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 Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, June 28, 2019

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Are You Complicit? by The Anti-Social Socialist

Click here to access article by "The Anti-Social Socialist" posted on Dandelion Salad. (updated)

This post reveals the naive political consciousness of many activists in today's USA. The post contains two major errors: 1) it puts the burden on individuals to not comply and cooperate with the capitalist system and their fake rulers; and 2) it ignores how the American version of fascism is highly deceptive and manipulative. 

The ruling class controls nearly all our "realities" using very sophisticated techniques that were first developed by the Creel Commission in WWI as psychological warfare to stunning success. Yes, our masters in the capitalist ruling class used not only psychological warfare techniques on their enemies of that time, but worst of all, on ordinary people in the USA not only to get them to interrupt their lives and go across the ocean to kill other ordinary people who had been similarly brainwashed, but to get ordinary Americans to support the war effort.

Capitalist ruling authorities since the 1930s realized the vast potential of this new discipline and went on to earnestly study and develop this technology to not only sell products but to create "realities" about the political and economic world that has neutralized a working class consciousness. They have created a full-spectrum propaganda technology that serves the interests of profit and power of ruling capitalist classes in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. 

In the 1930s, Walter Lippmann, building on his extensive work in psychological warfare in WWI, and Harold Lasswell, a political scientist, led the efforts to develop techniques of "persuasion". Christopher Simpson in his excellent book Science of Coercion described their perspectives this way:
Persuasive communication aimed at largely disenfranchised masses [meaning that they have no political party serving their interests] became central to Lippmann's strategy for domestic government and international relations. He saw mass communication as a major source of the modern crisis and as a necessary instrument for any managing elite. The social sciences offered tools that could make administration of what would otherwise be highly unstable social structure relatively rational and effective, he contented. In an era when methods of social supervision in industrial societies still mainly consisted of guns and policemen's clubs, many academics and intellectuals hailed Lippmann's insights as enlightened and humane. [my insertion]
Lasswell extended the idea, giving it a Machiavellian twist. He emphasized employing persuasive media and selectively using assassinations, violence, and other coercion as means of " communicating" with and managing disenfranchised people. He advocated what he regarded as "scientific" application of persuasion and precise violence, in contrast to bludgeon tactics. 
The Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 was also fascinated by how people could be manipulated to commit acts which they would otherwise not do through the use of propaganda that served the interests of the German ruling capitalist class in Germany. Remember this famous quote of his?
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.
After WWII, Simpson wrote (with extensive supporting documentation) that US networks fostered by lucrative government contracts arose among propaganda warfare veterans, and soon they were put to work perfecting their techniques through a series of legislation that produced the CIA (and other secret services) and signed off by the naive President Harry Truman. Truman in his earlier political career was carefully groomed for a political offices and influenced by the Pendergast mob of Kansas City, Missouri. He was the "lipstick on the pig" of nefarious influences which proved useful for fascists to use him to pursue their post-war anti-Soviet agendas and grow their Empire.

The CIA has continued to infiltrate all corporate media and Hollywood to insure that they all tell the same lies (see this). Not only in the USA, but in major media corporations in the Empire (see this--it should be noted that Ulfkotte "conveniently" died of a "heart attack" in 2017.). Now media corporations can broadcast their "realities" everywhere at the same time, and Hollywood can repeat these lies in their films. The Deep State through its secretive spy agencies have in realty accomplished what Goebbels said what was needed. This might be referred to as "full-spectrum psychological warfare dominance" over the working classes. 

Thus, today Americans believe all kinds of nonsense about their society and those abroad. Americans can only oppose this powerful class of capitalists by collectively organizing against them, but that takes a collective, dramatic rise of consciousness about the reality of class rule. This consciousness has been substantially erased by the intentional corruption of media and all ideological institutions.

Monday, June 24, 2019

Sunday, June 23, 2019

Articles recommended for Sunday, June 23, 2019 -- updated at 4:50 PM CT

(Thanks to activist for sending me this update.) 

Germany vs. Iran – Has Germany Sold Out to the Devil?

Click here to access article by Peter Koenig from New Eastern Outlook

I'm wondering if Koenig and others are right about the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire being in retreat. 
Instead of jumping off the sinking ship of Washington and its faithful entourage of the willing, as rats would do, and as the vast majority of the German people would prefer, let alone German and European business, Madame Merkel and apparently all her circles, including Berlin’s Parliament, follow the US flagrant lie propaganda. Why? – Well, this is the deal: There are many ways to “buy” top politicians, with threats or with money or by outright inflicting fear through ‘proxy-assassinations’.

Once Germany is on board – the rest of Europe will follow suit.
They, in spite of their belligerent foreign policies, seem to be losing everywhere. Just when the Empire declared victory over the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, and they subsequently went on a rampage of "color revolutions" and invasions. They seemed to rule supreme. But now their actions have the appearance of a desperate attempt to maintain dominance over the world. One thing appears more certain: Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China, Iran, Syria and their allies now appear determined to push back against this domination. And Europeans and Turkey seem on the edge of defecting from the Empire and its army NATO. If the latter happens, the old cold warriors in the Deep State will have to decide to risk everything with a nuclear war or abandon their dreams of a New World Order

It's not just a "conspiracy theory" to these people in the Empire's Deep State. For this dream they have the USA and a number of other countries mired in debts in the hope that one day they, like all imperialist-fascists, could rule supreme and make the rest of the world pay for these debts. Up to now, under the alliance with Saudi Arabia, Empire has simply printed dollars and used Petrodollars to force other countries to pay for their oil and gas in order to prop up the US dollar.