Aug 09

Today’s News 9th August 2018

  • Pfizer Faces Shrinking Sales, Stiff Competition From India As Viagra Patent Expires

    Getting a chemically-induced erection is about to become much cheaper, as pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s patent on its blockbuster erectile dysfunction (ED) drug, Viagra, expires in April 2020. 

    Approximately one in ten adult males will suffer from ED on a long-term basis, with many more suffering the occasional “letdown.” Moreover, recreational Viagra use – including mixing the drug with others such as ecstasy, has been on the rise. 

    Genuine Viagra costs around $65 per pill in the US, while Pfizer struck a deal with Teva Pharmaceuticals in 2007 for a half-price generic version. That said, it’s about to get much cheaper to get it up. 

    India rises to the occasion

    Looking to cash in on the patent expiration are several companies located in India, reports the Hindustan Times. 

    Seven Indian companies have already secured the required permissions. They are among 15 companies worldwide that have been granted approval by US health watchdog the Food and Drug Administration, to produce sildenafil citrate, the formulation patented as Viagra.

    The Indian companies in the fray to sell the blue pill are Rubicon Research, Hetero Drugs, Macleods Pharma, Dr.Reddy’s, Aurobindo Pharma, Torrent Pharmaceuticals and Ajanta Pharma.

    Could spark massive price crash in the US

    The Indian companies are working on strategies that could bring down the price of Viagra in the US market by almost 99 per cent. –Hindustan Times

    Mumbai-based Macleods Pharmaceuticals, for example, sells a generic version of Viagra for .85c/tablet. Another, Ajanta Pharma, a $1.6 billion publicly-listed firm, sells its own version in India for .47 cents each. 

    Pfizer’s global sales from Viagra alone was $1.685 billion in 2014, according to Transparency Market Research, while the gobal market for ED drugs was valued at $4.35 billion in 2016. 

    “Lower pricing is the only way to gain preference. Hence, a price war is certain,” said Macleods Pharma VP Niteesh Srivastava, who admitted that Indian competition will likely spark fierce competition. “While lesser known or relatively smaller firms will be able to crash prices due to less overhead expenditures, pharma giants will already have a better hold on the pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in the US to reach the desired negotiations,” he added. 

    “It is an opportunity for Indian drug makers to cash in on their R&D and pricing strength and get into the US market for Viagra, which has largely been cartel led so far due to patent and policy regulation,” said Sougat Chatterjee, president of TFPL, a global research consulting firm, reports the Times. 

    That said, it may not be a walk in the park, as Indian firms will need to contend with rising FDA license fees to around $160,000 USD for the fiscal year 2018, up from roughly $65,000.

    “With such investments to gain approvals, every player will come on the ground with a surprise strategy to reap long-term results,” Srivastav said.

    Indian firms are also hoping the FDA will follow the United Kingdom’s decision to allow Viagra to be sold over the counter without a prescription. 

    “Many among these seven companies have been waiting to get into the US OTC market considering its sheer volume. Now, they are likely to have the opportunity,” Chatterjee said.

    Next steps

    In anticipation of entry into the US market, Indian manufacturers will begin establishing relationships with pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in the United States – which are “primarily responsible for developing and maintaining the formulary, contracting with pharmacies, negotiating discounts and rebates with drug manufacturers, and processing and paying prescription drug claims,” according to the American Pharmacists Association. 

    In 2016, PBMs managed pharmacy benefits for 26.6 crore Americans. “These PBMs operate inside of integrated healthcare systems as part of retail pharmacies, and as part of insurance companies. The success of Indian firms will depend on their relationship and networking with these pharmacy chains,” said Ashok Madan, executive director, Indian Drug Manufacturers’ Association, a lobby representing over 1,000 pharma companies in India.

    Most of the companies, however, remained tight-lipped about their plans. While Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories said its spokesperson is traveling, emails sent to Cadila Healthcare, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Rubicon Research did not elicit a response. –Hindustan Times

    “We had just two US approvals until 2014. In 2016, we had nine new approvals. We are upping our ante to expand the business in the US. Whenever a drug loses a patent, it is a big opportunity. However, we are still working on the strategies,” said an official from Ajanta Pharma on condition of anonymity. 

    Whatever the case and however many hurdles India’s pharmaceutical industry needs to jump through – suffice to say, it’s going to be a lot cheaper to get your boner on in the next few years. 

  • Yazidi Slavery, Child Trafficking, Death Threats To Journalist: Should Turkey Remain In NATO?

    Authored by Uzay Bulut via The Gatestone Institute,

    August 3 marked the fourth anniversary of the ISIS invasion of Sinjar, Iraq and the start of the Yazidi genocide. Since that date in 2014, approximately 3,100 Yazidis either have been executed or died of dehydration and starvation, according to the organization Yazda. At least 6,800 women and children were kidnapped by ISIS terrorists and subjected to sexual and physical abuse, captives were forced to convert to Islam, and young boys were separated from their families and forced to become child soldiers, according to a report entitled “Working Against the Clock: Documenting Mass Graves of Yazidis Killed by the Islamic State.” Moreover, 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are believed to remain in ISIS captivity, but their whereabouts are unknown.

    One Yazidi child recently sold in Ankara, Turkey, and then freed through the mediation efforts of Yazidi and humanitarian-aid organizations, according to a report by Hale Gönültaş, a journalist with the Turkish news website Gazete Duvar. On July 30, three days after Gönültaş’s article appeared, she received a death threat on her mobile phone from a Turkish-speaking man, who told her that he knew her home address, and then shouted, “Jihad will come to this land. Watch your step!”

    This is not the first time that Gönültaş has been threatened for writing about ISIS atrocities. In May 2017, she received similar telephone threats after posting two articles: “200,000 children in ISIS camps,” and “ISIS holds 600 children from Turkey.”

    In addition, a video of Turkish-speaking children receiving military training from ISIS was sent to her email address. In the video, in which one of them is seen cutting off someone’s head with a knife, the children are saying, “We are here for jihad.”

    Gönültaş, whose lawyer has filed a criminal complaint about the threats, told Gatestone:

    “A child has been sold, and this is a crime against humanity; and I do not think the sole perpetrator is ISIS. There is a larger organized network involved in this. My report has further exposed this reality. I have been a journalist for 22 years and have been subjected to similar threats many times. I do not live in fear or worry. I will continue reporting facts.”

    In her article, Gönültaş conducted an interview with Azad Barış, founding president of the Yazidi Cultural Foundation, who said that a Yazidi girl, who was taken captive during the ISIS invasion of Sinjar in 2014, was sold for a fee determined by ISIS through “intermediaries” in Ankara:

    “To restore the child to liberty, the Yazidi community and humanitarian aid organizations — the ‘reliable intermediaries’ who stepped in to save the child — contacted the intermediaries who acted on behalf of ISIS…. The child was then taken out of Turkey quickly with the help of international organizations and reunited with her family. As far as I know, Turkish security forces were not informed of the incident. The priority was the life of the child and to take her to safety swiftly. And the child did get safely reunited with her family.”

    Barış also said that Yazidi women were exposed to mass rapes at the hands of ISIS terrorists who called them “spoils of war” and claimed that it was “religiously permissible” (“jaiz” in Arabic) to rape them:

    “Women were taken from one cell house to another and were exposed to the same sexual and psychological torture in every house. According to witness statements, women were mass raped by ISIS militants three times every day. Dozens of women ended their lives by noosing and strangling themselves with their headscarves.

    “Slave markets have been formed on an internet platform known as the ‘deep web.’ Not only women but also children are sold on auctions on the deep web… When the selling is completed on the internet, the intermediaries of those buying the women and the intermediaries of ISIS meet at a place considered ‘safe’ by both parties. Women and children are delivered to their buyers. Some Yazidi families have liberated their wives, children and relatives through the help of the reliable persons that joined in the auctions on the deep web on their behalf. The price for liberating the women and children ranges between 5,000 and 25,000 euros… Our missing people are still largely held by ISIS. Wherever ISIS is, and wherever they are effective, the women and children are mostly there. But selling women is not heard of very often anymore.”

    Also according to Barış, the second largest Yazidi group held captive by ISIS are boys under the age of nine:

    “[they] receive jihadist education at the hands of ISIS; are brainwashed, and have been made to change their religion. Each of them is raised as a jihadist. But we are not fully informed of the exact number and whereabouts of our kidnapped children.”

    This is not the first time that the sale of Yazidis in Turkey was reported in the media. In 2015, the German public television station ARD produced footagedocumenting the slave trade being conducted by ISIS through a liaison office in the province of Gaziantep in southeast Turkey, near the Syrian border.

    In 2016, the Turkish daily Hürriyet reported that the Gaziantep police had raided the Gaziantep office and found $370,000, many foreign (non-Turkish) passports, and 1,768 pages of Arabic-language receipts that demonstrate the transfer of millions of dollars between Syria and Turkey.

    Six Syrians were indicted in Turkey for their involvement, but all were acquitteddue to a “lack of evidence.” No member of the Gaziantep Bar Association, which had filed the criminal complaint against them, was invited to attend the hearings. According to Mehmet Yalçınkaya, a lawyer and member of the Gaziantep Bar Association:

    “The court, without looking into the documents found by police, made the decision to acquit… We learned of the decision to acquit by coincidence. That the trial ended in only 16 days and 1,768 pages of documents were submitted to the court after the decision to acquit shows that it was not an effective trial.”

    A news report from German broadcaster ARD shows photos of Yazidi slaves distributed by ISIS (left), as well as undercover footage of ISIS operatives in Turkey taking payment for buying the slaves (right).

    Addressing the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on December 9, 2015, Mirza Ismail, founder and chairman of the Yezidi Human Rights Organization-International, said, in part:

    “We Yezidis are desperate for your immediate help and support. During our six-thousand-year history, Yezidis have faced 74 genocides in the Middle East, including the ongoing genocide. Why? Simply because we are not Muslims. We are an ancient and proud people from the heart of Mesopotamia, the birth place of civilization and the birth place of many of the world’s religions. And here we are today, in 2015, on the verge of annihilation. In response to our suffering around the World there is profound, obscene silence. We Yezidis are considered ‘Infidels’ in the eyes of Muslims, and so they are encouraged to kill, rape, enslave, and convert us.”

    …

    “I am pleading with each and every one of you in the name of humanity to lend us your support at this crucial time to save the indigenous and peaceful peoples of the Middle East.”

    Three years after this impassioned plea, Yazidis are still being enslaved and sold by ISIS, with Turkish involvement, while the life of the journalist who exposed the crime is threatened. Reuniting the kidnapped Yazidis with their families and bringing the perpetrators to justice should be a priority of civilized governments worldwide, not only to help stop the persecution and enslavement of Yazidis, but also to defeat jihad.

    The question is whether NATO member Turkey is a part of the solution or part of the problem. Should Turkey, with the path it is on, be allowed even to remain a member of NATO?

  • China Just Tested A Hypersonic Missile The US Can't Defend Against

    China claims to have successfully tested a new hypersonic missile that would be capable of penetrating any missile defense system in the world.

    The Starry Sky-2, which is an experimental design known as “waverider,” rides the shock waves generated during flight. The missile could one day carry conventional and or nuclear warheads undetected through US missile defense shields.

    According to the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA), an aerodynamic research institution in Beijing and part of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC), conducted the hypersonic missile test in northwestern China last Friday.

    The CAAA released a statement issued on Monday, indicating the Starry Sky-2 was carried into space by a solid-propellant rocket before separating.

    CAAA images of the rocket launching the Starry Sky-2 to the upper atmosphere (Source/WeChat)

    Video: Starry Sky-2 Launch

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    After separation, it descended to lower altitudes as it autonomously conducted extreme turning manoeuvers, reaching Mach 5.5 for more than 400 seconds, and reached a top speed of Mach 6, or 7,344km/h (4,563mph), the CAAA WeChat statement said.

    The test was deemed a “complete success,” stated CAAA, which posted a series of behind the scenes images of the experiment on social media. “The Starry Sky-2 flight test project was strongly innovative and technically difficult, confronting a number of cutting-edge international technical challenges.”

    However, the CAAA did not mention what the intended purpose of the missile would be used for, other than commenting on how hypersonic technologies could further China’s aerospace industry.

    Although, the missile is still in the development stage and probably a few years out from series production, waveriders could be used to carry conventional and or nuclear warheads capable of penetrating the world’s most advanced anti-missile defense systems.

    Earlier this year, Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the US is extremely vulnerable to future attack via hypersonic missiles.

    “The first, most important message I want to deliver today is that the forces under my command are fully ready to deter our adversaries and respond decisively, should deterrence ever fail. We are ready for all threats. No one should doubt this,” Gen. Hyten said in his opening statement.

    However, in a follow-on conversation with Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, Hyten cautioned:

    “we [US] don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon [hypersonic missiles] against us.”

    Hyten suggested the US is powerless against hypersonic weapon threats and has to rely on nuclear deterrence.

    Hyten added, “so our response would be our deterrent force which would be the triad and the nuclear capabilities that we have to respond to such a threat.”

    In mid-April, Lockheed Martin announced that it had won a $928 million contract to develop a hypersonic missile for the Air Force to counter Chinese and Russian missile defense systems.

    During the recent discussion at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington, D.C., Gen. Paul Selva, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said China has yet to “mass deploy hypersonics or long-range [tactical] ballistic missiles,” however, “they are able now to deploy those capabilities at a large scale” if they decide to move in that direction, he added.

    Gen. Selva then dropped a bombshell indicating the Pentagon is behind in the demonstration of hypersonic technologies, but he did mention that the Pentagon still holds an advantage when it comes to sensor and sensor-integration technologies.

    “If we just sit back and don’t react we will lose our technological superiority” over China, Selva said.

    Beijing-based military analyst Zhou Chenming told the South China Morning Post that Starry Sky-2 would be used for carrying conventional warheads rather than nuclear ones, adding that such a capability was not in the immediate future.

    “I think there are still three to five years before this technology can be weaponized,” he said. “As well as being fitted to missiles, it may also have other military applications, which are still being explored.”

    The Starry Sky-2 is not China’s first rodeo operating in the hypersonic space — it has been testing hypersonic missiles since 2014, but the latest test is the first to make use of waverider technology.

    Mike Griffin, a former Nasa administrator and now the Pentagon’s defense undersecretary for research and engineering, warned earlier this year that China had built “a pretty mature system” for a hypersonic missile to strike from thousands of miles away.

    To sum up, this is it – the dying American empire is behind the hypersonic technology curve, as it may suggest: The US could lose its military technological superiority to China sometime in the mid/late 2020s, if it does not properly allocate enough investments into hypersonic technologies.

    We then ask the question: What comes next if Washington’s power slips in the Pacific? Well, you guessed it… War.

  • Institutionalizing Intolerance: Bullies Win, Freedom Suffers When We Can't Agree To Disagree

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” ― Benjamin Franklin

    What a mess.

    As America has become ever more polarized, and those polarized factions have become more militant and less inclined to listen to – or even allow for the existence of – other viewpoints, we are fast becoming a nation of people who just can’t get along.

    Here’s the thing: if Americans don’t learn how to get along – at the very least, agreeing to disagree and respecting each other’s right to subscribe to beliefs and opinions that may be offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different – then we’re going to soon find that we have no rights whatsoever (to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge our own paths as individuals).

    In such an environment, when we can’t agree to disagree, the bullies (on both sides) win and freedom suffers.

    Intolerance, once the domain of the politically correct and self-righteous, has been institutionalized, normalized and politicized.

    Even those who dare to defend speech that may be unpopular or hateful as a constitutional right are now accused of “weaponizing the First Amendment.”

    On college campuses across the country, speakers whose views are deemed “offensive” to some of the student body are having their invitations recalled or cancelled, being shouted down by hecklers, or forced to hire costly security details. As The Washington Postconcludes, “College students support free speech—unless it offends them.”

    At Hofstra University, half the students in a freshman class boycotted when the professor assigned them to read Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Artificial Nigger.” As Professor Arthur Dobrin recounts, “The boycotters refused to engage a writer who would use such an offensive word. They hadn’t read the story; they wouldn’t lower themselves to that level. Here is what they missed: The story’s title refers to a lawn jockey, a once common ornament of a black man holding a lantern. The statue symbolizes the suffering of an entire group of people and looking at it bring a moment of insight to a racist old man.”

    It’s not just college students who have lost their taste for diverse viewpoints and free speech.

    In Charlottesville, Va., in the wake of a violent clash between the alt-right and alt-left over whether Confederate statues should remain standing in a community park, City Council meetings were routinely “punctuated with screaming matches, confrontations, calls to order, and even arrests,” making it all but impossible for attendees and councilors alike to speak their minds.

    In Maryland, a 90-year-old World War I Peace Cross memorial that pays tribute to the valor, courage and sacrifice of 49 members of the Prince George community who died in battle is under fire because a group of humanists believes the memorial, which evokes the rows of wooden Latin Crosses that mark the graves of WW I servicemen who fell on battlefields far away, is offensive.

    On Twitter, President Trump has repeatedly called for the NFL to penalize players who take a knee in protest of police brutality during the national anthem, which clearly flies in the face of the First Amendment’s assurance of the right to free speech and protest (especially in light of the president’s decision to insert himself—an agent of the government—into a private workplace dispute).

    On Facebook, Alex Jones, the majordomo of conspiracy theorists who spawned an empire built on alternative news, has been banned for posting content that violates the social media site’s “Community Standards,” which prohibit posts that can be construed as bullying or hateful.

    Jones is not alone in being censured for content that might be construed as false or offensive.

    Facebook also flagged a Canadian museum for posting abstract nude paintings by Pablo Picasso.

    Even the American Civil Liberties Union, once a group known for taking on the most controversial cases, is contemplating stepping back from its full-throated defense of free (at times, hateful) speech.

    “What are the defenders of free speech to do?” asks commentator William Ruger in Time magazine. 

    “The sad fact is that this fundamental freedom is on its heels across America,” concludes Ruger. “Politicians of both parties want to use the power of government to silence their foes. Some in the university community seek to drive it from their campuses. And an entire generation of Americans is being taught that free speech should be curtailed as soon as it makes someone else feel uncomfortable. On the current trajectory, our nation’s dynamic marketplace of ideas will soon be replaced by either disengaged intellectual silos or even a stagnant ideological conformity. Few things would be so disastrous for our nation and the well-being of our citizenry.”

    Disastrous, indeed.

    You see, tolerance cuts both ways.

    This isn’t an easy pill to swallow, I know, but that’s the way free speech works, especially when it comes to tolerating speech that we hate.

    The most controversial issues of our day—gay rights, abortion, race, religion, sexuality, political correctness, police brutality, et al.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support.

    “Free speech for me but not for thee” is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard.

    This haphazard approach to the First Amendment has so muddied the waters that even First Amendment scholars are finding it hard to navigate at times.

    It’s really not that hard.

    The First Amendment affirms the right of the people to speak freely, worship freely, peaceably assemble, petition the government for a redress of grievances, and have a free press.

    Nowhere in the First Amendment does it permit the government to limit speech in order to avoid causing offense, hurting someone’s feelings, safeguarding government secrets, protecting government officials, insulating judges from undue influence, discouraging bullying, penalizing hateful ideas and actions, eliminating terrorism, combatting prejudice and intolerance, and the like.

    Unfortunately, in the war being waged between free speech purists who believe that free speech is an inalienable right and those who believe that free speech is a mere privilege to be granted only under certain conditions, the censors are winning.

    We have entered into an egotistical, insulated, narcissistic era in which free speech has become regulated speech: to be celebrated when it reflects the values of the majority and tolerated otherwise, unless it moves so far beyond our political, religious and socio-economic comfort zones as to be rendered dangerous and unacceptable.

    Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors (and championed by those who want to suppress speech with which they might disagree) have conspired to corrode our core freedoms, purportedly for our own good.

    On paper – at least according to the U.S. Constitution – we are technically free to speak.

    In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official – or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube – may allow.

    Emboldened by phrases such as “hate crimes,” “bullying,” “extremism” and “microaggressions,” the nation has been whittling away at free speech, confining it to carefully constructed “free speech zones,” criminalizing it when it skates too close to challenging the status quo, shaming it when it butts up against politically correct ideals, and muzzling it when it appears dangerous.

    Free speech is no longer free.

    The U.S. Supreme Court has long been the referee in the tug-of-war over the nation’s tolerance for free speech and other expressive activities protected by the First Amendment. Yet the Supreme Court’s role as arbiter of justice in these disputes is undergoing a sea change. Except in cases where it has no vested interest, the Court has begun to advocate for the government’s outsized interests, ruling in favor of the government in matters of war, national security, commerce and speech. 

    When asked to choose between the rule of law and government supremacy, the Supreme Court tends to side with the government.

    If we no longer have the right to tell a Census Worker to get off our property, if we no longer have the right to tell a police officer to get a search warrant before they dare to walk through our door, if we no longer have the right to stand in front of the Supreme Court wearing a protest sign or approach an elected representative to share our views, if we no longer have the right to voice our opinions in public—no matter how misogynistic, hateful, prejudiced, intolerant, misguided or politically incorrect they might be—then we do not have free speech.

    What we have instead is regulated, controlled speech, and that’s a whole other ballgame.

    Just as surveillance has been shown to “stifle and smother dissent, keeping a populace cowed by fear,” government censorship gives rise to self-censorship, breeds compliance, makes independent thought all but impossible, and ultimately foments a seething discontent that has no outlet but violence.

    The First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world.

    When there is no steam valve – when there is no one to hear what the people have to say – frustration builds, anger grows and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation. By bottling up dissent, we have created a pressure cooker of stifled misery and discontent that is now bubbling over and fomenting even more hate, distrust and paranoia among portions of the populace.

    Silencing unpopular viewpoints with which the majority might disagree—whether it’s by shouting them down, censoring them, muzzling them, or criminalizing them—only empowers the controllers of the Deep State.

    Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.

    It’s political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility and love, but what it really amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.

    We’ve allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us. And we’ve allowed ourselves to become so timid in the face of offensive words and ideas that we’ve bought into the idea that we need the government to shield us from that which is ugly or upsetting or mean.

    The result is a society in which we’ve stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences.

    In short, we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent, passive, polarized populace incapable of working through our own problems with each other and reliant on the government to protect us from our fears of each other. 

    So where does that leave us?

    We’ve got to do the hard work of figuring out how to get along again.

    Charlottesville, Va., is a good example of this.

    It’s been a year since my hometown of Charlottesville, Va., became the poster child in a heated war of words—and actions—over racism, “sanitizing history,” extremism (both right and left), political correctness, hate speech, partisan politics, and a growing fear that violent words would end in violent actions.

    Those fears were realized when what should have been an exercise in free speech quickly became a brawl that left one activist dead.

    Yet lawful, peaceful, nonviolent First Amendment activity did not kill Heather Heyer. She was killed by a 20-year-old Neo-Nazi who drove his car into a crowd of pedestrians in Charlottesville, Va.

    Words, no matter how distasteful or disagreeable, did not turn what should have been an exercise in free speech into a brawl. That was accomplished by militant protesters on both sides of the debate who arrived at what should have been a nonviolent protest armed with sticks and guns, bleach bottles, balloons filled with feces and urine and improvised flamethrowers, and by the law enforcement agencies who stood by and allowed it.

    This is what happens when we turn our disagreements, even about critically and morally important issues, into lines in the sand.

    If we can’t agree to disagree—and learn to live with each other in peace and speak with civility in order to change hearts and minds—then we’ve reached an impasse.

    That way lies death, destruction and tyranny.

    Now, there’s a big difference between civility (treating others with consideration and respect) and civil disobedience (refusing to comply with certain laws as a means of peaceful protest), both of which Martin Luther King Jr. employed brilliantly, and I’m a champion of both tactics when used wisely.

    Frankly, I agree with journalist Bret Stephens when he says that we’re failing at the art of disagreement.

    As Stephens explains in a 2017 lecture, which should be required reading for every American:

    “To say the words, ‘I agree’—whether it’s agreeing to join an organization, or submit to a political authority, or subscribe to a religious faith—may be the basis of every community. But to say, I disagree; I refuse; you’re wrong; etiam si omnes—ego non—these are the words that define our individuality, give us our freedom, enjoin our tolerance, enlarge our perspectives, seize our attention, energize our progress, make our democracies real, and give hope and courage to oppressed people everywhere. Galileo and Darwin; Mandela, Havel, and Liu Xiaobo; Rosa Parks and Natan Sharansky — such are the ranks of those who disagree.”

    What does it mean to not merely disagree but rather to disagree well?

    According to Stephens, “to disagree well you must first understand well. You have to read deeply, listen carefully, watch closely. You need to grant your adversary moral respect; give him the intellectual benefit of doubt; have sympathy for his motives and participate empathically with his line of reasoning. And you need to allow for the possibility that you might yet be persuaded of what he has to say.”

    Instead of intelligent discourse, we’ve been saddled with identity politics, “a safe space from thought, rather than a safe space for thought.”

    Safe spaces.

    That’s what we’ve been reduced to on college campuses, in government-run forums, and now on public property and on previously open forums such as the internet.

    The problem, as I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, is that the creation of so-called safe spaces—where offensive ideas and speech are prohibited—is just censorship by another name, and censorship breeds resentment, and resentment breeds conflict, and unresolved, festering conflict gives rise to violence.

    Charlottesville is a prime example of this.

    Anticipating the one-year anniversary of the riots in Charlottesville on August 12, the local city government, which bungled its response the first time around, is now attempting to ostensibly create a “safe space” by shutting the city down for the days surrounding the anniversary, all the while ramping up the presence of militarized police, in the hopes that no one else (meaning activists or protesters) will show up and nothing (meaning riots and brawls among activists) will happen.

    What a mess.

  • China's Winnie The Pooh Crackdown Intensifies As Half-Naked Bear Becomes Resistance Icon

    First HBO, and now Disney.

    China’s war with Winnie the Pooh has intensified, as Beijing has reportedly banned the new Disney film “Christopher Robin” as part of their new crackdown on the half-naked bear. Why? Because Pooh has become a resistance icon over Chinese social media due to his resemblance to Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

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    While the Guardian notes that it’s possible the Pooh film was simply blocked due to China only allowing a certain number of foreign films in its theaters annually, the Huffington Post pointed out that Chinese censors have been relentlessly scrubbing Pooh-related material from the web. 

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    In June, China blocked HBO’s website after host John Oliver devoted a considerable amount of time criticizing President Xi Jinping and China’s notorious crackdowns on dissent, at a time when Xi is trying to rebrand himself. 

    In addition to calling out China over human rights violations and various forms of propaganda, Oliver pointed out that Xi is very sensitive about Winnie the Pooh comparisons. 

    The Daily News reported at the time that HBO.com has been blocked for 100% of Chinese internet users following the segment – citing internet monitoring website Greatfire.org. 

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  • Brandon Smith: The Strengths And Weaknesses Of Leftists Vs Conservatives

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    Before I jump into this subject matter, I should probably address a common misconception among people who are new to liberty movement activism. The first time people hear about the concept of the “false left/right paradigm,” they wrongly assume that this means there is “no left or right ideology,” that it is all fabricated to divide the masses. This is a misconception.

    When we speak of the false left/right paradigm in the liberty movement, we are usually referring to the elitists at the top of the political and financial pyramid. These people do NOT have any loyalty to any one political party, nor do they hold to the beliefs of one side or the other. They are happy, though, to exploit leftists or conservatives by targeting their weaknesses.  They do this in order to create a social outcome that elevates the elitist’s own goals, but that is all. Meaning, these people are globalists and have their own agenda separate from the political left or right, but will pretend to stand on one side or the other in order to control the narrative. Hence, the “falseness” of their particular left/right theater.

    The common citizen, however, does indeed tend to legitimately rest his or her ideals on a spectrum from left to right, from progressive to conservative. And lately, the separation between these two sides has been growing ever wider.

    To be clear, it is not playing into the hands of the globalists to point out the differences in the two sides.  The two sides are concrete, they are a natural extension of human though processes, and they would exist even if the globalists did not exist.  The globalists did not create left vs right philosophical differences, this is giving them too much credit.  They only seek to take advantage of divisions in thought that already exist.

    Where things go horribly wrong is when one side or the other is pushed artificially towards zealotry. This is where the globalists create chaos, by influencing the left or the right into subverting their own principles and abandoning diplomacy in the name of destroying the other side.  This is when disagreements become war and the political process becomes a blood feud.  Globalists sometimes attempt to conjure such violent conditions when they want to wipe the slate clean and introduce a new social system. Generally, their goal is even more centralization and control.

    Over the years I have been critical of BOTH sides of the political spectrum, and sometimes even more critical of liberty activists when I see the movement being led astray by disinformation. The reality is that both leftists and conservatives sense severe imbalances in the way our society and our government functions. Where we differ greatly is in how each side places blame for our problems and how they plan to solve those imbalances.

    In order to understand why the left and the right are so close to open war, we have to step outside the political bubble and look at our differences in a more objective way. First, let’s start with an examination of the leftist mindset…

    How Leftists View The World

    The key to understanding leftists resides in their inclination toward collectivism as a means of protection and power. To put it more bluntly, leftists love and embrace the mob mentality.

    This is why the political left seems to organize so much more effectively than conservatives in many cases. While conservatives engage in internal debates with each other over principles and practical solutions, leftists are far more single-minded in their pursuit of social influence. They seem to gravitate to each other like ants around a sugar cube, and in this they can be effective in removing obstacles and gaining political territory. This could be considered a strength, but it can also act as a weakness.

    The leftists ideal is one in which all people are in general agreement — they think all people are tied together in a great social chain, that every individual action has consequences for everyone else in that chain and, therefore, all individual actions no matter how small should be regulated in order to avoid one person adding to a potential disaster for the rest of humanity.  True individualism is seen as “selfish” and disruptive to the survival prospects of the group.

    Thus, the notion of “society” becomes a control mechanism used by leftists. “We are all part of this society, whether we like it or not.” They often say, “People have to accept the rules for the greater good of the greater number.”

    When we look at this objectively, this is clearly a brand of totalitarianism posing as humanitarian rationality. Who decides what is the “greater good?” Well, our inherent conscience does that, but conscience is an individual trait. When mobs get together and engage in mob thinking, conscience tends to go out the window.

    For example, it is impossible to institute such a thing as “social justice;” arbitrarily homogenizing an entire group based on their skin color, sexual orientation, financial status, etc. and then deciding how they should be rewarded (or punished) erases the individual accomplishments and crimes of the people within that group you just arbitrarily created.

    It is true that some behaviors tend to be cultural, and in that case, the most we can do morally is point out those behaviors and applaud or criticize. In the case of globalists, you have an actual example of organized criminality within a definable group of people. This can indeed be judged on a broad scale but still must be punished based on individual actions.

    We can judge an individual for his behavior predicated on evidence, but no one on Earth is devoid of bias, and no one on Earth has the omnipotent wisdom required to dole out punishment or prizes to an entire subculture of people en masse.

    Those leftists with good intentions desire a world without suffering. This is perhaps a noble thing. Unfortunately, that world does not exist and never will. There will always be inequality of outcome because not all people are equal in ability or willpower. I realize that leftists have been brainwashed into thinking that all people are equally capable, if not completely the same in every imaginable way. But, believing this does not make it fact.

    The best we can hope for is the freedom to pursue prosperity as individuals, but in their pursuit of total equality, leftists are encouraging the erasure of individual freedom and opportunity. They believe that what is best for the individual is for him to sacrifice his individualism for the sake of the mob made up of the lowest common denominator. When one understands that the mob is morally relative, that it has no soul or conscience, this suggestion sounds like madness. And frankly, it is madness.

    Needless to say, the collectivist thinking of leftists makes them easy prey for sociopathic global elites.  However, to be fair, conservatives are also targeted for manipulation exactly because they present the most viable threat to the success of globalism as construct.

    How Conservatives View The World

    While the political left is essentially going off the deep end into the errors of zealotry, conservatives are also not immune to ideological blindness. It is no secret that I view the conservative position as far superior to that of the left — I will summarize the strengths of this position as briefly as possible so that we can get to the more important issue of weaknesses.

    The left sees the world as a complex Gordian Knot that must be chopped in half and meticulously untangled until all is made equal. Conservatives see society’s problems as much simpler – Each individual’s problems are his own. Each individual must work hard to elevate himself and to solve his problems without taking from other people in the process. Each person is an island, and while we might ally with each other at times, we are not permanently tied to each other in some kind of endless symbiotic relationship. As the Non-Aggression Principle outlines, you leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone, and as long as no one is attempting to steal from others, enslave others or murder others I will remain quiet and peaceful.

    The conservative dynamic goes wrong, though, when conservatives abandon their foundational principles for the sake of winning a fight against an imminent threat.

    As leftists worship the mob and government power, conservatives tend to worship heroes, some of them false prophets. Conservatives are always desperately searching for the man on the white horse to lead them to the promise land. They are always looking for another messiah.  And in this they make themselves weak.

    What they should be emulating are their principles and heritage alone. Only principles and truths matter, because they are eternal.  They do not corrupt like people can.  But let the right showman or mascot come along reciting the correct rhetoric in a rousing way, and many conservatives become putty in the hands of the political elites.

    I believe this is owed to the problem of organization that conservatives suffer from. Individualists do not always agree on everything and normally abhor group think. The political right grows frustrated at how easy it is for leftists to congeal into an effective mob, and the tyranny of the majority is horrifying to the average conservative. So, in response conservatives seek out unifying leaders, people that appear to hold the same values and who conservatives can pour all their hopes and dreams for the future into. When this happens, group think can and does spread like a cancer through the political right.

    When conservatives hyper-focus on leadership, they unwittingly centralize and become easily controlled. Globalists can either co-opt the leader or they can destroy the leader and thus the hopes of all the people that were invested in him. They can use the leader as a placebo, making conservatives sit idle waiting around for things to change when they should be taking action themselves.  And, globalists can also tie all the perceived or real blunders of that leader around the necks of his political base; meaning, conservatives can be conned into rallying around a false prophet and then when he falls from grace, all conservative thought falls from grace as well.

    When conservatives bottleneck all their efforts and energy into a single leader, they set themselves up for failure. Organization does not need to be pursued from the top down. It can be built from the ground up in a decentralized way. When conservatives ignore their own principles and start centralizing, some very ugly things can happen. Zealotry is not only a vice of leftists. I remember the insanity of the Iraq War, for example, and in that event I saw self-proclaimed conservatives acting like the very mob they used to despise. This happened because they were frightened by what they perceived as an imminent threat and sought out leadership in all the wrong places instead of thinking critically.

    The two sides of the political spectrum are a fact of life (unless of course the globalists get their way and replace everything with their own brand of moral relativism). One side is often used against the other to illicit a self-destructive response. Understanding where each side is coming from helps us to remain vigilant and to avoid exploitation by the powers that be.

    *  *  *

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  • Mapping The Median Age In Every US County

    The United States is a vast place, and every region is markedly different.

    Usually we look at these differences through lenses like geography, population density, preferences, wealth, and culture – but, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, age is another interesting one to think about, and age is a significant factor in predicting future economic health and growth for almost any society.

    THE AGE FACTOR

    As the French philosopher Auguste Comte wrote, “Demography is destiny”.

    If you know a person’s age, you’re usually able to guess other things about them. For example, younger people are usually more motivated and inclined to launch careers, start families, and seek economic security. Not all young people are this way of course – but in aggregate, this is generally true.

    Today’s map comes to us from Reddit user /r/JFBoyy and it charts median age by every U.S. county, parish, borough, and Census Area.

    Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

    COUNTIES BY AGE

    Which states and counties stand out on the map?

    Utah is an interesting place to start – it’s the youngest state with a median age of 29.9, and this is extremely clear when looking at the county level. The state has only one county (Daggett) with a median age range above 35-44 years.

    Florida and Maine are two other states that stand out. Florida is the stereotypical “old” state, and there is some truth to that based on the numbers. It’s the only state that has a county (Sumter) with a median age range over 65 years. Meanwhile, Maine has only five counties that are not “old” counties – and the majority of counties have median ages that fall in the 45-54 range.

    The Midwest and Southeast seem to have a higher distribution of counties with median ages in the “middle ground” 35-44 median age range. Alabama has 67 counties, and all but five of them are in that bracket.

    Meanwhile, the West seems to have an interesting dichotomy in many of its states. Washington State, for example, has many counties with old populations (San Juan, Jefferson, and others) but also counties with younger populations (Whitman, Yakima, Kittitas).

    Idaho is the most potent example of this tendency: all of the old people seem to live in the north of the state, and all of the young people in the south.

    A LOOK TO THE FUTURE

    Here is how median age projects out to 2040, but on a state level.

    Overall the national median age is projected to go from 37.7 to 39 years.

    Interestingly, while aging in the United States is expected to cause some demographic issues in the long run, the country’s challenges pale in comparison to other rapidly-aging countries in the Western world.

     

  • Pakistan's New Leader Is A Democratically Elected Populist-Visionary

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

    Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which translates to the Pakistan Movement For Justice and is commonly known by its abbreviation as the PTI, came out on top in the latest elections after campaigning on a strong anti-corruption platform, but it was nevertheless a supposedly “controversial” victory because of the opposition’s claims of “military rigging” and the West’s efforts to “delegitimize” the vote.

    To briefly explain, the Supreme Court disqualified former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from office last summer and he has since been arrested for corruption, but instead of lauding this as a positive move in the right direction by an emerging democracy, it was condemned by some domestic political forces and foreign countries as supposedly being a “military-driven conspiracy” to tilt the future elections to Khan’s favor.

    The narrative that his opponents have propagated is that he’s therefore nothing more than a “stooge” of the Pakistani “deep state”.

    That’s not the case, however, because Pakistan’s democracy is continually improving, and the only way for it to achieve anything sustainable of significance is for the highest law of the land to be upheld irrespective of the polarized political feelings surrounding the Supreme Court’s ruling last year. Without law and order, no matter how controversial its manifestation may be, no country can ever hope to build democracy, and it’s very telling that so many millions of Pakistanis were attracted to the PTI’s anti-corruption message.

    That in and of itself speaks to the need to proverbially “clean house” by holding elected officials and their business partners to account, which is what the Prime Minister-elect has promised to do. This will in turn improve domestic political administration and encourage the trust that’s needed to attract diaspora investments, which can then contribute to Pakistan pursuing value-added projects that turn the CPEC-transiting country into more than just a “Chinese highway”.

    Internationally, Khan’s view of foreign affairs closely aligns with what many have interpreted the military establishment’s as being, though that shouldn’t be understood as a bad thing or abused as supposed “proof” that the armed forces “rigged” the vote to help him win.

    Pakistan’s new leader seems to understand the value of “multi-aligning” his country’s international partnerships in order to promote the shared goal of multipolarity. This could predictably see him continuing with the fast-moving and full-spectrum Russian-Pakistani rapprochement in parallel with “rebalancing” Pakistan’s traditional relations with the US, all the while never shying away from talking tough to India when needed but nevertheless signaling his intent for pragmatic cooperation. The previous administration was perceived by many as being “too soft” on the US and India, so Khan is merely channeling their frustrations independently of whatever the military’s position towards these two countries may be.

    The bottom line is that Pakistan’s next Prime Minister was democratically elected in a free and fair election. Bringing corrupt politicians to justice and embracing populism aren’t indicative of “military meddling”, but are the sign of our times, with Khan being the latest visionary leader to enter into office by appealing to the people’s desires.

  • Ten Bombshell Revelations From Seymour Hersh's New Autobiography

    Among the more interesting revelations to surface as legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh continues a book tour and gives interviews discussing his newly published autobiography, Reporter: A Memoir, is that he never set out to write it at all, but was actually deeply engaged in writing a massive exposé of Dick Cheney — a project he decided couldn’t ultimately be published in the current climate of aggressive persecution of whistleblowers which became especially intense during the Obama years.

    Hersh has pointed out he worries his sources risk exposure while taking on the Cheney book, which ultimately resulted in the famed reporter opting to write an in-depth account of his storied career instead — itself full of previously hidden details connected with major historical events and state secrets. 

    In a recent wide-ranging interview with the UK Independent, Hersh is finally asked to discuss in-depth some of the controversial investigative stories he’s written on Syria, Russia-US intelligence sharing, and the Osama bin Laden death narrative, which have gotten the Pulitzer Prize winner and five-time Polk Award recipient essentially blacklisted from his regular publication, The New Yorker magazine, for which he broke stories of monumental importance for decades.

    Though few would disagree that Hersh “has single-handedly broken more stories of genuine world-historical significance than any reporter alive (or dead, perhaps)” — as The Nation put it — the man who exposed shocking cover-ups like the My Lai Massacre, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the truth behind the downing of Korean Air Flight 007, has lately been shunned and even attacked by the American mainstream media especially over his controversial coverage of Syria and the bin Laden raid in 2011.

    But merely a few of the many hit pieces written on this front include The Washington Post’s “Sy Hersh, journalism giant: Why some who worshiped him no longer do,” and elsewhere “Whatever happened to Seymour Hersh?” or “Sy Hersh’s Chemical Misfire” in Foreign Policy — the latter which was written, it should be noted, by a UK blogger who conducts chemical weapons “investigations” via YouTube and Google Maps (and this is not an exaggeration). 

    The Post story begins by acknowledging, “But Sy Hersh now has a problem: He thinks 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue lied about the death of Osama bin Laden, and it seems nearly everyone is mad at him for saying so” — before proceeding to take a sledgehammer to Hersh’s findings while painting him as some kind of conspiracy theorist (Hersh published the bin Laden story for the London Review of Books after his usual New Yorker rejected it). 

    Seymour Hersh broke the story of CIA’s illegal domestic operations with a front page story in the New York Times on December 22, 1974.

    However, the mainstream pundits piling on against his reporting of late ignore the clearly establish historical pattern when it comes to Hersh: nearly all of the biggest stories of his career were initially met with incredulity and severe push back from both government officials and even his fellow journalists, and yet he’s managed to emerge proven right and ultimately vindicated time and again. 

    * * *

    Here are ten bombshell revelations and fascinating new details to lately come out of both Sy Hersh’s new book, Reporter, as well as interviews he’s given since publication…

    1) On a leaked Bush-era intelligence memo outlining the neocon plan to remake the Middle East

    (Note: though previously alluded to only anecdotally by General Wesley Clark in his memoir and in a 2007 speech, the below passage from Seymour Hersh is to our knowledge the first time this highly classified memo has been quoted. Hersh’s account appears to corroborate now retired Gen. Clark’s assertion that days after 9/11 a classified memo outlining plans to foster regime change in “7 countries in 5 years” was being circulated among intelligence officials.)

    From Reporter: A Memoir pg. 306 — A few months after the invasion of Iraq, during an interview overseas with a general who was director of a foreign intelligence service, I was provided with a copy of a Republican neocon plan for American dominance in the Middle East. The general was an American ally, but one who was very rattled by the Bush/Cheney aggression. I was told that the document leaked to me initially had been obtained by someone in the local CIA station. There was reason to be rattled: The document declared that the war to reshape the Middle East had to begin “with the assault on Iraq. The fundamental reason for this… is that the war will start making the U.S. the hegemon of the Middle East. The correlative reason is to make the region feel in its bones, as it were, the seriousness of American intent and determination.” Victory in Iraq would lead to an ultimatum to Damascus, the “defanging” of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, and other anti-Israeli groups. America’s enemies must understand that “they are fighting for their life: Pax Americana is on its way, which implies their annihilation.” I and the foreign general agreed that America’s neocons were a menace to civilization.

    * * *

    2) On early regime change plans in Syria

    From Reporter: A Memoir pages 306-307 — Donald Rumsfeld was also infected with neocon fantasy. Turkey had refused to permit America’s Fourth Division to join the attack of Iraq from its territory, and the division, with its twenty-five thousand men and women, did not arrive in force inside Iraq until mid-April, when the initial fighting was essentially over. I learned then that Rumsfeld had asked the American military command in Stuttgart, Germany, which had responsibility for monitoring Europe, including Syria and Lebanon, to begin drawing up an operational plan for an invasion of Syria. A young general assigned to the task refused to do so, thereby winning applause from my friends on the inside and risking his career. The plan was seen by those I knew as especially bizarre because Bashar Assad, the ruler of secular Syria, had responded to 9/11 by sharing with the CIA hundreds of his country’s most sensitive intelligence files on the Muslim Brotherhood in Hamburg, where much of the planning for 9/11 was carried out… Rumsfeld eventually came to his senses and back down, I was told…

    3) On the Neocon deep state which seized power after 9/11

    From Reporter: A Memoir pages 305-306 — I began to comprehend that eight or nine neoconservatives who were political outsiders in the Clinton years had essentially overthrown the government of the United States — with ease. It was stunning to realize how fragile our Constitution was. The intellectual leaders of that group — Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle — had not hidden their ideology and their belief in the power of the executive but depicted themselves in public with a great calmness and a self-assurance that masked their radicalism. I had spent many hours after 9/11 in conversations with Perle that, luckily for me, helped me understand what was coming. (Perle and I had been chatting about policy since the early 1980s, but he broke off relations in 1993 over an article I did for The New Yorker linking him, a fervent supporter of Israel, to a series of meetings with Saudi businessmen in an attempt to land a multibillion-dollar contract from Saudi Arabia. Perle responded by publicly threatening to sue me and characterizing me as a newspaper terrorist. He did not sue. 

    Meanwhile, Cheney had emerged as a leader of the neocon pack. From 9/11 on he did all he could to undermine congressional oversight. I learned a great deal from the inside about his primacy in the White House, but once again I was limited in what I would write for fear of betraying my sources…

    I came to understand that Cheney’s goal was to run his most important military and intelligence operations with as little congressional knowledge, and interference, as possible. I was fascinating and important to learn what I did about Cheney’s constant accumulation of power and authority as vice president, but it was impossible to even begin to verify the information without running the risk that Cheney would learn of my questioning and have a good idea from whom I was getting the information.

    4) On Russian meddling in the US election

    From the recent Independent interview based on his autobiography — Hersh has vociferously strong opinions on the subject and smells a rat. He states that there is “a great deal of animosity towards Russia. All of that stuff about Russia hacking the election appears to be preposterous.” He has been researching the subject but is not ready to go public… yet.

    Hersh quips that the last time he heard the US defense establishment have high confidence, it was regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He points out that the NSA only has moderate confidence in Russian hacking. It is a point that has been made before; there has been no national intelligence estimate in which all 17 US intelligence agencies would have to sign off. “When the intel community wants to say something they say it… High confidence effectively means that they don’t know.”

    5) On the Novichok poisoning 

    From the recent Independent interview — Hersh is also on the record as stating that the official version of the Skripal poisoning does not stand up to scrutiny. He tells me: “The story of novichok poisoning has not held up very well. He [Skripal] was most likely talking to British intelligence services about Russian organised crime.” The unfortunate turn of events with the contamination of other victims is suggestive, according to Hersh, of organised crime elements rather than state-sponsored actions –though this files in the face of the UK government’s position.

    Hersh modestly points out that these are just his opinions. Opinions or not, he is scathing on Obama – “a trimmer … articulate [but] … far from a radical … a middleman”. During his Goldsmiths talk, he remarks that liberal critics underestimate Trump at their peril.

    He ends the Goldsmiths talk with an anecdote about having lunch with his sources in the wake of 9/11. He vents his anger at the agencies for not sharing information. One of his CIA sources fires back: “Sy you still don’t get it after all these years – the FBI catches bank robbers, the CIA robs banks.” It is a delicious, if cryptic aphorism.

    * * *

    6) On the Bush-era ‘Redirection’ policy of arming Sunni radicals to counter Shia Iran, which in a 2007 New Yorker article Hersh accurately predicted would set off war in Syria

    From the Independent interview: [Hersh] tells me it is “amazing how many times that story has been reprinted”. I ask about his argument that US policy was designed to neutralize the Shia sphere extending from Iran to Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon and hence redraw the Sykes-Picot boundaries for the 21st century.

    He goes on to say that Bush and Cheney “had it in for Iran”, although he denies the idea that Iran was heavily involved in Iraq: “They were providing intel, collecting intel … The US did many cross-border hunts to kill ops [with] much more aggression than Iran”…

    He believes that the Trump administration has no memory of this approach. I’m sure though that the military-industrial complex has a longer memory…

    I press him on the RAND and Stratfor reports including one authored by Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz in which they envisage deliberate ethno-sectarian partitioning of Iraq. Hersh ruefully states that: “The day after 9/11 we should have gone to Russia. We did the one thing that George Kennan warned us never to do – to expand NATO too far.”

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    * * *

    7) On the official 9/11 narrative

    From the Independent interview: We end up ruminating about 9/11, perhaps because it is another narrative ripe for deconstruction by sceptics. Polling shows that a significant proportion of the American public believes there is more to the truth. These doubts have been reinforced by the declassification of the suppressed 28 pages of the 9/11 commission report last year undermining the version that a group of terrorists acting independently managed to pull off the attacks. The implication is that they may well have been state-sponsored with the Saudis potentially involved. 

    Hersh tells me: “I don’t necessarily buy the story that Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. We really don’t have an ending to the story. I’ve known people in the [intelligence] community. We don’t know anything empirical about who did what”. He continues: “The guy was living in a cave. He really didn’t know much English. He was pretty bright and he had a lot of hatred for the US. We respond by attacking the Taliban. Eighteen years later… How’s it going guys?”

    8) On the media and the morality of the powerful

    From a recent The Intercept interview and book review — If Hersh were a superhero, this would be his origin story. Two hundred and seventy-four pages after the Chicago anecdote, he describes his coverage of a massive slaughter of Iraqi troops and civilians by the U.S. in 1991 after a ceasefire had ended the Persian Gulf War. America’s indifference to this massacre was, Hersh writes, “a reminder of the Vietnam War’s MGR, for Mere Gook Rule: If it’s a murdered or raped gook, there is no crime.” It was also, he adds, a reminder of something else: “I had learned a domestic version of that rule decades earlier” in Chicago.

    “Reporter” demonstrates that Hersh has derived three simple lessons from that rule:

    1. The powerful prey mercilessly upon the powerless, up to and including mass murder.
    2. The powerful lie constantly about their predations.
    3. The natural instinct of the media is to let the powerful get away with it.

    * * *

    9) On the time President Lyndon B. Johnson expressed his displeasure to a reporter over a Vietnam piece by defecating on the ground in front of him

    From Reporter: A Memoir pages 201-202 — Tom [Wicker] got into the car and the two of them sped off down a dusty dirt road. No words were spoken. After a moment or two, Johnson once again slammed on the brakes, wheeling to a halt near a stand of trees. Leaving the motor running, he climbed out, walked a few dozen feet toward the trees, stopped, pulled down his pants, and defecated, in full view. The President wiped himself with leaves and grass, pulled up his pants, climbed into the car, turned in around, and sped back to the press gathering. Once there, again the brakes were slammed on, and Tom was motioned out. All of this was done without a word being spoken.

    …”I knew then,” Tom told me, “that the son of a bitch was never going to end the war.”

    10) On Sy’s “most troublesome article” for which his own family received death threats

    From Reporter: A Memoir pages 263-264 — The most troublesome article I did, as someone not on the staff of the newspaper, came in June 1986 and dealt with American signals intelligence showing that General Manuel Antonio Noriega, the dictator who ran Panama, had authorized the assassination of a popular political opponent. At the time, Noriega was actively involved in supplying the Reagan administration with what was said to be intelligence on the spread of communism in Central America. Noriega also permitted American military and intelligence units to operate with impunity, in secret, from bases in Panama, and the Americans, in return, looked the other way while the general dealt openly in drugs and arms. The story was published just as Noriega was giving a speech at Harvard University and created embarrassment for him, and for Harvard, along with a very disturbing telephone threat at home, directed not at me but at my family. 

    * * *

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