A bipartisan commission has determined that President Trump’s recent record defense bill is insufficiently massive to keep America safe, and we should spend more, while cutting “entitlements.”
This nightmare version of 'news' is maintained by a corporate 'filter bubble' that blocks facts, ideas and sources that challenge state-corporate control of politics, economics and culture. It is maintained by a mixture of ruthless high-level control and middle- and lower-level compromise, conformity and self-serving blindness.
It stands to reason that anyone seeking employment within this bubble will have to accept an unwritten agreement not to challenge the integrity of the bubble by which they are granted wealth and fame. Any ingrate deciding to renege is attacked, reviled and cast out; treated almost as sub-human, not entirely real. Politicians like George Galloway challenging the bubble can be beaten up in broad daylight and it is of no concern. Idealistic hippies like Russell Brand preaching love can be torn to shreds and silenced by the press pack – it doesn't matter. Whistleblowing activists like Julian Assange can be trapped, threatened with life imprisonment and death, and it is a laughing matter. Whole countries can be destroyed – it doesn't matter. The climate can be destroyed – it doesn't matter. The filter bubble has its own dream logic, follows its own cosmic laws as if the real world was none of its concern.
Basically, Trump has arranged for Assange to be eliminated either by illness that’s imposed by his Ecuadorean agent, or else by Assange’s own suicide resulting from that “torture,” or else by America’s own criminal-justice system. If this elimination happens inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, then that would be optimal for America’s President and Congress; but, if it instead happens on U.S. soil, then that would be optimal for Ecuador’s President. Apparently, America’s President thinks that his subjects, the American people, will become sufficiently hostile toward Assange so that even if Assange disappears or is executed inside the United States, this President will be able to retain his supporters. Trump, of course, needs his supporters, but this is a gamble that he has now clearly taken. This much is clear, even though the rest of the secret agreement that was reached between Pence and Ecuador’s President is not.
“I believe that [Washington, London and Quito] have reached some agreement and that is exactly why the special protocol [on home rules] was introduced... to accelerate the process of ending his asylum and hand him over to the United Kingdom authorities," Poveda said Thursday.
It’s not surprising that myths about the system are spreading, given the shrinking space in China for civil society, rights lawyering, speech, investigative journalism, and religious belief; its increasingly ubiquitous, invasive surveillance capability; and the Chinese Communist Party’s push to apply big data and artificial intelligence in governance. China’s party-state is collecting a vast amount of information on its citizens, and its social credit system and other developments internally and overseas raise many serious concerns. But contrary to the mainstream media narrative on this, Chinese authorities are not assigning a single score that will determine every aspect of every citizen’s life—at least not yet.
I predict two things will happen: the stock market, although the economy rests on very tenuous or unstable foundations, it will pick up after the elections because our masters have a great deal of control over it; secondly, the FBI will never solve who was sending these mail-bombs simply because agents employed by our masters did it. (Need I predict that our masters will succeed in their attempt to elect a majority of Democrats?)Results:
The failure of this strategy has pushed the US establishment towards two new options: the first, of using media to reveal Saudi Arabia’s intention to harm the Iranian economy and assassinate its military commanders. The second is to promote and advertise for an “Arab (Sunni) NATO Army”. The goal is to keep the possibility of sectarian war alive.
It appears increasingly likely Wikileaks founder and publisher Julian Assange will wind up in the clutches of the U.S. government.If we can't protect our hero Julian Assange, who tirelessly worked to keep real information flowing to us, from the war and environmental criminals, I fear all is lost.
It’s hardly surprising, given that in ten years’ time, Wikileaks published more classified information than all other media combined. It exposed human rights abuses, government spying, torture, and war crimes on an unprecedented scale.
How much of a freethinker do you think you actually are? The majority of people aren’t much: Their ideas and opinions on the most important issues in life don’t sprout from their own personal experience and understanding, but are just a result of the conditioning they had to undergo during their upbringing. In other words, they have been brainwashed to accept and follow dogmas that were forced upon them by tradition through — just to name a few examples — school, religion, and the mainstream media.We are social creatures, so we learn about life from each other. But, what if nearly all of us ordinary people are fed information from a source that controls in a self-serving fashion all information? Well, I am absolutely convinced that we live in a society that is in very large measure controlled by a ruling class consisting of very powerful and rich capitalists. Peruse all the articles written by independent thinkers I've collected and posted over the past nine years to see if you aren't also convinced of this. So what is the freedom of speech worth in such a society? The author is right that the much vaunted freedom of speech we supposedly enjoy is just another foolish illusion.
Give this a thought: If your thinking is actually controlled and bounded within a tiny mental box, how much freedom of speech and expression do you actually possess?
Julian Assange’s sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has been transformed into a little shop of horrors. He has been largely cut off from communicating with the outside world for the last seven months. His Ecuadorian citizenship, granted to him as an asylum seeker, is in the process of being revoked. His health is failing. He is being denied medical care. His efforts for legal redress have been crippled by the gag rules, including Ecuadorian orders that he cannot make public his conditions inside the embassy in fighting revocation of his Ecuadorian citizenship.But he ends with a call to protest. But the age of protest to our masters is over. Forget it. They aren't listening. They are completely under the influence of the drugs of power and riches, and like all addicts they are obsessed with accumulating ever more power and riches. It is for we, the people, to take matters in our own hands to free him one way or another.
This is not a joke, or a drill. This is it. Decision-point for humankind. The UN says we have to turn things around within 12 years to avoid catastrophe. Others give us even less time.She understands that working within the capitalist system which controls our nation can never be a solution because they, the ruling class, will never allow the system to be replaced--the tremendous power and wealth they enjoy is delivered by this system. We ordinary people must come to the rescue of our planet's ecosystem to save our ourselves, the rest of humanity, and future generations! She writes:
We need to act. And we need to act quickly. But we need to act rationally as well. It won’t help to run out and just “do something, anything” to fight for our future. We need to look honestly at whether the things we’ve been doing so far are effective. They aren’t.
Some say it’s crazy to fight for system change, leaving the Democrats and incrementalism behind. “System change is impossible” they maintain. “We can’t possibly achieve it in time to stave off disaster.” But which is crazier really? Fighting for actual control over our destiny, or continuing to fight within the very system that produced global warming, a system that thoroughly disempowers us?Enough said. Read the article in which she has some specific suggestions about how get the system-change started ... and act!
Over the past weekend, the leaders of the world’s great powers met in France to commemorate the official end of World War I. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump pulled long faces, hugged each other and gave speeches lamenting the “horror” and “tragedy” of a war that claimed more than 16 million lives.
But their talk of “tragedy” and “suicide” could not hide the fact that they are all engaged in active preparations for a new and deadly world military conflict.
The New York Times is lying to its readers about the commitments of an adversarial state. It did not learn a single lesson from its fake reporting that led the Iraq War. It again furthers hostile aggression.
In a piece published today, In North Korea, Missile Bases Suggest a Great Deception, the paper lies about North Korea's commitments:Although major media corporations always served the capitalist ruling class, The NY Times, The Washington Post, along with all major media have become thoroughly integrated into the Deep State (see my commentary here which explains the concept) that rules the capitalist Empire. They are now little more than propaganda platforms for the Deep State and its Empire.
They were only temporarily subsumed under the domination of the United States. The disease which had gripped the global capitalist system was not cured, it only went into a period of remission. This period has now ended.Now our arrogant masters seem to be planning another global nuclear war holocaust that would likely cause the extinction of all humans. Experts like Stephen Cohen fear this is about to happen--unless of course we can prevent it by taking away their ownership and control of most of the world's economy.
The very development of global capitalism after 1945 has brought about the relative and absolute decline of the United States. Confronted with the resurgence of its old rivals in Europe and Asia and the emergence of a potential new challenger in the form of China it now prepares to wage world war. And all the other imperialist powers are on the same road. They were only temporarily subsumed under the domination of the United States. The disease which had gripped the global capitalist system was not cured, it only went into a period of remission. This period has now ended.
The very development of global capitalism after 1945 has brought about the relative and absolute decline of the United States. Confronted with the resurgence of its old rivals in Europe and Asia and the emergence of a potential new challenger in the form of China it now prepares to wage world war.
Know that anyone could be (and have in the past been) Julian Assange; any publisher, any journalist, any writer, any poet, any professor, any artist, or any citizen. In that sense, we are all Julian Assange.This is the way the author ends his excellent essay on the masters of the Empire with their continuing persecution of Julian Assange in a desperate effort to hide their war crimes from us. I wish I could be as optimistic as the author is about "right to publish and be damned". The latter was only a part of the propaganda that our past capitalist masters used to fool the public into acquiescence to their rule. Now that their rule is threatened, it will be another story.
For these reasons, we should all be concerned with the plight of Julian Assange, and should speak out now in support of his own human rights. In doing so, you’ll also be advancing the right to free speech and press freedom.
That is, the right to publish and be damned.