Here is the transcription of an audio interview with former Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater
Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it.
I could give other examples, but if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's 1993 WTC bombing was not enough of a warning that that complex was a target, I don't know what would be. Mohammed succeeded on his second try.
John P. O'Neill of the FBI headed that investigation and he left the FBI and was head of WTC security on the day of the attack. He told people he thought he expected another attempt.
By the logic of that tweet, the CIA was hiding behind and deliberately using the civilians working in the WTC complex as human shields to hide from the Saudi 9/11 militants looking to remove US military bases from Saudi Arabia.
From 1947 to 1957 US media was filled with the idea that all progress in the Soviet Union was from stealing US innovations. Particularly the 1949 A-bomb, but other things as well.
Then the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. Then they put a dog in space. Then they put a man in space. And the narrative changed.
> Hamas is the political party that current controls the Gaza Strip and is widely recognized to be a terrorist organization. Among other things, the first actions Hamas took after seizing power in the Gaza Strip included killing leaders from other Palestinian political parties.
Yitzhak Segev, once the Israeli military governor of Gaza, funded Ahmed Yassin and encouraged antagonism in him against secular Palestinian political forces.
It's funny for Israel to fund the founding of Hamas, encourage Muslim religious antagonism against more internationally appealing secular Palestinian figures, and then turn around and whinge about the people that they bankrolled. Hamas was bankrolled by Israel and its no secret.
Working people around the world know this and stand in support of Ahmad Sa'adat and other Palestinians to live free of the barbarism and tyranny Zionism is inflicting on them right now.
> bizarrely then talks about unions, which are known to depress wages for top performers
I guess that's why top performing movie stars, NBA basketball players etc. have their wages depressed?
Maybe companies lowballing salaries, or being in secret, illegal cartels to drive down salaries of high earners like that lawsuit showing Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs did, can depress wages too?
> Negotiation is an extremely important skill in life
Yes, which is why companies have scores of lawyers, HR personnel etc. to draw up IP assignment agreements etc. In fact the company has people who specialize solely on negotiating salaries. Your advice is for workers to shun working in concert with their fellow workers since they're so high performing, and walk into this phalanx arrayed against them solo. You also advise someone spending the time to become a top performer to spend their spare time becoming better negotiators, in order to get over on the team of negotiating specialists they will be facing.
> the West was severely outgunned (at least in conventional weapons) by Soviets in Europe.
"The west" was severely outgunned by the west - the largest political party in France in 1948 was PCF, the communist/socialist alliance in Italy almost won that year. Finland remained outside the eastern bloc simply because it was no longer seen as being part of a threat. In the UK the Labour party which tossed out Churchill while he was in Potsdam was busy nationalizing the commanding heights of England's means of production (although they were not as militant as their comrades on the continent of course).
The west was busy trying to hold onto the West, never mind intervening in Prague.
"A scientific body to which had been confided the government of society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to quite another affair; and that affair, as in the case of all established powers, would be its own eternal perpetuation by rendering the society confided to its care ever more stupid and consequently more in need of its government and direction.
But that which is true of scientific academies is also true of all constituent and legislative assemblies, even those chosen by universal suffrage. In the latter case they may renew their composition, it is true, but this does not prevent the formation in a few years' time of a body of politicans, privileged in fact though not in law, who, devoting themselves exclusively to the direction of the public affairs of a country, finally form a sort of political aristocracy or oligarchy. Witness the United States of America and Switzerland.
Consequently, no external legislation and no authority - one, for that matter, being inseparable from the other, and both tending to the servitude of society and the degradation of the legislators themsleves.
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others." - Mikhail Bakunin, 1870
Yes. In the past year I have heard endless breathless "news reports" about how China supposedly manufactured Covid in a lab, to how they are committing genocide with Uighur muslims, to how they are not respecting the UK's continuing dominion over Hong Kong, to how they never innovate and only steal technology from the US, to how they are being aggressive in the east China sea, how they're threatening Taiwan, and on and on and on.
Of course I have been hearing the same thing at various times about Cubans, Venezuelans, Russians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, Libyans - Blinken just denounced the arrests of those involved in the post-coup massacre in Bolivia. And on and on. This piece is an example of the drive for ever expanding imperial policy under an authoritarian government.
The irony is one of AEI's goals is that the workers who create all created wealth be put out to pasture early so that heirs owning majority shares of corporations can profit. Now he is being hoisted by the petard he fired. Luckily my skills and experience are at a more lucrative point of production than his.
"A one-size-fits-all union-type compensation contract with pay determined mostly by seniority and not merit is no longer desirable or relevant for the workers of the 21st century."
> It is 'literal' and therefore not subjective. This is a fallacy - as there is always subjectivity and interpretation in human understanding, and certainly in interpreting something as nuanced and contradictory as the bible.
At the sermon on the mount, Jesus said "you are the salt of the earth". A literal take would be Jesus was saying the listeners were salt. You can be subjective and think this is a metaphor, but allowing for metaphors in the bible puts an end to literalism.
What scripture? As Bart Ehrman has written in his books condensing scholarly tomes for the layman, there are many scriptures, and we don't have the originals. The Comma Johanneum being the clearest passage that there is a trinity is not found in the Greek until the 15th century. Mark thought to be the earliest gospel, it ends without a clear resurrection from the earliest manuscripts - a resurrection was tacked on later. The story of the adulteress Jesus refused to condemn is not found in the earliest scriptures. And on and on. Much of contemporary scripture were things invented centuries after the events recorded.
It's great how the protestors stormed the legislature, beat up security guards, spray painted the walls, threatened legislators etc., spurred on by the US president.
I am talking about the storming of the US Capitol, not the Hong Kong legislature.
> Unions are also blamed (rightly or wrongly) for the downfall of Detroit and auto manufacturing in the US.
What killed off the textile mill manufacturing in North Carolina, a state with the lowest (tied with South Carolina) unionization in the country?
The difference is unionized factory workers in the 1930s in Michigan sent their children to college, like Larry Page's auto worker grandfather. Non-unionized North Carolina textile workers could not afford college, and their children worked at textile mills until they closed down, and their grandchildren are in worse shape than they were.
Some thinking is inherent to the societies where capitalist relations or feudal relations or slave/master relations or hunter-gatherer band relations predominate. Short-term thinking, centralization and environmental externalities have been hallmarks of capitalism for centuries. Some things only change when relations of production go from one form to another.
One question is - what has improved under capitalism? That children don't have to go to dangerous, Dickensian factories is one improvement. Between labor agitation and capitalists realizing a literate population was more profitable, this changed in industrialized countries.
> Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions.
Neighbors denouncing their black, Mexican, LGBTQ what have you neighbors. Then other neighbors denouncing the denouncers - this latter part seems to be where you start having a problem with it.
Incidentally, the US government surveils its citizen's phone calls etc. far more than the DDR under Honecker ever did.
Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it.