Russia Insider has the article Kremlin Publishes Full Megan Kelly Putin Interview – NBC Cut the Best Parts (Video + Transcript).

Putin is very confident in this interview. He knows that what he is saying makes Russia look very smart, and America look ridiculous.

I have no idea who or what Russia Insider is. I have no independent knowledge of the faithfulness of the translation. If NBC wants to contest this transcript, they are free to publish their own transcript. I do wonder why they did not publish their version of the complete interview. In this day and age of the internet, you would think that NBC wolud publish a transcript of the whole interview even though they couldn’t fit it all in in the air time they decided to give this interview. Large parts of the USA and world audience demand more of our news media these days.

Democracy Now has the story Overthrow: 100 Years of U.S. Meddling & Regime Change, from Iran to Nicaragua to Hawaii to Cuba

As special counsel Robert Mueller continues his probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, we take a look back at Washington’s record of meddling in elections across the globe. By one count, the United States has interfered in more than 80 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000. And that doesn’t count U.S.-backed coups and invasions. We speak to former New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, author of “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.”

The tail end of this interview is in the article As Ex-CIA Head Admits to U.S. Meddling in Elections, Is Outrage over Russian Interference Overblown? This second part has a startling revelation about an organization called the National Endowment for Democracy. As you might guess, this organization promotes the opposite of democracy,

Kinzer’s latest book is The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire.

Politico has the story The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook.

An ambitious US task force targeting Hezbollah’s billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House’s desire for a nuclear deal with Iran.

I am not sure what to make of this story. There is enough in the story to back up the headline, but their are also tidbits that undermine it. Some day, I might put aside enough time to read the whole story.

Here is another excerpt from the story.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

While reading this, I was thinking of another post I had yesterday – “Rise and Kill First” Explores the Corrupting Effects of Israel’s Assassination Program. In that post, I had an excerpt that said the following:

Bombing and invading Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, with assassination an essential element of the campaign, produced out of the hitherto pacific Lebanese Shiite community an organization called Hezbollah that became the most effective guerrilla force Israel had ever faced.

These words are not a direct refutation of the excerpt from the first story, but it has me wondering if there is some conflict between the two understandings of Hezbollah.

The Intercept has the book review “Rise and Kill First” Explores the Corrupting Effects of Israel’s Assassination Program.

Bergman, an Israeli former lawyer and investigative journalist, charts not only the details of assassinations over the past century, but also the corrupting effect of relying on the black to the exclusion of diplomacy and compromise. Why negotiate with your enemies when it’s so easy to kill them?

As a member of a minority group that often suffers seemingly undeserved hate against it, I take particular exception to this possible collateral damage from Israeli government actions.

Because the book concentrates on Israeli actions and their corrupting effects within the Israeli polity, it sometimes misses their consequences in the countries where they took place. Employing Jewish citizens of Syria, Egypt, and Iraq as spies, for example, created the misimpression that their communities were fifth columns. Bombing and invading Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, with assassination an essential element of the campaign, produced out of the hitherto pacific Lebanese Shiite community an organization called Hezbollah that became the most effective guerrilla force Israel had ever faced.

If you are a member of my tribe, and want to give unquestioned support to the government of Israel, you might consider the above consequence.

If you are a citizen of the USA, you might want to consider the consequence of supporting our own govenment’s actions along these lines. Maybe this is the true answer to George W. Bush’s question about “Why do they hate us, so?”

Bernie Sanders has posted the video The Bank Lobbyist Act.

Why is Congress busy worrying about the needs of huge financial institutions, but ignores the concerns of ordinary Americans? The answer is simple. Follow the money.

The next bank to fail ought to be nationalized, the executives fired, and some be put in jail. I bet that is not in the bill that Congress is looking to enact.

The Rabit Hole has the story What’s really going on in East Ghouta? VIDEO. (It is also on Facebook.)

This video was created by an amazing team of people that won’t let the voices of innocent civilians who are being killed in Damascus, be silenced by western mainstream media!

Created by Carla Ortiz, Jason Clarke, Soraya Tebbani and narrated by Sarah Abed.

Helicia Forest-Ussach has posted some items like this one. The Rabbit Hole web site has a “What Is The Rabbit Hole?” page to give you some background on the author of these stories.

It is hard to figure out who, if anyone, is telling you the truth about Syria. I get skeptical when a well financed news medium tells you only one side of a story. That is why I post the “other” side of the story. I could post both sides, but I figure you get enough of one side from the corporate press, so I only have to supply the missing part.

Twitter has some videos and screen shots about the situation in Syria.

Save #Ghouta’s children from #Assad’s bombing, but mostly from #terrorists that stick children in holes so that they can “rescue” them for #propaganda. (See magic hand at 00:02 brought to you by your friend at #Save_Ghouta )

If the story the corporate media is trying to sell us is legit, why don’t you see stuff like this?

I hope you can follow the link to the above posting to see the video, images, and comments. At the very least, I have included above one of the images.

The Nation has the article Bob Massie Is Putting Climate and Democracy at the Center of the Massachusetts Governor’s Race.

If this racial-justice and climate activist wins the nomination, he’ll be on the ballot along with Senator Elizabeth Warren.

I know I won’t be voting for Elizabeth Warren, but for Governor, my vote is up for grabs. So far, I have read about or listened to Setti Warren and now Bob Massie.

The Black Agenda Report has the article The Real Goal of “Russiagate” is to Prepare for Endless Austerity and War.

The Russians will never face trial in the U.S., and it is highly unlikely that the unindicted Americans will be criminally charged — but that is not the purpose of Mueller’s indictment. The political crime has been defined, for the broad purpose of repressing dissent in the United States. The witch hunt has found a legalistic vocabulary.

There are a lot of good reasons mentioned in this article to be angry with the promotion of the idea of Russiagate.

I’ll mention one of my life long principles that is another reason for my anger.

Throughout my life and particularly during my professional career, I have always felt that in any competitive situations I tried to beat the competition by doing a better job than they did. I would be, and was, ashamed of any effort to win by putting road blocks in the way of the competition. I did manage to talk companies where I worked from taking punitive actions against a competitor if it looked like the competitor were going to do a better job than we were going to do.

The world and my industry is better served if all the competitors try to do the best job that they can rather than trying to trip up the competition. I always felt that if had to resort to tripping up the competition to win the race, then I didn’t belong in the race. If the competition was winning through fair and honest practices, then they deserved to win.

I guess I could afford to have my attitude because I always felt that I was capable of doing a job well enough to succeed at it. I also worked for companies that I thought were good enough to succeed. When my interests and the company’s interests started to diverge in ways that I could not change, then I just looked for (and luckily always found) another job.

If we, as residents of the USA, believe that our country can do a better job, then why wouldn’t we just do that job as well as we can. If some other society can do the job better, then they deserve to win. Perhaps we can actually learn from people who do a better job at what we want to do. We don;t actually need to “win”. All I want to do is to be able to lead a respectable and comfortable life. If those needs are met, I don’t have to get myself in a fever pitch with concern that someone else might be doing better.

This carries over to my philosophy about investing. I don’t care whether or not I beat the market. If I do well enough to support my family and myself, then I can be happy no matter what the rest of the market does.

The Real News Network has the interview How Did Communist China Become a Capitalist Superpower?

In his new book, “Competing Economic Paradigms in China,” Steve Cohn examines how China’s economic policy went from Maoist to “iron rice bowl” to neoliberal

I am always fascinated by how China pulled off this transition. I have observed their tendency to be “what worksists” rather than “capitalists” or “communists”. I am not sure I would classify their policies as neo-liberal in the same pejorative sense that is applied to the Clintons and most of the Democratic party. I think being a “what worksist” is a much better strategy than trying to make the real world fit into a single ideology.

In my previous post China’s Secret Source For Funding Infrastructure, the article referenced describes how China uses their fiat currency system in a much better way than the USA does. So, in that instance the neo-liberalism in the USA is much more ideologically closed-minded than whatever you want to call neo-liberalism in China.

One aspect of Western ways that they have adopted that I think is a mistake is to allow the emergence of a billionaire class. I do not know the details as much as I do about the billionaires in Russia, but I assume the Chinese billionaires arose from the same forces as in Russia. This is the sale of state owned enterprises at fire-sale prices in the effort to privatize. I do take note that there are some restrictions on these billionaires that you do not find in the United States. In China and Russia, some billionaires actually do end up in jail. In China some of them even end up being executed. I am not for executions, but I think that jail is warranted in many cases. I would much prefer the prevention of economic crimes rather than just punishment after the crimes have been committed.