The new U.S. energy policy of the Trump era is, in some ways, the oldest energy policy on Earth. Every great power has sought to mobilize the energy resources at its command, whether those be slaves, wind-power, coal, or oil, to further its hegemonic ambitions. What makes the Trumpian variant—the unfettered exploitation of America’s fossil-fuel reserves—unique lies only in the moment it’s being applied and the likely devastation that will result, thanks not only to the 1950s-style polluting of America’s air, waters, and urban environment, but to the devastating hand it will lend to a globally warming world.

From the onset of his presidency, Donald Trump has made it clear that cheap and abundant domestic energy derived from fossil fuels was going to be the crucial factor in his total-mobilization approach to global engagement.

Last month, if you listened to the chatter among elite power brokers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, you would have heard a lot of bragging about the immense progress being made in renewable energy.  “My government has planned a major campaign,”said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the group.  “By 2022, we want to generate 175 gigawatts of renewable energy; in the last three years, we have already achieved 60 gigawatts, or around one-third of this target.” Other world leaders also boasted of their achievements in speeding the installation of wind and solar energy.  Even the energy minister of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Khalid Al-Falih, announced plans for a $30 billion to $50 billion investment in solar power. Only one major figure defied this trend: U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. The United States, he insisted, is “blessed” with “a substantial ability to deliver the people of the globe a better quality of life through fossil fuels.”

A better quality of life through fossil fuels? On this, he and his Trump administration colleagues now stand essentially alone on planet Earth. Virtually every other country has by now chosen—via the Paris climate accord and efforts like those under way in India—to speed the transition from a carbon-based energy economy to a renewable one.

A possible explanation for this: Donald Trump’s indebtedness to the very fossil fuel interests that helped propel him into office.  Think, for example, of his interior secretary’s recent decision to open much of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to offshore drilling (long sought by the oil and gas industry) or his administration’s moves to lift restrictions on coal mining on federal lands (long favored by the coal industry). Both were clearly acts of payback. Still, far more than subservience to oil and coal barons lurks in Trump’s energy policy (and Perry’s words).  From the White House perspective, the U.S. is engaged in a momentous struggle for global power with rival nations and, it is claimed, the country’s abundance of fossil fuels affords it a vital edge. The more of those fuels America produces and exports, the greater its stature in a competitive world system, which is precisely why maximizing such output has already become a major pillar of President Trump’s national security policy.

He laid out his dystopian world vision (and that of the generals he’s put in charge of what was once known as American “foreign policy”) in a December 18th address announcing the release of the administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) document.  “Whether we like it or not,” he asserted, “we are engaged in a new era of competition.” The U.S. faces “rogue regimes” like Iran and North Korea and “rival powers, Russia and China, that seek to challenge American influence, values, and wealth.” In such an intensely competitive world, he added, “we will stand up for ourselves, and we will stand up for our country like we have never stood up before… Our rivals are tough.  They’re tenacious and committed to the long term. But so are we.”

To Trump and his generals, we’ve been plunged into a world that bears little relation to the one faced by the last two administrations, when great-power conflict was rarely the focus of attention and civilian society remained largely insulated from the pressures of the country’s never-ending wars.  Today, they believe, the U.S. can no longer afford to distinguish between “the homeland” and foreign battle zones when girding for years of struggle to come. “To succeed,” the president concluded, “we must integrate every dimension of our national strength, and we must compete with every instrument of our national power.”

And that’s where, in the Trumpian worldview, energy enters the picture.

Energy Dominance

From the onset of his presidency, Donald Trump has made it clear that cheap and abundant domestic energy derived from fossil fuels was going to be the crucial factor in his total-mobilization approach to global engagement. In his view and that of his advisers, it’s the essential element in ensuring national economic vitality, military strength, and geopolitical clout, whatever damage it might cause to American life, the global environment, or even the future of human life on this planet.  The exploitation and wielding of fossil fuels now sits at the very heart of the Trumpian definition of national security, as the recently released NSS makes all too clear.

“Access to domestic sources of clean, affordable, and reliable energy underpins a prosperous, secure, and powerful America for decades to come,” itstates.  “Unleashing these abundant energy resources—coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear—stimulates the economy and builds a foundation for future growth.”

So, yes, the document does pay lip service to the role of renewables, though no one should take that seriously given, for instance, the president’s recent decision to place high tariffs on imported solar panels, an act likely to cripple the domestic solar-installation industry. What really matters to Trump are those domestic reserves of fossil fuels. Only by using them to gain energy self-sufficiency, or what he trumpets not just as “energy independence” but total “energy dominance,” can the U.S. avoid becoming beholden to foreign powers and so protect its sovereignty. That’s why he regularly hails the successes of the “shale revolution,” the use of fracking technology to extract oil and gas from deeply buried shale formations. As he sees it, fracking to the max makes America that much less dependent on foreign imports.

It follows then that the ability to supply fossil fuels to other countries will be a source of geopolitical advantage, a reality made painfully clear early in this century when Russia exploited its status as a major supplier of natural gas to Ukraine, Belarus, and other former Soviet republics to try to extract political concessions from them.  Donald Trump absorbed that lesson and incorporated it into his strategic playbook.

“Our country is blessed with extraordinary energy abundance,” he declared at an “Unleashing American Energy Event” last June. “We are a top producer of petroleum and the number-one producer of natural gas… With these incredible resources, my administration will seek not only American energy independence that we’ve been looking for so long, but American energy dominance. And we’re going to be an exporter… We will be dominant. We will export American energy all over the world, all around the globe.”

Attaining Energy Dominance

In energy terms, what does dominant mean in practice?  For President Trump and his cohorts, it means above all the “unleashing” of the country’s energy abundance by eliminating every imaginable regulatory impediment to the exploitation of domestic reserves of fossil fuels. After all, America possesses some of the largest reservoirs of oil, coal, and natural gas on the planet and, by applying every technological marvel at its disposal, can maximally extract those reserves to enhance national power.

“The truth is that we have near-limitless supplies of energy in our country,” he declared last June. All that stood in the way of exploiting them when he entered the Oval Office, he insisted, were environmental regulations imposed by the Obama administration. “We cannot have obstruction. Since my very first day in office, I have been moving at record pace to cancel these regulations and to eliminate the barriers to domestic energy production.”  He then cited his approval of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, the cancellation of a moratorium on the leasing of federal lands for coal mining, the reversal of an Obama administration rule aimed at preventing methane leakage from natural gas production on federal lands, and the rollback of Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which (if implemented) would require sharp cuts in coal usage. And from the recent opening of the pristine Alaskan Arctic Refuge to that of those coastal waters to every kind of drilling, it’s never ended.

Closely related to such actions has been his repudiation of the Paris Agreement, because—as he saw it—that pact, too, stood in the way of his plan to “unleash” domestic energy in the pursuit of international power. By withdrawing from the agreement, he claimed to be preserving American “sovereignty,” while opening the path to a new kind of global energy dominance. “We have so much more [energy] than we ever thought possible,” he asserted.  “We are really in the driving seat.  And you know what? We don’t want to let other countries take away our sovereignty and tell us what to do and how to do it. That’s not going to happen.”

Never mind that the Paris agreement in no way intruded on American sovereignty. It only obligated its partners—at this point, every country on Earth except the United States—to enact its own greenhouse gas emissions reduction measures aimed at preventing global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above their pre-industrial levels. (That is the biggest increase scientists believe the planet can absorb without experiencing truly catastrophic impacts like a 10-foot rise in global sea levels). In the Obama years, in its own self-designed blueprint for achieving this goal, the United States promised, among other things, to implement the Clean Power Plan to minimize the consumption of coal, itself already a dying industry. This, of course, represented an unacceptable impediment to Trump’s extract-everything policy.

The final step in the president’s strategy to become a major exporter involves facilitating the transport of fossil fuels to the country’s coastal areas for shipment abroad. In this way, he would also turn the government into a major global salesman of fossil fuels (as it already is, for instance, of American weaponry).  To do so, he would expedite the approval of permits for the export of LNG, or liquefied natural gas, and even for some new types of “lower emissions” coal plants. The Department of the Treasury, he revealed in that June talk of his, “will address barriers to the financing of highly efficient, overseas coal energy plants.” In addition, he claimed that the Ukrainians tell us “they need millions and millions of metric tons [of coal] right now.  There are many other places that need it, too.  And we want to sell it to them, and to everyone else all over the globe who need[s] it.” He also announced the approval of expanded LNG exports from a new facility at Lake Charles, Louisiana, and of a new oil pipeline to Mexico, meant to “further boost American energy exports, and that will go right under the [as yet unbuilt] wall.”

Such energy moves have generally been viewed as part of a pro-industry, anti-environmentalist agenda, which they certainly are, but each is also a component in an increasingly militarized strategy to enlist domestic energy in an epic struggle—at least in the minds of the president and his advisers—to ensure America’s global dominance.

Where All This Is Headed

Trump achieved many of these maximal-extraction objectives during his first year in office. Now, with fossil fuels uniquely imbedded in the country’s National Security Strategy, we have a clearer sense of what’s happening.  First of all, along with the further funding of the U.S. military (and of the “modernization” of the country’s nuclear arsenal), Donald Trump and his generals are making fossil fuels a crucial ingredient for bulking up our national security.  In that way, they will turn anything (or any group) standing in the way of the extraction and exploitation of oil, coal, and natural gas into obstructers of the national interest and, quite literally, of American national security. 

Along with the further funding of the U.S. military (and of the “modernization” of the country’s nuclear arsenal), Donald Trump and his generals are making fossil fuels a crucial ingredient for bulking up our national security. 

In other words, the expansion of the fossil fuel industry and its exports has been transformed into a major component of American foreign and security policy. Of course, such developments and the exports that go with them do generate income and sustain somejobs, but in the Trumpian view they also boost the country’s geopolitical profile by encouraging foreign friends and partners to rely ever more heavily on us for their energy needs, rather than adversaries like Russia or Iran. “As a growing supplier of energy resources, technologies, and services around the world,” the NSS declares without a hint of irony, “the United States will help our allies and partners become more resilient against those that use energy to coerce.”

As the Trump administration moves forward on all this, the key battlefield will undoubtedly be the building and maintaining of energy infrastructure—the pipelines and railroads carrying oil, gas, and coal from the American interior to processing and export facilities on the coasts.  Because so many of the country’s large cities and population centers are on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, or the Gulf of Mexico, and because the country has long depended on imports for much of its petroleum supply, a surprising share of existing energy infrastructure—refineries, LNG facilities, pumping stations, and the like—is already located along those same coasts.  Yet much of the energy supply Trump seeks to exploit—the shale fields of Texas and North Dakota, the coal fields of Nebraska—is located in the interior of the country. For his strategy to succeed, such resource zones must be connected far more effectively to coastal facilities via a mammoth web of new pipelines and other transport infrastructure. All of this will cost vast sums of money and lead to intense clashes with environmentalists, Native peoples, farmers, ranchers, and others whose lands and way of life will be severely degraded when that kind of construction takes place, and who can be expected to resist.

For Trump, the road ahead is clear: do whatever it takes to install the infrastructure needed to deliver those fossil fuels abroad. Not surprisingly then, the National Security Strategy asserts that “we will streamline the Federal regulatory approval processes for energy infrastructure, from pipeline and export terminals to container shipments and gathering lines.”  This is bound to provoke numerous conflicts with environmental groups and other inhabitants of what Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything, calls “Blockadia”—places like the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota, where thousands of Native people and their supporters camped out last year in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to block construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. Given the administration’s insistence on linking energy extraction to U.S. security, don’t for a moment imagine that attempts to protest such moves won’t be met with harsh treatment from federal law enforcement agencies.

Building all of that infrastructure will also prove expensive, so expect President Trump to make pipeline construction integral to any infrastructure modernization bill he sends to Congress, thereby securing taxpayer dollars for the effort. Indeed, the inclusion of pipeline construction and other kinds of energy build-out in any future infrastructure initiative is already a major objective of influential business groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Rebuilding roads and bridges is fine, commented Thomas Donohue, the Chamber’s influential president, but “we’re also living in the midst of an energy renaissance, yet we don’t have the infrastructure to support it.” As a result, he added, we must “build the pipelines necessary to transport our abundant resources to market.” Given the influence such corporate interests have over this White House and congressional Republicans, it’s reasonable to assume that any bill on infrastructure revitalization will be, at least in part, energy focused.

And keep in mind that for President Trump, with his thoroughly fossil-fuelized view of the world, this is just the beginning. Issues that may be viewed by others as environmental or even land-conservation matters will be seen by him and his associates as so many obstacles to national security and greatness. Facing what will almost certainly be a series of unparalleled potential environmental disasters, those who oppose him will also have to contest his view of the world and the role fossil fuels should play in it.

Selling more of them to foreign buyers, while attempting to stifle the development of renewals (and thereby ceding those true job-creating sectors of the economy to other countries) may be good for giant oil and coal corporations, but it won’t win America any friends abroad at a moment when climate change is becoming a growing concern for ever more people on this planet. With prolonged droughts, increasingly severe storms and hurricanes, and killer heat waves affecting ever-larger swaths of the planet, with sea levels rising and extreme weather becoming the norm, the urge for progress on climate change is only growing stronger, as is the demand for climate-friendly renewables.

Donald Trump and his administration of climate-change deniers are quite literally living in the wrong century. The militarization of energy policy at this late date and the lodging of fossil fuels at the heart of national security policy may seem appealing to them, but it’s an approach that’s obviously doomed.  On arrival, it is, in fact, already the definition of obsolescence.

Unfortunately, given the circumstances of this planet at the moment, it also threatens to doom the rest of us. The further we look into the future, the more likely international leadership will fall on the shoulders of those who can effectively and efficiently deliver renewables, not those who can provide climate-poisoning fossil fuels. That being so, no one seeking global prestige would say at Davos or anywhere else that we are blessed with “a substantial ability to deliver the people of the globe a better quality of life through fossil fuels.”

From the start, let’s be clear, the term ‘think tank’ essentially amounts to a more polite way of saying ‘lobby group.’ Bar a few exceptions, they exist to serve – and promote – the agendas of their funders.

However, particularly in the United States, the field has become increasingly shady and disingenuous, with lobbyists being given faux academic titles like ‘Senior Non-Resident Fellow’ and ‘Junior Adjunct Fellow’ and the like. And this smokescreen usually serves to cloud the real goals of these operations.

Think tanks actually originate from the Europe of the Dark Ages. That’s 9th-century France, to be precise. But the modern American movement is modeled on British organizations from around a millennium later, many of which, such as ‘RUSI (1831)’, still exist today. The concept was possibly brought to America by the Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie. And his ‘Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’ (1910) is still going strong.

Yet, the real boom in the ‘think tank’ industry came with the era of globalization. With a 200-percent rise in numbers since 1970. And in recent years, they’ve become more transnational, with foreign states and individuals sponsoring them in order to gain curry favor in Washington.

One country that largely hasn’t bothered playing this game is Russia. Instead, mostly in the foreign policy and defense sectors, Moscow frequently serves as Enemy Number One for many advocacy groups. Here are some prominent outfits in the think tank racket, which focus on hyping up threats from Russia.

Founded: 1961

What is it? Essentially the academic wing of NATO. The Atlantic Council serves to link people useful to the organization’s agenda across Europe and North America. However, in recent years, its recruitment has increasingly focused on employees who directly attack Russia, especially on social media. Presumably, this is to give them a guaranteed income so they can continue their activities, without needing to worry about paying the bills.

What does it do? Promotes the idea of Russia being an existential threat to Europe and the US, in order to justify NATO’s reason for being.

Who are its people? The Atlantic Council’s list of lobbyists (sorry, ‘Fellows’!) reads like a telephone directory of the Russia bashing world. For instance, Dmitri Alperovitch (of Crowdstrike, which conveniently alleges how Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee) is joined by the perennially- wrong Anders Aslund, who has predicted Russia’s impending collapse on a number of occasions and has, obviously, been off the mark. Then there’s Joe Biden’s “Russia hand,” Michael Carpenter and their recent co-authored ‘Foreign Affairs’ piece suggests he actually knows very little about the country. Meanwhile, Evelyn Farkas, a fanatical Russophobe who served in Barack Obama’s administration has also found a home here. Another interesting Atlantic Council lobbyist is Eliot Higgins, a “geolocation expert” who has made a career out of spinning tales from the Ukraine and Syrian wars but is, naturally, mostly disinterested in covering Iraq and Yemen, where the US and its allies are involved, but Russia has no particular stake. Lastly, we can’t forget CNN’s Michael Weiss, the self-declared “Russia analyst” who, by all accounts, has never been to Russia and can’t speak Russian.

Who pays for it?The Atlantic Council has quite an eclectic bunch of patrons to serve. NATO itself is a big backer, along with military contractors Saab, Lockheed Martin and the Raytheon Company, all of which naturally benefit from increased tensions with Moscow. The UK Foreign Office also splashes the cash and is joined by the Ukrainian World Congress and the US Department of State. Other sugar daddies include the US military (via separate contributions from the Air Force, Navy, Army and Marine Corps), Northrop Grumman and Boeing.

• The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)

Founded: 2005

What is it? Despite the name, CEPA is based in Washington, not the ‘old continent’, but it does have an outpost in Warsaw. This club specifically focusses on Central and Eastern Europe and promoting the US Army and foreign policy establishment’s agenda there. Or, in its own words, creating a “Central and Eastern Europe with close and enduring ties to the United States.”

What does it do? CEPA amounts to a home for media figures who devote their careers to opposing Russia. It whips up tensions, even when they don’t really exist, presumably in order to drum up business for its sponsors, who are heavily drawn from the military industry. For example, it spent last year hyping up the ‘threat’ from Russia’s and Belarus’ joint ‘Zapad’ exercises, even running a sinister-looking countdown clock before the long-planned training commenced.

CEPA grossly overestimated the size of the event, saying it “could be the largest military exercise since the end of the Cold War” and dismissing basically all Moscow’s statements on its actual nature as “disinformation.”

Who are its people? Times of London columnist Edward Lucas has been part of CEPA for years.

The dedicated ‘Cold Warrior’ doesn’t appear to have spent much time in Russia for a long while and still seems to view the country through a prism which is very much rooted in the past. Thus, he’s more-or-less an out-of-touch dinosaur when it comes to Russia expertise. He will soon be joined by Brian Whitmore, who comes on board from RFE/RL and appears to be even more ill-informed than Lucas. His work for the US state-run broadcaster led to him being described as the “Lord Haw Haw of Prague,” where he has been based for some years. CEPA is a pretty fluid organization and, until recently, Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev were also on its list of lobbyists. The former is a Polish-American Washington Post columnist who obsessively denigrates Russia and the latter has previously worked with the Atlantic Council’s Michael Weiss, which shows you how small and incestuous the Russia-bashing world is.

Who pays for it? While other think tanks at least try to make their funding look semi-organic, CEPA looks to have zero hang-ups about its role as a mouthpiece for defence contractors. Which is, at least, honest. FireEye, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Bell Helicopters and BAE systems pump funds in and they are joined by the US State Department and the Department of Defence. Another notable paymaster is the National Endowment for Democracy – ‘regime change’ experts who are surely interested in CEPA’s remit to also cover Belarus. The US Mission to NATO and NATO’s own Public Diplomacy Division also provide cash.

• German Marshall Fund of the United States

Founded: 1972

What is it? Don’t be fooled by the name, the German Marshall Fund (GMF) is a very American body these days with little input from Berlin. It was founded by a donation from Willy Brandt’s Bonn-government to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. Ironically, Brandt is today best remembered as the father of ‘Ostpolitik’, which sought a rapprochement between Germany and Russia.

What does it do? After the fall of the Soviet Union, the GMF transformed into a vehicle promoting US influence in Eastern Europe, with outreaches in Warsaw, Belgrade and Bucharest. However, in the past 12 months, it’s taken a very strange turn. Following the election of US President Donald Trump (ironically a German-American), the lobby group launched the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) project. Its centerpiece is the ‘Hamilton 68 Dashboard’, which seems to classify social media users which reject the US liberal elite’s consensus as “Russian trolls.” The reaction has been highly critical, with even the secretly-funded Russian opposition website Meduza asking “how do you identify ‘pro-Russian amplifiers’ if… themes dovetail with alternative American political views?”

Who are its people? The GMF, especially through its new ASD plaything, has a high-profile bunch of lobbyists. They include Toomas Ilves, an American-raised son of Estonian emigrants who once headed the Estonian desk at erstwhile CIA cut-out Radio Free Europe and eventually became president of Estonia. Also on board is Bill Kristol, known as the ‘architect of the Iraq War’ and former CIA Director Michael Morrell. Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who recently announced he was partially abandoning his Russian scholarship and has “lost interest in maintaining my (sic) ability to speak/write Russian” is another team member.

After serving on Obama’s team, McFaul has re-invented himself as a network TV personality since 2016 with 280,000 Twitter followers, 106,000 of which are fake, according to Twitter audit. 

Who pays for it? USAID are big backers, throwing in a seven-figure annual sum. This, of course, raises some questions about US taxpayers essentially funding the Hamilton 68 dashboard, which may be smearing Americans who don’t agree with their government’s policies as Russian agents. The State Department also ponies up capital, as does NATO and Latvia’s Defense Ministry. Other interesting paymasters are George Soros, Airbus and Google. While Boeing and the ubiquitous Raytheon are also involved.

• Institute for the Study of War

Founded: 2007

What is it? This lobby group could as easily be titled ‘The Institute for the Promotion of War’. Unlike the others, it doesn’t consider Russia its primary target, instead preferring to push for more conflict in the Middle East. However, Moscow’s increased influence in that region has brought the Kremlin into its crosshairs.

What does it do? The IFTSOW agitates for more and more American aggression. It supported the Iraq ‘surge’ and has encouraged more involvement in Afghanistan. IFTSOW also focuses on Syria, Libya and Iran. Just last week, one of its lobbyists, Jennifer Cafarella,  called for the US military to take Damascus, which would bring Washington into direct conflict with Russia and Iran.

Who are its people? Kimberly Kagan is the brains behind this operation. She’s married to Frederick Kagan, who was involved in the neocon ‘Project for the New American Century’ group along with his brother, Robert Kagan. Which makes Kimberly the sister-in-law of Victoria “f**k the EU” Nuland.

Another lobbyist is Ukrainian Natalia Bugayova, who was involved in Kiev’s 2014 EuroMaidan coup. She previously worked for the Kiev Post, a resolutely anti-Russian newspaper which promotes US interests in Ukraine. However, IFTSOW’s most notorious lobbyist was Elizabeth O’Bagy, who emerged as a ‘Syria expert’ in 2013 and called for American political leaders to send heavy weaponry to Syrian insurgent groups. She claimed to have a PhD from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, but this was fictional and once the media twigged to it, she was dismissed by the IFTSOW. Two weeks later, she was rewarded for her deception by falling up to a job with fanatical Russophobe Senator John McCain. O’Bagy has also collaborated with the Atlantic Council’s Michael Weiss, which is further evidence of how tight-knit the world of US neoconservative advocacy really is.

Who pays for it? Predictably, Raytheon has opened its wallet. Meanwhile, other US military contractors like General Dynamics and DynCorp are also involved. L3, which provides services to the US Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and government intelligence agencies is another backer along with Vencore, CACI and Mantech.

Bryan MacDonald, for RT

Taliban has invited a US senator for “mutual talks” in the Qatari capital Doha, where the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has an office.

The terror group’s social media accounts extended the invitation to Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul over his latest comments about the United States’ long war in Afghanistan, The Washington Times reported Sunday.

“We invite the respectable US Senator Rand Paul, in his official capacity to visit our political office in Doha for mutual talks,” read a Twitter post by the self-declared Information Committee of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

It further suggested that the US should withdraw its forces from the war-ravaged country for peace to emerge.

“We’ll prove to Mr. Rand Paul, the immediate US withdrawal from [Afghanistan] will bring peace to our country & will enhance…

“The United States of America will soon unveil the toughest and most aggressive round of economic sanctions on North Korea ever – and we will continue to isolate North Korea until it abandons its nuclear and ballistic missile programs once and for all,” Pence said Wednesday after meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Although Pence didn’t reveal the details, the penalties are said to be put in force before the end of the Olympic Games, scheduled to take place from February 9 to 25 in South Korea.

Currently on a six-day visit to Japan and South Korea, the vice president will be heading the US delegation during the opening ceremony on Friday. North Korea will be present as well, with its delegation marching together with its southern neighbor under a ‘Korean Unification Flag’.

The inter-Korean talks paved the way for Pyongyang’s participation at the 2018 Games. Twenty-two athletes will represent the nation, competing in three sports and five disciplines. The 229-strong cheerleading team arrived in South Korea on Wednesday, and a North Korean orchestra is expected to follow later.

Amid the attempts of the two Koreas to ease tensions, the US, however, remains belligerent. Pence said he wants to ensure the Olympics don’t distract from North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“The United States is with you in this challenge,” Pence assured Abe before the meeting, saying Washington “will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Japan, the people of South Korea, and our allies and partners across the region until we achieve the global objective of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

While Washington keeps pushing its message of exerting pressure on the North, Moscow has warned against ramping up the sanctions. Earlier, Russia’s ambassador in Pyongyang, Aleksander Matsegora, cautioned that punitive measures, such as further slashing oil supplies to the country, could “be perceived as a declaration of war with all its consequences.”

In December, the UN Security Council voted in favor of reducing oil and petroleum imports. In addition to that, the US Treasury Department placed more North Korean individuals, entities and ships to its sanctions blacklist following a joint US-Canada meeting regarding the Korean crisis in Vancouver.

Russia and China – who were not invited to Vancouver – condemned the move, saying it was a poor alternative to their “double-freeze plan.” The strategy proposes that North Korea would cease its missile and nuclear program, while the US and its allies would halt their military maneuvers in the region.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launched yesterday with the roadster on board, and it didn’t take long for the Reddit rumour mill to go into overdrive with a thread bluntly titled ‘Elon Musk got away with the perfect murder by sending the body to Mars.’

READ MORE: SpaceX heavy rocket takes Tesla car into orbit in test blast-off (VIDEO)

The outrageous suggestion has gathered more than 17,000 upvotes at the time of writing and 500 responses as commenters borrow from Hollywood plots to push bizarre theories of how Musk could have got away with murder.

Speculation on who the hypothetical victim could be ranges from rival spaceflight entrepreneur Jeff Bezos – despite his open support for the Heavy launch – to actress Amber Heard and even fictional movie assassin John Wick.

Musk sent his Tesla Roadster towards Mars aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, Tuesday. A mannequin called Starman, wearing an official SpaceX crew flight suit, was in the vehicle.

“Elon Musk launched a car into space with a dummy in a spacesuit in the driver’s seat. The idea is that the dummy is actually a corpse, hidden in plain sight on international news, and nobody will ever be able to find the person he killed,” one Redditor proposed.

Others suggested there could be two bodies – a second one in the trunk, or perhaps the mystery passenger is a cloned version of Musk himself returning to his home planet. Taking the discussion to another level, a wannabe CSI investigator suggested that “the reason you can’t see the bloodstains is because (the car) is cherry red! Until you enhance, of course..”

READ MORE: Space oddity: Dummy rides Elon Musk’s Tesla to Mars (VIDEO)

Musk is famously no stranger to wacky theories around his endeavors. The billionaire has addressed some of the more fantastical suspicions inspired by his projects with tongue in cheek logic.

Last year he even provoked flat earthers asking, “Why is there no Flat Mars Society?”

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Transhumanism is knocking at the door. Dubbed as Humanity⁺ or H⁺, the idea to radically revolutionize humanity has emerged in the last decades as a global intellectual movement. With a slogan of melding humans with the machine, it aims to radically alter human nature by means of technological advancement.

Transhumanists ask, ‘If humans can interfere with the process of evolution, is it possible for us to create a human being with greater capacities than what we are now?’

Proponents of transhumanism envision a human that goes beyond its current biology and cognition. They are trying to move society into the next stage of human development where man achieves super-intelligence and emotional well-being. Transhumanists ask, “If humans can interfere with the process of evolution, is it possible for us to create a human being with greater capacities than what we are now? Can we make a human species without weakness of disease and illness, anger and sadness, and ultimately overcome death itself?”

Some see such technologically driven future as not just desirable, but a necessity. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX indicated an inevitability of humans to symbiotically bond with artificial intelligence, if the human species were to remain relevant. This call for humanity’s radical makeover comes right at the midst of the digital age, where Homo sapiens, with the progress of science and technology is crossing the Rubicon, challenging physical boundaries and organic biological limitations.

Our fake world, fake democracy

The rapid expansion of technology in this new millennium radically transformed our social landscape. The modern life filled with information has placed everyone behind computer screens and cell phones. As society has become more abstract, it became virtual, fabricated with images that are dissociated from the facts and events of the world.

The beast of neoliberalism that has been devouring victims abroad is now finally coming home to roost. Now, ordinary Americans are suffering from unemployment, homelessness and lack of access to medical care.

In many ways, the recent hype of “fake news” reflects this counterfeit reality that we are all surrounded by. Waves of whistleblowers in recent years revealed that we live in a kind of simulation intervened by government and corporate media propaganda. The 2008 financial meltdown exposed the global economy, overdriven by the bubble of toxic assets and stocks that were propped up by central banks with their money made out of thin air. This Ponzi scam of financial engineering was further covered up by bank bailouts, creating a fake recovery.

Meanwhile, our ‘democracy’ has been one big consumer fraud. We have been duped by psychopaths in power who pull the strings of puppet politicians. Civic power has been fragmented by a corporate duopoly, keeping the populace in false hope for change in the electoral arena. With tactics of divide and conquer, monetary elites behind the scenes trigger emotions, stirring conflicts among voters in a national tournament of identity politics. Once people are trapped by fear and hatred that are carefully manufactured, they easily lose sight of reality. Rather than finding commonality and building a coalition to solve problems, many engage in mutually assured self-destruction.

While the American working class is distracted by this political charade, the economy continues to stagnate, making the divide between the rich and poor ever wider. The beast of neoliberalism that has been devouring victims abroad is now finally coming home to roost. Now, ordinary Americans are suffering from unemployment, homelessness and lack of access to medical care. Young people are burdened with predatory student debt, where despite the promise of college recruiters, there are few viable jobs for them. Social services are defunded, throwing away elders, while a military budget gets fatter and fatter, with increased defense contracts for the never ending wars.

Free ticket to heaven?  

While political corruption is deepening the crisis of institutions and governments, Silicon Valley tech companies through lobbying have steadily gained influence in Washington. Now, technological innovation is pushed forward as a solution to the breakdown of social systems. From Apple and Google to Facebook, giant tech companies put a monopoly on AI, trying to control its development, so to dictate the course of our future. With the initiative of universal basic income (UBI), wealthy and elite technologists advocate for the creation of a robot economy where labor is replaced by automation.

This techno-utopia does not come for free. One has to pay a heavy price for the ticket to this supposed heaven on earth.

Here the radical vision of humanity 2.0 arises. The coming of a post-human era promises to alleviate suffering, make us stronger, more intelligent and godlike. Transhumanists try to bring eternal life through insemination of machine intelligence into the human body. By combining big data with AI software, the idea is already there for humanity to attain digital immortality, where one can develop mind clones of oneself that has its own life on the web. Dr. Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist and futurist shares his aspiration of uploading a digital memory, creating a new pill that slows down people’s perception of time and drugs that can eliminate painful memories.

The idea of fusion with technology as a next stage in human evolution can speak to our own narcissism induced by social media attention culture. The H+ agenda can be marketed by appealing to one’s desire for recognition, to be boundless and to attain mastery of oneself. Through social engineering, it will corral the herd and achieve mass adoption. Yet this techno-utopia does not come for free. One has to pay a heavy price for the ticket to this supposed heaven on earth. In the exchange to transcend human limitations, we are asked to give up the essence of being human. What are we expected to sacrifice on this altar of transcendence.

Free will and learning

Humans are endowed with subjectivity that places them in relationship with the world. With this self-awareness, we are given freedom to determine the course of our own actions. While machines can only do what they are programmed to do, humans with intention can choose their actions and alter the situation through insight and creativity. This freedom releases spontaneity and variation, making the environment not fixed and unpredictable. At the same time, out of this comes the potential for errors. Choices expose men to the propensity for mistakes and make them fallible.

The AI trend of technological intervention of humanity now threatens this ability to make choices. 

The AI trend of technological intervention of humanity now threatens this ability to make choices. Automation narrows and eliminates the space for humans to make their own decisions, locking society into a deterministic future. Through scientific and mathematical precision, the force of mechanization tries to remove possibilities for errors and by doing so, it deprives something essential about human beings.

What make us different from these artificial beings is our free will and unique learning processes that are associated with it. Our connection to the world binds us deeply to the consequences of our own choices. In a moment we make a mistake, reality blows up in our face and we are forced to see the results of what we have created. The feeling of shame and guilt that overwhelm us can break the heart wide open. The unbearable pain awakens one’s moral sensibility. With these burning sensations, we directly experience our own actions and the effect they have on others’ lives.

When we confront our own mistakes with honesty, we can transform this sense of humiliation into humility. We learn to become humble. This connects us to other human beings, allowing us to see reality from their perspectives. This empathy makes us strive to mend our actions. It is the foundation of conscience that makes humans acknowledge their errors and inspire one another to repent, undo wrongdoing and learn. 

Fiction of corporate personhood

It is this morality rooted in our relationship to the environment that corporate culture has been trying hard to eradicate. Agendas behind transhumanist movements can be seen as the ultimate goal of transnational corporations. The rise of corporate power turned civilization against nature. Multinational agricultural biotechnology corporations like Monsanto have assaulted life by monopolizing seeds and poisoning food with GMOs.  

Corporations as artificial entities bring the force that hardens the heart. They assert themselves in society through the legal fiction of corporate personhood. The theater of the American Dream managed by big business has turned citizens into consumers, who are directed to find happiness in consumption and material acquisition. Unbridled greed of capitalism bombards all with ads and commercials, 24 hours 7 days a week, making us chase after products that we don’t need and to be always cheerful, while suppressing sadness and deep dissatisfaction of life with antidepressant drugs. Ensnared by glamorous Hollywood life and a culture that worships youth, many engage in a pathological pursuit for perfection, to be beautiful, thin, and ageless.

In this fictional world, we are not humans. Workers are exploited, being treated as disposable with no benefits, while mega corporations look for the next cheap labor to exploit and new markets to make a killing. The merciless cyborg with its callous skin controls world finance, turning all living beings into caricatures in their tyrannical fantasy. In this artificial natural selection pushed forward by the invisible hands of the market, the cold algorithm enacts financial terrorism, dictating who should survive and who should die.

Pursuit of happiness and pathological drive for perfection

Now, in Trump’s America, the fiction of corporate personhood finds a new iteration to make its dream great again. As the nation consolidates power with the new administration, we all become contestants in The Apprentice. In this grandiose Reality Show, we are told to mimic corporate personhood, to be cunning and self-serving or we will be fired. The world of Wall Street entices all to a path of personal power, filled with ambition, vanity and pride. Plundering through exploitative business practices and addictive gambling of high frequency trading becomes a way of life. Corruption is rife with rampant greed and sexual conquest.

Inside 9-5 office hours of white collar jobs, relationships became impersonal and transactional, where people are forced to hide real emotions behind professional masks. In this supposed free market competition that bars entry to immigrants, people of color and transgenders, workers are trained to mind their own business by climbing up the ladder of success in a rat race of profit at any cost. Deep inside the labyrinth of organizational hierarchies, we are cut off from our own authentic feelings and lose the ground of consensual reality. We no longer are held accountable by feedback of others.

The goal is no longer just total control of the world to create an ever more perfect world, but to control human nature itself by reprogramming our biology to create a perfect self.

Now, with depletion of resources and environmental destruction, the life of the American dream is becoming unsustainable. As the fantasy of corporate personhood is losing its fuel, it seems to be carried into a vision of techno-utopianism. Through mass surveillance and authoritarian use of police force, the corporate state has been attacking privacy and autonomy of individuals. From face recognition technology and biometrics used at borders to AI augmented cyber-security and auto flying drones, it further mechanizes this world. The goal is no longer just total control of the world to create an ever more perfect world, but to control human nature itself by reprogramming our biology to create a perfect self.

As the disfranchised middle class is slowly waking up from their insulated reality and starting to face their broken life, transhumanism offers all a short cut to nirvana. From the magic of genetic modification to the creation of the mind file, through making humans directly interface with the net, technology is presented to rescue us, trying to numb throbbing aches in the arteries that carry the ebb and flow of our human experience.

Humanity at a crossroads

Transhumanist thinkers with technological enlightenment ideas declare the liberation of humanity from a cog in the wheel of the corporate machine, only to once again ensnare all in their Sci Fi illusory future. From self-driving cars to androids, robots that are designed to look and act like a human, artificial intelligence is here in everyday life, promising to make our life more convenient, efficient and safe. With a gospel of machine supremacy preaching perfection, increased dominance of technology can annihilate our free will that is a prerequisite for developing conscience.

With artificial nerves that can’t carry the warmth of blood, robots mimic life in their synthetic existence. They are the phantoms that claim immortality, when they never even had a chance to truly live. These ghosts in the machine make us sever our ties to the world, by turning the heart into a pump that pushes out the pain of our mother in her giving birth to a child.

Our remembering of her pain that brought all of life makes us remain connected to her world. “We are living in a fake world; we are watching fake evening news. We are fighting a fake war. Our government is fake,” said renowned Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. He continued:

But we find reality in this fake world. So our stories are the same; we are walking through the fake scenes, but ourselves, as we walk through these scenes, are real. The situation is real, in the sense that it’s a commitment, it’s a true relationship.

Our ability to feel is a testimony of being human, allowing us to be a real person in this fake world. To be human is to live among flesh, being audaciously flawed. Our striving to bear our own pain awakens compassion. We are able to forgive ourselves and others. We find strength to love one another in our authenticity found in each other’s imperfection. This total acceptance of human errors connects us to potent creative power within that resists rigidity, mechanization and all stagnation, keeping the world alive through our relationship with her.

Humanity is now at a crossroads. With the exponential growth of technology, we have the capability to bring a great turning or destroy the world. 

Humanity is now at a crossroads. With the exponential growth of technology, we have the capability to bring a great turning or destroy the world. Branches of science; technology, engineering, chemistry and medicine helped mankind overcome natural disaster and disease and live more comfortably in this harsh physical environment. Renewable energy technologies can help us create a sustainable future. These are tools that can be used for the good. They can reduce poverty and enhance the quality of our lives. But they can be also used against us and our ability to make choices needs to be preserved to determine which path we will take.

Transhumanism is marching on into our society, showing its footsteps everywhere. With iPad and Android, talking gadgets are entering into the crib, hijacking childhood imagination. Day and night technology snatches youngster’s attention, plugging them into Instagram and Snapchat. As the expansion of this machine world accelerates, our life gets faster and faster, making it harder for us to be present in our own bodies.

We need to stay awake and not sleepwalk through this time of decision. Reality may be painful, but if we lose our own sense of reality by giving up what feels at the center of our hearts, it will be the death of our own selves. Such is a tragic loss of what it means to be human and the life of all on this planet that we are meant to steward.

An order to extradite him should be quashed, the Lord Chief Justice added. The court erupted in applause when the judgment was handed down.

Love, who suffers from Asperger syndrome, eczema, asthma, and depression, had his appeal case heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in London in November.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and Justice Ouseley heard that extradition would not be in the “interests of justice” for a number of reasons, including the “high risk” that Love would kill himself.

The 32-year-old British-Finlander, who lives with his parents near Newmarket in Suffolk, was accused of carrying out a “series of cyber attacks against the websites and computer systems” of a raft of US government agencies and private firms. They include a spate of attacks on the Federal Reserve, the US Army, the Department of Defense, NASA, and the FBI between 2012 and 2013.

Love, who denies any wrongdoing, risks a 99-year jail sentence if he faces trial in the US. It is understood the US is using the lengthy sentence in order to get a guilty plea out of him in exchange for a considerably lighter sentence.

Speaking to the BBC on Monday before the judgment was handed down, Love’s father the Rev Alexander Love said: “[Lauri’s] very distressed, he’s obviously afraid because he has stated on more than one occasion he fears for his life because he doesn’t think he could cope with the trauma of being taken away from his family and country, and taken in exile to America.”

The Rev Love said he was concerned his son would not get the support he needed if he was jailed in the US, adding “the mental health provision in American prisons, from what I have read, is woefully inadequate compared to ours.”

In September 2016 a district judge at Westminster Magistrates’ Court ruled that Love could be extradited. The High Court appeal centred on that ruling made by District Judge Nina Tempia.

Edward Fitzgerald QC, for Love, submitted that there were “overwhelming reasons of justice and humanity” why any trial should take place in the UK. He argued that it would be “unjust and oppressive” to extradite him because of his severe mental disorders.

Peter Caldwell, representing the US, made submissions inviting the judges to dismiss Love’s appeal.

In written argument he said the district judge’s conclusion on extradition was “reasonably open to her on the findings of fact she made.”

Having identified a high risk of suicide, she “properly assessed whether and how that risk could be managed were the appellant to be extradited.”

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“Potus wants to know everything we’re doing,” Page texted Strzok on September 2, 2016, according to a report titled ‘The Clinton Email Scandal and the FBI’s Investigation of it.’ The report was released by majority staff of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Tuesday. 

The text exchange between Strzok and attorney Page – both of whom previously worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation team on alleged Russian meddling – took place as part of a conversation about former FBI Director James Comey, who had been developing talking points for Obama regarding the investigation. It raises further questions about Obama’s personal involvement in the Clinton email investigation, despite “guaranteeing” that he wouldn’t get involved.

Further questions have been raised by other text messages revealed in the report, including one sent by Strzok to Page on September 28, 2016. “Got called up to Andy’s [McCabe] earlier… hundreds of thousands of emails turned over by Weiner’s atty to sdny [Southern District of New York], includes a ton of material from spouse [Human Abedin]. Sending team up tomorrow to review… this will never end.”

That text message raises questions about when senior FBI officials learned of relevant emails on the laptop belonging to Human Abedin’s husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner, the report states. It wasn’t until a full month later that Comey informed Congress that the FBI was reopening its Clinton email probe “due to recent developments.”

Other text messages showed more examples of Strzok’s and Page’s disdain for Donald Trump. “OMG THIS IS F***ING TERRIFYING,” Page wrote on the day Trump was elected. “Omg, I am so depressed,” Strzok replied.

The texts between Strzok and Page have fueled the arguments of Republicans, who have alleged the existence of an anti-Trump bias within the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ). Those allegations were strengthened in January, when it emerged that the FBI had reportedly lost five months of texts between the two lovers. The DOJ announced two days later that the messages had been found. 

Strzok, who was one of the lead agents in the Clinton email probe, was removed from Mueller’s Russia investigation team in July 2017, after Mueller learned of the texts. Page left the team before the messages were discovered.

Sympathy levels for the founder of Wikileaks differ, pursuant to his perceived personal characteristics. The same applies to his life’s work, but that doesn’t make his current situation any less bizarre.

In terms of Tom and Jerry cartoons, Assange is a hungry mouse, and there is a massive piece of cheese (freedom) wafting delicious smells in through the Ecuadorian embassy’s window that may or may not be attached to a very large mouse trap (American justice).

READ MORE: ‘Trump intensified war on whistleblowers, wants Assange’s head on a platter’ – ex-CIA officer to RT

Sweden is no longer chasing him over allegations of sexual assault. While its justice system has an extremely long list of things it regards as constituting rape, it also has a very short attention span, so the Swedes have essentially given up trying to speak to Assange.

A prosecutor did however say that if Assange is ever passing through Sweden, he should still pop in.

Swedish authorities may have been swayed by Baywatch beauty Pamela Anderson, who is close to Assange and convinced he was set up.

Then we have the British legal system, which is now essentially deploying resources to arrest a man for skipping bail relating to Swedish charges that no longer exist.

The Metropolitan police says there is no longer a 24-hour police presence outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The man in a trilby hat and trench coat reading a newspaper outside the front door is probably still making Assange a little nervous though. (NB: Actual man in trilby does not exist. Ed.)

Assange is waiting for a British judge to drop the arrest warrant for absconding, which should enable him to walk free from the little room he has been in for over five years. But if the judge rules in Assange’s favour, that’s when the mind-bending US justice system kicks in.

The reason Assange is unlikely to head straight out the door to the nearest Starbucks is that there may be a US indictment hanging over him for his decision to leak classified documents. Then again, there may not.

As US Grand Jury decisions are made in secret, Assange cannot know what Washington has in store, but he’s probably taken an educated guess.

One British judge may decide Assange is now safe from arrest over his skipped bail. Minutes later, another could order he be snatched, prepared and served up on a silver extradition platter to America.

That little room in the Ecuadorian embassy and the midnight chats with Pamela Anderson will be memories as fond as they are distant if that happens. What would you do?

More and more former senior government officials are moving into TV punditry: CNN has hired former assistant to James Comey, Josh Campbell, and MSNBC hired former CIA director John Brennan.

While a Pew Research Center poll found that the majority of Americans believe their media is biased, and amid the controversy surrounding the recent Nunes memo, RT discussed these latest career switches with political analyst and author Gina Loudon.     

RT: Do you believe it is OK to position former government officials as unbiased experts, particularly when they are the subject of what they are talking about?

Gina Loudon: As long as it is disclosed that that’s who they are, there is always a repertoire of… knowledge that comes from being inside the government. So, if people want to hire them in a free economy, free market, free press, like we have here in the US, it would be common and no one would want them to pass a law that would say that someone who was in the government couldn’t appear on TV. That would go against the way we do things here. But at the same time, I think that it would be important that the viewers were advised of that. I think that if CNN and MSNBC want to maintain credibility within the American public eye, then they would want to make sure that those details were disclosed and that it was known that those people were former employees, especially someone like [former FBI director James] Comey, who is so partisan and very controversial.     

RT: In general, is it a healthy phenomenon that the position of government official and the job of media pundit or expert have become so intertwined?

GL: I wouldn’t say normal. I think that it is a little bit unusual and I think that it is important that if you are going to be a credible media source, not fake news, that you would want to disclose that. Unfortunately, there is media bias in the US, especially on certain networks that the president has deemed “fake news,” and we think for those outlets in particular, they would really want to be careful to disclose the fact that this person is so partisan. As they are very careful to do, I have noticed, when it is, for example, me, as I served on the president’s media advisory board for his campaign, or others who they know are close to the president for whatever reason. I would think that they would want to disclose someone who came, certainly, from the Comey cloth, or anybody else. I think it is important just to be open, honest, and transparent about what your perspective is, where you come from, what your biases might be, and I don’t think that anybody should be embarrassed about that or try to hide that for any reason because that is what is great about the American press in general, is that we do like to engage in civil discourse, we like to engage in competing ideas from the two different parties. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I would certainly not want to preclude that by law. However, if it is not disclosed and it is not known and this person is presented, for example, as an unbiased reporter, I would think that would not bode very well for ethics for the press in this country. I agree that there could be some problems there if it isn’t disclosed.

RT: Most US viewers believe that the news reports are biased in one way or another. Is that belief the result of this process?

GL: There is an absolute leftist bias in the country, most of the networks, if you just add up, for example, the time that they speak negatively about the president, it is about 90 percent of the time that the news media overall will speak negatively about the president. There are numerous studies that show this. For example, President Obama, he would do things, say things, and there would be no media coverage of it whatsoever. And case in point are the recent memos that we are all seeing come out. Of course, the Republican memo received (the Nunes memo) great scrutiny over most of the American media, but very little coverage, when what should happen based on that memo, for example, would be that Mueller’s investigation should be expanded – not contracted but expanded – to include investigations of collusion and corruption in the Democrat Party with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and some of our government agencies. But that is not what the media has called for. And that is a great example of leftist media bias in the US. So, yes, I do think it is there. There are very few examples of right-leaning bias in American media. And frankly, I just wish there would be more conversation where people from the Left and the Right have a chance to really debate the issues honestly, transparently and forthrightly. And I think that is where the American people can get a real taste of what is true news.

In the 1969 documentary The Sorrow and The Pity, a young German worker says about Germany prior to World War II: “The worm was in the fruit.” I was thinking about this here and now from a cultural perspective. What is/was the worm in America’s sweet plum? 

For this government, and its voters, look to the culture. Look to the prevailing posture of anti intellectualism—indifference to beautiful architecture and humane city planning. Look to movies produced with weekend box office bonanza as the only barometer for meaning. Look to television series mass produced by slick cynics. Look to news programs that break for commercials, which primarily sell drugs, and by necessity suggest, and in some pernicious way, invite disease. 

“The collective mind of the American population is seduced daily, hourly, into simplistic adrenaline rushes and trivialities.”

The collective mind of the American population is seduced daily, hourly, into simplistic adrenaline rushes and trivialities. The consciousness of the American population is fragmented as major issues are discussed and reported only to be interrupted by the more important matter of what you need to buy.

Television shows that aim to sell junk as it presents approximations of human behavior are the midsection of the worm. 

As much as America loves her, and even though she is on a stamp, what do we make of I Love Lucy episodes ending with Ricky (a husband) angrily spanking Lucy (his wife) after her lies catch up to her? As America laughed and still laughs at this sight while jaunty music plays can we assume no signals were/are being sent to adolescent boys and girls? The worm in the fruit was/is that men are honest—women lie—and a man can physically punish a woman because she lies. And it’s funny.

Or how are we to interpret an episode of Friends where the two main girl composite characters, by way of bribing or rewarding one of the main composite guy characters, make out with each other in front of him, for his pleasure, not theirs, we assume? 

What can anyone make of a show in which some blonde “Ubermensch” fires people. He gets to say it and a wide audience for some  reason tunes in to watch the crestfallen face of the loser. Thrilling. Great ratings. Jerry Springer—the joy of watching “lesser low class humans” parade their infidelities and unresolved attractions or pregnancies. Big hit. Sponsor bonanza. Judge Judy snapping at hapless plaintiffs and defendants as she is rude and riled with antipathy. Isn’t she smart? She doesn’t let them get away with anything. 

Parody at this point is an opioid. And it’s a drug not coming from across the border—it, along with all the other trivial and inane cultural offerings that saturate the market and American consciousness, is in the fruit.

During a debate a Republican candidate said, “We need more welders and less philosophers.” Wild applause from the Republican audience. The idea that these two things are not mutually exclusive never enters the conversation. Be a welder and a philosopher.

Christian philosophy, or culture, if one accepts there is such a thing, might want to be the guide for the current administration and its posse even as they pose at a prayer breakfast. But what would they do with this quote from Christ: “The first shall be last and the last shall be first” when you’re braying “America first?” A mulligan on this one too? “He who exalts himself will be humbled, he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Whether he’s the reason for the season or not, these are keen observations from the putative Salvator Mundi. His image may be sold for 450 million dollars but his philosophical thoughts are free and priceless and for the regime American citizens have just elected, useless.

Parody at this point is an opioid. And it’s a drug not coming from across the border—it, along with all the other trivial and inane cultural offerings that saturate the market and American consciousness, is in the fruit.

The Hungarian-born investor faced allegations of meddling in British politics last week when it emerged that he had donated £400,000 ($558,000) to the pro-EU lobby group ‘Best for Britain.’

On Thursday the Telegraph reported that Best for Britain is trying to recruit major political donors and business leaders to undermine Brexit.

The group is reportedly lobbying MPs to vote down the final deal, a move that could initiate another referendum or a general election.

In a column penned in the Mail on Sunday the 87-year-old shrugged off the accusations and confirmed that he is a “proud supporter” of Best For Britain because he considers Brexit a “tragic mistake”.

“Since Brexit is a lose-lose proposition, it follows that a parliamentary vote to stop Brexit would be its opposite,” Soros writes.