Recommended articles for Saturday, January 19, 2019

• Martin Luther King Day and the Unspeakable by Edward Curtin from his blog "Behind the Curtain".

Monday, January 21, 2019 will be Martin Luther King Day, and I am posting this piece in advance so that readers can let its message sink in before the corporate media tell their lies by omission, as they have done on so many issues, such as the assassinations of JFK, Malcom X, MLK, and RFK, four linked assassinations that have profoundly affected our world up to the present day.

Curtin explains how leaders of the people, and others that refuse to follow the  orders of the Deep State, are dealt with by our masters in the Deep State, the directorate of the transnational ruling capitalist class.

• Talk of Western intervention in the Black Sea is pure fantasy by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times.

By now it’s established the US and NATO are stepping up military pressure from Poland to Romania and Bulgaria all the way to Ukraine and east of the Black Sea, which seems, at least for the moment, relatively peaceful, just as Crimea’s return to Russia starts to be regarded, in realpolitik terms, as a fait accompli.

After a recent series of conversations with top analysts from Istanbul to Moscow, it’s possible to identify the main trends ahead.

• 'Jewish state' will soon cease to exist, Israelis may flee to West: Zionist historian from PressTV (Iran).

• Science and social crisis in 2019 by Bryan Dyne from World Socialist Web Site. 

The author contrasts major breakthroughs in scientific knowledge with increasing reports about the degradation of living conditions among the overwhelming majority of humans. Clearly the system, capitalism, that governs human exchanges of productivity to benefit a tiny minority, is in basic conflict with science, the rigorous system that humans developed to attain knowledge about the universe they live in.

The Vice President’s Men

Click here to access article by Seymour Hersh from London Review of Books. (Edited at 6:23 PM CT to correct and clarify my commentary.)

Note that Hersh can no longer be published in the USA because his writings contain too much truth for the ruling class to tolerate. It appears that he is too popular and credible within the USA to being allowed to publish his writings by a US based publishing outfit. You see, the truth about our wars and government must be prevented at all costs which includes the legitimate charge of censorship, and above all, to maintain the fiction of some kind of official constitutional government and quasi-democracy. 

Hersh can't help writing about specific topics that undermine this fiction: it because he is obsessed with a drive to report the truth wherever he finds evidence to support some version of the truth. As is clear in Hersh's recent book Reporter, he relies heavily on government informants. In this rather lengthy article Hersh reports on how George (Herbert Walker) Bush set up a secret government within the official government to evade the onerous laws to curb the actions of the CIA which had been passed in 1976 in the aftermath of the (Sen.) Church Committee’s hearings.

It is not a general exposé of the crimes committed by our masters in the Deep State that control our government and their secret services. Relying mostly on his government informants, Hersh specifically targets what occurred in the Reagan administration with Vice-President George H.W. Bush thoroughly in charge. In this piece, he often refers to an "officer" who reportedly worked for Vice-Admiral Arthur Moreau who, in turn, was setup by Bush to work effectively as a CIA director (working around the official CIA Director Bill Casey) in the White House.

Typically our masters order their media corporations to fire such truth-tellers and/or smear them so that no one pays attention to them, but Hersh has too much credibility. This is another illustration of how the ruling class are increasingly resorting to fascist methods of control because the usual methods of capitalist control of employees no longer works to curb the writings of the independent and determined Hersh; and because they have long been engaged in "high crimes and misdemeanors", they don't want anyone writing about it. Therefore, he is dangerous and must be effectively blocked from any publications that Americans might read.

Normally our masters stay far removed from the glare of publicity, but in the case of George H.W. Bush, who had a Deep State heritage beginning with banker and Nazi supporter Prescott Bush, posed quite a challenge for them to keep Bush in a low profile. They set up a popular front man, former GE salesman and B-grade actor Ronald Reagan, who our capitalist masters had their media corporations focus on and glamorize in order to distract attention from who was really running the government.

The article requires one to have an extensive knowledge of what occurred, at least officially, in the Reagan years. I expect that this article will often be referred to and used for documentation in other broader essays about our secret government.

(You might also be interested in Bernhard's take (Moon of Alabama) on the article in his post "Seymour Hersh: George H.W. Bush Team Leaked To Media To Reveal CIA's Iran-Contra Affair".)

Recommended articles for Thursday, January 17, 2019

• Israel's Top Commander Finally Spills Secrets Of "Invisible War" In Syria by Tyler Durden from ZeroHedge.

• Pro-Israel groups are trying to split the Women’s March with a Zionist alternative by Amith Gupta from Mondoweiss.

• A graphic depicting the concentration of wealth amidst poor people of the Earth posted on Real-World Economics Review Blog. 

• Bases, Bases, Everywhere... by Nick Turse from TomDispatch. (If you wish to skip Engelhardt's introduction, you should direct your cursor down to the article.)

• Amnesty International’s Troubling Collaboration with UK & US Intelligence by Alexander Rubinstein from Mint Press News.  (This article reports on another illustration of how the Deep State's directors orders their secret services to infiltrate and control every substantial media organization in the USA and in many of the countries under the control of the US-led capitalist Empire.)

• American ‘Liberal’ Delusions on Trump by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation. (You should be aware that the US political spectrum has rather dramatically shifted to the right since the false-flag event of 9/11.)

• 3 reasons to pay attention to the LA teacher strike by Erin McHenry-Sorber, Assistant Professor of Higher Education, West Virginia University from The Conversation. 

The War on Populism

Click here to access article by C.J. Hopkins from The Unz Review.

I absolutely love this political satirist. He not only lampoons the ruling class of capitalists, but in addition, occasionally provides us with real insights on what they are currently doing. 

In this hilarious, slashing attack on our masters, he uncovers their latest campaign: their "war on populism". I think he is absolutely right. While reading this, I suddenly realized that "terrorist" incidents have diminished to nothing, and in its place has been an unrelenting war on populism in general together with their more obvious war on Trump. Following this insight, it suddenly occurred to me that we are really being punished for voting the wrong way in the 2016 elections! Our capitalist masters can't get over our disobedience! Thus, this unrelenting hysterical war on the Russian devils and Putin is really a war on us for being so disobedient as to vote for Trump instead of their candidate Hillary.

The War on Terror (or, rather, “the series of persistent targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America,” as Obama rebranded it) was going to continue, probably forever. The Brexit referendum had just taken place, but no one had really digested that yet … and then Trump won the nomination.

Like that scene in Orwell’s 1984 where the Party switches official enemies right in the middle of the Hate Week rally, the War on Terror was officially canceled and replaced by the War on Populism.

Instead of terrorist incidents to put us in a state of panic, we are bombarded with stories from corporate media that explains how our "democracy" has been tampered with by those evil Russian commies (excuse me) Putin/Hitler devils who are intent on corrupting our minds and threatening the foundations of our American Way of Life!

Unfortunately he ends this hilarious article with the prediction that the current campaign of whipping us for being bad will end when they get rid of Trump, and things will return to normal with the "War on Terror". 

Recommended articles for Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Updated at 4:04 PM CT--added one post by Magnier.

• It’s a Gas… Germany Outraged by US Colonial Arrogance by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• The US Mainstream Media Prefer Confrontation to Cooperation by Brian Cloughley from Strategic Culture Foundation.

What the author doesn't seem to understand is that mainstream media are the media of the Deep State which fumbled their control of the last election in which US citizens voted the wrong way (for them, because Russia, along with China, stands in their way of world domination). I am confident that they will never allow this to happen again.

• Mainstream Media Is Now Killing People Directly by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

Now our Deep State masters and their allies have come up with a diagnosis for the sick American people who voted the wrong way in the last election--"Trump Anxiety Disorder" (sarcasm).

• Guantanamo Prison Turns Seventeen by Elaine Pasquini from Washington Report.

• Press TV anchor Marzieh Hashemi jailed in US on unspecified charges from PressTV (Iran). 

The same treatment (likely worse) by Empire agents await Julian Assange if he should walk out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

• How To Survive Dangers of 5G, a posted 5:22m video from the Rick Sanchez show posted on RT.

The fifth generation of wireless technology (5G) is being rolled out worldwide, without safety testing. Scientists, doctors, and environmental organizers are saying the side effects of wireless radiation are linked to cancerous heart tumors, brain tumors, DNA damage, infertility, autism, Alzheimer’s and more. RT’s America Michele Greenstein joins The News with Rick Sanchez to discuss.

I would like to see the scientific evidence from scientific resources. If you find any, please let me know (goatmeal36@yahoo.com).

• Israel has been weakened by the war on Syria: only 5% of the Iranian and Hezbollah arsenal has been destroyed in Syria by Elijah J Magnier from his blog.

The World Will End in Fire

Click here to access article by David Swanson from his blog Let's Try Democracy.

Swanson and many other long-time climate and environmental observers like Dar Jamail are reluctantly facing the end of humans (and many other species), entering a stage of grieving, and desperately trying to find some meaning in this event. The end of our species is far and away beyond merely facing one's own demise. Thus, we can forgive them (and ourselves) if they exhibit some waffling and romantic attitudes about this beyond-epochal event. In this post Swanson borrows heavily from a new book by Jamail entitled The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption.  

Swanson concludes with recommendations on how we should face our extinction:

... we have to rededicate ourselves to redoubling our efforts, again and again, with ever greater effort as we continue. The alternative of giving up is guaranteed not to be more enjoyable than working well together on a crisis that could bring out the best in us. The alternative of pretending everything is normal, scorning radical activism, and contenting ourselves with voting in yet another “most important election of our lifetime” every two years is guaranteed to create a crisis of faith and a crisis of guilt. Let’s not go there. Or rather, let’s not stay there.

Meanwhile, most ordinary people are too busy surviving and misinformed to worry about such things.

Entering a Major Regional Re-set – The Syria Outcome Will Haunt Those Who Started This War

Click here to access article by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Commentary updated at 6:00 PM CT.)

This former MI6 (CIA is the American version) geopolitical analyst has a solid background in planning, organizing, and executing often illegal plans to serve the British ruling class. Thus, he knows much about what he writes in relation to ruling classes and the type of people they employ to serve their interests of power and profits. In other words, his career has well equipped him to understand the intricacies of power plays of those who enjoy overwhelming power--ruling classes in capitalist countries and heads of governments elsewhere. 

In this article he applies his knowledge to explain how the complex situation in the current Middle East, where the US-led Empire with their NATO army and their allies (Saudi Arabia and Israel) versus their enemies (Russia, Iran, and to a more limited extent China), is playing out. Turkey's pivotal actions are apparently swinging to the Empire's enemy camp.

I often find such geopolitical analyses rather mind-boggling. I challenge you to read another such analysis by an author who apparently knows about the history of the regions--Dr. Can Erimtan. More-so than Crooke's analysis, he cites distant histories of authorities using religion as a means to manipulate their people to fight to secure more power and wealth for themselves. You will notice that it is not much different today in that area of the world. 

Organized religion has its own hierarchy of officials who control their religious organization. Frequently the only "asset" that poor people have is religion, an ideology that tries to explain the fundamental questions about their lives: their extreme vulnerability which can be ameliorated by faith in this religion, and an unquestioning obedience to the authorities of this religion. Often such religions offer some sort of after-life as rewards for good behavior. Notice that secular authorities always collaborate with religious authorities to exploit, manipulate, and oppress ordinary people.
 
Throughout history we have seen secular and religious authorities motivating and manipulating people by appealing to their religion to serve hegemonic interests. They do this by justifying their aggressive policies because their gods (or god) and religion support these actions. Often these authorities advance their actions using such propaganda. For example, during the feudal era, the Christian religion was used by monarchs and their aristocracy (their princes) to justify their rule to their peasant subjects--they ruled by "divine right". Islam is still used to buttress the rule of the king of Saudi Arabia today. And Judaism claims that Jews are the "chosen people"--of course, chosen by their god. The advancement of science has weakened the use of organized religion to manipulate people in most of the world today, but it still plays a major role in the Middle East where many of these religions were born.

Today we also see the rather astonishing use of a sophisticated ideology among the Syrian Kurds: socialist Murray Bookchin’s "libertarian municipalism" (described in the article by Erimtan) that is used to advance the interests of the Syrian Kurdish rulers. And, Kurdish leaders seem to be cynically willing to ally themselves with anybody who they perceive has the power to advance their interests.

What all such wars and geopolitical contests have in common, other than the ultimate suffering of ordinary people, is that they are based on a hierarchical system of rule that serve a few versus the masses of ordinary people. What I have tried to argue over the past decade in my blog is hierarchical rule will inevitably lead to the disappearance of humans either through a nuclear war catastrophe or global warming and environmental devastation. 

Only the survival of our human species can be assured if we adopt a bottom-up authority  system (subarchy?), and this can only brought about if ordinary people become engaged in their own survival. Attempts must be made to construct such systems until a system is created that will erase class conflict and wars, and can adopt policies that can stop the degradation of our biosphere. Time is fast running out. If I were a hypothetical betting man, I would bet on the extinction of humans within 50 years.

State versus Film-makers: Criticising Iran's Regime Through Cinema (2002)

Click here if you wish to directly access the following 15 minute video from YouTube. The transcript of the video can be accessed here. (Edited the second to the last paragraph for greater clarity at 5:21 PM CT.)

I don't understand the various dates related to this uploaded post on YouTube, but I do understand why Western capitalist ideologues want to post such anti-Iranian views on the internet. In contrast to much of the anti-Iran propaganda this video describes true events, but the issues of censorship lack any kind of context. 

Thus, no effort is made to understand that Iran has suffered so many interventions from the US-led Empire in their affairs starting in 1953 with the Anglo-American coup that replaced the elected the Prime Minister of Iran Mosaddegh with the former Shah of Iran who was something like the queen/king of England. You see, Mosaddegh wanted to get rid of the British colonial control of Iran's oil resources bv the British oil company. The directors of the Empire knew that they could use the Shah to serve their interests. In 1979 the Iranians with the backing of religious authorities finally rid themselves of this colonial puppet Shah and since then the US-led Empire (some prefer "Anglo-American Empire") has put Iran on their shit-list. Recently and currently the Empire has both forbidden them to develop nuclear weapons and have imposed severe economic sanctions on Iran.

If Iran had not been interfered with, the religious authorities who exercise so much influence in today's Iran likely would not have had such power if the secular-oriented Mosaddegh and subsequent governments had not been targeted by the US Empire, and the Iranian film industry would not now experience such censorship.

Notice that starting about 11:05m the narrator and film director Farmanara accurately state that Hollywood films, or films in the West, can be just as restrictive with the financial control of which films are made and how they are made.

The War Against America’s Only Anti-War Candidate

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

This ex-Marine author extols the anti-war virtues of Representative and Major Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii who is running for President of the USA, and lampoons nearly all the US politicos as fake pro-war warriors in Washington DC.

I mention this because the truth, a truth hidden, a truth censored, has borne fruit, a nation of fakes, of hypocrites, of “twitter warriors” and trolls, of empty lies, of smears, a nation that lies and bullies and one that allows its heroes to be defamed, insulted and smeared on behalf of the interests of international gangsters.

And, I think he is right simply because the "warriors" in Washington serve the Deep State's military-industrial-media corporations as engines of world domination. Thus, they dislike her and will see that she goes nowhere in her pursuit of the presidency. She will be totally ignored by corporate media so that the American people will never learn of her political perspectives, and she will never receive any funding by the rich to help her in her political campaigns. These are the major reasons why Congress overwhelmingly consists of fake warriors. Other reasons include the control of the entire electoral process by the rich ruling class of capitalists.