We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore LappĂ©, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Are You a Mind-Controlled CIA Stooge?

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his website.
Do you smirk when you hear someone question the official stories of Orlando, San Bernardino, Paris or Nice? Do you feel superior to 2,500 architects and engineers, to firefighters, commercial and military pilots, physicists and chemists, and former high government officials who have raised doubts about 9/11? If so, you reflect the profile of a mind-controlled CIA stooge.
Well, not to worry if you are one of those "CIA stooges". There is an excellent antidote to this CIA inflicted disease in the form of a book lauded by Roberts entitled Conspiracy Theory in America by political science professor Lance deHaven-Smith. Seriously, the book looks very promising. If you are not a CIA stooge, you surely know someone who is, and you could send them this book as a cure.

Facing the Violence Organized by the Capitalist State

Click here to access article from The Spark.

After reviewing the recent violence perpetrated by the police in Milwaukee, the writer concludes:
...to safeguard everything the capitalists have stolen from the population, government officials have beefed up the entire repressive state apparatus.

The police violence in Milwaukee is not an accident. It is just one arm of the violence imposed by the capitalist social and economic system on the entire working class, especially its most oppressed layers.

The same kinds of attacks that are taking place in Milwaukee are happening all across the country.

Friday, September 2, 2016

Beyond the 28 Pages - What A Real 9/11 Investigation Would Reveal

by "AlienScientist" from YouTube.
After 15 years of meticulous research and analysis into the events and theories surrounding 9/11, this is a collection of all the best facts and evidence proving who had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the crimes we witnessed on September 11th, and who ought to be investigated if we ever hope to get to the bottom of it.

The way the world will end? Superstorms, soaring temperatures, droughts, fires and the collision of political, economic and environmental disasters

Click here to access article by Will Denayer from Flassbeck-Economics (based in Germany). [A best post.]

This website offers some of the best analysis backed up by solid documentation on various topics related to economics. This article focuses on climate destabilization.
This is what we are seeing. The ‘impeding dislocations’ of climate change intersect with already existing crises of poverty and neoliberal violence all over the world. The militarized response to the threat of terrorism and the militarisation of the Mediterranean with regards of the refugee problem of today leaves no doubt that increasing militarisation will be used in order to respond to the impeding crises that the multiple threats of climate change are creating. Based on what we did so far, what will be the likely answer of the West to a MENA region which becomes increasingly uninhabitable, while European and American cities are running under water, infrastructure is taken apart and global food prices spike?

Don’t Feed the Snakes

Click here to access article by Rejane Carolina Hoeveler from Jacobin

This examines some lessons that can be learned from the right-wing takeover of the left government in Brazil. 

Once again we see in South America, as we've seen elsewhere, that there can be no compromises with the capitalist class. Reformers (liberals) within left parties can easily be bribed with offices and power to make such compromises with the snakes of capitalism. But slowly the latter will grow into large snakes that will devour those who thought they could tame them. Only devoutly revolutionary parties that are held to their goal of building a new social structure by bottom-up power arrangements within their movement can succeed in starving the snakes of capitalism.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Top USA National Security Officials Admit Turkey Coup

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook

Super geopolitical sleuth Engdahl digs up some embarrassing (to US intelligence officials) material regarding the recent coup attempt against Erdogan of Turkey. However this piece must be read carefully and the implications from it should be regarded as rather speculative. 

Notice especially that the EurActiv and (apparently) the Oriental Review websites have retracted the article that Engdahl cites by retired State Department figure Arthur H. Hughes after the latter recently swore that he did not write the article.

I also question whether one can reach the conclusion that Engdahl does:
July 15 may go down in history as one of the most decisive defeats of American global power projection, of the so-called New World Order of David Rockefeller and friends. If so, not a minute too soon for the prospect of a more peaceful world.
It looks to me like that his findings suggest that the Zionist neocons have taken direct control of our foreign policies, and that they have replaced the Rockefeller imperialist faction. I would have liked to see some documentation to back up the following statement made by Engdahl regarding Turkey:
Notably, the person in the US State Department directly responsible for not only the disastrous US coup in February, 2014 in Ukraine, but also for Turkey, is the hapless neo-con perpetual warrior-ess, Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland, wife of neo-con Robert Kagan.
If Engdahl is correct about the neocons being behind the coup in Turkey, this is a rather frightening prospect even though the CIA planned coup against Erdogan failed in this instance. Thus I don't see a "more peaceful world" ahead. Future events should give us more evidence to interpret these recent events.

The Neocon in the Oval Office

Click here to access article by Paul Larudee from Dissident Voice.
If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes US President, she will be the first neoconservative to actually occupy that office. The neoconservatives have been an ascendant force in policymaking since the Reagan administration, and remained (through Vice President Dick Cheney) an unsteady heartbeat from the presidency in the G.W. Bush administration. Now possession of the highest office in the land is within their grasp.

This is important because the neoconservatives are wedded to war, death and destruction. It is the foundation of their policy and it dominates the culture that they have created. They see war and conquest as the means to maintain unchallenged US military, political, and economic supremacy in the world – and even (according to H.R. Clinton) as a “business opportunity”.

Graham: Many More Documents on Saudi Links to 9/11 Still Secret

Click here to access article from 28pages.org.
In an appearance this morning at the National Press Club, former Senate intelligence committee chairman Bob Graham said the July release of 28 pages from a 2002 congressional inquiry was just the first step toward gaining full transparency on the U.S. government’s investigation of Saudi links to the 9/11 attacks.

“This is removing the cork from the bottle,” said Graham. “There is a significant amount of information which, like the 28 pages, has been withheld and it was necessary to get this first block of material to the public in order to build the support that will be necessary for the balance of the material to flow.”

Why does the Invisible Government Continue to Grow in Strength?

Click here to access article by Moti Nissani from The Greanville Post.

In this article Nissani draws extensively from observations of others who have examined the nature of private banking and its effects.The rather long article's main strength is that it sees much of the history of the USA determined by the actions of the top part of the capitalist class--the major bankers. 

In this history he also explains a bit about the development of banking and how central banks and banks in general work to create money out of nothing and charge interest on it. With this class's control of banking, they also determine who gets funding and who doesn't. Thus banking gives bankers incredible power by giving them control over the issuance of money and who gets the money they create out of nothing. With this double power they have managed to create an invisible government that is a kind of puppet play of official "democratic" government behind which they pull the strings of their puppets. This major banker class have also managed to install their agents in every institution of society.
The bankers have played a destructive role in American history, always achieving their goals through a combination of clandestine conspiracies, control of information sources, controlled elections, bribery, intimidation, smears, imprisonment, and assassinations.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

The Campaign to Blame Putin for Everything

Click here to access article by Justin Raimondo from AntiWar.com.

I would go further than Raimondo does because I've never seen corporate media this bad over my adult lifespan of 60 years, and just when I think it has reached rock-bottom, it gets worse.
What we are seeing in this election season is a propaganda campaign the likes of which we haven’t experienced since the run up to the Iraq war. We are being buried in a veritable shit-storm of lies on a daily basis. Except that, this time, the target isn’t some third-rate Third World despot like Saddam Hussein, nor it is really Donald Trump, whose electoral prospects were never that great to begin with. Trump is just collateral damage – the real quarry is Vladimir Putin.

In concert with a bevy of exiled Russian oligarchs and Western “investors” who plundered Yeltsin-era Russia and were cut off from their orgy of lucrative looting by Putin, the historically Russophobic Clintons and their newfound neoconservative allies dream of regime change in Russia. The vast oil and mineral wealth to be found in Russia’s central Asian provinces and “near abroad,” is a tempting target for those who habitually combine profiteering with politics. The Clintons and their crony capitalist corporate benefactors are drooling at the prospect of looting a prostrate Russia, and Putin stands in their way. Therefore, he must go – and if they have to risk World War III in order to accomplish their goal, well then so be it.

The “Movement for Black Lives” unveils Platform courtesy of $100 million from parasitic capitalist organizations

Click here to access article by Aaron O'Neal from The Burning Spear.

Once again we see capitalist agents trying to control an organization by funding them. O'Neal argues that capitalists are already trying to control various African-American protest movements, most especially the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization. In contrast to BLM, he favors Black is Back which has a long history of advocating Black power and Black community control over police forces.
Ironically, 50 years ago it was Stokely Carmichael who popularized the phrase "Black Power." This has widely been seen as the split that catapulted our movement from the opportunist demands of the Civil Rights Movement to the black power era that that swept the African community with such ferocity.

This movement was militarily defeated by the U.S. government with the killing of MLK 2 years later, Fred Hampton and destruction of our organizations through counterinsurgent attacks like the Black Panther Party.

Private funding sources were part and parcel
[of] counterinsurgent attacks on our movement in the 1960s that lead to the defeat of our movement. We cannot relieve the mistakes of the past.

Humanity at Risk

Click here to access article by Stephen Lendman from The Greanville Post.

Referring to Einstein's warning back in 1946: "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.", he writes:
Neocons in Washington represent the greatest threat to life on earth. If war against Russia or China is launched with nuclear weapons, Einstein’s dark prediction could become reality.

They’ll be no turning back. Extinction may follow or conditions so devastating for survivors they’ll wish they were dead – anything to end their unbearable suffering.

Valuing Education?

Click here to access article by economist Peter Radford from Real-World Economics Review Blog

Radford sifts through another article for solid numbers on the support of education in the last few decades to reveal that in spite of political campaign rhetoric the US, with a few exceptions, is declining in its support of education.

Corporate welfare

Click here if you wish to access the cartoon by Max Gustafson directly from his website. 

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Mike Whitney on YouTube commenting on corporate media in relation to Brzezinski's change of views

This is a followup post of my post on August 25th of Whitney's article in CounterPunch.

Whitney devotes the first 3:23m of the 4:38m video to point out the total lack of reporting by corporate media of Brzezinski's startling change of views in regard to Russia. Following this is a film clip from a scene from the 1980s in which Brzezinski exhorts the Mujaheddin, the Empire's first Muslim terrorist army, to overthrow the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan which was supported militarily by the USSR (similar to Syria today).

What Syria's Kurds "Think" They are Fighting For Versus Reality

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.
The use of Kurds by Western interests is a modern-day example of classical imperial divide and rule in motion. What the Kurds "think" they are fighting for is absolutely irrelevant versus what in reality they are being armed, organized, and used for by Western interests.

Unhealthy healthcare: double squeeze

Click here to access article by economist David Ruccio from Occasional Links & Commentary
While middle-income households are spending 25 percent more on health care, their real incomes actually fell 6.5 percent between 2007 and 2014, from $57,357 to $53,657.

Clearly, American workers are increasingly being squeezed by their employers at both ends—while they’re at work (since they’re working less and less time for themselves and more for their employers) and while they’re away from work (since they’ve been forced to assume a larger and larger share of the costs of their healthcare)

Monday, August 29, 2016

The GOP's Stealth War Against Voters

Click here to access article by Greg Palast from Rolling Stone.

Elections have always been held up as a primary feature of "democracy". However, our ruling capitalist class have learned over the years how to subvert that process of democracy. In this article Palast seems to focus narrowly on the GOP, and I question why.

It is no accident of history that our ruling capitalist class first restricted the vote to white property owning males. You see, our reverently referred to "Founding Fathers" (they have been deified) did this intentionally because they feared the rest of the population. At that time they discovered that mixing people into large voting areas tended to dilute any real democratic pressures from below. (Remember that roads were poor and the means of communication was limited.) It has been taught to us, along with a lot of other garbage, that the system of checks and balances that is a part of the design of our government was to protect against autocrats from coming to power. The truth is that the new American ruling class led by Hamilton and the banker Morris had a terrible fear of citizens and designed the new government to protect them from the "unwashed masses". (Read Unruly Americans by Woody Holton and An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles Beard.) 

Since then we have witnessed the extension of voting rights to most of the rest of the population, but this was only allowed because over time the capitalist class tightened their grip on the media and education to instill ideas that were favorable to their rule. They also used a variety of other tricks to subvert any meaningful democracy by their control over what political parties were allowed to participate, gerrymandering districts, poll taxes, and now with the purging of voter rolls. 

(If all else failed, they never hesitated to hire private hooligans (for example, the Pinkertons), or us the FBI, the National Guard (for example, the Kent State massacre) to insure that their interests and policies are protected. Nowadays they are using aggressive local police forces trained in crowd control by the Israelis.)

Judging by the extremely slanted coverage of the current presidential campaigns by corporate media, it is clear that the deep state wants Hillary Clinton as the figurehead president. Donald Trump is too much of a maverick who likely cannot be bought or intimidated to follow their orders. They will insure that Hillary is elected and that neoliberal and neoconservative interests are well represented in Congress.  

So the way that Palast frames this article, he seems to be promoting the idea that only Trump and the GOP are seeking to subvert the elections. This is only a shameful step away from promoting the idea that Hillary Clinton should be elected.

15 Years Later: On the Physics of High-Rise Building Collapses

Click here to access a free article by Steven Jones, Robert Korol, Anthony Szamboti, and Ted Walter published in a European science journal, Europhysics News. (You will need to access this article by clicking on the PDF format on the right side of the website post.)

In only six pages, which are filled with diagrams and pictures, the scientists summarize their investigation with this statement.
Conclusion

It bears repeating that fires have never caused the total collapse of a steel-framed high-rise before or since 9/11. Did we witness an unprecedented event three separate
times on September 11, 2001? The NIST
[U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology] reports, which attempted to support that unlikely conclusion, fail to persuade a growing number of architects, engineers, and scientists. Instead, the evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that all three buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition. Given the far-reaching implications, it is morally imperative that this hypothesis be the subject of a truly scientific and impartial investigation by responsible authorities.
This scientific examination of the 9/11 fairy tale, that our masters used to explain the tragedy, offers an excellent illustration of the power of our capitalist ruling class. They can even intimidate NIST, the nation's premiere scientific institution, to go along with their fairy tales. However a growing number of our scientists, engineers, and architects are beginning to challenge it on scientific grounds. The ruling class, although on the defensive, so far are not going after these people because they are counting on you to know longer care about 9/11. After all, they got what they wanted: an aggressive foreign policy that reserves the right to invade any country without Congressional approval, never-ending wars, the framework of a police state embodied in the Patriot Acts, and a dumbed-down and passive citizenry.

Big Pharma as capitalist enterprise

from Mad magazine.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Eva Bartlett Challenges the Corrupt Western Media’s Vision of Syria [followed by a genuine revolutionary idea]

Click here if you wish to access this 15:16m RT produced video interview with the Canadian activist, Eva Bartlett, directly from her website In Gaza. In the interview she reports on her observations while recently visiting Syria. Also from her website we learn that she is a...
Canadian activist/freelance journalist. I've lived cumulative ~3 years in Gaza, spent time in Lebanon and visited Syria 4 times since April 2014. Anti-zionist, anti-imperialist, pro-justice.


This article written by an independent observer on the ground in Syria got me thinking. It seems to me that many people are rather desperately looking for some progressive alternative to politics as is usually practiced in our nation and Canada. A new media organization with revolutionary potential could very well inspire and motivate these people. The next great idea that could satisfy this demand could be a radically organized independent media organization. It seems to me that many disaffected people in our two countries are ready to support such a venture. 

This could be accomplished by people setting up their own media organization supported with low cost subscriptions that are gathered from millions of Americans and Canadians who want reports from independent on-the-ground observers of events instead of propaganda pieces from corporate media that justify Empire policies and actions. It seems to me that this project could be initiated by staff from the many alternative media websites coming together to pool their resources and technical abilities in support of a new North American independent media organization instead of using a Russian media network as this interview does.

The makeup of this new media organization would incorporate a new radical revolutionary perspective that would be oriented around a bottom-up authority structure. It seems to me that local groups of subscribers could be formed across the US and Canada, and they in turn would elect representatives that would have the authority to hire and fire staff. The organization could make considerable use of the internet to mediate decisions instead of face-to-face meetings. 

Organizers would no doubt experience terrific opposition from corporate media and the ruling class, but this could be used to further raise the political consciousness of the brainwashed American and Canadian people.

Facing the Violence Organized by the Capitalist State

Click here to access article from The Spark
...to safeguard everything the capitalists have stolen from the population, government officials have beefed up the entire repressive state apparatus.

The police violence in Milwaukee is not an accident. It is just one arm of the violence imposed by the capitalist social and economic system on the entire working class, especially its most oppressed layers.

The same kinds of attacks that are taking place in Milwaukee are happening all across the country. But in Milwaukee, just as in Ferguson and Baltimore, people opposed themselves to the state apparatus that protects the capitalists’ profits.

The Happiness Industry by William Davies review – why capitalism has turned us into narcissists

Click here to access this book review by Terry Eagleton from The Guardian
In our own time, the concept of happiness has moved from the private sphere to the public one. As William Davies reports in this fascinating study, a growing number of corporations employ chief happiness officers, while Google has a “jolly good fellow” to keep the company’s spirits up. Maybe the Bank of England should consider hiring a jester. Specialist happiness consultants advise those who have been forcibly displaced from their homes on how to move on emotionally. Two years ago, British Airways trialled a “happiness blanket”, which turns from red to blue as the passenger becomes more relaxed so that your level of contentment is visible to the flight attendants. A new drug, Wellbutrin, promises to alleviate major depressive symptoms occurring after the loss of a loved one.

Life Itself Is Being Patented, Privatized and Re-engineered

Click here to access article by Mark Karlin from Truthout.

Karlin interviews Ashley Dawson, author of Extinction: A Radical History, about the ideas contained in his book. Dawson sees capitalism as the driving force behind the extinction of so many species.
Today’s mass extinction crisis is one of the clearest indications we have of the fundamental irrationality and destructiveness of the capitalist system.