Category Archives: Politics

Flushing the Mookie Betts salary dump

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Preface: This is my fourth & final piece with “Mookie Betts salary dump” in the title. My initial installment was published on February 1, a few days before the proposed deal hit the media. “Postscript on the Mookie Betts salary dump” was published on February 5, shortly after the deal was announced, and it looked like everything was over. “‘Adjusting’ the Mookie Betts salary dump” was published on February 7, as the fake media went silent on this mega-deal falling apart. These four essays will endure in sports literature as the best analysis of what happened here– in real time.

It looked so clean & elegant when it was first reported in the sports media on Tuesday evening, February 4, 2020:

DODGERS GET: OF Mookie Betts, LHP David Price & ~$48M [!] cash (all from BOS)
RED SOX GET: OF Alex Verdugo (from LAD), RHP Brusdar Graterol (MLB Pipeline’s No. 83 prospect, from MIN)
TWINS GET: RHP Kenta Maeda (from LAD)

…and then the clincher for Dodgers GM Andrew Friedman…

ANGELS GET: OF Joc Pederson, RHP Ross Stripling, OF prospect Andy Pages
DODGERS GET: IF Luis Rengifo

Joc Pederson was to be Andrew Friedman’s salary dump, to keep the Dodgers under the CBT. Pederson is a free agent in November. With Mookie Betts apparently in RF, the Dodgers were ready for a championship run in 2020. For Angels GM Billy Eppler, this was an opportunity to upgrade his outfield, and possibly extend Joc Pederson if it worked out well.

Instead, Joc Pederson had the distinction of going through an arbitration hearing with the Dodgers (which he lost), while believing he was being traded to the Angels. If MLB had any ethics, it would have: 1) suspended the Pederson arbitration hearing until after the proposed trade deal was resolved– one way or another; and 2) set a hard deadline for the deal’s resolution.

MLB did neither.Why? Because it was acting as an agent of the Red Sox to get the deal done on Boston’s terms. The Red Sox kept pushing for more time, but time eventually ran out.

A lot of really diligent & talented front offices worked very hard this winter to make their teams better, only to have it destroyed by Red Sox pettiness, arrogance & greed. What a colossal waste of time! This is now officially, “The greatest baseball trade that never happened.”

The Dodgers were always motivated to get this deal done. In the end it was on them to deal more prospects to Boston. They didn’t, as they felt they had given up enough already, and were probably correct. Here’s a good analysis from their perspective.

In short, the Joc Pederson arbitration hearing was a disaster for the Dodgers, even though the team won the case. They will pay Pederson $7.75M in 2020, but the Dodgers & MLB look really bad. It resembled a Julian Assange hearing in many respects. Kenta Maeda wants to be a starter so he can earn contract bonuses, but is being used as a reliever, especially down the stretch. The Twins would have put Maeda in their rotation. It would have been a great deal for the Twins.

The third Dodgers piece was Alex Verdugo, a high-end young talent in RF. I’ve been wondering why Andrew Friedman had been so willing to part with him. I had speculated in an earlier piece that it could be a core injury which was lowering his value.

But due diligence & sticking with a story eventually brought me here. It’s been alleged that Alex Verdugo was witness to his minor-league teammate, James Baldwin, sexually assaulting an underage girl at a team party in Rancho Cucamunga. There was a police report filed. This is an ugly organizational story. Dealing Alex Verdugo moves a big part of it to Boston. Apparently MLB is aware of all this, but hasn’t taken action. Very murky.

At ~3:15 PM EST, on Saturday, February 8, it was reported by MLB that Brusdar Graterol had been pulled back by the Minnesota Twins from the proposed Mookie Betts blockbuster. This announcement all but killed the deal, along with the concurrent proposed Dodgers-Angels swap.

An hour later, and the news is reverberating through the baseball world. It will soon be announced by MLB that the whole deal(s) is off. So I’m now finally able to publish this piece (which I had already written) at ~4:20 PM EST. This story actually wrote itself is how I look at it. So what the bleep happened?!

Once the Twins pulled back Brusdar Graterol, the Dodgers took back Kenta Maeda. This probably happened on late Wednesday or early Thursday, looking at the fake media reporting, but was kept quiet to try to get the Twins management to change their minds. They rightfully didn’t. This means the Red Sox take back David Price and all of his 3/$96 remaining. That leaves only Alex Verdugo for Mookie Betts at $27M.

All that puts the Dodgers-Angels proposal in jeopardy. You can see how quickly this unraveled. The money the Red Sox were going to eat on Price was never nailed down. It was reported to be “around half” of his remaining deal, but this was still being hotly negotiated after the deal was announced.

This means money, between the Red Sox & Dodgers, was an issue in killing this deal. Once it’s down to Betts-for-Verdugo, the $27M for one season becomes a problem, because this one season is all there is for the Dodgers. Especially when they are giving up a promising, cost-controlled young player to the Red Sox.

That’s why David Price had to be in the deal, for GM Andrew Friedman to part with Alex Verdugo. That’s why Verdugo-for-Betts straight-up doesn’t work. From the Dodgers GM perspective, the Red Sox needed to eat salary on Mookie Betts. The Red Sox wouldn’t (and couldn’t) do this, because this was supposed to be a salary dump in order to get under the CBT. The problem is Red Sox dysfunction, all down the line.

The final story is about the Minnesota Twins [!] taking a stand on medical/player ethics. This is a case of an “unethical medical records leak” in professional sports by the Boston Red Sox, used to gain leverage in trade negotiations. This is now a union grievance with the MLBPA. For the players involved it’s a privacy issue, just like for patients in any doctor’s office or hospital setting.

By today (Saturday), noon EST, Brusdar Graterol’s agent, Scott Boras finally responded to these unethical Red Sox assertions. “To suggest that this player is not healthy going forward, or has any form of substantive medical defect that would in any way damage his career, all of that is false,” Boras told The Boston Globe.

“This is a scant supposition created by medical review, by someone who has never seen him physically. I don’t know Boston’s position on this. I know that people are suggesting that Graterol has some malady about him medically, which is inaccurate. That supposition is false. He is in spring training. He’s ready to throw without limitations going forward through the season. And there’s no suggestion that there’s anything at issue with this player in the current or immediate aspects of his career.”

The medical rule is: don’t discuss patient/player data with outside parties, without their recorded consent. It’s a serious breach of doctor-patient ethics to do so. The same ethics exist for team-player relationships in professional sports.

As a practicing dentist for over 25 years, I know the professional lines in discussing patient information. Basically, you don’t do it. Patients don’t want it leaked, because once it’s out there, it’s public domain. The Red Sox blatantly breached a player’s right-to-privacy in their leaking the confidential medical records of RHP Brusdar Graterol. The Twins fairly deserve some form of compensation from the Red Sox.

Hypothetical question: How would you like another company interested in your services, leaking private medical & personal information to the media, in order to de-value you? This was done by the Red Sox in order to gain advantage in grabbing more assets in the already-agreed-upon Mookie Betts deal.

How do you think Brusdar Graderol felt about being traded to the Red Sox after hearing all this uproar? Terrified, possibly? I think that’s a reasonable assumption. A responsible GM can’t trade a top young prospect under the toxic circumstances created by the Red Sox. It would be unprofessional. What kind of message would it send to all the players in the Twins organization?

Patients (players) don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care. That’s the golden rule in dealing with human beings. GM’s running their organizations are like doctors running a practice, in that they are responsible for a lot of people. If you throw someone under the bus like that, everyone sees it, and it kills morale.

The Red Sox have no such ethics on this, they only care about winning & whining– in debatable order. They are again about to be sanctioned by MLB, this time over using iPhone watches to stream live center-field camera video of the opposing catcher’s signs to the pitcher. A bench coach under manager Alex Cora would relay it to Red Sox runners-on-base. That’s quite a Fenway advantage, and it puts an asterisk on their 2018 World Series season. Just like the Houston Astros in 2017.

I believe the best deterrence for illegal video usage is fan disgust with this type of cheating. That, and serious MLB investigations & sanctions for proven offenders. Live video used to steal signs totally sucks, because it’s completely unfair to the opposing team. When fans start losing respect for the players & the game, changes must be made. That’s perhaps the biggest storyline in baseball this past winter.

Since the Yankees were also involved in this, and likely originated it, expect the sanctions for the Red Sox to be less severe than they were for the Houston Astros. It’s Carlos Beltran signing with the Astros as a free agent on December 5, 2016, after nearly three years with the Yankees, that helped Houston perfect its system of video cheating. Beltran brought it from the Bronx to Houston.

That’s why Beltran was fired by the New York Mets this winter, after being hired weeks earlier. Carlos Beltran’s career MLB managing record will forever be 0-0. The Yankees don’t want an investigation into their original 2014-16 sign-stealing schemes, so they’ll make a deal with Red Sox wheels in the MLB commissioner’s office to go lightly on Boston, as a quid pro quo for no New York Yankees investigation. That’s east coast bias in action. Watch for it.

Coincidentally, ESPN just published an article implicating an Astros intern as the source of MLB video sign stealing. That’s been the top headlines on MLB & ESPN for the past two days, while the silence on the Betts deal in limbo is deafening. All this immediately confirms my conspiracy theory that the impending Red Sox punishment will be less severe than it was for the Astros. The AJ Hinch apology videos (& Astros players defiance) can all be seen as pro-Red Sox propaganda, to deflect attention from their sins. We’ll see who is correct here, soon enough.

After all this, the Red Sox deserve yet another investigation, this time in breaching player medical privacy ethics for gain in trade talks. There’s lots of corporate media complicity here, so I don’t see this going anywhere. The Red Sox & MLB are a mafia, and they’ve both had difficult winters. More & more fans outside of these inner MLB circles are now understanding the depth of this corruption. I’ve used The Office (2005-13) as a pictorial metaphor for all this corporate dysfunction.

The Los Angeles Dodgers can still get Mookie Betts in free agency, next winter, if that’s what they want. You can be sure that Andrew Friedman & the rest of his GM colleagues don’t want to deal with the Red Sox again anytime soon.

For me as a sportswriter with an outsider’s perspective, it’s been a fascinating story which I’ve been enthusiastic to cover. I understand that I’m strictly censored, but I’ve learned that the truth (when well phrased) quickly gets out to enough of the right people in time to make a difference.

This Mookie Betts deal was so tense, emotional, & tightly wound, that the excess strain from Red Sox meddling caused it to burst apart. Once the Twins pulled back Brusdar Graterol, out of respect for their valued young player & themselves, this mega-deal fell apart. When that happened, all the king’s mouthpieces, and all the Red Sox yes-men, couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. The dominoes all tumbled, and the Dodgers, Twins & Angels are left with nothing for all their weeks of time & energy spent.

They, all probably deserve some compensation from MLB over this despicable dealing in bad faith by the Boston Red Sox. All the Red Sox had to do was sign on the bottom line, and it was over. They had a great deal. Their real fans knew it. Just sign it, you bleeping bleep-holes!!

But no, it was unacceptable in its tiniest detail, so management had to insist on more. And now the Red Sox have Mookie Betts & David Price back, and they’re still well above the CBT, which ownership mandated they get below back in November.

Question: Who wants to deal with the Boston Red Sox now? Answer: Nobody. Would you? It’s pitchers & catchers starting next week, so now nothing is possible until July at the earliest, if at all, after especially so much bad blood. By then Mookie Betts will have already earned approximately two-thirds of his 2020 salary. That makes it too late for Boston to dump him, and get below the CBT.

The Red Sox & Dodgers desperately tried all the way to the end to find another trade partner to make this deal go through. If I was Padres GM AJ Preller, I would have gotten both these teams together on a three-way call to pitch a final offer. Something like, “So you both need another player to make this deal work, huh? Wil Myers is available.” Click. Click. LOL!! Call it payback for being suspended by MLB over “undisclosed anti-inflammatories” in the Drew Pomeranz deal. No love lost for the Dodgers either.

How can the GM (& a lot of other people in upper management, medical, legal, media, etc) keep their privileged Red Sox jobs, after blowing the biggest deal this organization had to make, since they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees? Roughly 100 years after that infamous baseball disaster deal, the Red Sox again grasped defeat, this time after victory had been painstakingly negotiated, They wouldn’t claim it.

Losing sight of one’s primary objective, as badly as Red Sox management has bungled it here, is astoundingly incompetent. In Taipan they would all grade out as shipwrecked galley hands. But I don’t expect any high-level firings in Boston management for this fiasco, because the Red Sox (above all else) take care of their own. They will use their media clout to blame the Twins for not “playing ball,” or the Dodgers for not giving up enough, or some other hateful nonsense meant to acquit themselves.

There were obviously forces within the Red Sox organization, and their rabid fan base, that didn’t want this trade to happen. They did everything to sabotage it. Those are their haters, and they won– again. Any kind of respectable ownership would ruthlessly purge this self-defeating filth from its organization, but not the Boston Red Sox.

And finally, let’s be clear on the role of the corporate media in this sordid, manipulative affair. Every time Buster Olney, Ken Rosenthal, et al, speculated on Brusdar Graterol’s “shoulder injury” over the past few days, they were acting not as baseball journalists, but tools of the Boston Red Sox. These willful & repeated violations of privacy prove these “reporters” have no ethics, and thus no credibility. They are all backed by an east coast mafia, so unfortunately they aren’t going to go away, despite their shameful actions in plain sight.

This is a classic case of the Red Sox being their own worst enemy. Anyone following along, could see it, and did. I commend Twins management & ownership for sticking it to the Red Sox. No one deserves it more than Red Sox Nation, and they’ve have had it a-coming for a long time. It’s the only satisfaction the Twins & all other baseball fans will get here. There was no other reasonable option.

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“Adjusting” the Mookie Betts salary dump

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Here were are at the end of the week, Friday after 5:00 PM EST, and the proposed deal of RF Mookie Betts & LHP David Price to the Dodgers, which was announced Tuesday evening and had everybody buzzing Wednesday morning, has gone into deep freeze mode.

There have been no meaningful updates on this situation by MLB or ESPN on Thursday & Friday. No other stories are being followed by baseball fans, because this was supposed to be the biggest blockbuster of the winter. The eyes of the baseball world have been on this Red Sox salary dump for over three months, and still all we have are possible scenarios & rumors.

Teams are hiding from the media, and no one from these organizations is going on-the-record at this point. The teams involved are the Red Sox, Dodgers, Twins & Angels. Everything you’ve read in the media is from the Red Sox or Dodgers perspective. Let me try to explain the Twins perspective, which is the key here. The Minnesota Twins are a good team who won 101 games last year, but got swept again by the Yankees in the ALDS. They have a smart GM in Thad Levine, and a limited budget.

Dodgers GM Andrew Friedman gave Thad Levine a call a week-or-two ago, and said, “How would you like to trade young righty reliever Brusdar Graterol for starter Kenta Maeda? It’ll be part of the package we send back to the Red Sox for Mookie Betts & David Price.” If you’re Twins GM Thad Levine, you say, “Sure. Sounds great!” Right?

Except it’s the Boston Red Sox, who go into re-negotiation mode every time they look at a young pitcher’s medical records. The Red Sox management line becomes, “We have changed our projections after having had a look at the opposing side’s proprietary medical & player data. We demand another player to make us whole again.” This is how it is presented to the world by Ken Rosenthal and the rest of the baseball media.

What the HELL is Twins general manager Thad Levine supposed to do? He really wants Kenta Maeda in the Twins rotation, with his affordable contract for four seasons. But the problem is the Boston Red Sox have unilaterally decided to de-value Brusdar Graderol– one of their top prospects. Of course the Red Sox still insist they want Graderol (who wouldn’t?), it’s just that he isn’t projecting to be as good as they thought, so therefore the Twins need to cough up another prospect. Say what?!

What do you do if you’re Thad Levine? This is really disrespectful, and respect has currency among GM’s. He was led to believe this was going to be an easy deal on his end, and now his organization being extorted by the east coast sports mafia. If the Red Sox really needed more in this deal (and they don’t), then it’s the Dodgers who should kick in. The trade for Maeda sends Graderol to the Dodgers, who is then sent to Boston for David Price. The Twins have nothing to do with that. But I haven’t read that analysis anywhere in the corporate, pro-Sox sports media. That means the Dodgers are part of this fix to screw the Twins.

Reader comments, on the other hand, overwhelmingly favor the sentiment and reasoning I’ve expressed here. Getting involved with the Red Sox in any major deal comes with bitter poisons, so beware. Teams that break even on deals, get slandered & marginalized by a blatantly biased east coast media, which is all-powerful.

No one else is allowed to win a deal with the Red Sox. Management can get sanctioned by MLB itself, for making too many good deals, because teams like the Yankees & Red Sox control MLB. They staff it’s executive offices with their people. It’s tough for an outsider to get a meaningful job in the MLB commissioners office. Like I said, it’s a mafia.

So right now there is an omerta-like silence among the teams involved, with full cooperation from their media arms. That’s what fear & power does. So much for the fans who follow the game. They would surely like to know what’s going on, but they’re kept in the dark on these conversations, while being blitzed with pro-Red Sox propaganda meant to gain them leverage. Nothing is being reported, which means things are REALLY heated between these clubs.

This is not just about who gets a valuable player in Mookie Betts, it’s now about challenging one team’s ability to renegotiate trades, after they’ve been agreed upon & announced to the media. If the Red Sox had serious questions on Brusdar Graderol’s medical history, they should have asked to see the data before the deal was announced to the media. That’s the issue for the Twins.

Of course, the Red Sox are playing all this as they’ve planned. They didn’t want to make this Mookie Betts trade, so they’ve made as many other people suffer for it as possible. That’s the Red Sox way. Will this deal fall apart? Yesterday when it was first announced there was a hold-up, it was stated that the chances were “slim” that the deal wouldn’t go through. Today it’s “more likely, than not” that it will go through. It’s now officially the weekend on the east coast, and still no word from any of the organizations or MLB…

MLBPA chief Tony Clark just made this announcement at 5:15 PM EST, reported on ESPN. “The proposed trades between the Dodgers, Red Sox, Twins, and Angels need to be resolved without further delay. The events of this last week have unfairly put several Players’ lives in a state of limbo. The unethical leaking of medical information as well as the perversion of the salary arbitration process serve as continued reminders that too often Players are treated as commodities by those running the game.”

Here’s a news flash: pitchers & catchers report next week. Remember that Brusdar Graderol is a pitcher, and it’s really important that he knows which plane to get on when it’s time to report to camp. Stay tuned here for a final update on this drawn out & sordid affair, when a resolution is reached.

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Anti-Russian interference in Iowa

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It’s Wednesday after 7:00 PM EST, and US President Donald Trump has just been acquitted by the US Senate on both articles of impeachment. No one is surprised, as this was a stage-managed affair from the start, a virtual continuance of the phony claims of “Russian interference” in the 2016 election. Once the Mueller report exonerated Trump, the deep state Democrats shifted in unison to Ukraine-gate.

It’s now clear this did more damage to Joe Biden and the Democrats. It implicated the favored Democratic nominee in 2020 & his son Hunter Biden for being a corrupt politician and favoring his entitled kid. Of course Trump does the same, but he admits it (and even brags about it), so it’s okay in bourgeois politics. No story there after the headlines go away in the corporate fake news.

I’ve marked this event in my timeline as now 86% of the Iowa caucuses have been reported, almost two days after they were held. Last night (Tuesday) it was 62%. Monday night it was 0%. Usually complete Iowa caucus results come within two hours after closing. But this time critical Iowa poll results were unpublished days before Monday’s Iowa caucus, and so these shenanigans aren’t entirely unexpected.

It’s different how Iowans do it, and they’ve always been proud of that. Now Iowans who caucused for Bernie Sanders get to feel like Floridians who voted for liberals like Ralph Nader or Al Gore.

Down south, we know how the votes are counted– and not counted. Every time it’s close for the US Presidency, Florida is “in play,” meaning it can be a hung jury for weeks as politicians work the back rooms and manipulate the numbers to get what they want. Republicans want power, and use fear & hate to whip up their political base. The Democrats want to be adored and listened to as the voices of reason with all their empty rhetoric.

This dynamic is now shattering the Democratic party, which clearly is hostile to Bernie Sanders. The problem is Bernie just won the Iowa caucus, and Biden had to be propped up to finish a distant 4th. This is why billionaires Tom Steyer & Michael Bloomberg have entered the race on TV. Each can spend over a billion dollars on their campaigns and hardly be impacted financially.

Trump introduced the ego play for the US Presidency in 2016, and he won. Trump is an ignorant egomaniac, who thinks he’s god. His supporters worship him in that respect. It’s very reactionary, but also very visceral. Trump doesn’t appeal to intellect, he appeals to emotions. Trump’s message resonates with those who are politically ignorant & prone to hostility & violence. Fascists love him.

The Iowa debacle for the DNC just wiped out almost a year of political grooming on Joe Biden. He is the definition of a zombie candidate. We have zombie banks & corporations, which don’t have enough cash-flow to pay the interest on their mountain of debt. We now have zombie candidates personified by Joe Biden & Elizabeth Warren. This was to be the 2020 Democratic ticket, no question.

It still may be, but it’s a big loser if it goes to that. That’s the crisis for the Democrats. Billionaires like Steyer & Bloomberg aren’t the kind of populists that are going to attract disenfranchised Sanders supporters. That’s why Bernie Sanders matters so much to the DNC.

To the American royalty personified by the Clinton’s, John Kerry & Barack Obama; Bernie Sanders represents socialism and a strong movement of the masses to the left, particularly among younger voters & militant workers. This is dangerous and hard to control, and no one in bourgeois politics wants any part of it.

Only the Socialist Equality Party has a viable political program to empower the working masses & disenfranchised youth. My official endorsement is: Joseph Kishore for US President & Norissa Santa Cruz for Vice President!  All information on their campaign is at the World Socialist Web Site.

I’ve presented the SEP as an option for Sanders voters who are outraged at having their votes for Bernie turned into votes for Biden, Warren & Buttigieg. Bernie Sanders isn’t really too upset, and is ready to move on. As far as his disenfranchised Iowa voters goes, Bernie Sanders is very good a faking outrage, while doing nothing,

At this point Bernie Sanders is the only non-billionaire, non-CIA Democrat left in the field. These conservatives & hawks have nothing good for anyone, except themselves. Nobody is fooled from what I’ve seen online, yet the Democrats keep pretending this is legitimate what they’re doing in Iowa, and then it’s onto New Hampshire.

How much longer will the Democrats front-run sleepwalking Joe Biden through their corporate media? It gets to a point where you can’t keep throwing good money after bad. Except it’s all silly money the elites are playing with now. The Fed just prints more and hands it to them. Chase is a zombie bank. Its Democrat-leaning executives back Biden, the zombie candidate. You eventually go with what matches– in love & politics.

The losers are those Bernie Sanders supporters in Iowa (pic above) who didn’t get their caucuses counted. This will happen to Sanders in all other 49 states, DC & Puerto Rico. That’s because the DNC controls the entire process, and it is a private entity. Sanders supporters sued the DNC in 2016 after being cheated by the Hillary Clinton campaign, in the same manner it’s being rigged now.

The courts ruled back then that the DNC could do whatever it wants, and has no obligation to hold fair primaries. The Democratic party is a private entity, owned by Wall Street & the CIA. Votes from registered Democrats are considered as suggestions to the party elite on who should receive delegates. They can change their rules anytime they want, and registered Democrats have no recourse to object. In short, the DNC has no legal obligation to its rank & file voting constituency.

Bernie Sanders supporters in New Hampshire can expect that same treatment towards their constitutional right to vote next Tuesday. Will we have a result reasonably soon after the polls close? Who knows? Will it be manipulated against the most left-leaning candidate? Absolutely.

So as a first-time voter in college who wants a better world, the question is, “What candidate among the Democrats is fighting against fascism?” The answer is, “none.” Sanders is the illusion of progress, and ever the political opportunist underneath. He whines about being cheated, and even publishes the numbers to prove it, but then he backs off. Just when he should go for the throat and bury those cockroach Democrats, he obediently goes to a neutral corner.

There is no better Democrat than Bernie Sanders for doing that. He represents all the illusions & false hopes of liberalism. His protégées, such as AOC and “the Squad” are few, but all have strong support among younger voters. The Democrats need a safety valve, and those liberals are the tools.

None of these liberal scarecrows can put together any kind of serious program to stop war, inequality & global warming, because they are all capitalists to the core. The only thing they try to unite people on is their hatred for those who don’t agree with their reactionary identity politics. That doesn’t lead to anywhere good, and there are enough examples of its failures in our lifetimes where an international socialist revolution now becomes a serious possibility. The internet & social media has empowered the unsatisfied youth & masses, despite big tech manipulation, censorship & blacklisting.

This is a watershed moment for the Democratic party. It’s about to lose the most energetic chunk of its constituency, by strangling the Bernie Sanders campaign and handing it over to a reliable defender of capitalism & the deep state. Buttigieg-Warren appears to be the DNC pivot. We’ll see what the voters of new Hampshire say on February 11, not that it matters much.

If you’re a liberal Democrat, it’s a really depressing political realization that your party doesn’t want to win the presidential election, but it’s a fact. It happened in 2016. The DNC prefer Trump to Sanders again in 2020. It’s willing to run another zombie for that reason.

Intelligent, young people don’t want to be represented by zombies. The shock wave of Iowa is just a precursor to the zombie apocalypse that is coming soon. When the banks, stock & bond markets all crash, it will be open season on zombies. The working people know too much, and the guilty will be recognized & punished by the coming revolution. Something about the millstones of history grinding slowly, but exceedingly fine.

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Prognosticating Collapse

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What’s difficult for most ordinary people to realize is that if they have a few thousand dollars on hand, with no debt of any kind, then they are worth more than any major bank. JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, BOA, et al, are living off never-ending, cheap money from the Fed. Whatever their “stock market value” is, it’s dwarfed by at least 2-3 times that amount in debt– which they can never repay. Hence they are zombies. This situation applies to most household, corporate & all national debt. That is the crux of this impending financial crisis.

These banks, stock markets & hedge fund investors hold extravagant claims to assets that are 99+% worthless. These are all toxic assets that will all go to zero when the next crash hits. It’s called a Ponzi scheme. Central banks all around the world have this same policy, so no nation will be spared. The capitalist system is about to implode upon itself in every epicenter, in a mountain of bad debt fueled by rampant corruption condoned by the entire global establishment.

This isn’t going to be your regular periodic crash, like in 1987, 1998, 2000, or even 2007-08 which was the biggest shock wave since 1929. This next collapse of corruption is going to call into question the viability of the entire capitalist system on Facebook. It’s going to take riot police & military troops to keep hungry workers from their bank savings. The only way a government can stop people from posting on social media is to shut down the internet. That will anger people, for sure.

This show of force will be deemed necessary for “national security,” as the banks are insolvent, so a military-police state will be needed to maintain “law & order.” If you are not among the elite class, then this will be your fate. ATM’s will not give you cash. and the bank deposits will be inaccessible. “How am I supposed to live?” you may ask. The answer is that you aren’t.

This is class war in the death-throes of capitalism. Through the internet & social media, the youth & workers of the world have been exchanging ideas for over a decade, since the crash of 2007-08. These lessons have been learned & absorbed by a great many.

For the masses, it’s about leadership, in terms of having a vision for the future of humanity along with everything else on this planet. Leadership needs to be revolutionary, with a scientific program for equality & peace. Karl Marx gave civilization that program when he published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, a year of revolution in Europe.

Socialism is best expressed in our modern world in the writings of Leon Trotsky, who should be considered the last classical Marxist; and today through the International Committee of the Fourth International, which publishes the World Socialist Web Site. Trotsky founded the 4th International in 1938, two years before he was assassinated by an agent of Stalin, so this party has a long & impressive political history.

Political leadership is groomed by reading the WSWS, and adopting their line. Opportunities for polemics are plenty, but they are in areas of subjectivity such as opinions on art, and analysis of profound new ideas. Predicting future events by using Marxism & its dialectical method is an invaluable form of leadership that must be cultivated among the working masses.

The revolution of the future needs to be leaderless. When great & courageous individuals become elevated to supreme leader of a movement, they can easily be neutralized by any deep state conspiracy. Think Malcolm X, MLK or John Lennon, who were all assassinated. Great leaders of today don’t seek cult followings & celebrity status, they seek to be understood & influential.

Great leaders are the best listeners & observers. They see & hear things others miss, because they make it a point to be aware of their surroundings. This is sound leadership, because it compliments the survival instinct. We can’t continue to be at war with our planet, and expect to survive as a species. Leaders must understand & weigh all positions.

The root idea of socialism is that leadership is shared. This will allow the best in any field to rise to the top, since everyone will have access. This idea is abhorrent to every capitalist, who prefer monopoly, mass slavery, world war & annihilation– to socialism.

This is obviously sociopathic “thinking,” which is why Donald J. Trump is now the US President who has been given unlimited governmental authority to wage war on socialists. That’s what economic inequality, internet censorship, and war on immigrants while inciting neo-Nazi violence is all about– it’s the political strategy of fascists.

The objective of socialists since Trump was handed the US Presidency on November 8, 2016 is to discredit fascism & the deep state– in order to prevent a world war. It’s over three years, and humanity has now been perilously driven to the brink of world war by these madmen & madwomen.

But the truth is there is no mass support for any of these lunatic semi-corpses anymore. They are ready to crumble, and will, as soon as their supply of free money, media monopoly & military obedience finally fails them as a class.

If there is an election this November, Trump will get less votes this time, because he no longer fools so many people. The situation for most is getting worse, while Trump the conman keeps making speeches on how things are better than ever. That’s the way it is for billionaires.

For the Democrats  it’s their primary season, as Iowa is finally two weeks away, with billions already spent on 2020. Among young, left-leaning voters, Tulsi Gabbard was by far the most popular early candidate, especially after she embarrassed #MeToo & BLM party favorite Kamala Harris as shown here.

Gabbard has been a target of Hillary Clinton, who refers to the congresswoman from Hawaii as a “Russian asset” in the media. We’re talking about a left-leaning, CIA Democrat in Tulsi Gabbard. She has been neutralized at this point, fundraising-wise, but now Bernie Sanders has regained the top spot in many Democratic polls. This deeply concerns the Clinton’s, Barack Obama, John Kerry, and the rest of the deep state.

At this point, any expression of any impulse to the left is dealt with hysterically through the corporate media. Denunciations, censorship & blacklisting are the methods. Hence the term “fake news,” which didn’t exist ten years ago, but is understood by everyone with a functioning brain today.

Serious political discussions need to be ongoing for as long as possible, with the realization that the deep state may eventually block internet access to the masses. This coordinated shutdown of essential services has been rehearsed over & over during “natural disasters” such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods & fires.

The ruling establishment has its hands on all the levers of power, and a playbook from which it never veers. This makes them powerful, but predicable. When you know what the ultra-rich will do in every crisis, then you can be ready with a revolutionary strategy to defeat them. It’s up to the yearning masses to consider all this, and be ready to act when the time comes.

The #1 rule in bourgeois politics is: no socialism. Only Trump is allowed to say that, because he’s a fascist, which is acceptable. Democrats prefer to hide that primary motto, under the guise of pseudo-politics such as feminism & black racialism, which support elite members of those demographics, under the tired lies of class discrimination & social inequality.

Both parties double-down on their reactionary ideologies, because they have no other choice. As the absurdity of their policies became more apparent, their social support erodes even further. Kids don’t believe in politicians anymore, like they used to. There’s too much information, and access to it, which proves them liars. Millennials are smart like that.

Conclusion: These are the outlines of the coming social revolution. The wildfires in Australia and everywhere else will never be contained under capitalism, and that is now apparent on a mass scale. Humanity has reached it’s tipping point, where business-as-usual is about to come to an end. There is too much want & awareness, combined with too much excess & hypocrisy, for things to continue as before.

The deep state can’t behead 21st-century socialist leadership, because it’s now grown to a point where so many advanced workers & youth have become learned & class-conscious that leadership will be able to nurture & replenish itself from within. Socialized leadership for permanent revolution.

Julian Assange is an example of this process, as he sits in Belsmarsh prison outside of London, awaiting a rigged extradition trial. Assange is a courageous whistle-blowing journalist who has been kidnapped & tortured by the US & UK governments & deep states. But even if he dies in prison, WikiLeaks will live on. The point is to get Julian Assange out alive, which protects ALL journalists & whistle-blowers.

The coming Julian Assange trial portends this revolution. While the courts of law are rigged, the court of public opinion is squarely behind Assange & freedom of the press. This up-coming show trial could be the spark that ignites this coming socialist revolution. The ruling establishments fear this, while revolutionaries are preparing for it.

The reason capitalism must collapse and be revolutionized into socialism is because it’s an idea whose time has come. There is no amount of fake media, authoritative coercion & physical violence that can stop an idea whose time has come. That is a fundamental truth of socialism.

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Forecasting professional tennis

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Preface– posted 12-24-2019 on my Facebook page: Australia needs to get their wildfires under control, otherwise there isn’t going to be an event in Sydney. Same for the Aussie Open which follows in Melbourne.

Defending Aussie Open champion & unofficial ATP spokesperson for the players, Novak Djokovic, has voiced concerns about the impact of these wildfires on the tennis season-opening major, saying organizers may have to consider delaying the tournament if conditions around Melbourne deteriorate further, as player health becomes the primary concern. The wildfires have increased the temperatures to well over 40 degrees Celsius in Sydney & Melbourne, creating an oven-like environment across the continent, choked with toxic fumes.

The reply by tournament organizers who are beholden to the sponsors & networks is, “We have three roofed-stadiums and eight indoor courts at Melbourne Park. In the unlikely [!] case of extreme smoke conditions, the roofs will be closed on the three stadium courts and play will continue in their air-conditioned and air-filtered environment. #AusOpen”

As if this omnipresent smoke doesn’t filter indoors where the rich & famous are. That’s how elites view global warming. What about when the players & fans leave the court & go outside? Where do they stay that isn’t unhealthy?

There are 128 men & 128 women competing in singles in this major, meaning there are 254 matches to be played in total, over two weeks. Then there are all the doubles & mixed doubles matches, so we can clearly see through all the smoke & mirrors from the media that the Australian Open is logistically impossible with only 11 courts available,

This assumes these 11 courts will be playable, which they probably won’t be, due to the poor air quality. This sports analogy is a microcosm of the problem, in the refusal of elites to see facts as they are, while trying to carry on with business as usual.

After the Australian Open, the men’s & women’s tennis tour moves to North America, with Indian Wells, CA, and to a lesser extent Miami, FL being the key events. Located approximately equidistant south of Los Angeles & north of San Diego, Indian Wells is a west coast rock star event, located on a resort between the San Bernadino National Forest & Joshua Tree National Park. It’s hard to say what the conditions for tennis will be at Indian Wells from Monday, March 9 to Sunday, March 22, but here’s the California wildfire fire map as of 10-30-19:

Springtime isn’t wildfire season in California (but then again is wasn’t wildfire season when Australia broke out in flames), so the focus of the BNP Paribas Open will be mostly on the silicon valley billionaires schmoozing with the celebrity athletes, making new connections, and learning to see eye-to-eye with each other. Very important off-the-court stuff.

Many of the top ATP & WTA players skip the Miami Open, the final hardcourt event before the clay-court season begins in Europe. Women’s tennis star Serena Williams now literally owns this venue & event, with her financial stake. She’s from the Miami area, and has won this event more any any other player.

Serena Williams is a polarizing figure in professional sports, and many top players who have bypassed this event in the past, have even more reason to do so again, so don’t expect Maria Sharapova to attend.

By being black & female, Serena Williams automatically checks boxes for those with a political agenda, such as the Black Lives Matter or #MeToo campaigns. These were/are deep state Democrat concoctions, and Serena Williams has profited handsomely as a representative. Her TUE use, along with her sister Venus’, is never questioned, or even brought up in the official corporate media, who are in lockstep with all this.

There is SOOOO much money to be made by just obeying the rules of the puppet-masters. Top professional athletes are paid for two reasons: 1) they are the best, and 2) they obey the rules of the game. If you get out of line, you become Colin Kaepernick. In Hollywood, you become Kevin Spacey. In journalism, you become Julian Assange.

Looking ahead to conditions for the upcoming clay court season, I Google searched “European wildfire map,” but nothing recent came up– probably due to algorithms. Then I clicked under People also ask: How many wildfires in the world right now?

Most recent data is 2017: “In 2017, there were 71,499 wildfires, compared to 65,575 wildfires in the same period in 2016, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. About 10 million acres were burned in the 2017 period, compared with 5.4 million in 2016.

And for comparison, “As of one day ago, about 12.35 million acres of land have burned across Australia, according to the Associated Press.”

The clay court tennis season culminates with the French Open in Paris, France, running from Sunday, May 24, 2020 – Sunday, June 7. By this time the movement des gilets jaunes (yellow vests) will be over 18 months in existence, and growing stronger. At this point, this story is virtually censored in all the western media outlets, who never wanted to report it in the first place. The is a leaderless movement of the working people, against the Ancien Régime of capitalism.

The French workers are demanding the overthrow of a despised representative of the elite, Emmanuel Macron. The government response has been media blacklisting & censorship, negative interest rates & money printing for the rich, and massive build-up of the intelligence & police state apparatus– to be used against the population. It’s very difficult to prognosticate what will be the precise conditions at Roland Garros 2020, but it promises to be a fevered environment for sure.

After clay, it’s grass and a quick turn-around to Wimbledon. The French Open lets the players flash their fashion style, especially the women. But Wimbledon is located in London, England, and is all white & always will be.

This traditionally reserved dress code will not be able to cover over political tensions in the UK, which is now being hurled into a hard Brexit by new conservative PM Boris Johnson, a strong Donald Trump ally. Brexit (UK leaving the EU) carries catastrophic & revolutionary consequences.

Fascists such as Trump & Boris will do anything to stay in power, such as keeping courageous whistle-blowing journalist Julian Assange (pic above) in Belsmarsh prison until he’s killed. The Julian Assange rendition hearing is scheduled for February 2020 in London, but the US State Department now seems hesitant to stick to their requested date.

Julian Assange is being slowly murdered in prison, through every means of torture devised by the CIA & MI6, so their play is now to stall for more time. As of this publication, Assange is being heavily sedated, without his consent, or that of his attorney and/or physician.

The deep state mafia dons prefer another Jeffery Epstein “suicide” event, versus facing an open trial, even when the defendant has been deprived of every right to a fair defense. If alive, Julian Assange will win in court, due to massive popular support.

Everyone knows how this sham goes, so it’s indefensible when out in the open. It’s the court of public opinion that matters most, and that’s the one domain the deep state always loses in. No one cheers the deep state, except fanatical patriots & paid representatives.

It’s hard to say if this trial will even be held, and what the status of Julian Assange will be when Wimbledon unfolds from Monday, June 29, – Sunday, July 12. By then, many of these questions will answered, and many new questions will be raised, demanding more answers. All this is literally clouding my ability to prognostic if Rafa will win a 13th French Open, or if Djoker will win another Wimbledon. It doesn’t seem to matter much anymore. I believe many of the players realize this too.

After Wimbledon it’s back the the US, for the remainder of the hard court season, culminating on Monday, August 24 – Sunday, September 13 with the US Open at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York, NY. There will be a lot of things going on in the Big Apple around this time.

Election 2020 will be scheduled to kick into the homestretch, with a multi-billion dollar blitz campaign of advertising, like you ain’t never seen before, which will teach us nothing. This nauseating & never-ending spectacle can only be stopped by a workers revolution which expropriates the capitalists.

The monetary policy of printing free money for the rich goes on at the Federal Reserve, located in Manhattan. It’s hard to say exactly when the financial crash of 2020 will hit, because there is so much manipulation of the tens & hundreds of trillions of dollars in worthless assets, and it is completely opaque to outsiders. But it doesn’t take a weatherman to know which way the winds blows, and any Econ 101 student knows what a Ponzi scheme is, so it’s only a matter of when, not if, in 2020.

It’s politics in the US that is bringing this to a head. With 2020 being a presidential election year, campaigning already began over six months ago. The early returns look awful, with Joe Biden being the choice of deep sate Democrats. This makes it a nail-biter with Trump in November, in which case Trump wins again.

If they ran pseudo-socialist candidate Bernie Sanders as their nominee, the Democrats would sweep the White House, senate & congressional races– but they don’t want that. The Democrats have shifted so far to the right, as to be indistinguishable from conservative Republicans– meaning they are all fascists. The Dems prefer the Reps to do the uncomfortable dirty work of illegalizing immigration & inciting racial hatred.

The final tennis major of the 2020 season, the US Open, will be unusually difficult to prognosticate due to all this. Will Naomi Osaka put it all together and become the next dominant force in women’s tennis? Can Sloane Stephens regain her form? Does Angelique Kerber still have it? Can Petra Kvitova finally capture another major? I gaze at this photo below, and wonder.

Or will we be in the midst of an unprecedented global economic crash & political crisis which leaves humanity with two options: socialist revolution or World War? It’s really hard to know.

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Defining Terms

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Bourgeois politics can be confusing, for sure. So here’s a handy Marxist working dictionary of what you need to know when everything crashes.

“Modern Monetary Theory” is unlimited money for the rich, dressed up in post-modernist gobble-de-gook. In short, it’s monopoly capitalism. Capitalism is how a billionaire class can develop, by extracting all the wealth of labor from the workers, and congealing it into money. Marxism is a scientific approach to political economy, with the intent of educating & uniting the global working class in revolution, to overthrow capitalism & establish socialism. Socialism is defined as social equality for all– globally & permanently.

When philistine haters attempt to slander socialism, they usually equate it with Stalinism, which is bureaucratic rule over a state-planned economy. Russian workers & peasants in the army, led by the Bolsheviks of Lenin & Trotsky, overthrew the Tsar & reformists in 1917, and state planning was then implemented. When Lenin eventually died from ill health, due to gunshot wounds he received in an assassination attempt by a liberal party loyalist, there was an ideological struggle for power between Trotsky & Stalin.

Stalin was an unexceptional old Bolshevik bureaucrat, who was kept in the background during the October Revolution because of his centrist tendencies which were correctly considered counter-revolutionary by Lenin & Trotsky. After Lenin’s debilitating strokes, and then final death in January 1924, Stalin stepped forward and defined his theory of “socialism in one country” to attack Trotsky and usurp power for himself, which he eventually did as Trotsky was exiled by 1929.

Stalin played the political game well, and laid many traps for his friends & enemies, eventually liquidating them all. Trotsky himself was one of the last old Bolsheviks to be murdered by Stalin’s agents, in August, 1940 in Mexico City, just as World War II broke out. Trotsky fought mostly with his pen, which is why he remains so powerful a figure in modern politics. Trotskyism is the only genuine expression of revolutionary socialism in the world today, represented by the ICFI and their publishing organ, the World Socialist Web Site.

Stalinism and all of its crimes are directly comparable to Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist party, better known as the Nazis. Nationalism & socialism are diametric opposites in politics. That’s because genuine socialism (Trotskyism) is international in perspective. Nationalism is about racism, religious chauvinism & patriotism, which define they worst instincts of humanity in their ignorance, selfishness & lack of democratic input.

Diametric & dialectic are similar words. The latter is the philosophy of Marxism, which replaces religion and all other forms of mysticism, with the science of opposites & revolution known as dialectics. When water freezes or turns to steam, there are qualitative shifts in the properties of water. What happens to water at 0 & 100 Celsius, is unlike anything in-between or beyond those temperatures. That’s a clear metaphor for dialectics, in that you have to stop thinking linearly and more dialectically, in times of revolutionary flux in order to understand what is happening.

When an army of millions of peasants led by a political opportunist, overthrows an ancient regime after a Second World War, and takes state power into it’s hands, that is called Maoism. When a band of peasants & guerrillas take state power into their hands in a banana republic, because it falls to them, that is called Castroism. When an anarchist leader proclaims, “Power comes from a gun barrel,” and then dies isolated in a third-world jungle, that is called Guevaraism.

The collapse of the Soviet Union from 1989-91 profoundly influenced US militarists, who saw it as an opportunity to reconquer the world. These are the bureaucrats, profiteers & warheads who planned 9/11, and engineered the bank bailouts after the financial crash of 2007-08. This is what is known as the deep state.

Our biggest political problem is the deep state, which is not acknowledged. “Thank God for the deep state” said ex-CIA Director John McLaughlin, to resounding audience approval on October 31, 2019. Up until then, “deep state” was another nutty conspiracy theory, pushed by kooks online such as yours truly. Now it’s vindicated, but still not discussed, except in the most general & glowingly patriotic terms.

The deep state is defined as any powerful institution which no one elects and holds power over US political economy. Every nation has a deep state these days. This institution acts independently of public oversight & democratic input. The Federal Reserve banking system is part of the deep state. So is the CIA, and the rest of the military-police apparatus. They will always lie & slander to hide their own guilt, and will never give up power peacefully. The deep state is the root of all evil under capitalism, and it must be dealt with decisively.

“Quantitative easing,” negative interest rates for big banks, and now the “repo market” intervention by the Fed & Treasury, are injections of newly printed money which has no backing, but is desperately needed to keep this “zombie economy” going. Zombie companies are defined as publicly traded corporations that can’t even pay the interest on their debt– which is massive & unpayable. At least 20% of DJIA & NASDAQ listings are zombies. This endless supply of free money keeps the stock market going up & up to new all-time highs, from which it will eventually crash.

Government is defined as a committee of the ruling class, so if you want social justice, then don’t look towards the two-party system bureaucrats for solutions. They put us in this mess in the first place. The solution in politics is so far beyond reform, that it makes Bernie Sanders look so much like the old windbag he actually is. Liberalism is dead, as it died with Barack Obama and all his vague promises of hope & change back in 2008. Then Hillary Clinton came out stillborn 2016, and the working masses got Russiagate & the #MeToo campaign in retribution for Donald Trump winning the Electoral College.

Journalists are defined as people who report the events of the world. The best ones do it honestly & with deep insight. Julian Assange is a journalist. People who persecute journalists for revealing the truth are fascists. Fascism comes in many forms, through the thuggish brutality personified by Donald Trump, or from the deep state, hidden spook, censorship version– agreed to by all the rest in the US two-party set-up. These are the “adults in the room” we are told by authoritative fake news sources.

Fake news is defined as CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Breitbart, ABC, CBS, NBC, et al. They are all owned by multi-national corporations, who push a pro-capitalist agenda in their interest. Social media including Facebook, Twitter, Google & YouTube is revolutionary in that everyone can now participate, but realize that it has also been tied into the deep state, which manipulates what you see, while selling your content to others without your knowledge. That’s called stealing, creeping, and abusing power. These entities will all become public utilities under socialism, with democratic control by users, which allows for maximum participation & innovation.

“Two-party strait-jacket” means Democrats & Republicans are two sides of the same coin– domestically & in foreign policy. They can’t exist without the other, and therefore are all in it together. Their mission in Washington is to enslave the working class, and rule the world through intimidation & military supremacy. This is pathological madness personified in capitalist politics.

Madness is defined as repeating the same mistakes over & over again, and expecting better results. This is the conundrum which no Ivory Tower, ideological apologist can solve or hide, no matter how eloquent they are in post-modernist sophistry. Capitalism is bankrupt, and must be overthrow dialectically, through the international working masses uniting under the banner of socialist revolution in permanence.

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The Russians aren’t coming!! The Russians aren’t coming!!

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In case you haven’t heard the news, Russia has been banned from international sports for the next 4 years by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). This history of this action goes back many years, and is a de facto extension of the 2016 Rio Olympics which excluded Russian athletes.

This ban will include the next two Olympics and next FIFA World Cup’s– men & women, if they qualify. Systemic doping of athletes, along with falsifying records turned over to WADA, were the stated reasons for the Russian ban.

The real reasons are political, of course, since everyone cheats. The US deep state understands the importance of sports as propaganda, and denying this glory to Vladimir Putin is the aim, as WADA is subservient to these puppet-masters. WADA’s lead hatchet-man is Travis Tygart.

It’s not a blanket ban for Russian athletes, meaning “clean athletes” will be allowed to compete. Who determines what a “clean athlete” is, and isn’t, is entirely up to WADA. But no Russian flag will fly, and no Russian national anthem will be played for victorious Bolsheviks at the Olympics and/or World Cup.

Howls from Moscow about “denying an athlete their glorious moment,” reeks of hypocrisy. Athletes dedicate their lives to be able to compete in a short window of Olympic games. Under capitalism, they all do it for themselves.

That patriotic hogwash you see on TV may pull the heartstrings of the dullards, and there are more than a few athletes who will go on & on about god & country in their post-game press conferences, but that’s just good business. When they calm down, they get back to taking care of themselves.

Here’s a question no one asks: Why is it presumed that every victorious Russian athlete will feel a deep sense of loss at not hearing their national anthem played? This is actually progress, and there are those who recognize it.

Also, how exactly do we define “clean athlete?” I ask, because they basically don’t exist in professional sports. And what about TUE’s? And finally, who monitors WADA, RUSADA, et al, in the public’s interest? When everything is so crooked, nothing good can come out of it.

Only internationalism can overcome these contradictions.

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Trophy Hunting

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All-in-all it’s just Another Brick in the Wall — Roger Waters, Pink Floyd

President Trump needed a political win to enforce his order to remove US troops from northwestern Syria. So killing Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during a US military raid in northwest Syria last night is a victory, if it indeed happened. Trump tweeted intimations last evening & “confirmed” it this morning in a press conference. He said that after being chased by US troops, air support & dogs, al-Baghdadi blew himself up, along with his three children, using a vest bomb.

Killing the leader of ISIS, with Russian, Syrian, Iraqi, Kurdish & Turkish cooperation gets Trump a win, and an exit plan for Syria. Trump can now declare victory & leave Syria, if that is indeed his plan. Between 200 and 300 U.S. troops remain at the southern Syrian outpost of Al-Tanf, and no one is saying much about that– yet. Either way, there will still be CIA & US special forces involvement with Al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria.

Donald Trump is impulsive & unpredictable, as he zig-zags on issues of global importance over a whim, but his overall foreign policy strategy appears to be open cooperation with Moscow in Syria, in order to make the Democrats look like the fanatical McCarthyists they are.

For the record, Russia’s Minister of Defense has rejected Trump’s boasts of killing al-Baghdadi along with Russian cooperation, so this could very likely be another Trump publicity stunt to win popularity among his supporters. if that’s the case, then Trump just shot himself in the foot again. Like everything involved with Al-Qaeda & US politics, the truth is hard to get at.

One thing is for sure, Trump is no peacemaker, as these troops are being re-deployed somewhere else in the Middle East war zone. Remember, President Trump has a record $750 billion military budget to play with. Overtures by diplomats about leaving some US troops to “keep the oil from Al-Qaeda & others” [?] have been rejected by all the nations involved, along with maintaining these 1,000 soldiers in Iraq.

Reading the deep state’s intent, it appears the “plan” is for the US military is to blow-up Syria’s oilfields before abandoning them to Damascus, creating another disaster on every level. All forces are now pushing in on the Al-Qaeda terrorists, including their former friends.

Syria & Iraq are no-win wars, debacles unfolding in front of the world’s eyes. It appears Trump wants out of Syria, and is letting US intelligence agencies & establishment politicos take the heat for their Al-Qaeda affiliations. Commenters all over the internet now understand this murky situation much better, and are venting their anger towards the fake media & its puppet-masters.

Trump has already been forced to back-pedal several times on withdrawal, as new Defense Secretary Mark Esper seems to be the deep state’s point man for channeling the Don towards the establishment way of thinking, which is keeping US troops in Syria. Mark Esper has been in the media a LOT lately, I’ve noticed. He’s the new kid on the block. One thing about the NKOTB: I don’t have a favorite.

Iraqi Defense Minister Najah al-Shammari, center right, and U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, center left, stand for their country’s national anthems during a welcome ceremony at the Ministry of Defense, Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019 (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

The Syrian pullout is feeding protests & insurgencies– globally. Trump & his planners know he needs to appear to get out of at least one of these “endless wars,” to have any hope of getting re-elected in 2020. But deep state Democrats & Republicans want all these wars to continue, and for Trump to be defeated. That’s the conflict in NYC, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Washington & Langley right now.

Once again, there’s a ton of fake media propaganda flying around on all sides, with every new development. This Syrian situation could start World War III, so it is up up to Trotskyists/socialists everywhere to take class-conscious action. This is the only way fascism & barbarism can be pushed back & defeated.

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Squeezing out Uncle Sam & Al-Qaeda

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There is a furious ongoing diplomacy war being waged internationally through the media. These Reuters headlines (all from today) tell much of the story. On the US deep state side of the propaganda war, the headlines read like this:

U.S aim is for troops pulling out of Syria to leave Iraq eventually: Pentagon chief [1]

US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is in Afghanistan acting as a representative of the US deep state. As Trump’s lieutenant, he’s in a tight spot, as he clearly supports troops remaining in Syria & Iraq, but what he doesn’t realize or admit is that it’s already a lost cause.

Syria wants its sovereignty back, and Turkey wants the US-sponsored Al-Qaeda terrorists gone from its border. Russia is the new sheriff in town, and if you are a supporter of the US deep state, that really burns your ass.

Kurdish families stuck in crowded schools after fleeing north Syria conflict [2]

This is a human interest piece on innocent civilians & families of Al-Qaeda terrorists who are all impacted by this. They need our help! We must act!! This is a humanitarian crisis, and we can’t abandon our allies!!!

Syrian Kurdish [Al-Qaeda] forces tell U.S. they met truce obligations: U.S. official [3]

“The commander of YPG Kurdish forces in northeast Syria told the United States he had met all obligations set out in a U.S.-brokered truce, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday, as Washington warned it would punish Turkey if it resumes hostilities… blah blah blah.” Erdogan obviously isn’t impressed…

Turkey replaces four more pro-Kurdish mayors as crackdown widens [4]

The Kurdish separatists are being persecuted, politically & militarily, for their ties to terrorism (PKK). Who will protect them?

For Syrian Kurds, a leader’s killing deepens sense of U.S. betrayal [5]

This entire CIA/Al-Qaeda alliance is murky-murky, all the way back to its inception with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. One of the more-recent sordid chapters in this relationship occurred on October 3, 2019, when U.S. State Department representatives visited the Future Syria Party’s headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa to meet Hevrin Khalaf and party president Ibrahim al-Kaftan.

“Yes, there was encouragement from the Americans to set up a party,” Kaftan said. Apparently there was much discussion that the Kurdish YPG militia had become too powerful in the region, as Washington was moving towards mediation in Syria. Hevrin Khalaf was killed a few days later during the Turkish offensive into Syria. Murky, murky.

Calling Erdogan a ‘thief’, Syria’s Assad tours Idlib frontline near rebels [6]
This can be read as a western propaganda attempt to inflame Erdogan, and split him from Assad & Russia, but it’s too late.

Iraq says U.S. forces withdrawing from Syria have no approval to stay [7]
The problem for Washington are the 1,000 US troops that Iraq doesn’t want, as this exceeds their already maxed limit of 5,000. What’s become apparent is that treaties signed & agreed to by the US are worthless, as it’s the ever-changing conditions on the ground that determine their interests & insatiable demands.

This is creating a revolutionary upsurge globally, as US imperialism has been exposed as weak & corrupt to its core. There are over 60,000 US troops stationed across the Middle East, and only the Arab absolutist monarchies want them there.

There are US troops in: Saudi Arabia, Turkey (hard to believe, but still a NATO ally), Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar & Afghanistan. Of course Israel is a “special friend” of Washington, and both deep states have infiltrated, and work closely with, Al-Qaeda proxies. These “endless wars” ever end, they just get shifted around to keep people confused. This began in earnest with 9/11.

Smoke pours from the World Trade Center after it was hit by two hijacjked passenger planes September 11, 2001 in New York City in an alleged terrorist attack. (Photo by Robert Giroux/Getty Images)

The five-day truce in Turkey’s cross-border offensive to allow the withdrawal of Kurdish YPG fighters from the border area ends at 10 pm locally– 1900 GMT; 3:00 PM EDT– today. Or 2200 GMT, depending on whom you read. President Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly stated that Turkey will press on with fighting if the YPG remains in that region.

As he flew to Russia for talks on Syria, Erdogan said hundreds of Kurdish fighters remained near to Syria’s northeast border despite the truce demanding their withdrawal. Erdogan has stated that 700-800 YPG terrorists have been evacuated from the “safe zone” but that 1,200-1,300 more remain as of Tuesday morning.

Right now Erdogan is talking with Putin & Assad on how to crush the remnants of Al-Qaeda in Syria, since the US military “cut & ran” from their allies in the northeast. Washington wants another “timeout” to gain time in hiding & redeploying what’s left of its Al-Qaeda proxies.

But this isn’t so easy, because these YPG “allies” now feel betrayed by the US, and are throwing rocks & potatoes at them as they leave. Erdogan is insisting on sticking to the negotiated agreement, and has already stated he’s turned a “new page” in US-Turkey relations.


US imperialism doesn’t need that oil in Syria, it just wants to keep it away from it’s designated enemies– and Russia & Syria are on top of that list. The US war machine need theaters & markets for its existence, but the greater loss here is the exposure of all this imperialist murkiness to a global audience.

Al-Qaeda has nowhere to go, and the US (which created them) doesn’t want to own up to its own responsibility in Syria. The CIA & US imperialism created this Frankenstein, and watching this mess disintegrate so quickly, one gets a sense that blowback is in the future. There are too many hard feelings & double-crosses here, which means there will be repercussions– sooner or later.

Russia Today has been pumping out articles too. Here’s their latest headlines, which again tell much of the story:

Russian & Syrian forces to deploy to northeastern Syria outside Turkey operation zone – Putin-Erdogan agreement [8]

Trump approves $4.5 million in aid to ‘White Helmets’ in Syria [9]

Quoting RT, “Washington pledged $5 million in aid to the group at a conference back in March. Last May, the Trump administration had announced it would stop funding the White Helmets, only to backtrack a month later and send the group $6.8 million… Trump authorized the latest package on Tuesday, calling their work “important and highly valued.”

In reality, the White Helmets are mercenary scum, as this terrorist organization is funded by MI6 & the CIA. You need to keep your head on a swivel to keep up with Trump’s zig-zags.

This $4,5 million can be seen as a rapprochement for Uncle Sam bailing on them in Syria. “Here, forgive us for abandoning you.” This money will forge a closer alliance between Al-Qaeda & Washington until the money runs out, then these terrorists will need & demand more– and get it. This is what the deep state is for. You don’t think these fanatical idiots could exist on their own, do you?

According to RT, “Currently the White Helmets operate solely in the parts of Idlib province controlled by Al-Qaeda militants. Photographs of armed militants with “White Helmets” insignia, participating in the Turkish-backed ‘Operation Peace Spring’ against the Kurds in northern Syria, have appeared on social networks over the past two weeks.”

There is nothing but hypocrisy here, as Erdogan is claiming to be “cleansing terrorists” in his Syrian offensive, but is actually employing the same mercenaries he’s asserted to the world that he’s fighting.

When it gets this murky-murky in real-world covert ops & terrorism, I put on The Octagon (1980), a ninja classic for relaxation. With a LOT of help from his supporting cast, director, and many others, Chuck Norris kicks ass while not being too concerned about the facts, which wear thin on him.

The martial arts are amazing, particularly Richard Norton as Kyo the killer (and also Longlegs the henchman). But the REAL star is Art Hindle as A.J.– the wanna-be sidekick who goes fanatical in his inimitable American kamikaze stupid style– straight into hari kari. There are three leading ladies in this flick, and two of them get killed. Delicious.

The Octagon is a confused mess, with a lot of dangerous & misleading cliches. For instance, the fat Jew fur dealer as the “underbelly of terrorism” according to US intelligence. But it is still an action classic, just as re-watchable as The Terminator (1984) or Robocop 2 (1990). If you agree, then check out my comments on the linked movie for more STUFF!

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Lessons of the Syrian debacle

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“We don’t cut & run on our Al-Qaeda allies in Syria!” — fake news mantra

Below is a photo of Kurdish YPG militia in Syria. We are told that these brave fighters are our friends, and that you should never abandon your allies. One week ago Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was officially a longstanding US ally. Today he condemned by CNN & Fox News for committing unspeakable war crimes, invading Syria to persecute YPG terrorists– recruited, trained & armed by the CIA.

The ruling class doesn’t like it when CIA assets are attacked by a nominal ally, as this has evoked a hysterical response in the fake media. Trump has been forced to react with economic sanctions (surprise!), but they will have very little impact as the EU is Turkey’s main trading partner, and they do business differently than Trump.

Being an “ally” of the US under president Donald Trump requires bourgeois nationalists to be flexible & ready to find new partners at a moment’s notice. This is why the deep state is in such conflict with Trump, as he destabilizes long-term objectives for his own personal interest.

As discussed in my last post, the Trump administration with all its belligerence & stupidity has succeeded in isolating the US in its foreign policy. The mightiest military machine & intelligence apparatus in human history, in terms of GDP spent on it, has failed in Syria. Trump, like his predecessor Obama, had the direct support of powerful blood-stained Middle East regimes including the House of Saud & Israeli Zionism, but have used up all their political capital to accomplish nothing in Syria.

Every entity connected with US imperialism in this region has been weakened, discredited and/or abandoned. Russia is now signing major trade deals with Saudi Arabia for oil, gas, foodstuff, et al. This is considered nothing less than a disaster for US hegemony in the region.

All that remains of the US military presence is a small base in Al-Tanf at the southern border with Jordan. The US will eventually be forced to ingloriously abandon this last Syrian outpost. It’s only the humiliation & admission of defeat that sticks in the craw of deep state Democrats & Republicans. Not the dead, wounded, and displaced; nor the billions of dollars wasted.

No lessons can be learned from this debacle made in Washington & Langley, which was completely predicable as it is the result of class arrogance & historical ignorance. No lessons learned is always the message in the fake media. In the end, they’re all fanatical, blood-thirsty tribal Arabs anyways, so who cares…right? If you know how to read in-between the lines, that is the media message being pitched right now.

Donald Trump is a racist sociopath who doesn’t care if more Arabs are killing each other again. In fact, he likes it, and so do his hardcore supporters. Plus, Trump gets to piss on fanatical CIA Democrats in the process, so it’s a double-win for him– and that’s all that matters to him.

Shifting political sands have forced new alliances, which seem contradictory to the naive, but reveal two immutable facts to the wise: 1) there are no permanent alliances among bourgeois factions, only permanent interests– each trying to get itself a bigger slice of the pie; and 2) the only hope of unwinding tensions & bloodshed in the Middle East (and anywhere else) starts with the US military & CIA leaving.

Reference Notes: This is an informative & well-written article from Reuters, outlining the failures of Kurdistani nationalist politics in Turkey, Syria, Iran & Iraq. It’s a muddle of alphabet soup politics & ethnic nationalism; using terrorism, religious chauvinism & diplomatic maneuvering to promote selfish interests. It needs to be whole-heartedly rejected by the Kurdish people, in favor of class solidarity with working brothers & sisters internationally.

US imperialism out of the Middle East!!

It’s October 15, 2019, Trump has ordered the last 1,000 US troops from northeastern Syria, and he isn’t changing his mind this time– because he can’t. It’s now beyond US control, as Turkish president Erdogan has responded with an offensive to create a “safe zone” for refugees. Professional hacks on both sides of the US aisle, from Nancy Pelosi to Mitch McConnell, are screaming “humanitarian crisis.” So where are the heroic & brave White Helmets?

Moscow is leading the re-drawing of lines in the Syrian war, as it has long anticipated a US collapse in the region. Compare this to Trump’s disorganized withdrawal, announcing it to the world via Twitter, and then leaving it to the US military to get it done in haste. They needed to, as Erdogan & Putin-Assad moved in immediately to fill in the power vacuum on both sides. The laws of Marx in political economy prove the same as the laws of physics.

We’re a long, long way from “low-hanging fruit.” The vast majority of American soldiers don’t want to be there. Need proof of that? This video, of a retreating US military convoy (flying the stars & stripes!) passing Syrian armed forces in Toyota pickups & motorcycles racing to take the abandoned camp, is surreal.

In the annals of military history, I’ve never heard of (much less seen footage of) active enemies-of-war passing each other on a highway, one side advancing & the other retreating, with neither offering battle. From an American perspective, this is the most confusing & ill-conceived war we’ve ever seen.

In summary, US imperialism backed reactionary causes such as Kurdish separatism (YPG) & Islamic terrorism (ISIS) for the purpose of regime change in Syria. Now the YPG has been abandoned by the US, as Erdogan unleashes Al-Qaeda fighters upon the Kurdish population in this illegal invasion. Ethnic chauvinism & bourgeois realpolitik are the root causes of all this conflict.

To the point of US presidents wanting to start wars-of-aggression, there are none. War hurts their popularity, and all US presidents want to get re-elected. They all get pushed into these wars by the deep state– Korea, Vietnam, 9/11, et al. The last time the American population approved of war was December 7, 1941.

I don’t think there are any Russians and there ain’t no Yanks, just corporate criminals playing with tanks

— The Call, “The Walls Came Down” (1983)

Mopping-up update: Thu 17 Oct 2019 09:40 AM EDT

The American people have no respect for cowardly Democrats who “cut and run” on abused immigrants, shredded democratic rights, and lowered living standards at home. The next thing you know, the US military will “cut & run” on their dirty wars in Iraq, Afghanistan & Yemen too. This raises the prospect of peace breaking out in the Middle East, which horrifies US politicians. Do you realize what that would do to Lockheed-Martin & Exxon?

The USAF has flexed its muscles for the past few days, now reduced to bombing their own abandoned bases. But even this impotent display of strength will soon end. The abandonment of US ground troops in Syria, means Russian anti-aircraft batteries are being moved in to deter any more “muscling in” by air. Mercenaries & Al-Qaeda proxies, as much as they’ve been valuable CIA assets in this adventure, don’t defend US military air bases– for some unexplained reason.

Meanwhile, Mike’s Pompeo & Pence visit Erdogan today in Ankara. The president of Turkey is being urged by Extinction Rebellion supporters to take Trump’s “Don’t be a tough guy” letter out of the trash & have it recycled.

Bipartisan Spin

Election 2016 was a debased spectacle and possibly the last US presidential election, as it is now open political warfare on both sides of the aisle with new alliances being abandoned & formed on a moment-to-moment, ad hoc basis. Notice how this parallels their foreign policy. The 2020 presidential campaign already reminisces 1860.

Democratic firebrand upstart Tulsi Gabbard is being suppressed in the media for being too far left. She’s popular among younger voters, as the 2020 updated version of Bernie Sanders, who is now 78 and just had a heart attack on Oct. 1, which was downplayed in the fake media as “heart surgery.” Bernie is seen by many as outdated & no longer able to carry the torch of liberal betrayal for the Democrats. He still has influence, but is being slowly “put out to pasture,” as they say in politics & horse-racing.

We know from WikiLeaks 2016 that the DNC fixes their primary; through funneling money, media manipulation, super-delegates & vote rigging, so I still see it as Biden-Warren 2020. The question is, can Biden survive the scandals & criticisms? If not, the Democrats are scrambling because they don’t want another old woman leading their ticket in 2020, as that’s considered a win for Trump by the pollsters. Everything else is window dressing in this “contest.”

The US deep state has two major security leak sources at this time, and dialectically they are on opposite ends of the political & philosophical spectrum. The foremost is WikiLeaks– the good guys, whom the entire global political establishment is persecuting in the US-UK led campaign of silencing, jailing & torturing Julian Assange. Assange is still being held in a UK dungeon with no care, in solitary confinement, amongst the most-violent convicted criminals in England.

Julian Assange is there for jumping bail on phony US-Swedish rape allegations, by seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. After being spied upon & confined during the Obama years; Trump, Pence, Bolton & Pompeo had UK police drag Assange out of the embassy over six months ago, and “convicted” him in a kangaroo court.

All this is part of a US extradition process, as it’s the NSA, CIA & US military fanatics who hate Assange most, and want him permanently silenced for revealing very inconvenient truths to the world. Trump is a gangster, so no appeals can be made to this fascist White House cabal. Democrats & Republicans both want Julian Assange to die in prison, and are doing everything in their power to make it happen– short of direct intervention a la Jeffery Epstein. This is why freeing Julian Assange is a spearhead issue in the international campaign against US imperialism.

The second source of US intelligence leaks comes from Trump’s Twitter account. From JFK to 9/11 & Al-Qaeda, this huckster has slipped in some very inconvenient truths over the years– enough to brand himself a populist with his supporters. When Trump tweets the PKK, YPG & SDF (Al-Qaeda) are “no angels,” the CIA & deep state goes bonkers.

Of course, Trump is a fascist demagogue; a product of privilege, who couldn’t exist without his elite handlers, advisors & confidants. Trump tweets intelligence “open secrets,” which gives him credibility when he needs it, like in an election cycle. It’s always all self-interest with Trump.

Thursday 17 Oct 2019 ~2:35 PM EDT

Just minutes ago, this breaking news headline from Russia Today:

Turkey to halt military operation against Kurds in N. Syria, ceasefire will last for 120 hours – US VP Pence

The fact is the Turkish offensive had already bogged down, as Moscow & Damascus moved in quickly to halt early advances. It turns out that 15,000 Al-Qaeda invaders, armed to the hilt, still aren’t very reliable. Who knew?

I’ve been looking for a resolution to this nightmare essay, and here it finally is. The White House just sent its diplomatic A-Team to the Middle East to pull the plug on a major terrorist black-op debacle, which means this story will go dark quickly in the American media.

The US military & its media diplomacy have been defeated in Syria, with all their dirty lies exposed. The entire US establishment is part of this criminal conspiracy of aggressive foreign wars. They are the true enemy that must be defeated.

Saturday 19 Oct 2019 11:59 AM EDT

Hidden dimensions of this humanitarian crisis: US imperialism owns the Al-Qaeda terrorists, and by extension their families. After all, terrorists are people too.

February 23, 2019 – Baghouz, Rojava, Syria – Baghouz Area / The Kurdish YPG of the coalition (Syrian Democratic Forces AKA SDF) are taking thousands of women and children of Daesh jihadists (ISIS) out of Baghoz, the last jihadist stronghold in Syria, in trucks to drop them at Al Hol camp a few hours away. (Credit Image: © Chris Huby/Le Pictorium Agency via ZUMA Press)

The YPG-SDF terrorists can’t leave northeastern Syria because they have families, with women & children who can’t move or dodge bullets & artillery fire at a military pace. They have only themselves to blame for dragging their loved ones into this war zone, since they started this mess with a US deep state partnership. Murky, murky to infinity.

“What’s going to happen here?”, is the big question. Will these terrorists & their families be taken by Russian-Syrian forces, or will the US military & CIA be able to evacuate them? How will Erdogan play into all this?

Erdogan wants to turn a new page in this relationship, because he REALLY didn’t like the last one he read from Trump. The biggest fear in the US deep state is that this could be Al-Qaeda’s Stalingrad. Everything else is distraction & propaganda.

The fighting has now been reported by Reuters as infrequent & low-level along the Syrian border. I don’t hear any more saber-rattling from Erdogan either. He & Putin are scheduled to meet next week, and with Assad, to surely negotiate an arrangement for northeastern Syria. Russia has sent Turkey military hardware, and also has pipeline deals, so look for cooperation among these imperialists, with less violence in the region– directly proportionate to any US & Al-Qaeda evacuation.

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