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

Saturday, January 12, 2019

Two recommended articles (that I read) for Saturday, January 12, 2019

  • Philanthropic Capitalist Foundations and Corporate Environmentalism by Nicolas Casaux from Le Partage (in French) and translated into English with a very good machine translator and posted on Wrong Kind of Green. Despite this type of translation one can easily get the point of this article that NGOs in many cases funnel funds from large corporations to fund sources that are less inimical to their profitable interests. A prime example that always comes to my mind is "Democracy Now".

Banksters HATE The Free Market

Click here to access article by James Corbett from his blog. (I updated the following commentary to further clarify my views at 5:52 PM CT.)

This libertarian exemplifies so many American libertarians (Ron Paul is a well known example) who are critical of governments, and often criticize government policies and actions. Libertarians are found clear across the political spectrum. Clearly Corbett is on the right. His exclusive focus is on formal/legal restrictions on the rights of individuals and ignores all the power that wealth and the ownership of productive property gives to individuals who possess them. Property rights including the ownership of money are sacred to these people as well as to all capitalists. When right-wing libertarians speak of individual freedom, they totally ignore the system of capitalism that inevitably creates gross inequality in all its forms.

These "free marketeer" libertarians are often caught in contradictory political positions: they ignore the capitalist promotion of government subsidies to corporations but they don't like the rather mild restrictions that sometimes interfere with corporations' quest to attain profits regardless of adverse consequences: environmental destruction, food poisoning, drug addiction from opioids, and extreme inequality of living standards and opportunities. It's obvious to any awake person that the rich and their corporations control the government, and they want to keep it that way. But to right-wing libertarians the government is an entirely independent entity.

In this article and the related one for members by the same title, he argues that bankers as well as socialists (financiers) are the scourge of free marketeers, and he poses a question to socialists to reconcile this apparent contradiction: "Why is it that the very banksters that they so rightfully rage against are in fact their biggest allies in the fight against the free market?" This is a logical and empirical fallacy. He doesn't see that bankers are the ultimate capitalists, that they are an inevitable product of the capitalist system. Bankers simply believe that money is the ultimate form of property (which is sacred) and they use it to rent out to capitalists, who engage in profit-making enterprises and who don't have sufficient capital to be bankers. They are putting their capital to work in such corporations, and under the rules of capitalism they feel entitled to the rent of their money. Thus, I pose a question to Corbett: why do corporate executives and their upper-middle class professionals ally themselves with bankers?

Thus, Corbett often shares a bed with economists like Michael Hudson, who betrayed his Trotskyst roots to make money for capitalist enterprises and finally to teach in one of their universities. Granted that Hudson has often exposed the harmful effects on economies caused by financiers and the debts they pile on productive corporate enterprises, but he seldom directly criticizes the system in which bankers were created.

Corbett, like many American libertarians, always refers to "free market" as a system whereby small businesses compete against each other in a market of consumers who want the best products at the cheapest price. Is this a reality in today's world? Were the "free marketeers" ever leaders in capitalist countries? Financiers (think Alexander Hamilton, the Rothchild clan, etc) have always been a major and leading part of the capitalist class, and today they have overwhelming control of most of the world. 

Also, I want to deal with his often cited writings of Antony C. Sutton. One must exercise some critical thinking when reading his books or articles. Based on my readings of several of his books and his career, I think he was a rather weird character. He served capitalists for many years; and based on this service, he was awarded a research fellowship at the very exclusive and conservative Hoover Institution. I tend to think that he was a mixed-up character who had been thoroughly indoctrinated with capitalist philosophy, but was also a stickler for truth. When he started uncovering some very inconvenient truths about what happened in history and to the embarrassment of the ruling capitalist class, they cast him out of the Hoover Institution. 

One of the facts which Sutton spread that appealed to the ruling class was that capitalists had bankrolled both Lenin and Trotsky, and libertarians continue to make all kinds of wild inferences from this. In these cases bankers allegedly helped with trip expenses to enable the two revolutionaries to return to Russia. Do you think for a moment that Lenin and/or Trotsky were/was subsequently controlled by bankers? Capitalists will always try to control people by funding them.  On the other hand, Sutton's research did uncover a lot of information regarding the funding of Nazis by American capitalists; and he revealed a lot of information about the highly secret "Skull and Bones" club at Yale University to the embarrassment of the ruling class.

Friday, January 11, 2019

Recommended articles for Friday, January 11, 2019

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Ruling power’s desire to regulate people’s access to information is so desperate that it has become as clumsy and ham-fisted as a teenager pawing at his date in the back seat of a car, and it feels about as enjoyable. They’re barely even concealing their desire to control our minds anymore, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to wake everyone up to their manipulations. We need to use every inch of our ability to communicate with each other before it gets shut down for good.
RT America correspondent Michele Greenstein joins Rick Sanchez to discuss “Project Integrity,” a UK-funded intelligence operation “dedicated to revealing and combating propaganda and misinformation.” They create “clusters” of journalists and influencers across Europe and in the US to sew a “tougher stance” in policies toward Russia and the threat of “Russian measures” in media.

Inside the Mind of Edward Mandell House, Administrator

Click here to access James Corbett's audio interview with Richard Grove about some of the sordid history of the deep state using a novel by Col. House, who was one of the members of the deep state.
Originally aired January 20, 2015: Richard Grove of TragedyandHope.com and PeaceRevolution.org joins us on this month’s edition of Film, Literature and the New World Order to discuss Philip Dru: Administrator by Edward Mandell House. We examine the man behind the work and how the novel presages House’s time as the power behind the throne of the Wilson presidency.
This post is for historians, whether professional or amateur, out there who have read a lot of historical material related to what is now referred to as the deep state ("shadow government" is another term)--those key people, mostly very rich financiers, since 1900 who have shaped so much of the history of the 20th century up to the present. Obviously the deep state has always been hidden from public view, so one must be well-read on the history of the 20th century to come to any understanding of it. I, myself, have read a lot of books about FD Roosevelt (who was exceptionally influenced by Col. House in addition to Wilson), Tragedy and Hope by Quigley, much of the history of the 20th century, and this discussion made a lot of sense to me as well as piqued (def.) my interest in other books.

The post might motivate others to read some of the books that are referred to in the discussion, and thus attain some understanding of what the deep state is, deep state fantasies about power, and their manipulation of people throughout the 20th century which continues to this day. (The show notes provide many links to books and other materials.) I particularly recommend listening from 30:50m to 32:08m for people who are relatively new to the subject.

Thursday, January 10, 2019

Is the US Planning to Wage War on Russia and China? - Michel Chossudovsky

Click here to access the interview with Chossudovsky, editor and founder of Global Research, conducted by Bonnie Faulkner from her Guns and Butter website. 

If you don't have time to listen to all of this very interesting interview, I advise that you listen to the last half of it starting at 29:05m. I specify this point because he reports that China is a leader in telecommunications, and specifically, in 5G technology. This comment lends much suspicion about the authenticity of the article I posted on January 8 which announced a protest drive against this technology. 

Shortly thereafter, he addresses the subject contained in the title of this post with some very interesting and disturbing little-known information. I highly recommend this segment.

Facebook Censorship of Alternative Media “Just the Beginning,” Says Top Neocon Insider

Click here to access article by Max Blumenthal and Jeb Sprague from the Gray Zone
In comments published here for the first time, a neoconservative Washington insider has apparently claimed a degree of credit for the recent purge — and promised more takedowns in the near future.

“Russia, China, and other foreign states take advantage of our open political system,” remarked Jamie Fly, a senior fellow and director of the Asia program at the influential think tank the German Marshall Fund, which is funded by the U.S. government and NATO. “They can invent stories that get repeated and spread through different sites. So we are just starting to push back. Just this last week Facebook began starting to take down sites. So this is just the beginning.”

Forgotten France rises up

Click here to access article by Serge Halimi from Le Monde Diplomatique
Macron has come unstuck. As did previous wunderkinder just as young, smiling and modern: Laurent Fabius, Tony Blair, Matteo Renzi. The liberal bourgeoisie are hugely disappointed. His French presidential election win in 2017 — whether it was a miracle or a divine surprise — had given them hope that France had become a haven of tranquillity in a troubled West. When Macron was crowned (to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy), The Economist, that standard-bearer for the views of the international ruling class, put him on its front cover, grinning as he walked on water.

But the sea has swallowed up Macron, too sure of his own instincts and too contemptuous of other people’s economic plight.
Another good post from some unknown source in which you may be interested to learn about the ongoing French protests that US corporate media refuses to cover: French riots? Here’s the reality MSM will not show you… and there’s good reason.
 

Solidarity with LA teachers!

Click here to access article by David Feldman from Liberation.
Some 33,000 educators and members of the United Teachers of Los Angeles union, consisting of teachers, counselors, nurses, librarians and other school workers are set to take to the picket line to defend public education in Los Angeles against the privatization plans of LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner.

Beutner, a multimillionaire and former investment banker, got rich by breaking up and selling off corporations while laying off workers and wants to do the same to LAUSD.
This and another article entitled "Portland State University threatens to fire Peter Boghossian for authoring 'Grievance Studies' hoax" that has been recently reported on alternative websites furnishes more evidence that the our masters in the capitalist ruling class are clamping down on public education and teachers that present other than acceptable (to them) views to their students. This has always been the case in more subtle forms, but these recent efforts suggest that this drive to control dissent is going into overdrive (def.).

If We Can No Longer Tell the Truth, We’ve Failed

Click here to access article by Charles Hugh Smith posted on Washington's Blog
The last thing addicts want to hear is the truth: the only thing more terrifying than the truth is the possibility that they will lose access to whatever they’re addicted to: smack, Oxy, coke, alcohol, sex, porn, power, etc.
The author is no revolutionary, but in this article he does provide a major insight to a weakness of our masters. This piece directly supports one of my basic arguments that the power addicts of our capitalist ruling classes are most vulnerable when they engage in fake news and extremely biased reports as they are doing now. Hence, the need for a major alternative media organization to undermine their stories about what happens in the world. Such a bold plan and operation would "scare the daylights out of" (def.) them to the point that they would engage in all kinds of reckless acts which could very well add fuel to a revolutionary movement. 

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Opportunities and Challenges Posed by the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) Protests and the Sunrise Movement

Click here to access article by Kamran Nayeri from Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism.

It's clear to me that leftists have learned very little from history since the end of the Vietnam War. Now, judging by this essay, they want to use major issues to build an organization capable of establishing a "socialist" revolution (whatever that means). Oh, yes, I admit they have learned a few political buzz words like "bottom-up" when referring to organizations. However, they still address the dangers of looking to ruling class parties to address their problems, and they still, like Nayeri, advocate supporting independent movements that rally around contemporary issues. (Yawn) Forgive me, if I lack attentiveness. 

You see, in 1970 I largely agreed with Camejo's essay of 1970, that was republished at this website, which advocated using the Anti-Vietnam War Movement to build a revolutionary movement. Fortunately, unlike Nayeri, I have learned a lot since that time. That strategy didn't work then, and I have no reason to believe that it will work now in spite of what is going on in Europe with the Yellow Vest Movement. To his credit, he does warn about co-opted, reform movements such as the Sunrise Movement and other such movements.
The Sunrise Movement poses a different set of opportunities and challenges for the climate justice movement and its small ecosocialist component.  While its stated purpose is to combat the climate crisis, it has not absorbed a key political lesson apparent in the spontaneous Yellow Vests protests: that the existing political parties are not to be trusted.  Thus, the Sunrise Movement supports the agenda of the Democratic Party Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio Cortez ....
Nayeri, similar to Camejo, wants to use the ecological crisis to build a movement to construct some kind of "socialist" government. 
One such a proposal is what I have outlined (Nayeri, 2015)  A central goal of such a proposal is in its educational value: only an enlightened working people’s movement can stop and reverse the climate crisis. Such a proposal is key to educate our class about our lifestyle habits we came to own through the capitalist mass consumption culture.
However, I am convinced that the author of this article doesn't seem to understand the basic requirement of a revolution--enlightened working people--that will put working people into power and eliminate any class structured organization of society, particularly that which is in control of the capitalist class. Thus, Nayeri thinks getting behind an emissions tax will enlighten working people and put us on the road to socialism. Worse, he totally ignores the other major threat to humans: a global nuclear war catastrophe.

The only hope I see is the construction of a large alternative media organization that can provide real news coverage to the American public. Nobody likes to be lied to, and corporate media are disseminators of fake news reports and they censor honest coverage of vital issues. Polls show that increasing numbers of Americans are realizing that fact. In addition, such an alternative media organization would provide opportunities to experiment with bottom-up authority structures so vitally necessary in establishing a real and effective socialist society. (Here is my unfinished attempt as an example.)

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Recommended articles for Tuesday, January 8, 2019

INTERNATIONAL APPEAL: Stop 5G on Earth and in Space (updated)

Click here to access article from International Appeal. (Thanks go to an activist who alerted me to this warning.)

Updated at 1:17 PM CT on January 10: I suspect this article reflects a Western psy-op against China after listening to Michel Chossudovsky's remarks to Bonnie Faulkner at 29.08 (about half-way across the audio spectrum) who said that China was a leader in telecommunications and they were a leader in 5G technology.

Updated at 5 PM CT on January 10: I've read more using DuckDuckGo search engine which suggests that this technology has been pioneered by Israel.

They announce this:
Telecommunications companies worldwide, with the support of governments, are poised within the next two years to roll out the fifth-generation wireless network (5G). This is set to deliver what is acknowledged to be unprecedented societal change on a global scale.
As if we didn't have enough to worry about already:
Despite widespread denial, the evidence that radio frequency (RF) radiation is harmful to life is already overwhelming. The accumulated clinical evidence of sick and injured human beings, experimental evidence of damage to DNA, cells and organ systems in a wide variety of plants and animals, and epidemiological evidence that the major diseases of modern civilization—cancer, heart disease and diabetes—are in large part caused by electromagnetic pollution, forms a literature base of well over 10,000 peer-reviewed studies.

If the telecommunications industry’s plans for 5G come to fruition, no person, no animal, no bird, no insect and no plant on Earth will be able to avoid exposure, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to levels of RF radiation that are tens to hundreds of times greater than what exists today, without any possibility of escape anywhere on the planet. These 5G plans threaten to provoke serious, irreversible effects on humans and permanent damage to all of the Earth’s ecosystems.
Such statements have already been endorsed by highly educated specialists: Girish Kumar, PhD; Annie J Sasco, MD; Martin L Pall, PhD, etc. and supported by a number of references.

How Does Cinema War Propaganda Really Work?

Click here to access article by Matthew Alford and Tom Secker from Insurge Intelligence. (Updated with some much needed editing.)

The authors attempt an explanation of how our military branches of government together with film distributors shape what films are heavily promoted and Americans allowed to see. This results in films that are seriously critical of government actions and policies but result in very limited distribution and, in turn, incur financial losses to their promoters. However, I believe the authors' attempts at explanation fall well short of reality, and this is likely because of their own indoctrination received in schools controlled by the ruling capitalist class. 

You see, during and especially after WWII, American fascist capitalists came out of the woodwork of "isolationism" of the 1930s and allied themselves with the devastated remains of the British Empire to establish a new US-led Empire. The Zionist Jews soon joined them after they took control of Palestine in 1948. Immediately after the war when the old-fashioned fascist powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) were successfully concluded, they moved aggressively in all institutions to bring the American people along with them in support of their imperial ambitions. They infiltrated labor unions, higher educational institutions, and Hollywood (prove it, you might say. I simply don't have the staff and time to do this, and my old age also has diminished my energy) as their main initial targets in this campaign. After that they infiltrated media corporations and every other institution that could conceivably have independent influences that were anathema to their imperial ambitions. 

They also moved successfully to hide all of these actions from view by ordinary Americans. The fascist American, British, and Zionist capitalists stayed hidden in a deep state where no one was allowed to identify them and examine what they were doing. The most visible heads were those connections with the CIA: Allen Dulles, James Angleton, and George H. W. Bush. Meanwhile, abroad they brought areas they militarily controlled after WWII under ideological control mainly through such actions as Operation Gladio, and the same control of media and other institutions as they did within the USA.

I have provided some general references below. I have "tons" of other saved online documents, but I don't want to overwhelm you. (Notice that some have been taken down, or for some other reason eliminated. I have noticed this recently and it has been increasing. The Tides Foundation which funnels money from various sources to fund propaganda outlets is no longer providing access to data about funding particular websites. I used them in approximately 2011 to find out that they were funding Amy Goodwin of Democracy Now around $200,000. Thus, she avoids topics like 9/11 and limits other coverage.)

I think we must be conscious that the fascists of today's capitalist world have learned a lot of lessons from the earlier fascists of the 1930s and 40s. As is mentioned in the article, they strenuously avoid the appearance of old-fashioned propagandists. Thus, they permit some very limited criticisms and left-wing views to be exposed to the public, but this is extremely limited and mostly quite innocuous to their interests. They have all kinds of means to limit such criticisms and leftist views by their control of media, film industry, and co-opting people with their control over careers and with lots of money.

CIA Admits Using News To Manipulate the USA (1975) - YouTube  
70 Years of Disinformation: How the CIA Funded Opinion Magazines in Europe - American Herald Tribune  
The CIA and the Media: Bernstein  
The book “Bought Journalists” 5 People You Won’t Believe Worked For the CIA - YouTube  
The CIA and the Media: 50 Historical Facts the World Needs to Know 
Mainstream Media: Presstitutes for the Rich and Powerful  
Operation Mockingbird - Wikipedia ‘German politicians are US puppets’ | Oriental Review  
Is The West A Capitalist Society? -- they pretend to be independent reporters  
Rachel Maddow Plays Glenn Beck  
Shaky Foundations: Toxic Sources, Tainted Money
Oil Sands Truth: Shut down the Tar Sands  
US military studied how to influence Twitter users in Darpa-funded research  
Tides fund Democracy Now
Why has Time magazine endorsed the #MeToo “revolution”? 
Government has order the media not to cover 9/11  
Article: The Cointelpro Role of Left Gatekeeping Foundations | OpEdNews 

Monday, January 7, 2019

Recommended articles for Monday, January 7, 2019

ISDS is hugely controversial. Concerns have been raised by a wide range of actors about both the process of ISDS, and the way the system can infringe on the sovereign right of states to regulate to protect public health, human rights and the environment.
Watching the actions and ignoring the words is a personal policy I’ve found very useful in dealing with top government figures who understand that power has nothing to do with truth and everything to do with narrative control, and in that particular case the president’s claims were quickly memory holed after a highly suspicious chemical weapons allegation in Douma a few days later. The president’s words said the troops were leaving, and what actually happened was the US bombing the Syrian government for a second time in a year while troops remained where they were.

Everyone completely lost their shit last month when the president once again made the claim that US troops will be brought home from Syria.
Recent research indicates that a major ruling class solution to the carbon buildup from the burning of fossil fuels--capturing carbon dioxide and burying it underground--is based on very little science. In other words, this capitalist solution is mostly based on wishful thinking as a desperate measure to save their system which delivers to this tiny social-economic class so much power and wealth, and delivers to the rest of us extreme inequality, wars, environmental destruction, etc. 
“We need to refocus and reenergize ‘Western’ entertainment to combat increasing authoritarianism and illiberal tendencies worldwide, how to go about doing so BUT without it being ‘propaganda’,” states an undated “Memorandum” uploaded online last week, in the fourth tranche of leaks from the international Foreign Office-funded Integrity Initiative.

Some interesting new information about 9/11

Click here to access article posted by the editor of True Publica on their British-based website. 

Don't let the bland title of this article deter you from reading it--it's powerful! More and more people are questioning the official government story about history's top false-flag event: 9/11. Likewise the directorate of the ruling capitalist class (otherwise known as the Deep State), which controls our government and much of the Anglo-American Empire, are fighting back with the old canard about such questioning of official reports: questioning equals "conspiracy theory". This article from a major alternative British website furnishes details about the breakdown of belief in the government's 9/11 mythology while citing other major examples of government lies.

Sunday, January 6, 2019

9/11: Finally the Truth Comes Out?

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts posted on Foreign Policy Journal (not to be confused with Foreign Policy, one of the propaganda websites of the Deep State that governs America).
Although the United States is allegedly a democracy with a rule of law, it has taken 17 years for public pressure to bring about the first grand jury investigation of 9/11. Based on the work of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth led by Richard Gage, first responder and pilots organizations, books by David Ray Griffen and others, and eyewitness testimony, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry has presented enough hard facts to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York to force his compliance with the provisions of federal law that require the convening of a federal grand jury to investigate for the first time the attacks of September 11, 2001.

This puts the US Justice (sic) Department in an extraordinary position. Every informed person is aware that elements of the US government were involved either in the perpetration of the 9/11 attacks or in a coverup of the attacks.

Revolution back in Europe! Why and how?

Click here to access article by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos from Defend Democracy Press.

The author gives a thoughtful view of the Yellow Vest's (for the latest update, see this) potential to evolve into something of significance, and also the necessity of action today in order to save our human species. After citing numerous uprisings since WWII, he writes:
These are all movements which, each one in its own way and despite the differences between them, have profoundly changed the way we perceive the world, and were all characterized by the same direct form of people’s action, with millions of simple people directly participating, and by the fact that they all questioned the foundations of economic and social organization and the power system in the countries in which they broke. All these movements, without exception, were,in one way or another, accompanied by demands for democratisation of society, self-management and direct participation of people in power.

Does Socialism Affect Freedom?

Click here to access this 25 minute podcast by David Harvey, a noted "socialist" theorist and spokesman posted on Democracy at Work

Harvey, in my opinion, engages in a long, complicated discussion of the merits of freedom under some kind of socialism versus that of capitalism. Of course, our capitalist masters insure that we all receive indoctrination in the merits of freedom under capitalism and the lack of freedom under socialism. 

To me it is very simple. The system of capitalism in which everything must be produced or created in order to be bought and sold for profit provides abundant benefits (all kinds of freedom and an elevated standard of living including access to education and health care) for those who have large amounts of money already. 

People of the latter description became numerous in the 17th and 18th centuries and took control of leading nations and established capitalism in those countries which they expanded it to nearly all countries. Because they enjoyed radically different opportunities, standards of living, and enormous influence, they became known as a social-economic class of capitalists or bourgeoisie. In other words, their system which gave this class of people power over societies in addition to all kinds of opportunities for an abundant lifestyle, also put the majority of people essentially in bondage to these powerful people. But, why should a system exist to benefit for only one small group of people at the disadvantage of the vast majority???

True to his British heritage of favoring only mild reforms to capitalism, Harvey insists that only the basic necessities of a society should be socialized. He repeats this a number of times. Harvey along with many other fake socialists do not want an end to capitalism, but only reforms to the system in order to rid it of its worst consequences, but not a system that promotes the welfare and freedoms for all people. (That is precisely why he and other milder "socialists" like Richard Wolff are tolerated as professors teaching classes at American universities.) The system he and others like him favor has a name: social democracy. Like so many concepts nowadays, this is a prettied-up euphemism for a reformed capitalism.