Pushing for a Lucrative New Cold War

Click here to access article by Gareth Porter from ConsortiumNews. 

The New Cold War promises untold riches for the Military-Industrial Complex, causing hawks inside the Obama administration to push for more hostilities with Russia, as in a Syrian case study dissected by Gareth Porter....

The case study was:

Airstrikes by the United States and its allies against two Syrian army positions Sept. 17 killed at least 62 Syrian troops and wounded dozens more. The attack was quickly treated as a non-story by the U.S. news media; U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) claimed the strikes were carried out in the mistaken belief that Islamic State forces were being targeted, and the story disappeared.

Referring to the military-industrial faction in the capitalist ruling class, Porter's conclusion was that "those people had the power and the audacity to frustrate the will of the President of the United States."

Well, of course they had the power and thus there was no audacity involved in their decision. Porter, like most Americans, refuses to believe that anything other than the official government is in charge of what the government actually does.

I think what the case study indicates is that the ruling class directors are frustrated and disorganized due to the failure of their strategies--the support of their terrorist army (ISIS) and other proxy armies (Syrian Kurds)--to bring down the Syrian government because of Russia's support of the Syrian government. That is why their corporate media continue to issue so many outrageously unbelievable lies. Trump's election (and the failure of their candidate Hillary Clinton) and their media's continuing overt opposition to his administration is another indication of their disorganized state--something which we have not seen since they were thwarted in their attempts to bring down the Cuban government in 1961.

Making Sense of Donald Trump. Creating a Divide between Russia and China

Click here to access article by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich from Global Research. 

Unfortunately, last month I missed this article which makes a rather convincing argument that Trump represents a faction that wants to pursue a slightly different strategy against opponents of the Empire's new world order. Yes, it looks like the old divide and conquer strategy. Thus, the author joins F. William Engdahl who believes the same.

While Trump has made his position vis-à-vis China, Iran, and “radical Islam” abundantly clear, the media has led us on a different path where Russia is concerned.   As such, one could be forgiven for thinking that Trump will reset the button with Russia.  In fact, in the scheme of things, Trump is attempting to wean Russia away from China, Iran, and Syria  in order to continue and accomplish US goals:  Total domination, prevent Russia from re-emerging, contain China, contain Iran, Israel expansion. 

When You Thought Trade Deals Could Not Get Any Worse -- Enter Wall Street.

Click here to access article by Paul Keenlyside from the Sierra Club.

Because only corporations, not governments, can launch ISDS [my link] cases, governments have no equivalent funding sources [compared to wealthy hedge funds which are backing corporate law suits against governments].

Big Pharma prices, profits soar

Click here to access article by Betsey Piette from Workers World.

Affecting all population sectors in the U.S., the costs of prescription medicines are skyrocketing, fueled by the pharmaceutical industry’s greed and monopoly control of the market.

The capitalist ruling class will only allow passage of legislation that helps working people if it will benefit their corporation's profits. Although Social Security was forced on them by activists during the dark days of the Great Depression, our ruling masters soon learned how to "borrow" money from this fund to support their many wars and tax cuts for their rich members. As this article reports, the programs of Medicare, Medicaid, along with the Affordable Care Act have been used to enrich the owners of pharmaceutical corporations.

“Anti-Trump” New Left Continues Crypto-Identity Politics

Click here to access article by Bruce Lerro from Planning Beyond Capitalism.

I was alerted to this website by Pete Dolack who wrote a critique of an article entitled "Economic issues are not separate from 'identity' issues" posted on the Planning Beyond Capitalism website because (in his opinion) it failed to promote both identity politics as well as class politics. Because I, too, have been critical of identity politics which has thoroughly dominated the American left since the Vietnam War, I have some criticisms of Dolack's critique.

First of all, the author was arguing that identity politics within capitalism can never be a successful strategy to overturn the system. I totally agree. And, he never said in the article that he was against the issues promoted by identity politics--it's just that they are not revolutionary. I totally agree. 

In criticizing identity politics I am not proposing that race and gender issues should not be discussed or that they don’t matter.

Capitalism is the issue for our times; and if we don't overturn its existence, we humans along with many other species will stop existing. It is quite literally a matter of life or death for humans.

Political agents of the capitalist ruling class certainly recognized this flaw in identity politics. They encouraged it simply because it was not revolutionary, and it offered an excellent way of diverting left political energies away from class politics that so threatened their rule during the 1930s. (They even fund websites that pretend to be "activists" such as Democracy Now! and The Nation, but actually function as political gatekeepers for the ruling class.)

It is part of a long-standing liberal ideology that spans over a century to promise that under capitalism all ethnicities and genders will be able to compete for a piece of the capitalist pie. Gradually we are told that with education and an expanding economy capitalism will welcome all. After the 1960’s liberals gave up on supporting their color blind ideology, and have been sliding to the right ever since. The New Left, never having taken their own working class very seriously, happily took over race and gender inequalities that should have been the domain of liberals. For 45 years leftists, instead of developing and expanding a socialist program, simply took over the New Deal program that the old liberals abandoned. 

This is precisely why they promoted the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for president. And mostly middle class left activists were suckered into promoting exclusively identity politics because it was more "respectable", and that is because the middle class in general are always concerned about being respectable in the eyes of the capitalist class.

The extent to which identity politics still governs the liberal and social democratic left, the answer is because Obama, after all, is an African-American president. From the point of view of identity politics, what more can we ask for? He is the first African-American president. For identity politics advocates, the fact that Obama is a Harvard lawyer is no reason to be cynical of his true class interests. Rather, we should be impressed with his credentials.

But as soon as a rich white male is elected, these crypto New Leftists at last gladly see a familiar target. People pour into the streets.

As activists, either we are serious about the overthrow of capitalism because it is the root of most of the evils we experience today, or we think the system is basically fine (it can be tinkered with and fixed), and that we should concentrate on other issues. But the latter should not pretend otherwise as they often do.

How The CIA vs. Donald Trump War Is Just Getting Started

Click here if you wish to access this 6:45m video and rough transcript directly from We Are Change. 

Luke Rudkowski, the founder of this website, exposes the role of the CIA, one of weapons used by the capitalist ruling class's Deep State, along with 15 other secret unaccountable subversive agencies, to keep the US and their Empire from straying from their agendas of power and profits.



Like many other political observers on the left, I have been trying to understand what happened with the surprising election of Trump in spite of corporate media's campaign against him. Knowing that the CIA agendas have thoroughly been embedded in corporate media (beginning with Operation Mockingbird), this was a major puzzle to me along with many other left observers. 

Previously I hypothesized that Trump's election was a symptom of a split in the ruling class over strategies to pursue with regard to foreign policy, specifically in relations to Russia and China. The Trump faction represented Wall Street interests which either simply wanted to do more business with Russia or wanted to split Russia from China or both.This post has caused me to modify my hypothesis.

It looks to me like Trump's election was somewhat of a fluke in a very controlled, well-managed election system that actually represented a true vote count (there was no hacking by anybody, least of all the Russians). This result represented a revolt by wide segments of the population against ruling class authoritative sources in corporate media and a widespread opposition to the deterioration of the American economy and solid job opportunities that have occurred since the 1970s. With Trump's election many Wall Street people jumped on his bandwagon to promote their own corporate businesses, but his election greatly disturbed Deep State operatives of the capitalist ruling class that have been in charge of Empire policies since WWII.

In contrast to Rudkowski last comment (at 5:45m), I have seen a similar phenomenon with the election of John Kennedy in 1960. His policies generally wanted less aggressive actions to overthrow independent or unfriendly governments and to avoid confrontations with the Soviet Union that the CIA had been engaging in. Although this split was mostly concealed from public view, we subsequently learned that to oppose the CIA, a major weapon of the Deep State, was ultimately risking assassination. 

However, I don't think that Trump will be assassinated. He is too much of a businessman who likes to make deals with powerful actors. He will make deals with the Deep State to satisfy their interests in exchange for making money for himself and his Wall Street friends. He has already got on board the Empire's "pivot to China" program.

The Nasty Truth About Yemen

Click here to access article by Gordon Duff from New Eastern Outlook.

Yemen is another of the Empire's war crimes that hasn't been adequately covered in alternative media simply because the Empire is engaged in so many crimes worldwide. By looking at a lot of the evidence which I've been posting over the past seven years, it is easily to conclude that the ruling class's Deep State is really an organized crime syndicate. This article furnishes more evidence to support this conclusion. However, most people don't know this because the directors of the US-led transnational capitalist class's Empire constantly issue fake news reports via their corporate media to hide their crimes.

Were one to analyze “fake news” or “controlled news” or even “false historical narrative,” one would find a single overriding issue and that is a need to damn those who identify a single financial cabal as behind all war and social strife in the world. Thus, any who look at terrorism and extremism and, after peeling away the veneer, find other forces at work, tend to find themselves targeted.

Although Duff doesn't identify those forces adequately, I will. They are all the forces that are driven by the dynamics of concentrated wealth and power that capitalism creates.

The Entire World is “Fake News”

Click here to access article by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook.

Vltchek offers a comprehensive view of fake news that consists of the whole spectrum of Empire indoctrination from corporate media news reports to indoctrination in higher education. 

My only criticism is that his headline exaggerates by including the "entire world". This is primarily true of the world controlled by the US Empire, and to a lessor extent by countries whose ruling classes are insecure. But there are other countries that do permit and even promote a free exchange of ideas. Many US dissidents, particularly those who expose corporate and government lies or who attack capitalism, must now find outlets abroad or go underground to express their views: Julian Assange and Wikileaks, various commentators from Empire countries that are featured on RT, Abby Martin who frequently is featured on teleSUR, and Seymour Hersh who was dropped by the New Yorker and now writes for the London Review of Books.

Bullshit

by British illustrator and animator Steve Cutts from his website.

Democracy for the people, not for the money-bags

Click here to access article by Sally Campbell from Socialist Review (Britain). 

Campbell uses the upcoming centenary of the Russian Revolution to review the real significance of that event which shaped profoundly most subsequent events of the 20th century and of many events into this century. She focuses on the ideological significance of Lenin's thoughts about real democracy which is in sharp contrast what most of us have been taught through capitalist ideological institutions--schools, corporate media, and corporate entertainment. 

The Russian Revolution exposed common people to ideas that exposed the exploitative nature of class rule and affirmed ideas about a classless, truly democratic rule of, by, and for the people over every institution of society. Of course, in this new ideology no significant private ownership/control of the economy was permitted. The people would decide all important issues. Such ideas were a profound shock to Western capitalists, and there developed among these ruling classes a visceral hatred for these ideas which fundamentally challenged their rule, their wealth, and their privileges. 

They immediately tried to crush the revolution: 13 capitalist nations invaded Russia immediately following their revolution and many of these nations also funded the White armies opposing the Bolsheviks. Since then Western countries have launched wide ranging campaigns in every ideological sector to censor, distort, fabricate, and counter such ideas in order to prevent these ideas from taking hold in their own countries and influencing working people to make their own revolution. During the 1930s Western capitalists started funding the Nazi Party (see this, this, this, and this) when they determined that they could use it as a vehicle to expand eastward and destroy the Soviet Union. Also, the fascist parties across Europe were very useful in countering the influence of socialist type parties in existing capitalist countries.

Meanwhile under such severe pressure from the West and widespread disease and famine following the revolution, Soviet rule deteriorated into an authoritarian, top-down, bureaucratic class rule which eventually proved unable to counter the growth of the US-led Empire.

Immediately following WWII with all rivals in a weakened state the US ruling capitalist class saw a great opportunity to impose their rule on the world, and immediately embarked on imperial adventures starting with the Korean War to counter the socialist forces in that country which had been struggling for nearly 20 years against Japanese colonial-capitalist rule. Then the fascist section of the ruling class joined with the entire ruling class and attempted and largely succeeded in reversing some of the labor rights legislation of the FDR administration and purge progressive people on the left (McCarthy period) from Hollywood, education, and media who had been active in left wing movements of the 1930s; in foreign affairs they used mostly the CIA (Operation Gladio) and propaganda media to suppress very popular left-wing movements most especially in Europe and to a lessor, but significant extent in other areas of the world under US control or influence. At the same time the Cold War began in earnest.

Since then, the US Empire, using the CIA, toppled one government after another which were too independent; funded armies to overthrow other governments the Empire didn't like; directly engaged in the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War; in smaller countries they used military operations against nations like Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti; and now in the 21st century we are witnessing never-ending wars.

Lenin's embryonic ideas about real democracy are still alive today in the imagination of all revolutionary-minded people, and ruling capitalist classes are still trying to crush such ideas. You can see this in the current attempt to suppress alternative media that frequently present reports that counter their many lies. This battle will be fought until either a tiny fascist-capitalist class rules the world or the people rule. In the meantime while these battles are being fought, capitalist addiction to relatively cheap fossil fuels and their obsessive drive for more profits are destroying the habitat that can support the lives of humans and many other species on our planet Earth.

Hopelessly devoted to fossil fuels [a "best post"]

Click here to access article by Amy Leather from Socialist Review (Britain). 

So why won’t our rulers act? We need to look beyond the individual politicians. There are, of course, the climate change deniers, who must be challenged and stopped, but much of the ruling class does accept that climate change is a reality. The problem is they are guardians of a system with fossil fuels at its heart. Tackling the climate crisis would mean tackling the vested interests of the fossil fuel corporations — some of the most profitable companies in the world. To understand why capitalism and fossil fuels are so intertwined we need to go back to the time of the industrial revolution in Britain. 

Bitter banter about pollution turns into anger, frustration

Click here to access article by Bai Tiantian from Global Times (China).

There are definite drawbacks to serving as a workshop for the capitalist world, and this is one of the most obvious. Of course, this was Deng Xiaoping's "win-win" strategy which began in 1978 (profits for Western corporations by using China's cheap labor in exchange for technology) to accelerate the building of China's economy. And it worked fabulously well. But there are downsides and extreme pollution is one of them. Others? Consumerist values and potential capitalist influence in China's ruling class.

Public opinion in China was choked with depression, fear and anger, as large swaths of the country remained shrouded in dangerously high levels of smog and the Beijing government prolonged its yellow alert till Saturday.

Wednesday was the fifth day since the environmental department issued an orange alert for smog in Beijing. Highways have been shut down, flights canceled, and construction work and some vehicles are restricted in order to ease pollution.

However, economic losses are meager compared with torrential waves of complaints by disgruntled city dwellers.

You might also be interested in reading this editorial entitled "Massive social reform needed to cure smog" from the same source.

Germany’s Only Independent Newspaper Says Germany's Gov’t. Is Controlled by US Gov’t

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN), or German Economic News — an online daily news service for Germans, which has vigorously fought against the U.S. CIA’s longstanding (and now intensifying control over Germany’s ‘news’ media, and which has also helped to promote a book by an editor for the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung who publicly exposed and denounced his previous subordination to the CIA, and who is now being blackballed by Germany’s ’news’media for reporting such things — is finally going behind a pay-wall to sustain its independence, and alleges that the reason for doing this is that financial pressures from the Establishment’s ’news’ media require that this be done, or else DWN will be forced to shut down service altogether.

 Germany, as an outpost of the U.S. Empire, has its ‘news’media seeking to crush ‘fake news’, just as is the case inside the Empire’s center — the U.S.

And Zuesse offers a translated statement by the newspaper that explains why their news website must now charge their patrons for their online news coverage.

Zuesse also provides you with a link to the video and transcript of the brave confession of Udo Ulfkotte, the former editor of the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung (the NY Times of Germany), about his and other German journalists being forced, as a condition of employment, to promote US propaganda. (I fear for his life.) If you haven't seen the video, I urge you to do so. Now the website of Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten is facing similar economic pressures to conform to the diktats of the Empire's controllers.

US Concerns Over “Election Interference” May Backfire

Click here to access article by Joseph Thomas from New Eastern Outlook.

While the US has little evidence regarding Russia’s role in leaking what were genuine e-mails revealing very real impropriety among American political circles, nations like China, Malaysia and Thailand have verified evidence that opposition fronts are funded, backed and even directed by US organisations like NED. What has been perhaps preventing these nations from dismantling these foreign-backed networks, has been the illusion of America’s pro-democracy stance. However, with the US now cracking down on whistle-blowers, opposition media and shifting tides amid American politics all based on allegations of “Russian” involvement, what is preventing other states from cracking down on verified US interference in their own internal politics?

Thomas only barely scratches the surface of US interference in other countries' political processes by focusing only on recent interference--and this omits a lot. If he were to elaborate on US interference since the end of WWII, it would require hours of reading. Ever since the fascist element of the US ruling capitalist class came out of the woodwork after WWII (previously they hid in the woodwork of "isolationism") to promote their own empire after the Nazis, who they helped fund (see this, this, this, and this) failed, they interfered in the political affairs of nations wherever they could; and when such interference using unaccountable secret services and NGO fronts that didn't work, they brought in the jackals of armed forces to secure the governments they wanted.

A well-kept open secret: Washington is behind India’s brutal experiment of abolishing most cash

Click here to access article by Norbert Haering from Real-World Economic Review Blog.

Could it be that our ruling capitalist class operatives are using India as an experiment to see how a cashless electronic system would work as a test for its application here in the US and their satellite countries of the Empire? And why would they want to install such a system? Read the article to see what economist Haering thinks.

Also you might be interested in two other articles which provide some details on how this system is working in India: one entitled "India Cash Ban Could Get Worse: 'We Don’t Even Have Enough Money to Buy Food'", and a lengthy second article posted on Naked Capitalism entitled "The Global War on Cash – India’s Demonetization Debacle".

India’s World: Amazing Debate on Syria Exposes Criminal Western, Israeli and Gulf State Intervention

Click here if you wish to access a 28:21m forum, which was broadcast from a program on Lok Sabha TV station funded by the government of India and posted by independent British journalist Vanessa Beeley, directly from her website The Wall Will Fall. (It didn't seem like a "debate" to me.)

Although my old ears could not understand all of the comments by the two well-informed government officials from India, I believe their views lend more support to other independent sources on the conflict in Syria.

Niraj Srivastava -Former Ambassador,  Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty – Former Ambassador, Waiel Awwad – South Asia Bureau Chief, SANA

Amazing debate on the dirty war being waged against Syria by the US, UK, EU, Turkey, Gulf States, Israel, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jordan

 

Turkey’s Officials Say American TOWs are Hurting Them Big Time

Click here to access article by Martin Berger from New Eastern Outlook. 

Berger writes that there are ...

...more than enough reasons for Ankara’s resentment of the Obama administration, since it is directly responsible for every single Turkish soldiers murdered by radical militants.

From about 2012 till sometime during 2016 Turkey has been actively supporting ISIS terrorists; but now that the Empire is continuing to supply even more sophisticated weapons to ISIS that are being used against Turkey's armed forces, they are complaining. This, of course, seems so ironic. But I think this is another indication of Turkey's defection from the Empire's goal of dismembering Syria, and another indication of Turkey's growing cooperation with Russia by joining them in the fight against ISIS.

It remains a mystery to me why the Syrian Kurds allow themselves to be used by the US Empire, but it is no mystery to me why US agents have used them. 

The War Against Alternative Information

Click here to access article by independent journalist Rick Sterling from ConsortiumNews.

This article looks like a revision of an article I posted on January 1st entitled "The Information War on Syria and Beyond".

The enactment of HR5181, “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation,” suggests that the ruling powers seek to escalate suppression of news and analyses that run counter to the official narrative. Backed by a new infusion of $160 million, the plan is to further squelch skeptical voices with operation for “countering” and “refuting” what the U.S. government deems to be propaganda and disinformation.

As part of the $160 million package, funds can be used to hire or reward “civil society groups, media content providers, nongovernmental organizations, federally funded research and development centers, private companies, or academic institutions.”

For a European perspective on the Empire's transnational capitalist ruling class's campaign to control information, read an article posted on the British True Publica's website entitled "Obama Quietly Signs Propaganda Act to Counter ‘Fake News’ – EU to follow suit".

Washington Post latest blunder proves fake news is fine... if it involves Russia

from RT via Youtube.

'Fake news' is making a comeback to the headlines, and hashtags - after the Washington Post retracts its big story on Russian hackers penetrating the US power grid. Apparently, they didn't. The paper has now added an editorial correction, but for some it was too little, too late. Many are already accusing the outlet of spreading fake news supposedly used to influence various aspects of the political process.

You might also be interested in this piece from The Duran entitled "Two false stories about Russia in 3 days: the Moscow school and the Vermont grid".

Though complaining of Russian disinformation and propaganda, the US media spread completely false stories about Russia being about to close the Anglo-American school in Moscow and having hacked into the Vermont electricity grid in just three days, though the first story originated with a US not a Russian source, and the second story would not have survived basic fact checking with the electricity utility involved.

And likewise the ruling class's other newspaper of record, the NY Times. It seems that they, too, feed us misinformation whenever their support for the ruling capitalist class is needed. To find out the latest illustration of this, read an article from The Daily Sheeple entitled "Liar, Liar: NYT Forced to Issue Embarrassing Correction, Lied About Not Supporting the Electoral College in a Bid to Banish It".

Syria’s War Was Only Ever the Beginning

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.

The author reminds us of the long term strategy on the US-led Empire to rule over the entire world by eliminating the threats posed by the independent, powerful states of Russia and China, and other smaller independent threats posed by Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. This has been the trajectory of the Empire for the past 25 years, and Cartalucci argues convincingly that this will continue in the future regardless of which puppet lives in the White House. However, I think in this piece he fails to adequately explain the Trump phenomenon. Hopefully he will in the future. 

He concludes with a statement which argues that independent, alternative media and activists can play a constructive role in defeating the hegemonic plans of the Empire's ruling capitalist class.

The illusion that a presidential election could derail this singular, decades-long agenda is a dangerous one. In reality, the only obstacle between US special interests and achieving global hegemony are competing centers of power. These include nation-states like Russia and China, or grassroots movements like the alternative media, alternative and disruptive economic models, and political movements built on the power and influence such movements achieve. Such alternatives can undermine the unwarranted power and influence currently enjoyed by the US and the corporate-financier monopolies that dominate its political landscape.

Multinationals launch 50 lawsuits worth $31b against Asian nations

Click here to access article by Thuy Ong from ABC News (Australia). 

A new report has found that corporations have launched 50 lawsuits, worth at least $US31 billion, using secret international arbitration tribunals against 11 countries in the Asian region.

The Coup against Trump and His Military - Wall Street Defense

Click here to access article by retired Professor James Petras from his blog.

Petras is another perceptive writer who offers his views on the apparent ruling class split between what I will refer to as the Obama faction and the Trump faction. He also expresses his views in a PDF document that he posted the following day on Friday entitled "The Anti-Trump Institutional Coup and the Visible Operatives". I will tease out his position based on these two articles.

Petras sees the Obama faction as a more established one that has been guiding his policies, and whose backers have a visceral opposition to Russia, China, and Iran as has been evident all along during his administration. The Trump faction, on the other hand, want to expand markets to serve the commercial interests of major capitalists. Also with the sole exception of corporate media who support the Obama faction, he sees the split over these issues as cutting across every powerful interest group in the capitalist ruling class such as Wall Street, the military establishment, what I refer to as government puppets in Congress who are funded by both factions and serve both factions, and even several of his Cabinet appointees who support "bellicose policies" presumably toward Russia, China, and Iran.

Petras makes the following claim about the Trump faction:

Trump seeks to implement his foreign policy of ‘market deals’, renegotiation of trade agreements with China, oil and aerospace trade-offs with Iran, and the termination of sanctions with Russia. President Trump will declare ‘let the oil deals flow’!

I have not seen much evidence that the Trump camp wants to make deals with China and Iran--quite to the contrary. Thus, my suspicion is that Trump will be used to make deals with Russia in an effort to split them off from China as I explained on the 15th of December in an article entitled "My ('conspiracy') theory about the emergence of the Trump faction of the ruling capitalist class". In fact, the whole contentious contest between these two factions may be used as a ruse to hide this new strategy.

What is certain is that Trump's domestic policies will favor more austerity policies and likely further cuts to, privatization and/or abolition of, social supports such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act.

The Information War on Syria and Beyond

Click here to access article by Rick Sterling from Dissident Voice. 

Sterling provides an excellent summary of recent efforts to control the information Americans receive about the conflict in Syria, and with the recent passage of Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act it looks like our masters in the ruling class are tightening this control. Apparently they have been disturbed by too many independent journalists who have been reporting on the realities of this conflict which is in sharp contrast to what their corporate media report.

U.S. propaganda and disinformation on Syria has been overall effective in misleading much of the population. Most Americans are unaware how many billion tax payer dollars have been spent on yet another “regime change” attempt. Many liberal and progressive news outlets have failed to challenge the propaganda and disinformation on Syria. It has been left to RT and a host of smaller media outlets to challenge the government and mainstream media.

The passage of HR5181 “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation”, suggests that the ruling powers seek to escalate suppression of news and analysis which runs counter to their narrative.  Despite their current dominance in the media and information arena, that is not enough. They seek to further squelch opposing voices. The bill calls for “countering” and “refuting” what they deem to be propaganda and disinformation. A slush fund of $20M is provided to hire or reward “civil society groups, NGOs, journalists and private companies “ who participate in the campaign.

Progressives need to prepare for the escalation of the information war.  

$600 Million in CIA Funds at Work? WaPo Runs Another Fake Story on Russia Hacking US Power Grid

Click here to access article by Claire Bernish from The Free Thought Project. 

The fake news issued by corporate media keeps getting weirder and weirder,

Anti-Russia and disinformation hysteria has reached new heights, and — after the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S., among other retributions for an ostensibly hacked election — the Washington Post continued its foray into Fake News with an article suggesting Kremlin actors hacked the electrical grid in Vermont.

Perhaps because the outlet got away with citing unnamed officials twice before during this reinvigorated Red Scare, the Post again blared its Russia Did It alarm with an article titled, “Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say.”

...especially from the Washington Post which has such an obvious bias with its huge deal with the CIA.

The same year Bezos purchased the Post, Amazon landed a $600 million deal with the CIA to develop a coordinated computing cloud for all 17 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.

Perhaps superficially innocuous on its own, that sizable deal appears somewhat darker in consideration of this year’s quasi-official continuance of the U.S. government’s most notorious propaganda program, Operation Mockingbird — during which intelligence agents posed as the media to imbue pro-American propaganda and censor certain information.