TARPLEY.net

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net – World Crisis Radio
February 28, 2025

[download audio]

The desperado Trump cannot guide US destiny and is manifestly unfit to direct US and free world strategy. Europe is wise to take measures for its own military and economic defense, including the preservation of Ukraine as a NATO member. Trump does not get to decide who joins NATO.

Federal courts must impose serious civil and criminal contempt penalties on officials who violate court orders. Further tenure in office is a threat to the future of the nation and the world.

To make Hakeem Jeffries Speaker and block the looming Trump $4.5 trillion tax scam, Democrats must retake the majority and elect House candidates Gay Valimont (FL-1), Josh Weil (FL-6) and Blake Gendebien (NY-21), while preparing to elect a new governor of Virginia this year. The House should impeach Trump, Vance, RFK, Tulsi, and other dangerous figures. Arrange a vote on Trump under the Insurrection Clause and if he gets less than a 2/3 vote in either House, he remains disqualified and must go.

Mass protests should continue at a vigorous pace to preserve the right of public demonstrations. Springtime is likely to trigger a wave of strikes and related actions, which will need class-based programs and demands capable of transcending the impotence of identity group parochialism.

The alternative to Musk-DOGE unemployment and austerity is New Deal economic populism with a regulated industrial economy. To control the deficit, use provisions of the Biden 2025 budget, including the 25% alternative tax on billionaires, 28% capital gains tax for billionaires, and 28% corporate income tax-the program Wall Street Democrats could not tolerate, leading to the infamous anti-Biden coup of last July. Raise the minimum wage to $20-vote yourself a raise!

Democrats must regain the initiative from the widely hated MAGA by finding areas where they can go on the offensive and score victories that can restore mass morale. The Carville plan of defeatism by literally playing dead is absurd and must be shunned.

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net – World Crisis Radio
February 15, 2025

[download audio]

The Trump-Musk regime is now facing over 50 federal lawsuits challenging their anti-state wrecking activities; over a dozen of these actions have been marked by defeat;

Recent Mirrors for Current US Policy

Italian and German Fascism Used High Tariffs as a Tool for Autarky (Total Self-sufficiency Except for War Imports), Leading to Severe Austerity as Many Foreign Products Disappear From the Market or Become Super-expensive

[Illustrative material below is from the landmark study by Daniel Guerin, Fascism and Big Business (New York: Pathfinder, 1973). This study (Paris 1938, 1945) is a granular comparative study of German and Italian fascism based on primary sources including the French and Italian press of the day. Guerin recognizes that fascism went through distinct phases, including the struggle for power, the consolidation of the regime, and world war. The comparisons that interest us here involve especially wage austerity, tariffs/autarky/inflation/, and privatizations and perks for the super-rich.]

Italian and German Fascism Relied on Tariffs to Strangle Imports as Part of a Policy of Autarky and Austerity

But how does one achieve this “closed economy”? By entrusting the state with the monopoly of foreign trade….” (Guerin, p. 119) Such a system leads to rigorous state control of foreign trade. And since imported goods must be replaced by domestic products, the state is forced to create ersatz industries, artificially and at great expense. Fascism thus embarks, without having wanted to, on autarky, not the utopian autarky promised before the conquest of power, which was to “assure the satisfaction of the needs of every member of the community” and the “precedence of Labor over Money” (Chapter 4), but a veritable blockade [of imports] resulting in poverty for the masses and a tendency towards rising prices, contained nonetheless by draconian price controls. (Guerin, pp. 312-313)

The Essence of Fascism is Brutal Austerity and a Sharp Decline in the Standard of Living

In Italy: Wages Down 60-75% Over the Decade 1927-1937, Not Counting Inflation

In Italy, according to the figures supplied by the Italian press itself,43 between 1927 and 1932 nominal wages were reduced by half, and as the cuts have continued since 1932, it would be no exaggeration to say that wages have been reduced from the 1927 level by from 60 to 75 percent. Wages in 1935 were rarely as high as those before the First World War. Although they have been twice raised by 10 percent since 1935, the cost of living in the meantime has risen 30 percent.44 And from these meager wages all sorts of deductions have to be subtracted: wage tax (reintroduced by a decreelaw of November, 1922), compulsory “union” dues, “voluntary contributions” for winter unemployment relief, and assessments for social insurance, the party, Dopolavoro [recreation organization], etc. (Guerin, p. 261)

Germany: Nazis Reduce Wages by 25-40% in 2.5 Years After Seizure of Power

It has been estimated that between the advent of National Socialism (January 30, 1933) and the summer of 1935, wages were lowered from 25 to 40 percent. More than half of the German workers make less than 30 marks a week.48 The Angriff admits that the monthly wage of the worker varies between 80 and 150 marks.49 If the official figures are to be believed, 80 percent of the workers earn less than 150 marks a month.50 Hitler himself has to concede that “the living standard of countless Germans is utterly insufficient,” 51 and the Bavarian Minister Wagner that “many German workers suffer from hunger.” 52

Furthermore, all sorts of deductions have to be subtracted from these wretched earnings: wage taxes (increased from 25 to 35 percent), municipal “poll” taxes (more than doubled), bachelors’ taxes, contributions for unemployment insurance, disability insurance, health insurance, contributions for the Labor Front, the Strength Through Joy association [outdoor recreation organization], Winter Relief, anti-aircraft defense, victims of industrial accidents, the party or the Hitler Youth, etc. These various deductions lower the gross wage by from 20 to 30 percent. On the other hand, social insurance benefits (illness, disability, accidents, old age, unemployment) have been greatly diminished. The labor mutual assistance and insurance associations have been dissolved and their funds turned over to private insurance companies that pay smaller benefits.53

Mussolini: Total Privatization of Government Agencies, Services, and Functions

Shortly after the March on Rome, Mussolini stated: “We must take away from the state those functions for which it is incompetent and which it performs badly.” 1 “I believe the state should renounce its economic functions, especially those carried out through monopolies, because the state is incompetent in such matters …. “2 “We must put an end to state railways, state postal service, and state insurance.” 3 [Sound familiar?] Great monopolies were returned to private initiative, after having been made solvent. The match monopoly was turned over to a “Consortium of Match Manufacturers.” The state also gave up running the telephone system (1925) and the execution of various public works. As for insurance, legislation in 1912 had created a state institution which was to become a monopoly at the end of ten years, but by a law of April 19, 1923, Mussolini turned life insurance over to private capitalism. Under [PSI] socialist influence, municipal ownership had been considerably developed in Italy, but the Duce ordered that “the pace of municipalization be slowed down.” A fascist admits that the powerful electric companies “do not even hide under polite formulas their desire to absorb-it would be better to say swallow up-the municipal power plants.” 4 The podestas of Pola, Turin, etc., turned profitable sources of income over to the industrialists.

Nazi Germany: Privatizations and Re-privatizations of Nationalized Companies

In Germany, as soon as the National Socialists came in, they announced that there “will be an end to all the attempts of recent years at nationalization. State enterprises will again be transformed into private enterprises.” 5 In 1932 the state had put the powerful Gelsenkirchen company on a sound footing by buying 125 million marks of stock, which assured it control of the “United Steel” trust. But Hitler was anxious to display his gratitude to the magnates of heavy industry, the Kirdorfs and Thyssens; so, through a series of complicated mergers, the state practically gave them back control of the business 6 and in March, 1936, returned its stock to the “United Steel” for 100 million marks. After the [Vienna Kreditanstalt/Danatbank central European] bank crash of 1931, most of the big banks had come under state control. The Reich had acquired 90 percent of the capital of the Dresdner-Bank and Danatbank (merged); 70 percent of the capital of the Commerz und Privatbank, and 35 percent of the capital of the Deutsche Bank und Diskonto Gesellschaft. But the financiers demanded that their establishments be returned to private hands, and as early as December, 1933, the Minister of Economy, Schmitt, announced that “the Reich proposes to give up the important share it has had for two years in the capital of certain great credit establishments.” 7 At the end of 1933 an investigating committee composed of experts was appointed to study the question. Dr. Schacht at the same time stated in London that the “government of the Reich has no intention of making state influence over the banks eternal. … “8 In February, 1934, Dr. Reinhardt, state financial secretary and a big banker, declared in his turn that “the government is not thinking of nationalizing the banks …. “9 Finally, on December l, the report of the investigating committee appeared: all question of nationalizing the banks was definitely excluded. The Deutsche Bank, which as early as 1933 had got back nearly twenty million marks of its stock from the Reich (in return for giving the state a big building), could announce in March, 1937, that it had completed the repurchase of its stock from the Reich and had once more become a wholly private institution.10 In August, 1937, announcement was made that the Commerz und Privatbank had bought the greater part of its stock back from the state,11 and shortly afterwards a meeting of the directors of the Dresdner Bank let it be known that their bank too had finally become private again.12 In addition, the Reich had put a number of steamship companies and naval shipyards on a sound footing. In March, 1936, it returned the majority of the stock of the Deutscher Schiff und Maschinenbau to a group of Bremen merchants, and in September it ceded eight million marks of stock (out of a total capitalization of ten million) in the Hamburg SudAmerika shipping line to a Hamburg consortium,13 etc., etc.

Likewise, National Socialism fought municipally owned enterprises. These were prosperous; even during the depression year 1932-1933 they had made profits amounting to 650 million marks. Therefore private industry coveted them. The very day that Dr. Schacht was appointed to the Ministry of Economy, July 30, 1934, he gave instructions to hasten the liquidation of municipal enterprises. As a first step, they were burdened after January l, 1935, with a 20 percent tax on their profits.14 Legislation on December 13, 1935, repealed the law of 1919 permitting “socialization” of power production. “Such an organization of the distribution of electric power is contrary to the basic idea of the National Socialist concept … ” explained the preamble of the new statute, the avowed purpose of which was to put an end to the disorder brought into the development of electrical distribution by “municipal socialism.” Henceforth private plants for the production and distribution of electric power were to be freed of all “unnecessary impediments,” encouraged and favored in every way.15 2

Fascist Tax Exemptions for Wealthy Corporations

The fascist state helps the industrialists to “make a profit” by granting them all sorts of tax exemptions. The Minister of Finance, de Stefani, stated: “We have broken with the practice of persecuting capital. A financial system based on the persecution of capital is a system tainted with insanity.” 16 The new government on November 10, 1922, abolished the obligation to register securities-an obligation which to some extent prevented capitalists from evading the income tax-dissolved the committee to investigate “war profits” by a decree of November 19, and by legislation on August 20, 1923, abolished the inheritance tax on legacies remaining within a family.

The capital tax, instituted in 1920 and payable in annual installments, was called stupidissimo by fascist Minister de Stefani. Through partial rebates and friendly arrangements with the Treasury, it was liquidated in a manner highly advantageous to those concerned.17 In February, 1925, the supplementary tax on negotiable securities was abolished by law. A decree-law of June 23, 1927, established important tax exemptions with the purpose of facilitating the merger of corporations. Other instances of goodwill were the abolition of the 10 percent tax on capital invested in banking and industry, the cutting in half of the tax on managers and directors of corporations, the exemption of foreign capital from all taxation, and the abolition of the tax on luxury articles.

As the Catholic political leader don Luigi Sturzo wrote: “Fascist finance favors capitalist wealth.” 18

Immediately on coming to power, the National Socialist Treasury Department directed its efforts towards the assistance of capital. A law of June l, 1933, supplemented by that of October 16, 1934, authorized industrialists to deduct from their taxable income all sums used to purchase new equipment. In addition, the state reimbursed owners for part of their expense in repairing houses, factories, or stores. Tax delinquents had the amount of their unpaid taxes reduced by half if they invested in the “fight against unemployment” loans. Families employing a maid could count her as a “minor child” and benefit by the corresponding tax reduction. Legislation on July 15, 1933, provided for tax exemptions on new business firms, on those using new processes or manufacturing new products, and on newly built dwelling houses.19 In April, 1934, the government granted huge tax reductions (about 500 million marks) “to facilitate the resumption ofbusiness.” 20 The income tax for the fiscal year 1934-1935 was reduced to half of that for the fiscal year 1931-1932.21 The fiscal legislation which came into effect on January 1, 1935, not only confirmed these reductions but also reduced inheritance taxes.
(Daniel Guerin, Fascism and Big Business (New York: Pathfinder, 1973), pp. 282-286.)

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net – World Crisis Radio
February 1, 2025

[download audio]

Trump had talked of being dictator for a day, but it is now clear that he intends to be dictator for four years, if not longer. The Democratic Party must embrace the responsibility of being the main antagonist to this attempt to subvert our freedom, using every legal tool. We need the fighting spirit of Lincoln and FDR to master this crisis.

Hakeem Jeffries must scrape together 3 or more GOP votes during February or March when the MAGA majority is weakest, and become Speaker by carrying a motion to vacate the chair. He should then immediately push through a resolution of impeachment against Trump within minutes. This will energize resistance against dictatorship in all walks of life and open new perspectives. Here are some suggested articles of impeachment.

ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT FOR TRUMP

1. Attempted abolition of birthright citizenship by Executive Order entitled ”Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” of January 20, 2025. This EO stands in direct violation of Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1: ”All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Concerning this Executive Order, Seattle US District Judge John C. Coughenour commented:

”I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, and I can’t remember another case where the question presented was this clear…” ”This is a blatantly unconstitutional order. Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?” ”I am having trouble understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this order is constitutional,” the judge told a U.S. Justice Department lawyer defending Trump’s order. ”It just boggles my mind.”

Coughenour also warned that the president’s executive action harms the states by forcing their agencies to ”lose federal funding [for children suddenly declared non-citizens under Trump’s maneuver] and incur substantial costs to provide essential and legally required medical care and social services to resident children” subject to his measure.
He granted the state AGs a 14-day TRO for further litigation, estimating that the plaintiff states are likely to prevail over the Trump DoJ.
See Coughenour’s full opinion at:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.343943/gov.uscourts.wawd.343943.43.0_2.pdf

2. Repeated illegal fast track firings without cause of US federal government officials in violation of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, as repeatedly amended, and without reference to the Office of Personnel Management. Trump is seeking a return to the pre-1883 spoils system for his own political and pecuniary benefit.

These civil servants, including those belonging to the Senior Executive Service, all enjoy civil service protections, including the need to show cause to justify any firing. Trump’s sweeping ouster of federal officials has ignored the these protections and has cited no cause for the firings.
This wholesale purge of experienced senior officials on the mere suspicion that they are not aligned with Trump’s ill-defined and never specified ”agenda” is illegal and constitutes a federal crime. It is also being done with cynical disregard for US national security in a time of exacerbated Russian sabotage, espionage, and attacks.
The FBI appears to have fired the top 6-8 special agents in charge, decapitating the agency on the eve of a possible takeover by a subversive, security risk director. More than a dozen Department of Justice prosecutors who had handled the cases of Jan 6 rioters were reportedly fired last week, with more to come. Trump loyalists have demanded a list of all personnel involved in any way in Jan 6 prosecutions, a figure that could embrace up to 75% of all bureau personnel. The decimation of the FBI would be means of crippling and blinding the bureau, playing into the hands of the Russian FSB, SVR, and GRU.

3. Attempted Impoundment of Congressional Appropriations-On January 27 2025 in a series of chaotic and fragmented actions, the Office of Management and the White House proclaimed a spending freeze on some $3 trillion of expenditures described as ”agency grants,” allegedly to allow investigations to determine if the underlying programs were tainted by wokeism, CRT, and other doctrines condemned by Trump. This is absurd, since existing laws must be obeyed, whether the new tenant of the White House likes them or not.

Trump has decreed a freeze of up to $3 trillion in authorized and appropriated agency spending, but initially refused to list what is covered. So far two federal district judges, Judge John McConnell of Providence RI ruling in a case brought by 23 state AGs, and Judge Loren AliKhan of Washington DC, who granted an emergency stay to prevent the freeze from starting on Tuesday January 28 at 5pm, have ruled against Trump’s overreach. But Trump claims his freeze is still in force, thus showing himself as an incorrigible enemy of the justice system.

Trump’s cuts reportedly hit Medicaid (with all 50 state portals shut down), Head Start, WIC, LIHEAP, SBA, FEMA, SNAP, Pell grants, Meals on Wheels, and much more-the complete list is 80 pages long. Consternation and chaos gripped much of the nation.

These freezes are all illegal. Once Congress has authorized and appropriated funds and the president has signed on, they must be spent expeditiously. If the president tries to hoard the money for some other purpose (especially a corrupt one), that is a federal crime under the Anti-Impoundment Act of 1974, which was designed to stop Nixon from impounding this way.

”The States have put forth sufficient evidence at this stage that they will likely suffer severe and irreparable harm if the Court denies their request to enjoin enforcement of the funding pause,” Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. of Rhose Island wrote in the 13-page order. ”And it is more than monetary harm that is at stake here. As Justice Anthony Kennedy reminds us, ’Liberty is always at stake when one or more of the branches seek to transgress the separation of powers.’”

McConnell further noted in his opinion:

”The Court finds that, based on the evidence before it now, some of which is set forth below, the States are likely to succeed on the merits of some, if not all, their claims. The reasons are as follows: Case 1:25-cv-00039-JJM-PAS Document 50 Filed 01/31/25 Page 4 of 13 PageID #: 705 5

• The Executive’s action unilaterally suspends the payment of federal funds to the States and others simply by choosing to do so, no matter the authorizing or appropriating statute, the regulatory regime, or the terms of the grant itself. The Executive cites no legal authority allowing it to do so; indeed, no federal law would authorize the Executive’s unilateral action here.

• Congress has instructed the Executive to provide funding to States based on stated statutory factors—for example, population or the expenditure of qualifying State funds. By trying to impose certain conditions on this funding, the Executive has acted contrary to law and in violation of the APA.

• The Executive Orders threaten the States’ ability to conduct essential activities and gave the States and others less than 24 hours’ notice of this arbitrary pause, preventing them from making other plans or strategizing how they would continue to function without these promised funds.

• Congress appropriated many of these funds, and the Executive’s refusal to disburse them is contrary to congressional intent and directive and thus arbitrary and capricious.

• Congress has not given the Executive limitless power to broadly and indefinitely pause all funds that it has expressly directed to specific recipients and purposes and therefore the Executive’s actions violate the separation of powers.”

This is a decisive rebuff for Trump’s grandiose pretensions to dictatorial power.

When it comes to attempted impoundment of appropriations in defiance of the will of Congress, Trump is a notorious repeat offender. Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 was triggered by his illegal attempt to withhold (impound) a $400 million aid package from Ukraine to extort Ukraine into announcing a probe of Joe and Hunter Biden. This extortion was Trump’s theme, in a telephone call between Trump and Zelensky on July 25, 2019. After whistleblower reports, public scandal, and hearings, Trump was impeached on December 18, 2019.

If illegal impoundment merited impeachment in 2019, it certainly merits impeachment in 2025.

4. Disqualification under the Insurrection Clause
Trump’s tenure in office violates the Insurrection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because he has led an seditious uprising against the US government on and about January 6, 2021. This disqualification remains despite his second Inauguration:
Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3. ”No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.’ This describes Trump. If he does not get a two thirds vote in the House, he has failed to get rehabilitated and no action by the senate can change that outcome.

5. Trump has already abdicated much of his responsibility as president to the billionaire oligarch and intriguer Musk. His situation may be approaching that of Woodrow Wilson after his debilitating stroke, when the country was run by Mrs. Wilson as his caretaker.
Trump has evidently illegally given Musk and his associates access to the most secret and sensitive payment system in the government, the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the financial heart of the US government:

”Through a series of specific requests, Trump’s landing team attempted to lift the hood on the department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, an arcane branch that distributes nearly 90 percent of all federal payments, including Social Security benefits, tax refunds and payments to federal workers and contractors. That adds up to a billion annual transactions totaling more than $5 trillion.” (CNN, February 1 2025)

The Musk retainers were above all interested in ways to abort and cut off payments, likely as part of their brutal austerity assault on working people program.

Musk’s minions, some of whom claimed to represent the so-called DOGE operation, were initially blocked by David Lebryk, the top career civil servant of the Treasury, and briefly acting Secretary. Lebryk held off the Musk squad for a week before being coerced into resigning.

”According to one person familiar with the department, Trump-affiliated employees had previously asked about Treasury’s ability to stop payments. But Lebryk’s pushback was, ”We don’t do that,” the person said. ”They seem to want Treasury to be the chokepoint on payments, and that’s unprecedented,” the person added, emphasizing that it is not the bureau’s role to decide which payments to make — it is ”just to make the f-ing payments.” (CNN, Feb. 1 2025)

According to the New York Times, ”Treasury Secretary [and hedge fund operater] Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (not a US government agency legally constituted by Congress) access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to five people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending. The new authority follows a standoff this week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Mr. Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government. The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit.” (NYT, Feb. 1 2024)

This entire Musk operation is illegal and unconstitutional. His DOGE is not a part of the US government. Are all of the Musk operatives involved American citizens? Are any from enemy states like Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, or others? Are they US government employees? Do they have have requisite top secret security clearances need to view the totality of US government financial operations, including the personal information of every taxpayer, Social Security account holder and recipient? If they do not, a federal crime may be afoot. Who if anyone oversees their snooping? Who are today’s Secret Service T-men?

Beyond this, if the Musk interlopers attempt to stop and abort payments, they are committing a federal crime similar to Trump’s attempted impoundment of $3 trillion of spending. The difference is they are trying to impose impoundment at the tail end of the payments process, just before the money goes out the door.

In this way, the Musk operatives might provoke a US default on the public debt by sabotaging interest payments to holders of Treasury securities. Stiffing creditors of all kinds is of course a Trump specialty.

Or, Musk could sabotage payments to Ukraine for their national defense. It is reported that Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall II was concerned about allegations of Musk’s repeated telephone contacts with Putin. These concerns would also bear on Musk’s massive dependency, and his support for the AfD party in Germany.

In short, the Musk Treasury operation may well represent more illegal impoundment-stopping or preparing to stop legal government payments mandated by Congress or departments and agencies in the course of official business. Such interference is once again flatly illegal.

House Democrats and state AGs should be applying to the federal courts for an injunction to end this dangerous situation.

6. There are now numerous reports that Trump is intent on destroying US AID, the premier US operator in international relief, whose online presence has largely disappeared. To attempt this without the consent of Congress is illegal. Trump is illegally pretending that the DOGE is an actual US government agency, which it most emphatically is not, while also pretending that US AID, a real and existing government agency, has ceased to exist. The standard is the consent of Congress required to make or unmake such agencies. Trump does not have that consent and knows he is unlikely to get it. This deliberate violation of law deserves punishment by impeachment.

Abolishing US AID would be a hugely valuable gift to Russian, Chinese, and other anti-US operations in Africa especially. It might also cost many lives: the US still supplies about half of world emergency food aid. If the flow of such aid is disrupted, lives will be lost.

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net – World Crisis Radio
January 18, 2025

[download audio]

Plato’s Republic portrays oligarchy as a ’ruling class’ in a system where the wealthy few rule and poor people count for nothing; such societies stagnate and fail because oligarchy’s sole purpose is to perpetuate oligarchy despite incessant private warfare; Examples include the Ephors of Sparta, the Old Oligarch of Athens, the Roman Senate until the Tribunes of the People, the Byzantine Empire, the Republic of Venice, and the Venetian Party Whigs in England and UK

Biden has thus given us the first-ever call to class defense by a US President, with a concept of class from Plato, not the inferior one of Marx;

My own Against Oligarchy essays starting 1995 labeled the current era of neoliberal globalization as an Age of Oligarchy, from Wall Street finance oligarchs and speculators to Chinese princelings, EU Eurogarchs to the oligarchs of Russia and Latin America; These oligarchs are fighting for survival as globalization ends;

Key passages from Biden’s landmark speech:

… in my farewell address tonight, I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And this is the dangerous concer- — and that’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultra-wealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.

Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.

We see the consequences all across America. And we’ve seen it before, more than a century ago. But the American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts.

They didn’t punish the wealthy. They just made the wealthy pay the by — play by the rules everybody else had to. Workers won rights to earn their fair share. You know, they were dealt into the deal, and it helped put us on the path to building the largest middle class and the most prosperous century any nation the world has ever seen, and we’ve got to do that again.
It’s also clear that American leadership in technology is unparalleled — an unparalleled source of innovation that can transform lives. We see the same dangers of the concentration of technology, power, and wealth.

You know, his farewell address, President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He warned us then about, and I quote, ’the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power,’ end of quote.

Six day lec- — six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the p- — potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.

Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.

We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families, and our very democracy from the abuse of power.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is the most consequential technology of our time — perhaps of all time. Nothing offers more profound possibilities and risks for our economy and our security, our society, our very — for humanity.

Artificial intelligence even has the potential to help us answer my call to end cancer as we know it. But unless safeguards are in place, AI could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work, and how we protect our nation

Biden speaks with authority on these greedy oligarchs, since they were the ones who, working through the controlled corporate media and with the help of Wall Street Democrats Pelosi, Obama, and their factions, organized the June-July Anti-Biden ’My donors My donors’ Coup, trampling on primary results because they refuse to pay their fair share; This changing horses in mid-stream was the single biggest factor in Democratic defeat;

Since the Anti-Biden coup, the Democratic Party has not stopped retreating, ignoring the massive election interference of 70 Russian bomb threats to key precincts on
Election Day; refusing to fight for the XIV Amendment’s Insurrection Clause to bar Trump after correctly branding him a fascist; Mounting weak perfunctory interrogations of any of Trump’s lunatic cabinet picks, failing to go for a knockout blow against Tik Tok, owned by an enemy state preparing a nuclear first strike against the US; the party image is dominated by the slovenly collaborationist Fetterman;

Biden’s identification of the finance oligarchy as the main threat to the country and therefore the main enemy of Democrats is the authoritative guidance for reform the party has needed, and a stumbling block to the pro-Wall Street faction of Obama and Pelosi; The infamous insider trader and speculator Pelosi is also the prime recipient of Biden’s call to ban stockjobbing by members of Congress!

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net – World Crisis Radio
October 5, 2024

[download audio]

Historical examples from Machiavelli to Sir Neville Chamberlain to Macarthur prove that appeasement weakens the appeaser and guarantees defeat; an obsession with escalation in the style of Herman Kahn is part of the same problem;

To avoid a potential strategic crisis, President Biden must free Ukraine from all artificial constraints in using US and NATO weaponry;

Suicidal Russian human wave attacks have advanced into the town of Vuhledar and are threatening the important transport hub of Prokovsk near Donetsk; Ukraine continues to destroy Russian oil facilities and aviation assets; on the political side, signs of instability and chaos have emerged in the free world coalition supporting Ukraine, including France (neofascists around 30%), Canada (Poiliėvre), Germany (AFD as largest party with one third of the votes in Thuringia and Saxony), and now Austria (“Freedom Party” as largest party with about 30%), to say nothing of the United States; as Macarthur stated to the Congress, in war, there is no substitute for victory, and the world needs Ukraine to start winning victories during this month of October;

Biden should also urgently set in motion a crash program on the scale of the World War II Manhattan Project (as seen in the movie Oppenheimer) using lasers, particle beams, and other new physical principles to shoot down ballistic missiles of all types; recent events show that Iran and its proxies intend to overwhelm the expensive conventional interceptor rockets used by the Israeli defense systems of Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow by a continuous barrage of hundreds or thousands of missiles; but a laser-based ABM defense would use directed energy to destroy incoming warheads; the Israeli Iron Beam system is close to deployment, and the United States needs a layered ABM system based on directed energy to deal with Putin’s threats over Ukraine and the menace of the crinks in general; the spinoffs from such a program, like the Kennedy moonshot, would fuel a 20 year economic upswing;

Concerning the potential for a new era of good feelings: by the end of The War of 1812, Americans were disgusted with the greed and pro-British wartime treason of the formerly great Federalist party, which utterly collapsed over the course of a few years; patriots were horrified by the Federalist embrace of New England secessionism at the 1814 Hartford Convention, and also by the vile partisanship of Federalist demagogues;

The result in those days was the 1816-1824 “Era of Good Feelings,” roughly identical with the presidency of James Monroe, a time when the governing Democratic Republican party had no opposition;

As Madison was succeeded by Monroe, the watchword was nationalism in the sense of nationbuilding and fixing the problems revealed by the late war: national defense was strengthened, and expanded second bank of the United States provided a uniform currency, the 1816 protective tariff shielded the infant industries from British economic warfare, and congress voted funding for infrastructure by extending the Cumberland Road to Wheeling, West Virginia on the Ohio river; the backers of these measures included John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and the young John Calhoun, who thus managed to revive Hamilton’s American System of political economy, which was later carried forward by Abraham Lincoln;

After the victories of John Paul Jones against the Royal Navy, by Oliver Hazard Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie, and by Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans, the national mood was described as optimism, exultation, goodwill, unity, and national pride, expressed as a renewed sense of national purpose and patriotism; notice that all of these are antithetical to Trump, with his crippled America and American carnage doctrines; Henry Clay’s Missouri compromise of 1820 neutralized many sectional issues for 30 years, giving the Union time enough to acquire overwhelming economic superiority over the slave states; the era of good feelings was terminated with the coming of demagogue Andrew Jackson in 1828;

Harris and Democrats run rings around MAGA fundraising; are funding and fielding a vastly superior ground game for government; have normal candidates who are not psychotic, weird, or creepy; they have a program for the future in sharp contrast to Trump’s sad cult of his own last hurrah; are bolstered by prestigious defectors and blocks of voters coming from the traditional Republican party; have not attacked and offended the main components of society, starting with women; are getting decisive endorsements from civil society ranging from the biggest labor unions to Taylor swift and Bruce Bpringsteen; have not sponsored an insurrection for the violent overthrow of the government; have a national ticket with no convicted felons and a staff free of jailbirds; and enjoy a solid, stable, and growing lead in the few honest public opinion polls!

Jack Smith’s summary of evidence cleared for publication by Judge Chutcan is the screenplay for the most lurid film noir of our time, how a cabal of criminals tried to disenfranchise 83 million voters to seize state power!

Told that VP Pence’s life was in danger, the orange tyrant responded “so what?”, thus approximating Mussolini’s favorite slogan of “I don’t care!” (“me ne frego”); “make them riot” was a favorite slogan in the Trump camp in the days leading up to January 6; as he prepared the coup, Trump relied only on his own insurrectionist lawyers, many now indicted, and scorned his official white house counsel; by January 6, with all legal delays exhausted, Trump turned to his last line of defense: an armed fascist mob!

This and much else proves that Trump as a choreographer of the coup was acting as a private individual pursuing his own private interest, and not as President or any kind of us government official; therefore, the Supreme Court’s recent invention of an anti-constitutional immunity or license to kill for presidents will not save him!

In debate, Vance showed himself to be a compulsive liar just like Trump, but more skillful; Vance babbles about censorship, which she seems to think occurs whenever the crackpot RFK junior is denied an hour of prime time by the networks to expound his bizarre and highly dangerous theories of health and life;

Rumor has it that Vance and his billionaire owners are well aware of Trump’s rapid mental deterioration, and are preparing a scenario whereby Vance would lead the cabinet in ousting the orange dotard using the XXV Amendment, giving state power to Vance as the puppet of a kitchen cabinet of ultra-reactionary billionaire finance oligarchs: Trump wants only unprincipled scoundrels who will not assert the constitution, but unfortunately for him, nothing prevents such degenerates from directing their evil intent against him;

In Lebanon, the Israelis continue the decapitation and decimation of the Hezbollah death cult, and claim to have destroyed one half of Hezbollah ’s much touted arsenal of missiles and rockets; Hezbollah expects others to secure their aims, including a cease-fire, but if they really want a cease-fire, Hezbollah and Hamas should speak for themselves and sue for peace or simply surrender on humanitarian grounds; otherwise, figures like Sinwar are cynically exploiting their own astronomical losses in hopes of turning world public opinion against the Israelis;

On the first anniversary of the October 7 suicide attack, Palestinians in the US threaten to vote against Harris, showing the same bankrupt Muslim Brotherhood ideology which has tragically marred Palestinian history; Biden is right to note that the proxy militias are totally irrational; if the uncommitted make good on their threat, they will be the prime targets of MAGA’s program of gestapo raids, concentration camps, and boxcar deportations for up to 25 million people;

The only pause in the Gaza fighting with hostage release so far has been the Biden cease-fire of late last November; Sinwar like Netanyahu routinely rejects Biden’s cease-fire proposals; such eagerness to enable Trump’s demolition of the U.S. Constitution will lose them any remaining goodwill in much of us; backlash against pro-Hamas vigils on October 7 may be considerable;

Biden’s peerless mastery of economics, statecraft, and legislation continues: wisely declining to use the Taft-Hartley act to protect greedy bosses despite the fishy ILA leader, he has extracted robust wage increases for the Longshoremen and postponed the automation issue beyond the election into next year;

September job creation has exceeded 250,000, according to the Labor Department’s next to last report before the November 5 election;

For Harris and Walz, the great untapped issue remains Trump’s cataclysmic mismanagement of the Covid pandemic, when he opened the door to a contagion which has killed 1.2 million Americans and counting.

Early voting and mail-in voting are now on in many states; persons of good will are urged to bank their votes now, and then help their discouraged, disoriented, or intermittent neighbors to get on the scoreboard against totalitarian fascist dictatorship on or before November 5.