An American Tradition

by cartoonist Jalal Hajir. 

Bombing covers up reality, MSNBC lies & more

Click here to directly access the post of this 28:34m video from RT (you should not watch this American satirist and comedian because his show appears on RT which is a Russian sponsored internet webcast, and they always lie. Also, NPR, America's premier reliable radio station, disapproves of it. Just kidding!)

Lee Camp runs through some of the important stories the US bombing of Damascus helped hide from public scrutiny, then lists all the times there have been chemical attacks by the US and its contractors... on US citizens. Natalie McGill explains how patient advocacy groups may be getting drug money and Naomi Caravan reports on how self-proclaimed bastion of liberalism MSNBC is moving further and further to the right.

Recommended articles for Friday 4/20/2018 to clear your brain of the "corporate gas attack"

 (An additional item was added at 2:10 PM Seattle time.)

• Syria - Who Is Stalling The OPCW Investigation In Douma? by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

• The Moral Mask by Gregory Barrett from The Greanville Post. 

The empire’s true signature: Dantesque scenes of unspeakable suffering, destruction and death in Syria. A truth too ghastly for the tender sensibilities of the American public and their European cousins, their minds cushioned by dishonest mythologies and whorish escapist entertainment. 

I ran out of time because I simply must deal with personal issues. I advise you to look at the websites I recommend (on the right hand side).

• State, corporate and chiefly power is being contested from below in South Africa by Ruth Hall from Transnational Institute. See how the author reaches this conclusion:

Because building a new politics and a new society means uncertainty, we need to embrace humility central to a radical politics, meaning that we don’t always know the answers and must mistrust dogma and instruction from above.

Emancipatory politics in rural South Africa is under-developed and rural struggles are largely defensive. But out of the old, there are embryonic forms of agrarian alternatives and emancipatory politics – of land redistribution, food sovereignty, participatory democracy and accountable rural governance – that are taking root.

Real Reporting on Syria by Publius Tacitus (updated with a disclaimer)

Click here to access article by Patrick Lang from his website Sic Semper Tyrannis.  (I added in the last paragraph a disclaimer after viewing this video produced by OANN. This was added at 8:50 AM Seattle time on 4/21/2018.) 

This is a perfect example of how ordinary people with their native honesty can produce authentic news reports. This is in stark contrast to what we are getting from the ruling capitalist class who are addicts to profits and power, and as such the media which they own can no longer report honest news. So, who are you going to pay attention to or believe? Media corporations under the control of addicts to power or those run on a shoestring by ordinary, healthy people? 

While the vast majority of the media--print and electronic--have been missing in action on the real story about what happened on the ground in Douma, Syria, the upstart, conservative One America News Network showed up. A OANN reporter went to Damascus and actually did some reporting. He found no evidence whatsoever that chemical weapons had been used. Please watch.

(With the posting of this video, I am not endorsing OANN as a general source of reliable news and progressive views. As indicated above, OANN is a conservative network. That means it is funded by rich, property-owning people who live off "their property" instead of their work. That, in turns, means that they are supporters of the present class structured, capitalist society that gives them so much power. This video could also be a part of the effort to discredit the Trump administration in a widely coordinated effort by neoliberal capitalists to get rid of Trump as I argued in this post.) 

Heat Storm

Click here to access article by Sam Carana from Arctic News. (Thanks go to an activist for alerting me to the article.)

Arctic sea ice extent has been at a record low for the time of year for most of 2018, as illustrated by above image. In 2012, extent went below 3.4 million km². The question is what minimum 2018 extent will be.

Arctic sea ice could disappear altogether in 2018.

Near Deadly Political Gas Attack On Americans

Excerpt from an article by Frank Scott posted in The Greanville Post.

I particularly was impressed by the last paragraph in this article which I am quoting below:

We need to learn more about the actual conditions in the lives of people in other places but we first need to fully understand our own homeland and what our rulers do to the rest of the world in our name, while keeping us in the dark about reality. As in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Palestine and Ukraine, to mention only a few places where we murder, maim and prevent social justice and democracy while piously extolling their virtues. They can only continue to do that if we continue to let them, and inspiration can come from actually learning what people in other nations have achieved, against seemingly impossible odds, to enable us to not only believe in creation of a better world, but actually bring it from theoretical dream to practical reality. That means clearing the poisoned political gas filling our heads and analyzing reactionary rule in order to replace it with revolutionary democracy. Soon. Like now.

Joseph Werner: Diana of Ephesus as allegory of Nature, c. 1680

To paraphrase a famous quote by American revolutionary Patrick Henry, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country and humans throughout the world. To do this we must seek the truth which has become a monumental task in a world of lies and deceptions spread by our insane masters. The latter who control much of the world are headed for their demise and they are taking us with them. Shall we, their subjects, offer no resistance like sheep going to the slaughterhouse; or will we as thinking humans refuse to be guided by their fakery and poison gas filling our heads; and shall we take from them the reins of power and affirm life, and stop them from exploiting us and abusing other humans, and, most of all, our Mother Nature? You must make the most important decision of your life, a decision which is probably the most important that humans have ever been confronted with: "To be or not to be."

Recommended Web posts for Tuesday 4/17/2018 (updated)

• Ron Paul’s Liberty Report Talks with Vanessa Beeley in Damascus from 21st Century Wire. (Added interview with Eva Bartlett at 5:30 PM Seattle time.)

• An Interview [with Edward Curtin] about the JFK Assassination & The Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 posted Curtin's website that originated from It's the Empire, Stupid! on April 5.

Listen to "Empire-Episode26-EdwardCurtin" on Spreaker.

• The US secret plan on Damascus foiled by Elijah J. Magnier from his website. This independent Kuwaiti journalist usually has impeccable sources. The sources told him of the coordinated plans between Trump and the Russians, and the plans seem very convincing from the evidence reported after the US, British, and French missile attack on Douma (Duma), a suburb of Damascus.

• Talk Nation Radio: Scott Ritter: Syria and the Myth of Ethical Wars, a 29 minute interview with Scott Ritter, a former Marine Corps intelligence officer, posted by David Swanson on Washington's Blog.

• New sinews of working class power, a review by Mark Thomas of a book entitled On New Terrain: How Capital is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War authored by Kim Moody that was posted on Socialist Review (Britain). 

Moody’s argument not only insists the working class still exists but that its structural capacity to organise and paralyse production has grown as the restructuring and consolidation of capital has created a “new terrain” for the class struggle. Such a case is highly welcome to socialists who argue that workers possess the collective power to not just challenge capital but to break it. 

• Washington forces its allies to accept a bipolar world by Thierry Meyssan who is a prominent French geopolitical analyst. Read the article to see how the author reaches this dramatic conclusion:

This grand show [the missile attack on Syria], then, was no more than a futile gesture. After a quarter of a century of unilateral domination by the West, its three main military powers have just been down-graded. The world has returned to a bipolar situation like that of the Cold War, although the new rules still need to be defined. The Third World War will have to wait.

• Eva Bartlett on Syria & Smear Campaign, an approximately one hour video interview with Bartlett, conducted by Nathan Stolpman of the YouTube channel "Lift the Veil", in which she responds to questions about the smears she has received from several sources, and general questions about what is going on in Syria. 

Also I should direct you to the post of the interview on Bartlett's website In Gaza where she provides a number of links most especially to other writers she respects for their honest reporting of events in Syria and the nearby region. (You may need to wait a few seconds for the video to upload on your device.)

 

A prolonged war in Syria is on the US agenda

Click here to access article by Canadian Stephen Gowans from What's Left. 

While the directorate (Deep State) of the ruling capitalist class wants to continue to occupy a large part of Syria to harass and wear-down Syrians and its allied populations into accepting a different government that is more favorable to the Empire's interests of profit and power, Gowans points to the strategy's weaknesses:

... the US occupation of Syrian territory is kept largely under the radar of public awareness through its infrequent coverage by the mainstream media and minimization as a small scale effort involving “only 2,000 US military personnel,” a miscounting the Pentagon acknowledges. ....

The vast majority of the citizens of the United States, the UK, France and other Western satellites of the United States, do not benefit in the least from Washington’s long war on Syria, and on the contrary, are disadvantaged by it; they bear its monetary costs. And ordinary Syrians certainly do not benefit either; on the contrary, the war casts them as victims of a blackmail.

US policy, then, rests on untenable foundations. It is illegal and in principle unsupportable by public opinion. These are weaknesses that can be used against Western governments to pressure them to abandon their unlawful, wasteful and morally unconscionable plans for the prolonged infliction of misery on Syrians.

I believe that Gowans is correct in his analysis. Thus it follows that it is urgent that we in alternative media prevent their success by influencing our fellow Americans as to the truth about what our criminal masters are doing in Syria, as well as elsewhere in the world.

Recommended articles for Monday 4/16/2018

• Voices of the Syrian People by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook.

• The MoA Week In Review And Open Thread 2018-17 by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

•  Lawyers and Victims’ Families File Petition for Federal Grand Jury Investigation by Ted Walter from Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

• How the US Occupied the 30% of Syria Containing Most of its Oil, Water and Gas by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News. 

In January, Tillerson made this objective clear. Speaking at Stanford University, Tillerson noted that “diminishing” Iran’s influence in Syria was a key goal for the U.S. and a major reason for its occupation of the northeast.

By cutting off the route between Tehran and Damascus, the U.S. would greatly destabilize and weaken the region’s “resistance axis” and the U.S. — along with its regional allies – would be able to greatly increase its regional influence and control. Given the alliance between Syria and Iran, as well as their mutual defense accord, the occupation is necessary in order to weaken both nations and a key precursor to Trump administration plans to isolate and wage war against Iran.

With internal reports warning of the U.S.’ waning position as the “world’s only superpower,” the U.S. has no intention of leaving Syria, as it is becoming increasingly desperate to maintain its influence in the region and to maintain as well the influence of the corporations that benefit the most from U.S. empire.

Caught in a lie, US & allies bomb Syria the night before international inspectors arrive

Click here to access article by Eva Bartlett from her website In Gaza.

The evidence of significant damage to Syria is starting to come in from independent journalists.

One target, at which 76 missiles were fired, was the Barzeh scientific research centre in heavily-populated Damascus itself, which Dunford claimed was involved in the “development, production and testing of chemical and biological warfare technology.”

This ‘target’ is in the middle of a densely-inhabited area of Damascus. According to Damascus resident Dr. (of business and economy) Mudar Barakat, who knows the area in question, “the establishment consists of a number of buildings. One of them is a teaching institute. They are very close to the homes of the people around.”

Further on, Barlett writes:

Regarding the actual nature of the buildings bombed, Syrian media, SANA, describes the Pharmaceutical and Chemical Industries Research Institute as “centered on preparing the chemical compositions for cancer drugs.” The destruction of this institute is particularly bitter, as, under the criminal western sanctions, cancer medicines sales to Syria are prohibited.

Recommended articles for Sunday, 4/15/2018

(Note: Added article by Gowans at 11:14 AM Seattle time.) 

• Syria: What Just Happened by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• The Democratic “Deep State” Takeover and the Moribund State of American Politics by Danny Haiphong from Black Agenda Report.

The American ruling class is in a panic over its waning global influence and has consistently sought to obliterate any opposition to its rule. Conditions of decline are also evident inside of the American nation-state. The hoarding of wealth by the top 1 percent has reached astronomical levels. Mass shootings dominate headlines. Teachers in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma have all partaken in strikes against the austerity and privatization currently ravaging public education. All American imperialism has to offer is more war, more poverty, and more suppression of the legitimate problems afflicting workers and poor people.

• Washington strikes Syria again: was that it? by Aram Mirzaei from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

• An Excessive Emphasis on Theatrics Exposes US Hypocrisy on Syria by Peter Korzun from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• Here’s why chemical attack in Syria’s Douma is just another FAKE of White Helmets from Inside Syria Media Center.

• The Syrian “Show” Must Go On by Andrew Korybko from Eurasia Future. 

• First Step to Resolving Syria Crisis: Distribute Copies of the UN Charter to Washington, London and Paris by Stephen Gowans from What's Left. 

An Empire Built on Fear at Home and Abroad

Click here to access article by James Petras from Global Research. 

Domination is the driving force of US Empire builders.  But today’s empire is built on fragile economic foundations.  An Empire, which has aimed to dominate the world for the long duration, now stumbles over a series of military defeats abroad and increasingly relies on instilling fear, intimidation and propaganda on its domestic citizenry to regain its dominance.

Inculcating fear, especially at home, is the method of choice.

This method of choice works every time, and 9/11 was their master feat. Petras arrives at this distressing conclusion.

By the time the masses finally discover that the greatest menace stalking the country is the fear-mongering propaganda: They will have read an epitaph for their untimely nuclear death.