Why Was a Sunday Times Report on US Government Ties to al-Qaeda Chief Spiked?

Click here to access article by Dr Nafeez Ahmed from Information Clearing House. 

The article discloses the many links between terrorist organization and US government figures, drug running, illegal weapons and technology sales, US agents pressuring the Sunday Times to stop running a series of related reports, other coverups, and many attempts to stop people from revealing government involvement in these activities, especially Sibel Edmonds, by using the "state secrets privilege".

...according to Edmonds...the last two articles in the series were spiked under U.S. State Department pressure. She recalled being told at the time by journalists leading the Sunday Times investigation that the newspaper’s editor had decided to squash the story after receiving calls from officials at the U.S. embassy in London.

A journalist with the Sunday Times‘ investigative unit told this author he had interviewed former Special Agent in Charge, Dennis Saccher, who had moved to the FBI’s Colorado office. Saccher reportedly confirmed the veracity of Edmonds’ allegations of espionage, telling him that Edmonds’ story “should have been front page news” because it was “a scandal bigger than Watergate.” 

New revelations of US government spying on the press

Click here to access article by Ed Hightower from World Socialist Web Site.

The elaborate, "full spectrum dominance" of government surveillance of US citizens, especially over journalists, is now paying big dividends for the shadow government run by banking and corporate elites. In spite of the use of "state secrets"and "national security" to suppress information, it seems that there have been far too many honest people known as "whistle-blowers" who have been risking their careers and lives to report on illegal activities of the One Percent's government. Hence, going after journalists is a winner--for them!

The subpoenas and the investigation have already had a “chilling” effect on the constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech and the freedom of the press. Pruitt said that the AP has already encountered a situation where “officials that would normally talk to us, and people we talk to in the normal course of newsgathering, are already saying they’re a little reluctant to talk to us; they fear that they will be monitored by the government.”

Why small-scale alternatives won’t change the world

Click here to access a book review by Michael Ware of Greg Sharzer's No Local posted on Climate & Capitalism.

Against a backdrop of global climate disasters, financial panics, and inequality, localism — the creation of small-scale local systems of production and distribution — seems to make sense. Start small and stay close to home; forge community ties, grow your own food locally, and create alternatives that can eventually replace the current system of global capitalism with a sane, sustainable way of life. By providing this alternative, the local will overwhelm global capitalism. Death by a thousand cuts. But can the power of global capitalism be undone through establishing bike paths, cooperatives, bartering, alternative local currencies, community gardens, and small businesses?

Hope from the Margins

Click here to access article by Gustavo Esteva from The Wealth of the Commons.

These notes offer a quick glance to ways, in the south of Mexico, in which people are regenerating the society from the bottom up. It is a new kind of revolution without leaders or vanguards, which goes beyond development and globalization. It is about displacing the economy from the center of social life, reclaiming a communal way of being, encouraging radical pluralism, and advancing towards real democracy.

There are some writing flaws in this article and the author tends to over-idealize his commons theme; in spite of this he offers some promising examples of people who, drawing from their cultural roots, are creating islands of people-centered societies in the midst of a hostile capitalist world that serves only a small fraction of people bent on "owning" everything of value.

"Astoundingly Disturbing": Obama Administration Claims Power to Wage Endless War Across the Globe

Click here to access 26:00m video program from Democracy Now including comments from Jeremy Scahill of Nation magazine.

As illustrated by the remarks of Senator Angus King of Maine, this is a liberal take (in the common American sense) on the ruling class's assertion of executive branch authority to deploy the Armed Forces of the US anywhere in the world, from Boston to Yemen, to wage war against "terrorism" for the indefinite future. Liberals also want the executive branch to have this authority, but they merely want to have Congress pass specific authorization for this power to prosecute the "war on terrorism" anywhere at anytime. This would maintain the myth that the US is governed by laws based on legitimate democratic principles.

However, if you understand that 9/11 and all the other contrived "terrorist" attacks as well as real ones have been used by the ruling class precisely to eliminate most of the hassles of constitutional procedures, then you can understand why Pentagon figures can with confidence make such statements. 

Notice also in King's statements their nature: appealing , beseeching, almost begging. If the Congress had any real independent power left, they would hold these generals in contempt of Congress and punish them accordingly.

Jeremy Scahill does little better in this piece by attributing this Pentagon coup to the Obama administration. However, he did do better in an earlier interview on Democracy Now when he reviewed the history after 9/11 to include the Bush administration and earlier administrations in this development. Scahill and his employer The Nation, Democracy Now, and other sources in liberal-left US media are constrained by their funding sources to limit such attributions to presidential administrations rather than from anything resembling a shadow government which I believe considerable evidence points to. 

In a 2011 article Dr. Stuart Bramhall has confirmed my long held suspicions about these sources.  She has uncovered well documented evidence that much of what passes for left media coverage, including "Democracy Now!", in the US is funded, at least in substantial part, by right-wing non-profit institutions such as the Ford Foundation, Council on Foreign Relations, other CIA front organizations, and various liberal foundations. Such funding acts as a constraint on how far they will go to reveal the dirtiest secrets of our ruling class.

A more radical and accurate interpretation of this development can be had from the World Socialist Web Site that ran an editorial with this key statement:

The Pentagon’s assertion of the power for the indefinite future to unilaterally deploy the US killing machine wherever the president sees fit—including within the US and without any oversight or “checks and balances”—amounts to an announcement of a semi-dictatorship in the US.

And, even more importantly, the editorial provides real insights on this development by offering a class based analysis--instead of framing it as a product of the Obama administration. 

However, I would take issue with what appears to me in this editorial to be an implication that "American democracy" was ever much of a genuine democracy. The realities of our system are now being revealed for what it always was--a system supervised by a class of major owners of productive property and banks with some superficial, and managed, system of laws, courts, and legislative bodies. The difference now from previous periods is that our masters have acquired so much power that they no longer fear us very much. Thus, they feel that they can dispense with many of the niceties of legal processes, and rely more on their overwhelming control of media, education, and the Hollywood film industry to shape how we think and what we think. And, if that doesn't work, then they will deploy the troops to take over our cities.

The Criminal Case Against the Tea Party Cabal and Why the Justice Department Won’t Pursue It

Click here to access article by Pam Martens from Wall Street on Parade.

The nonprofits are funded through a growing roster of Koch foundations: the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation. The Charles Koch family also controls  the Knowledge and Progress Fund which has infused at least $8 million since 2005 into a super secretive black hole known as Donors Trust. Each year, Donors Trust and its sister organization, Donors Capital, provide tens of millions of dollars to the same nonprofits long supported by the Koch brothers. When the money is distributed, the names of the actual donors remain a deep, dark secret.

The author sheds light on all the ties, which is missing from corporate media coverage, among the Koch brothers, Justice Department officials, Koch organized and sponsored non-profit organizations, and the "Tea Party".

Money & Resistance: How “Moderate” Arab States Sold Out the Palestinian Cause

Click here to access article by Yazan al-Saadi from Muftah.

Today, Israel is experiencing a level of peace it has not witnessed in all its existence. Despite fearing the Arab uprisings, and the potential change in political dynamics they would bring, Israel’s hold over Palestine is at its zenith. With little to no active military resistance against the Israeli government, ‘moderate’ Arab states have played an important role in ensuring this state of affairs. [my emphasis]

The New Great Game

Click here to access article by Christoph Germann from The New Great Game.

Click on map to enlarge

This author draws on a lot of information from Russia sources. Russians, of course, have had a lot of problems with Chechin rebels who engaged in a prolonged and bloody separatist movement after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Chechnya is in the oil rich Caucasus region. In recent years Western agents have been very active in stirring up trouble for the Russians in nearby areas. See this, this, and this. Hence, I am inclined to give credibility to reports from these sources.

Thus, the Boston bombing event becomes curiouser and curiouser. I'm betting on the following scenario: the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was recruited to a Chechen project by the CIA. He earned a lot of easy money participating in their "training sessions". Then he recruited his younger brother to participate in some projects to also earn money, and eventually they were set up as patsies in the Boston bombing event.

Pentagon Engaging in a Power Grab Against the Civilian Leadership

Click here to access article from Washington's Blog.

The stated purpose of the updated rule is “support in Accordance With the Posse Comitatus Act,” but in reality it undermines the Insurrection Act and PCA in significant and alarming ways. The most substantial change is the notion of “civil disturbance” as one of the few “domestic emergencies” that would allow for the deployment of military assets on American soil.

The piece contains an interesting interview by this blogger with a constitutional lawyer to get his views on this latest Pentagon directive.

Zionist Extremists at Canada’s National Gallery – Passing the Hat for Israeli Imperialism

Click here to access article by Morgan Duchesney from The Media Co-op (Canada).

Although this grass-roots Canadian media source concentrates mostly on local issues in Canada, occasionally it demonstrates its success as an independent, people-powered source of information and news analysis for more global issues. This piece offers such an example. 

In this piece you will learn about the strong Zionist influence in Canada as illustrated by this report on a fundraising dinner hosted by the Jewish National Fund held at this celebrated national treasure--the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. You will also learn about the strong European colonial roots and outlook of Zionism, the use of "anti-Semitism" to smear critics of Zionist policies and practices, what the term "Semites" actually means, etc.

The Real IRS Scandal That No One Is Talking About

Click here to access article by Kurt Eichenwald from Vanity Fair. 

Another report confirming Pam Marten's exposé, this one from an upscale magazine.

Unfortunately, given the way this I.R.S. scandal slid so easily into ideological definitions, I fear that few non-politicos are recognizing the real disgrace here: that the federal government—Congress, the White House, the tax agency, and the Supreme Court—has created a situation where blatantly political organizations are able to legally break the law by pretending they’re something that they’re not.

Bombing Story Mysteries

Click here to access article by Russ Baker from his blog WhoWhatWhy.

It is the job of journalism not only to report what authorities say, but also to confirm their claims, and address anomalies, errors, inconsistencies, outright lies, and cover-ups, large and small.

When it comes to falsehoods of all types, we’ve seen plenty of doozies, and you don’t have to go all the way back to the Tonkin Gulf incident—which helped pave the way for the escalation of the Vietnam conflict. Most people now understand that circa 2002-2003, the George W. Bush Administration knowingly exaggerated and deceived in order to justify a desired invasion of Iraq.

Baker is an investigative journalist who, like myself, is appalled by the collusion of mainstream media with official government sources regarding the event. In this Orwellian time that we are now living in, corporate media has become nothing more than a propaganda organ of the ruling capitalist class.

Now that they have drilled their messages on the Boston bombing into the minds of the 99 Percent, mainstream media has gone on to other subjects like the persecution of Tea Partiers by the IRS. However, this investigative journalist is just beginning to examine the evidence, and to look for more, in order to unravel the many mysteries related to this incident that he outlines in this article.

The latest mystery, that Baker didn't mention, is the very recent "discovery" of a note supposedly written by the younger brother on the side of the boat where he was hiding. As reported by Ray McGovern, I find it rather mysterious that a former intelligence officer, now CBS correspondent, broke the "news" about the note. I also wonder how many mainstream media personnel have intelligence/CIA backgrounds. Like the Mafia, they say that once one becomes a member of the CIA family, one can never really leave.

Deceptions and Lies About the CIA's Operations in North Africa

Click here to access article by Horace Campbell from CounterPunch.

Two years after the failed NATO intervention, Libyan society is in chaos. Over 50,000 were killed in a mission that was meant to protect civilians, and there are reportedly more than 1,700 competing militias marauding the streets. One outcome of this chaos was the attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi which led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens on September 11, 2012. There have been Congressional hearings on this attack....

But, are we of the 99 Percent learning anything of value from these hearings? Campbell thinks not.

...these hearings did not come close to the real questions that should be posed to David Petraeus: what role did the use of Benghazi as a CIA station for the training of Jihadists play in the attack?

Washington gets explicit: its 'war on terror' is permanent

Click here to access article by Glenn Greenwald from The Guardian.

The genius of America's endless war machine is that, learning from the unplesantness of the Vietnam war protests, it has rendered the costs of war largely invisible. That is accomplished by heaping all of the fighting burden on a tiny and mostly economically marginalized faction of the population, by using sterile, mechanized instruments to deliver the violence, and by suppressing any real discussion in establishment media circles of America's innocent victims and the worldwide anti-American rage that generates.

Though rarely visible, the costs are nonetheless gargantuan.

Tar Sands Makes Climate Change “Unsolvable”

Click here to access article by Andy Rowell from The Price of Oil.

One of the world’s leading climate scientists Dr James Hansen has warned British MPs that exploiting the tar sands and oil shale would make the problem of climate change “unsolvable”.

Also, see this article entitled "Our Oil Addiction Ignores CO2 Milestone" posted on the same website and by the same author.

...scientists have called the 400-ppm threshold a sobering milestone which should serve as a wake-up call for all of us to support clean-energy and reduce our dependence on oil. But the ripple the milestone caused last week has quietly passed. It is back to business as usual.

Everywhere you look our addiction continues unabated. One of the world’s leading universities, Oxford has since announced a £6 million tie up with global oil giant Shell. 

Just Obey!

Click here if you wish to access the posting of this 51:47m film on Raging Bull-Shit. 



This film made by a British filmmaker is based on the views of Chris Hedges as articulated especially in his book Death of the Liberal Class. It has been making the rounds at various liberal (in the American sense) websites and some liberal-left sites such as Dissident Voice. The one-time aspirant to become a preacher, Hedges has a considerable influence in liberal-left circles in the US. His abortive theological career is what, I think, really informs his views on all things political. 

His various writings and speeches always have the appearance of a sermon: full of moral righteousness and, as we see in this film, the hell and damnation that is the fate of humans if they do not act morally--or apparently, even if they do. For Hedges, acting morally in the face of the developing dystopia always means resisting non-violently: boycotts, refusing to pay taxes, strikes, demonstrations, civil disobedience, etc. Of course, this has already been widely practiced. But, no matter, as long as we act morally, it doesn't matter if we are effective. Presumably we moral people will all go to heaven. 

However, at one point in the film the narrator briefly referred to sabotage as an acceptable form of non-violent resistance. Funny that, because I recall that Hedges was outraged by reports during the Occupy demonstrations in Oakland in 2011 of window-breaking incidents, while ignoring the brutal attacks on demonstrators by police. His inaccurate understanding of Black Bloc tactics and his moral inconsistencies have been well pointed out before by David Graeber and others (for example, see this and this).

In the past Hedges has always justified his views by citing his experience as a journalist with the NY Times when he observed the horrible acts of violence during the Empire-engineered destruction of Yugoslavia (see this and this). To be sure violence among humans can devolve into acts of barbarity as we are now witnessing in Syria as a consequence of subversive actions led by Empire friendly members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, NATO, and Israel. However, I must take issue with his categorical opposition to using violence as resistance to oppression. 

My argument is that what he witnessed was chaotic, misguided violence in conditions created by unknown agents whose real motives were unknown. Violence should always be a last resort, but there are times when a people must defend themselves using violence. Such use must always be informed by a clear understanding of the opposing actors involved, their motives, their forces, etc., the objectives desired by resistance-forces, and under the control of a bottom-up political organization.

While the narrator of Hedges' views makes appropriate reference to "the dynamics of capitalism as human evil", the effect is to reinforce the widespread insistence by liberals in the US that activists must always practice Gandhian non-violent resistance. An excellent response to such a position is provided by Peter Gelderloos in his book, How Nonviolence Protects the State, in which he writes:

The liberation movement in India failed. The British were not forced to quit India, Rather, they chose to transfer territory from direct colonial rule to neocolonial rule. ...The British authored the new constitution and turned power over to handpicked successors. They fanned the flames of religious and ethnic separatism so that India would be divided against itself...[by separating the mostly Muslim population in the north (Pakistan) from mostly Hindus in the rest of India].

After citing the important roles of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X in the Civil Rights Movement, he concludes his argument:

...from India to Birmingham, nonviolence failed to sufficiently empower its practitioners, whereas the use of a diversity of tactics got results. Put simply, if a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system based on centralized coercion and violence, and if that movement does not realize and exercise the power that makes it a threat , it cannot destroy such a system. ...The elite cannot be persuaded by appeals to their conscience. Individuals [among the elite] who do change their minds and find a better morality will be fired, impeached, replaced, recalled, assassinated. 

The Corporate Enclosure of Seeds Intensifies

Click here to access article by David Bollier from his blog David Bollier: news and perspectives on the commons.

The title makes reference to the classic event of enclosure in Britain starting in the 16th century (see this) and the subject of a classic work by Karl Polanyi entitled The Great Transformation. It had profound effects on working people in Britain, and continues to be employed today by capitalist agents in their quest to "own" everything everywhere that might be of value to anyone (see this).

In this article we see the same principle pursued by global corporations to "own" seeds.

In a sign of how far the forces of enclosure have come, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday that re-using seeds that are patented, knowingly or not, amounts to an act of piracy.  Of course, re-using seeds has been the tradition in agriculture for millennia, just as re-using songs and text is an essential element of culture.

No matter.  The masters of "intellectual property" hold the whip hand, and they don't want us to re-use and share seeds as the natural course of things. If you think that a farmer ought to be able to use the seeds from one crop in the next season, you are entertaining  illegal ideas.

Pioneers of Ecological Humanism

Click here to access article by Janet Biehl from New Compass (Norway).

Biehl, in her review of a new book by Brian Morris entitled Pioneers of Ecological Humanism, makes reference to profound views by recent thinkers who have been forgotten. I believe this happened because such views had to be "disappeared" from all media controlled by the One Percent. This demonstrates the power of mainstream media and educational institutions to control how and what we think.

Several thinkers whose names have since faded from memory were, back then, innovators in formulating the ecological critique of industrial capitalism that we take for granted today. Among them were Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), René Dubos (1901-82) and Murray Bookchin (1921-2006).

They have, Brian Morris argues, been forgotten too quickly. At a time when we are still struggling—intellectually, politically, and ethically—to grasp the reality of climate change, to face its implications, and to prevent it from getting worse (and in some cases even acknowledge its existence), the work of these three philosophers contains wisdom that is stimulating and germane. In Pioneers of Ecological Humanism, Morris has taken on task of demonstrating their intellectual stature and reaffirming their continued relevance.

Is Malaysia Teetering on the Edge of an Islamist Knife?

Click here to access article by Nile Bowie from Global Research. 

This writer provides further support to the article in Land Destroyer which is in opposition to a corresponding one in Open Democracy as I reported in this posting. Also, see this.

Why Europe can’t just “fix” youth unemployment

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution.

This European writer, while noticing a sudden concern among European political leaders agents regarding youth unemployment, explains why their formulation of this problem is self-serving and simply wrong. He has a hunch what this concern is really about.

This article is an introduction to some proposed answers to what he regards as the key problem and question:

How could Europe’s downtrodden youth ever possibly conceive of shaking the global financial order? It is to this impossible question that I will turn in my next post. 

It Wasn’t Conservatives That Were Being Investigated by the IRS; It Was the Koch Brothers’ Front Groups

Click here to access article by Pam Martens from Wall Street on Parade. 

...the Koch brothers must be laughing all the way to the bank.

While mainstream US media plays up the persecution of the Tea Party theme, we have here an alternative report on what the real story is. I suspect that the widespread reporting of this manufactured scandal provides a useful distraction from the real scandal of government spying on the private communications of journalists.

Israel’s Act of War Against Syria—Madness or Cold Calculation?

Click here to access article by  F. William Engdahl from Voltaire.

This sharp-eyed global-political analyst brings together various pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of the Syrian crisis to form a coherent picture of recent events.

US Prepares to Overthrow Malaysian Government

Click here to access article from Alternative Thai News Network. 

The street protests conducted by Bersih have all the hallmarks of US-backed "color revolutions," and this recent attempt to overturn election results that do not favor an overt US-proxy, foreshadows the same destructive, divisive, violent, and regressive unrest that has plagued Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria after US-engineered uprisings have left each in turn destabilized, failed states overrun by extremists, dictators, and traitors many times worse than the governments activists sought to overthrow.

I think that the headline should be stated as a question, however the article provides substantial evidence in the affirmative.

Collective Punishment Advocates Cry Foul Over Stephen Hawking’s Support of BDS

Click here to access article by Murtaza Hussain from Muftah. 

The decision last week by British physicist Stephen Hawking to abide by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel has predictably touched off a major controversy. While he has attracted many supporters, Hawking has also received a large degree of vitriol from certain pro-Israel quarters.

Could Hawking be (shudder!) an anti-Semite, too? (sarcasm) 

Meanwhile, back at the Israeli ranch we find institutionalized racism reported in this article.

The Project to Expose Power Structures

Click here to access posting by Andrew Gavin Marshall from his blog.

Because I have an extreme dislike for commercials--no doubt, from being daily bombarded by them--I have intentionally omitted any from my blog. This may be the closest I've come to featuring one, but in this pitch no one is getting rich and powerful from supporting the work of Marshall. 

See the world through a different lens [with] Andrew Gavin Marshall

On the other hand, we might think about ourselves all getting a bit more powerful by reading his well-documented and well-reasoned material. (Some examples: this, this, and this.) This brilliant scholar, in contrast to media directors hired by the One Percent, has dedicated his life to unraveling the truth that they hide behind many layers of deception. He, no doubt, could earn a very comfortable income working in some academic institution writing obscure intellectual articles that served the interests of the One Percent. His dedication serves us by empowering us with knowledge about the real world so that we can create effective tools to re-arrange the organization of existing societies to serve OUR needs, not theirs.

SUPPORT THE WORK OF ANDREW GAVIN MARSHALL!

Papelitos: An Economic Parable For Our Times

Click here to access article posted by Don Quijones from Raging Bull-Shit.

This parable has much to teach people about the complex betting schemes used by the One Percent at the capitalist casino to enrich themselves while creating havoc in our lives. For obvious reasons, such simple explanations are missing in mainstream media and other organs of indoctrination.

Part children’s fable, part economic parable, Papelitos was written by Hernán Casciari, one of the rising stars of Argentinean literature, with the help of his eight-year old daughter Nina. It is a tale about how a small, idyllic village succumbs to the destructive influence of financial speculation, triggering asset bubbles and ultimately wealth destruction for most of its inhabitants.