focused on medieval Europe. He learned that Western Europe had begun not as a great society of genetically superior people but as a technologically backward place that lagged behind Islamic culture. He studied the 8th century to the 12th century, trying to trace back the modern concepts of race and whiteness, but he couldn’t find them anywhere. “We basically just invented it,” he concluded.

“Get out of this,” one of his Shabbat friends emailed a few weeks after Derek’s graduation in May 2013, urging Derek to publicly disavow white nationalism. “Get out before it ruins some part of your future more than it already irreparably has.”

Derek stayed near campus to housesit for a professor after graduation, and he began to consider making a public statement. He knew he no longer believed in white nationalism, and he had made plans to distance himself from his past by changing part of his name and moving across the country for graduate school. His instinct was to slip away quietly, but his advocacy had always been public — a legacy of radio shows, Internet posts, TV appearances, and an annual conference on racial tactics.

He was still considering what to do when he returned home to visit his parents later that summer. His father was tracking the rise of white nationalism on cable TV, and his parents were talking about “enemies” and “comrades” in the “ongoing war,” but now it sounded ridiculous to Derek. He spent the day rebuilding windows with them, which was one of Derek’s quirky hobbies that his parents had always supported. They had bought his guitar and joined in his medieval re-enactments. They had paid his tuition at the liberal arts college where he had Shabbat dinners. They had taught him, most of all, to be independent and ideological, and to speak his beliefs even when doing so resulted in backlash.

He left the house that night and went to a bar. He took out his computer and began writing a statement.

“A large section of the community I grew up in believes strongly in white nationalism, and members of my family whom I respect greatly, particularly my father, have long been resolute advocates for that cause. I was not prepared to risk driving a wedge in those relationships.

“After a great deal of thought since then, I have resolved that it is in the best interests of everyone involved to be honest about my slow but steady disaffiliation from white nationalism. I can’t support a movement that tells me I can’t be a friend to whomever I wish or that other people’s races require me to think of them in a certain way or be suspicious at their advancements.

“The things I have said as well as my actions have been harmful to people of color, people of Jewish descent, activists striving for opportunity and fairness for all. I am sorry for the damage done.”

He continued to write for several more paragraphs before addressing an email to the SPLC, the group his father had considered a primary adversary for 40 years.

“Publish in full,” Derek instructed. Then he attached the letter and hit “send.”

Don was at the computer the next afternoon searching Google when Derek’s name popped up in a headline on his screen. For a decade, Don had been typing “Stormfront” and “Derek Black” into the search bar a few times each week to track his son’s public rise in white nationalism. This particular story had been published by the SPLC, which Don had always referred to as the “Poverty Palace.”

“Activist Son of Key Racist Leader Renounces White Nationalism,” it read, and Don began to read the letter. It had phrases like “structural oppression,” “privilege,” “limited opportunity,” and “marginalized groups” — the kind of liberal-apologist language Don and Derek had often made fun of on the radio.

“You got hacked,” Don remembered telling Derek, once he reached him on the phone.

“It’s real,” Derek said, and then he heard the sound of his father hanging up.

For the next few hours, Don was in disbelief.

[...]

Later that night, Don logged on to the Stormfront message board. “I’m sure this will be all over the Net and our local media, so I’ll start here,” he wrote, posting a link to Derek’s letter. “I don’t want to talk to him. He says he doesn’t understand why we’d feel betrayed just because he announced his ‘personal beliefs’ to our worst enemies.”

[...]

Late this summer, for the first time in years, he traveled to Florida to see them. At a time of increasingly contentious rhetoric, he wanted to hear what his father had to say. They sat in the house and talked about graduate school and Don’s new German shepherd. But after a while, their conversation turned back to ideology, the topic they had always preferred.

Don, who usually didn’t vote, said he was going to support Trump.

Derek said he had taken an online political quiz, and his views aligned 97 percent with Hillary Clinton’s.

Don said immigration restrictions sounded like a good start.

Derek said he actually believed in more immigration, because he had been studying the social and economic benefits of diversity.

Don thought that would result in a white genocide.

Derek thought race was a false concept anyway.

Express, “The Euro is FINISHED’ Currency’s creator says it will soon COLLAPSE and destroy the EU”, 17 Oct 2016:

THE Euro is a ticking time bomb which will soon blow up and wipe out the whole EU project in its wake, the currency’s creator has said in an extraordinary warning today.

“Euro founder Otmar Issing has predicted that the currency will collapse.”

In an explosive intervention professor Otmar Issing predicted that Brussels’ dream of a European superstate will finally be buried amongst the rubble of the crumbling single currency he designed.

The respected economist launched a withering attack on eurocrats and German leader Angela Merkel, accusing them of betraying the principles of the euro and demonstrating scandalous incompetence over its management.

And he savaged the whole idea of a United States of Europe, saying the attempt to push through federalisation by the back door had churned the ground the currency was built on into a quagmire of patchwork legislation, into which it is fast sinking.

Frontex.europa.eu

“European Border and Coast Guard Agency launches today”, 6 Oct 2016:

Today the European Border and Coast Guard Agency is being officially launched, less than a year after it was first proposed by the European Commission. The launch event takes place at the Kapitan Andreevo Border Checkpoint at the Bulgarian external border with Turkey and includes a presentation of the vehicles, equipment and teams of the new Agency, as well as a press conference attended by Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior of Bulgaria Rumiana Bachvarova, State Secretary of the Interior Ministry of the Slovak Republic Denisa Sakova, Executive Director of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Fabrice Leggeri, EU interior ministers and other senior officials. Building on the foundations of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency will closely monitor the EU’s external borders and work together with Member States to quickly identify and address any potential security threats to the EU’s external borders.

Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Avramopoulos, said: “Today is a milestone in the history of European border management. From now onwards, the external EU border of one Member State is the external border of all Member States – both legally and operationally. In less than one year we have established a fully-fledged European Border and Coast Guard system, turning into reality the principles of shared responsibility and solidarity among the Member States and the Union. This is exactly the European response that we need for the security and migration challenges of the 21st century.”

Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, holder of the rotating Presidency of the Council, said: “By launching the European Border and Coast Guard, we are creating a new reality at our external borders. This is a tangible outcome of the joint commitment agreed in the Bratislava Roadmap, as well as a practical display of unity among Member States. It will help us to get back to Schengen. The Presidency is determined to help further strengthen the European Border and Coast Guard, as well as translate other commitments from the Roadmap into action.”

Executive Director of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Fabrice Leggeri, said: “This is a historic moment and I am very proud to see Frontex become the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. The new Agency is stronger and better equipped to tackle migration and security challenges at Europe’s external borders. Its mandate has wider scope and new powers that will allow it to act effectively. The Agency will conduct stress tests at the external borders to identify vulnerabilities before a crisis hits. It will now also be able to offer operational support to neighbouring non-EU countries who ask for assistance at their border and share intelligence on cross-border criminal activities with national authorities and European agencies in support of criminal investigations.  It also has a key role at Europe’s maritime borders through its new coast guard functions.”

Under the new mandate, the Agency’s role and activities have been significantly expanded. The Agency’s permanent staff will be more than doubled and the Agency will be able to purchase its own equipment and deploy them in border operations at short notice. A rapid reserve pool of at least 1,500 border guards and a technical equipment pool will be put at the disposal of the Agency – meaning there will no longer be shortages of staff or equipment for Agency operations. The European Border and Coast Guard will now ensure the implementation of Union standards of border management through periodic risk analysis and mandatory vulnerability assessments.

The European Border and Coast Guard will provide a missing link in strengthening Europe’s external borders, so that people can continue to live and move freely within the European Union – helping to meet Europe’s commitment to get back to the normal functioning of the Schengen area and the lifting of temporary internal border controls by the end of the year, as set out in the Commission’s Back to Schengen Roadmap on 4 March.

Over the next months, the new Agency will be fully rolled out:

·  6 OCTOBER 2016: new Agency is legally operational

·  7 DECEMBER 2016: rapid reaction pool and the rapid reaction equipment pool become operational

·  BY DECEMBER 2016: 50 new recruitments in the Agency

·  7 JANUARY 2017: return pools become operational

·  JANUARY-MARCH 2017: first vulnerability assessments.

Background

The establishment of a European Border and Coast Guard, as announced by President Juncker in his State of the Union Speech on 9 September 2015, is part of the measures set out under the European Agenda on Migration to reinforce the management and security of the EU’s external borders. The Schengen area without internal borders is only sustainable if the external borders are effectively secured and protected.

On 15 December 2015, the European Commission presented a legislative proposal for the creation of a European Border and Coast Guard, building on existing structures of Frontex, to meet the new challenges and political realities faced by the EU, both as regards migration and internal security. The European Border and Coast Guard was approved by the European Parliament and Council in a record time of just nine months.

The European Border and Coast Guard will help to manage migration more effectively, improve the internal security of the European Union and safeguard the principle of free movement of persons. The establishment of a European Border and Coast Guard will ensure a strong management of the EU’s external borders as a shared responsibility between the Union and its Member States.

Files available for download

I was discussing this article with Kumiko. We came to the conclusion that the most charitable explanation for its penultimate confusion - exactly who, really, is to be persuaded and of what? has to do with perhaps a shyness in having to talk in a situation controlled by right wing interests: Euractiv, The EU, corporate industries invested in Asia, and German corporate interests - rather, the difficulty in getting them to see their interests aright.

Seeing the article’s argument more clearly, German, Dutch and other European workers and Asian workers should have higher salaries. That would allow Germans in particular to buy more of their own product and export less and allow Asian economies to buy more European exports in addition to their own domestic product.

The key is to dissuade corporate feudalism - the idea that low wages are a corollary to profitable business. The article argues in effect that low wages are only a corollary to enormous profit for a narrow group of elites, poorer workers and not to successful industry and healthy economic balance.

Where Germany, for example, does not let some of its industry go abroad, it should be incorporating more robotics to increase the better output as they might provide and “make-work” if necessary, with better paid “workers”, with more capacity to buy more of their own domestic product.

Euractiv, “Who fears the wolf of globalisation?”, 14 Oct 2016:

Trade unions and companies are more closely aligned against the harmful competition stemming from emerging economies’ low salaries and working conditions than ever before. The EU’s export of jobs is harming itself and the global economy, write Ernest Maragall and Jordi Angusto.

Ernest Maragall is an MEP with the Green/EFA group and Jordi Angusto is an economist.

They are accused of taking our jobs as a result of the low-cost products we buy from them. But the fact is that the EU’s external surplus has now reached an astonishing amount, close to half a trillion euros. This is 20% bigger than the Chinese surplus and both together pose a serious threat to the world economy.

In other words, by restricting our domestic demand through austerity we’re harming both ourselves and our major trading partners.

There is no ‘foreign enemy’ taking our jobs, rather the EU is taking jobs to the rest of the world. Prime examples are countries such as Germany and the Netherlands which are the main contributors to the EU surplus and which today have historically high employment thanks to third country demand, mostly from the US, UK, Canada, Brazil and Australia. And this is most definitely not because Germany and the Netherlands have low salaries.

In fact, companies tend not to invest where salaries are lower but where the difference between product per worker and salary is greater; i.e. where profitability can be greatest. In the case of Germany, the reunification process and the Schröder 2010 plan led to a huge contraction in wages and a notable increase in the product to salary difference.

Some might say they gained in terms of competitiveness, increasing economic activity, jobs and exports. Others, however, would see this not only as ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’, but their own people too, becoming unable to absorb increased production and depending on exports.

Whilst productivity gains can allow profits and wages to increase and support growth; competitiveness gained through wage dumping leads to a substitution effect, with jobs and profits gained here at the expense of jobs and profits lost elsewhere. This, in turn, leads to contraction because of a fall in demand.

That’s why institutions which could never be accused of being leftwing such as the IMF, the G20 and the OECD, have called upon Germany to increase domestic demand through public investment and salary increases, in order to help boost global growth whilst also contributing towards an improvement in labour conditions in emergent-economies.

Or do we think we’ll help them by competing to see who has the lowest salaries?

Globalisation brings many problems and with it comes the need for political action at a global level to heal our planet, eradicate tax havens and avoid the consolidation of a new corporate feudalism; but the fact that millions of people are emerging from poverty in Asia and Africa is not a problem. The critical problem today is much more how to convince those countries in surplus to increase their domestic demand.