Saturday, January 21, 2017

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

Click here to access article by German economist Norbert Häring from his website. 

 I encountered this article when it was referred to by F. William Engdahl in his today's article entitled "The Sinister Agenda Behind the Washington War On Cash", and you may want to also read that article. Colin Todhunter was the first (that I know of) to report this phenomenon, and now Häring uncovers more information on the hidden role of US-led Empire agents who have been promoting digital currency in India as the first experiment in what they plan to do in other countries including the US (as Engdahl explains).

It seems that the digital transformation of India's money supply is part of the Empire's plan to dominate the world, sometimes referred to by US imperialists (like George Bush, his father, Bill Clinton, etc.) as the New World Order. Control of money (along with many other weapons such as indirect and direct military incursions, "color revolutions", financial manipulation, sanctions, etc) has been a major economic weapon (mostly in the form of petrodollars) for their dreams of world domination. Häring explains how this digital money weapon would greatly facilitate the realization of the old fascist fantasy.
The business interests of the US-companies that dominate the gobal IT business and payment systems are an important reason for the zeal of the US-government in its push to reduce cash use worldwide, but it is not the only one and might not be the most important one. Another motive is surveillance power that goes with increased use of digital payment. US-intelligence organizations and IT-companies together can survey all international payments done through banks and can monitor most of the general stream of digital data. Financial data tends to be the most important and valuable.

Even more importantly, the status of the dollar as the worlds currency of reference and the dominance of US companies in international finance provide the US government with tremendous power over all participants in the formal non-cash financial system. It can make everybody conform to American law rather than to their local or international rules.
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Here's How the Trump Presidency Will Play Out

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Sputnik.
I have argued that Trump's foreign policy guru Henry Kissinger's strategy to deal with the formidable Eurasia integration trio – Russia, China and Iran — is a remixed Divide and Rule; seduce Russia away from its strategic partnership with China, while keep harassing the weakest link, Iran.

In fact that's how it's already playing out – as in the outbursts of selected members of Trump's cabinet during their US Senate hearings. Factions of US Think Tankland, referring to Nixon's China policy, which was designed by Kissinger, are also excited with the possibilities of containment regarding at least one of those powers "potentially arrayed against America".

Kissinger and Dr. Zbig "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski are the two foremost, self-described Western dalangs – puppet masters – in the geopolitical arena. In opposition to Kissinger, Obama's foreign policy mentor Brzezinski, true to his Russophobia, proposes a Divide and Rule centered on seducing China.
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Rothschild Family Wealth is Five Times that of World’s Top 8 Billionaires Combined

Click here to access article by Isaac Davis from Waking Times. 

Frequently lists of the world's richest fail to include the Rothchild clan as was the case in the recent report published by Oxfam International. I've often wondered why this is. Could it be that they are so powerful that their data is kept hidden? Anyway, Davis's research shows how rich they really are, and with riches come power which we read even less about from most alternative sources. 
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What’s Wrong in Canada’s Halls of Power?

Click here to access article by Phil Butler from New Eastern Outlook.

Based on my four years of living in Canada, I think that Butler makes some very keen observations about Canada's rather dismal fate as a colony of the US given what Trump has declared as his agenda for US industry. Still, given Canada's subservience to the US Empire's diktats, I can't imagine that the real directors of the US (think Deep State) will allow him to go too far in hurting Canada's economy.
The fourth largest country in the world by land area, Canada’s true potential is not even close to being tapped. A nation of only 36 million people, the country probably should have emerged as a major power decades ago. Instead the hapless politicians set in place there just tag along, and they don’t even do a good job of that. Canada’s national debt of just over $800 billion is not even all that bad compared to the US, and European nations. Still the leadership there trudges along doing foreign policy like a satrap. It is inconceivable for me that the world’s most educated country can appoint the dumbest leaders on the planet. The only country that can actually beat Russia at ice hockey cannot even chart its own course and best interests?

Canada-Russia relations and trade were put on hold after the Ukraine crisis, to the detriment of both nations.
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Friday, January 20, 2017

Wealth distribution in the United States and the politics of the pseudo-left

Click here to access article by Eric London from World Socialist Web Site.

This writer carves out an important strata in our capitalist structured society known as the upper middle class, a class consisting of about 9% of Americans who lie just below the 1% rich ruling class. These people are identified by sociologists as the upper middle class. London shows how this particular class plays such an important role for the ruling 1%. Malcolm X graphically described the role played by the middle class to a largely African-American audience with a metaphor drawn from an historical context of American slavery that is relevant here: the difference between field negroes and house negroes, or the difference between most workers and a special subset of workers who identify with the ruling capitalist class.

London zeros in on the critical role played by the upper middle class (business executives, academics, successful attorneys, professionals, trade union executives and trust fund beneficiaries) in supporting the ruling 1%, and specifically how they have used identity politics (aka "multiculturalism") to successfully divert attention and energies away from class-based political activism. Likewise this class have obscured their own role in perpetuating identity politics by pretending to be left oriented activists. His research shows that this upper-middle class loves and serves their capitalist masters so well and that they have been richly rewarded for their efforts--unlike those classes of workers below them. London concludes his analysis with this political lesson:
The working class comprises the vast majority of the world’s 7 billion inhabitants and produces all of the world’s wealth. It possesses immense potential power. But it can advance its own interests only if it is armed with an anticapitalist and socialist program based on the class struggle. In advancing the slogan for a party of the 99 percent, the pseudo-left is perpetrating a fraud aimed at preventing the development of such a struggle and preserving the capitalist system.
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The Dying Days of Liberalism

Click here to access article by Max Forte from Zero Anthropology (Canada).

 This is a rather lengthy article and I haven't had time to read all of it. I am posting it because I found a lot of important insights contained in it. Here are some:
Liberal [capitalist] democracy has been reduced to a shell, more a name than a fact that deserves the name. For many years, liberalism has been liberal authoritarianism or post-liberalism or neoliberalism, with a high elitist disdain for democracy and a fear of the masses everywhere. Promises of inclusion, fairness, and welfare, were replaced by sensitive-sounding rhetorical tricks and tokenism. Moral narcissism, virtue signalling, identity politics, and building patchwork quilts of diversity were the order of the day. Protests were encouraged abroad, against target nations, in the name of democracy promotion—but at home, protests were shut down by an always more militarized police. Nations around the world were lectured about transparency and accountability, but at home it was all about mass surveillance, domestic espionage, and a crackdown on whistleblowers. Liberal leaders claimed to be upholders of peace and order, while multiplying the number of wars.
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Why Readers Shouldn’t Trust Staff Reporters

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from The Unz Review.
Journalism — especially about important matters — is not a profession. It’s a calling. Or else, if it’s not a calling, then it is public relations; it is propaganda, “PR” — done for the purpose of receiving pay, not really for the purpose of conveying truth. But propaganda isn’t journalism at all. It’s not merely fake ‘news’; it is fake ‘journalism’. Corporate-owned ‘news’ is that, but so too is government-owned ‘news’. That’s the problem: journalism, as it exists, isn’t what people think it is, and expect it to be. What is called “journalism” is actually now just a branch of the PR profession, and doesn’t deserve to be trusted more than that.

In order to be a staff journalist, one must adhere to the propaganda-aims of the individual(s) (the employer) who control(s) the given ‘news’ medium. 
This historian-writer does well until he tries to come up with a solution. He essentially argues that "there is no alternative" and he uses empty, incorrect concepts like "aristocracy" instead of capitalist ruling class. Maybe he, too, is one of those upper middle class academics who is so well paid and taken care of by the ruling class, that he avoids offending them too much by throwing in such meaningless terms.
The aristocracy controls both Parties. And the government. And the press.

And that’s the problem. Nobody has figured out a solution for it. And America’s press won’t allow even its existence to be published. So, the public cannot understand why they cannot understand.

What can be done to solve this problem that the press hide from the public? Might there be a way for some members of the press to become part of the solution, and no longer part of the problem? Would that even be possible? If not, then how can the public ever come to understand what the problem is? 
What is so hard to understand about independent alternative media that is funded by the people? What is so hard to understand about revolutionary activism? 
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Thursday, January 19, 2017

Trump vs. the CIA

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his blog. 

Traditional conservative capitalists like Roberts, Pat Buchanan, and Ron Paul often get exposure in the abundant liberal websites because of their criticisms of the reigning neoliberal capitalists. I, too, have posted some of Roberts's articles also because some of them really expose the contradictions, weaknesses, and immorality of the current neoliberal ruling class. So I would like to take time today to expose what these traditional critics are all about, and they are definitely not all about any kind of social justice that followers of this website believe in. 

These people had their day in the ruling class that runs our country roughly from the Gilded Age of robber barons to the end of WWII. After that they were gradually replaced by imperial minded power seekers which combined the interests of major capitalists who had foreign holdings, imperialist-oriented military generals, and the many secret and unaccountable secrets services like the CIA, NSA, etc. This was referred to as the "military-industrial complex" that drew most attention (frequently by liberals) after President Eisenhower uttered a few sentences in his departing speech.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. 
I think Ike said these things because he had a lot of guilt about the rapid growth of the military-industrial complex and associated secret services during his years as president. My reading of his background suggests that he grew up in very ordinary circumstances where religion and respect for authority was pronounced. His military career reinforced this respect for authorities, and when he became president he loved to hobnob (hang out) with major power figures from Wall Street. Frequently this occurred on golf courses which is a favorite ruling class sport. Thus I think he was so much in awe of these authority figures that he failed to check the growth of their anti-democratic institutions.

After the disaster of the Vietnam War a more globalized and sophisticated capitalist ruling class took power under the Reagan administration which combined elements of imperial minded power seekers, transnational capitalists, and Zionists. Their ideology became known as neoliberalism--the advanced form of classic liberalism which was the original ideology of capitalism. The concentration of capital brought about by the earlier nation-based industrialism under private ownership gave way after WWII to a more international ruling class composed primarily of capitalists from the old British Empire and US capitalists, and secondarily of those who grew rich and powerful in other NATO countries. I identify this group as "neoconservatives". They and traditional liberals have combined to be the main force behind the project (neoliberalism) of a US-led Empire which sought (and seeks) to eliminate national barriers to international commerce to facilitate their exploitation of labor and raw materials throughout the world. Traditional conservatives like Roberts, Pat Buchanan, and Ron Paul (aka "old fashioned conservatives") have resented the takeover by this new international capitalist class.

Thus, we should not be deceived by their criticisms of this new neoliberal capitalist class and think that they have the interests of ordinary people at heart. They often tend to be racist, opposed to any kind of social serves, anti-union, and pro-corporate. Notice in this article by Roberts that he takes much umbrage at Lazare's criticism of Trump. 
Trump is a rightwing blowhard whose absurd babblings about Saudi Arabia, Iran and Yemen reveal a man who is dangerously ignorant about how the world works. But he has managed to seize on one or two semi-good ideas over the years. One is that Obama administration’s confrontational policies toward Russia are a recipe for disaster, while another is that toppling Syria’s Bashar al-Assad with Al Qaeda and ISIS still up and about will only hasten their march on Damascus.
Roberts's attack on Lazare's article is a rather subtle indication that Roberts sees Trump as an ally, a "fellow (capitalist) traveler". That is precisely why Roberts attacks his views in this post. The reason why his defense of Trump is rather subtle is because he has been posing as a critic of the actions of the current ruling capitalist class, and as such, has enjoyed a wide following among liberal-left circles who hate Trump. 

 The best explanation of this old fashioned capitalist political faction is one provided by Shamus Cooke in article entitled "The Danger of Right-Wing Populism". Thus, I urge you to read Cooke's article so that you are not deceived by these "right wing populists" who are essentially old-fashioned capitalists.

 Thus I think you can dismiss these "right wing populists"--they are "has-beens". Instead concentrate on the bigger, important picture as argued by F. William Engdahl whose analysis gives a much sounder explanation of the current antagonisms between the neoliberals led by the CIA and media (that combination is not coincidental) and those capitalists allied with Trump. With Trump's cabinet so full of Goldman Sachs people, I don't think that neoliberals have much to worry about. To paraphrase a quote attributed to Lenin, I think Trump is merely a very useful idiot for one faction of the ruling class. The current split appears to be merely conflicts over strategy to promote the US-led Empire's domination of the world. The CIA faction wants to continue with their hostile actions against Russia, while the Trump faction see his administration as a useful vehicle to split Russia from China. 

However, during the Trump administration we should be concerned with, and oppose, the administration's likely efforts to privatize education, to favor cutbacks to social and medical services, and to promote attacks on minorities. Non of these administration efforts will ever be seriously attacked by Paul Craig Roberts and associates.
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Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Regime Change Comes Home: The CIA’s Overt Threats against Trump

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

It's clear that the faction that aligns itself behind the CIA, other secret, unaccountable "intelligence" services, and corporate media have been trying their best to undermine President-Elect Trump from becoming president. But it should not surprise because the CIA has been manipulating elections, and other criminal acts such as assassinating leaders in other countries since WWII. 

This is the fascist element is often present in what is known as bourgeois (or capitalist) democracy in most of the world. Fascism is always latent in most capitalist democracies simply because a system that favors one (tiny) class is always exploitative and thus unstable. When that instability becomes marked, then the capitalists will resort to lawless and/or violent means to secure their rule.
The norms of US capitalist democracy include the election of presidential candidates through competitive elections, unimpeded by force and violence by the permanent institutions of the state. Voter manipulation has occurred during the recent elections, as in the case of the John F. Kennedy victory in 1960 and the George W. Bush victory over ‘Al’ Gore in 2000.

But despite the dubious electoral outcomes in these cases, the ‘defeated’ candidate conceded and sought via legislation, judicial rulings, lobbying and peaceful protests to register their opposition.

These norms are no longer operative.
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Pharma Money Reaches Guideline Writers, Patient Groups, Even Doctors on Twitter

Click here to access article by Charles Ornstein from Pro Publica.
The long arm of the pharmaceutical industry continues to pervade practically every area of medicine, reaching those who write guidelines that shape doctors’ practices, patient advocacy organizations, letter writers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even oncologists on Twitter, according to a series of papers on money and influence published today in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The findings of the papers provide further evidence showing how conflicts of interest help shape health care....
Ornstein doesn't present even half of the story of how medical care and low cost access to prescription drugs are influenced by pharmaceutical corporations with their tons of money. This is another illustration of how money that is concentrated in the hands of a few people can exercise so much power over only one sector, but a very important sector, of our lives. 

The rest of the story is about how pharmaceutical corporations purchase influence over our representatives in Congress and the executive branch in order to insure that they vote for their corporate interests. For this part of the unwritten story, we have to go to Open Secrets:

Top 20 Recipients (included on the list were candidates for offices)

                              Pharmaceuticals / Health Products: Top Recipients

My own Sen. Murray (from Washington state) who is touted as a very liberal Democratic senator is fifth on the list. Hillary raked in by far the most money because she was once a sure candidate for the White House.

It is clear that our masters in the capitalist ruling class not only purchase influence among our health providers, but also the government that passes laws related to our health care.
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Capitalism’s Greatest Weapon Is the Propaganda Used on Its Own People

by guest writer Caren Black for Surviving Capitalism.

Of all the bovine poo being slung about as the 20th approaches, we should not allow one item to pass unridiculed, even though it’s already done its work.

Never missing an opportunity to misdirect the public, the MSM managed to slip one past people. (For example, see this.) Amid the recent bogus “hacking” claims lay another more sinister and misleading claim that will sit in people’s brains as their concept of “US intelligence”.

By obliquely entering the number 17 - not as the story, but as a support of the story - this lie makes it look like 17 buildings filled with offices and intelligence worker-geeks had difficulty uncovering evil-doers over the course of the campaign year.
 
By mentioning 17 agencies, how many worker-geeks could that be? If each building has 1000 workers, then maybe 17,000 people couldn’t uncover the evil-doers? Well, that’s bad, but those evil-doers are crafty! So, the story is bought, swallowed whole and digested. Done.

Using only a computer search, the material I encountered doesn't begin to describe our vast intelligence sector, and most of it didn't include private contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton that Edward Snowden worked for. And, for those who might be radical enough to doubt, a simple search with your friendly government ally, Google, will get you back into the fold: see this, and this.

For a much more in-depth material on our "intelligence" complex, some six and a half years ago Dana Priest and William Arkin with a staff of 20 journalists published Top Secret America, Parts I, II, and III in the Washington Post (before Bezos bought it). Here's an excerpt:
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.
Now we have close to 1 million worker geeks who, over the course of 12 months, couldn’t find a traceable hack in emails which they themselves were collecting and monitoring – with the ability (according to William Binney and Ray McGovern who had long careers in NSA and CIA) to “identify both sender and recipient of any and all data crossing the network.” Oh, really? Well, maybe that makes MSM's story even less believable. Maybe that puts the whole story right up there with the 19 kids with utility knives who outsmarted the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, NORAD, the Pentagon, ….

Often when fighting our capitalist global owners, it’s just as  important to refute the embedded lies than the outright ones.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Obscene Inequality: Eight men’s wealth equals half the world

Click here to access article adapted from Oxfam International and posted on Climate & Capitalism.
Eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, according to a new report published by Oxfam today to mark the annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos.Oxfam’s report, ‘An economy for the 99 percent’, shows that the gap between rich and poor is far greater than had been feared.
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Website Claims To Pay Anti-Trump Protesters $2,500K A Month and $50 An Hour

Click here to access article by Aaron Kesel from We Are Change.

It appears that protestors, like terrorists in Syria, can be bought by our capitalist masters.
...the website was recently registered, according to a who.is search, yet the organization claims to be the largest private grassroots support organization in the United States. The second anomaly is the website was registered anonymously, and there is no background to this website, to determine it’s validity.

Although rumors were running rampant on 4chan that this site is financed by George Soros, there is no proof to back this claim that came to light. So it’s unclear if the website is legitimate, or a fraud that someone created for attention, or to just troll the internet.
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Martin Luther King’s Death Disappears Down the Memory Hole. “He Was Assassinated by a U.S. Government Conspiracy”

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from Global Research. 
As Martin Luther King’s birthday is celebrated with a national holiday, his death day disappears down the memory hole.  Across the country – in response to the King Holiday and Service Act passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1994 – people will  be encouraged to make the day one of service  (from Latin, servus = slave).  Etymological irony aside, such service does not include King’s commitment to protesting a decadent system of racial and economic injustice or non-violently resisting the warfare state that is the United States.  Government sponsored service is cultural neo-liberalism at its finest. 
He goes on to argue that the holiday is being transformed into a day of service, meaning a day of unpaid service instead of honoring a man who heroically resisted the police and other capitalist authorities who tried to continue racist practices and to promote racism in order to divide Americans. 
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A Foreign Nation Did Interfere in a US Election: in 1980

Click here to access article by Wayne Madsen from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

Well, to be more specific and accurate, a foreign nation was used by a section of our ruling class to interfere in the 1980 election to swing it for the Zionist infiltrated Republican party and their puppet-candidate and super salesman/grade B Hollywood actor, Ronald Reagan. The event was another illustration of managed fake elections, along with fake news, that are constantly used in the capitalist ruling class's ersatz democracy to insure their interests of profit and power--not our interests of peace, equality, and sustainability.
In 1980, Democratic President Jimmy Carter, running for re-election under the cloud of the U.S. embassy in Tehran having been seized by radical Iranian students and 52 members of its staff being held hostage, was trying desperately to pull off an "October Surprise" to salvage his presidency. Unbeknownst to Carter, the campaign of his Republican rival, Ronald Reagan, had secretly negotiated an «arms-for-no-hostages» deal with the Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime in Iran.

In return for the shipment of embargoed military items, including spare parts for Iran’s U.S.-supplied F-14 Tomcat fighter planes and Phoenix air-to-air missiles for the planes, before the November 4 election, the Reagan team was promised by the Iranians that Tehran would hold the hostages until after the November election. Upon Reagan’s defeat of Carter, Iran held true to its promise and did not release the American hostages until noon Eastern Standard Time on January 20, 1981, the very moment Reagan raised his hand to take the presidential oath of office.
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Monday, January 16, 2017

From Obama to Trump: The Failure of Passive Revolution [a must read article]

Click here to access article by sociology Professor William I. Robinson posted on TeleSur.

I regard Robinson as one of the most astute analysts of political-social events in today's world. He has a solid understanding of history from a class-based leftist perspective.

He begins his analysis by delineating various aspects of what he refers to as the "passive revolution" that occurred under the Obama administration:
The Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci developed the concept of passive revolution to refer to efforts by dominant groups to bring about mild change from above in order to defuse mobilization from below for more far-reaching transformation. Integral to passive revolution is the cooptation of leadership from below and the integration of that leadership into the dominant project.
I am not enamored of this term although I agree with much of it. There is nothing revolutionary about it. It is simply the capitalist ruling class's attempt to pacify and delude the public into accepting its hegemonic role and to pretend to be serving the public while actually serving its own tiny class interests. People like Obama and Bernie Sanders for varying reasons are rather easily co-opted into serving the ruling class's liberal wing to pacify the general public. The ruling capitalist class loves to divert people's attention from the class war onto other subjects like terrorism, the drug problems, and identity politics.

I think he accurately describes the significance of Trump's victory.
Trumpism’s far-right agenda – contrary to superficial interpretations – constitutes a deepening, not a reversal, of the program of capitalist globalization pursued by the Obama administration and every U.S. administration since Ronald Reagan. The crisis of global capitalism has become more acute in the face of economic stagnation and the rise of anti-globalization populism on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. Trumpism does not represent a break with capitalist globalization, but rather the recomposition of political forces and ideological discourse as the crisis deepens and as international tensions reach new depths. 
And, I think he places "Trumpism" in a correct historical context:
Whether in its 20th or its emerging 21st century variants, fascism is, above all, a response to deep structural crises of capitalism, such as that of the 1930s and the one that began with the financial meltdown of 2008. I have been writing for the past decade about the rise of 21st century fascist currents in the context of the new global capitalism. One key difference between 20th century fascism and 21st century fascism is that the former involved the fusion of national capital with reactionary and repressive political power, whereas the latter involves the fusion of transnational capital with reactionary political power. Trumpism is not a departure from but an incarnation of the emerging dictatorship of the transnational capitalist class.

Trumpism and the sharp turn to the extreme right is the logical progression of the political system in the face of the crisis of global capitalism.
There is so much substance included in this article. I recommend listening to his remarks in the early 2015 interview (16:40m) in which he addresses questions about the history of the OAS in the context of neoliberalist agenda, the differing US strategies toward Venezuela versus Cuba, and his expectations about the OAS summit of April of 2015. (If you have difficulty viewing this on your computer that uses a Firefox browser, I might be of assistance. The other videos are not very important.) 

I also like his advice about fighting back against the latest iteration of ruling class strategy, Trumpism, and for the interests of working people.
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Fake News: The Latest Weapon in Information Space

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.
In any struggle, adaptation is required. With Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms joining the so-called war on “fake news,” those who seek to maintain the rise of the alternative media and a balance of power across information space must identify the special interests driving this agenda, as well as various means to undermine and overcome it.
Because Facebook (which I don't use) has joined the directors of the US Empire to spy on you and to limit what you read as real or significant news and opinion, it is urgent that activists find another means of sharing information among each other. Cartalucci presents another alternative (which I have not yet used) in the form of Freenet.
Geopolitically, a successful, widely used, and disruptive P2P social networking platform that undermines or entirely breaks Facebook’s control over social media evens the playing field and allows individuals and states to once again get their side of the story out to the public on equal footing to the “fact checkers” seeking to combat “fake news” on Facebook, Twitter, and other centralized platforms dominated by Western tech-giants.
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Sunday, January 15, 2017

Former Newspaper Editor Who Exposed CIA Found Dead

Click here to access article by Baxter Dmitry from YourNewsWire. (additional link added 7:30 AM Seattle time.)

I was wondering how long he would last after the widespread publications of his book and RT video (linked to in the article). See what Sen. Schumer says about the CIA.
Ulfkotte was an editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the largest newspapers in Germany, when he published Bought Journalists, the bestselling book that cost him his job and perhaps his life.

He was 56. German media, who were banned from reporting on his work in recent years, are reporting he died of “heart failure”.

Acknowledging that his life was under threat, Ulfkotte explained that he was in a better position that most journalists to expose the truth because he didn’t have any children who could be threatened.
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Trump Recruits Another Goldman Sachs Bankster

Click here to access article by Kurt Nimmo from Another Day in the Empire.

 I guess the moral of this story is...the more things change, the more they stay the same (under capitalist rule).
How is the anti-establishment establishment supposed to fulfill its promise to restore the economy if its top people are former banksters and hedge fund managers?
How are guys associated with a firm that packaged and sold toxic securities while betting they would fail and screw over investors good for America? How in the hell are they anti-establishment?



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The Radical Left in the Age of Trump

Click here to access this brief article which points to a gathering of leftists by Bruce from Planning Beyond Capitalism.
The world capitalist system is in its worst crisis. As  this election shows, along with the elections in Europe, centrist politics is also in its worst crisis. Yet here in the US the left has been fragmented for at least 45 years. Now more than ever, the economic and political crisis requires a united radical left. A well-respected comrade of ours has organized a public meeting in NYC on February 5th to discuss how the radical left can be a force. Please check Insurgent Notes for updates.

Details in Insurgent Notes
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Letter From Mexico

Click here to access article from Insurgent Notes.

The 20% rise in gas prices in Mexico has resulted in widespread turmoil among the populace.
Editor’s Note [editor of Insurgent Notes]: We recently sent a couple of articles on Mexico from the Financial Times to our Mexico correspondent to check their accuracy. The following is his reply. 
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Look who's talking via corporate media

by editorial cartoonist Nick Anderson.

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