in the time remaining, to help us understand how the man-made system of capitalism will lead to the extinction of our human species, and so many others.
This article is a warning not to trust fake Western news reports--as if we needed any. But we do! The public of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire have short memories. Every generation needs to be reminded of the past false narratives by the capitalist ruling class in order to get their support for war. But can the public be reminded? There is decreasing chances of this happening because of the ongoing development of capitalism to increase the concentration of ownership and/or control of all institutions.
Well paid ruling class agents only need to fool about 65% of their nation's populace in order to promote wars. Under current circumstances of the concentration of ownership and infiltration of other media corporations, this is quite easily achieved.
Bernhard isn't fooled which is common among people who pay attention. But worker populations of the Empire are mired in debts, work long hours, and have been intentionally conditioned not to think critically by most public schools that they are fairly easily influenced by fake or exaggerated reports. Still, most populations are fed up with ongoing wars and the steady deterioration of their living standards, and thus it is becoming harder for propaganda agents to get them to support Empire wars.
This time Hopkins uses his well-honed satirical weapons on what he identifies as liberal anti-fascists. However, although some liberals are involved, I think the real target are unthinking anti-fascist anarchists. These people have a way of predictably reacting to the latest propaganda by the fascist Deep State who have for a long time practiced and perfected their skills at manipulating people. Because of the many years of propaganda and psychological warfare directed at the American people (as described by Christopher Simpson in his excellent book Science of Coercion), there is no shortage of these dumbed-down, uncritical thinking people.
Concentration camps and dead people are nothing to joke about. It’s OK, however, to cynically use them to whip people up into a paroxysm of manufactured mass fascism hysteria. Not that the neoliberal ruling classes and the corporate media would ever do that. No, they would never repeatedly attempt to evoke our hatred of the actual Nazis (and their actual concentration camps … which people were dragged out of their homes, loaded onto trains, and shipped away to, and which you could not voluntarily depart) in order to short circuit our critical thinking, or otherwise emotionally manipulate us into supporting their War on Populism.
Many anarchists among the working class, who simply do not have the time to develop critical thinking skills, do not realize that contemporary capitalism has morphed into a new version of neoliberal fascism because they have always been taught to believe that fascism were stereotypes depicted by goosestepping fascist thugs who beat up decent people and send them on trains to their death.This new updated fascism uses more sophisticated psychological methods to deceive and manipulate people in order to continue their self-serving exploitation of people and nature.
Beckwith introduces the topic by showing that the nation's capital (DC) is very recently experiencing major flooding, and goes on to explain that there are a number of ways to access weather related information. Such extreme weather is going to be common event in our future, and it will likely not be covered in corporate media, at least, not in the short term.
Click here to access article by Elijah J Magnier, an exceptionally independent journalist from Kuwait, from his weblog.
Although most figures in Iraq are unfamiliar to Americans, Magnier tries to explain how the prime minister of Iraq and the Iraqi government, who are under tremendous pressure to enact various anti-Iran measures, must balance off the threats posed by the American occupation of their country with powerful anti-USA factions within Iraq. Obviously in many respects, the US officials are treating Iraq as an old-fashioned colony on which they can impose their will whenever they want regardless of the consequences for Iraq.
One realistic threat that the USA poses for Iraq is the co-optation of military leaders who may be used by US authorities as a coup attempt to oust Iraq's prime ministers whenever they don't sufficiently obey US commands. But there are loyal forces in Iraq that are keeping a watchful eye of such military leaders, and presumably could prevent such a coup from happening. Up til now, such forces, together with the population as a whole, have prevented the American strategy of divide and rule by separating Iraq into three countries:
Many US and western analysts take it upon themselves to regularly and harshly criticise Hashd, ignoring the fact that it was Hashd that saved Iraq (and the rest of the Middle East) from ISIS when all other “security” forces were on the run. The US objective in imposing this reform was to cripple all Iranian friends and allies in Iraq and divide Mesopotamia into Kurdistan, Shiistan and Sunnistan.
Has "left" organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of American (DSA) been taken over by subversive agents paid by Empire-serving NGOs and directly from the government? Well, the authors provide well-documented facts that suggest this is so. That reminds me of one of Lenin's insightful quotes: “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” However, I think the article overstates a typical anti-Trotskyist views by painting them all with the same brush of cynical subversion. Although I don't agree with everything that the group behind World Socialist Web Site publishes, but they are a genuine followers of Trotsky, whereas the groups and organizations mentioned in the article fit the insight attributed to Lenin, but being applied by subversive agents of the US ruling class.
The 2019 Socialism Conference, like its annual predecessors, combines calls for radical economic democratic transformation and progressive social progress with the demonization of independent foreign governments that are targeted by the US government for regime change, such as Nicaragua, Cuba, Syria, Iran, China, and Russia.
Click here if you wish to access this interview with Douglas Valentine conducted by Jeff Brown of Radio Sinoland directly from The Greanville Post. It is well worth the hour and eighteen minutes it takes to listen to the interview.
As he mentioned in the interview, Valentine has talked, and reported on these interviews, with more CIA employees than any other person. This enlightened Valentine to the reality of the many subversions of reality that our masters in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire have used to oppress us since capitalism reared its ugly, imperialist head in the settler colony of the USA under our "Founding Fathers" in 1776. As he tells it, he was pressured by a brave publisher to write this book entitled The CIA as Organized Crime, and he finally did. The interview, like the book, serves to sum up his thinking about what he has learned from since these CIA interviews. I haven't heard anything that I disagree with, except that I would put somewhat different accents on his various views.
Johnstone's concern about the continuation of human species is very much appreciated, but I think she fails to diagnose the problem.
... we’ve all got some important questions to ask ourselves, haven’t we? Do we desire to stay in the familiar US-controlled world order at the price of omnicide and ecocide, or do we wish to roll the dice and bet on humanity instead? Do we wish to stay the course because it preserves a status quo that is all we’ve ever known, or do we take a leap of faith on the possibility that we can de-escalate all geopolitical enmity and move into collaboration with each other and with our ecosystem?
This choice right here is why I write so much about mankind’s need to transcend its old conditioning patterns and move into something wildly unprecedented. Our current fear-based mentality makes a populism-driven leap of faith into transcendence impossible and ensures that we remain on an oligarch-driven trajectory toward extinction. I firmly believe that we have the freedom to either pass or fail this test, but we don’t have the freedom not to take it. We’ll transcend our old conditioning patterns which we inherited from our evolutionary ancestors who lived in a wildly different world from the one we’ve created, or we will perish. It’s an A or B choice, but the choice is ours.
I argue that it is not our inherited "fear-based mentality" from our evolutionary ancestors so much as it is the addiction to power which concentrated wealth delivers in abundance. Thus, aggression in the form of imperialism is necessary to preserve the system of capitalism and makes imperialism a necessity for the continuance of this system.
If "fear-based mentality" is at the root of the problem, I think it may be a result of our conscious awareness of death because power creates the illusion of omnipotence. To survive as a species, we humans must outgrow this fear of death by recognizing the reality that our evolved species is only an infinitesimal and fragile part of the web of life that continually tries to renew itself on a tiny planet within a vast universe. We must grow out of the immature delusions spread by the old religions that we must ...
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth [including other humans]. (Gen. 1:26)
Click here to access article by Patrick Armstrong (Canadian) from Strategic Culture Foundation (independent, based in Russia).
And he is only pointing to some of the lies we've been told.
I don't think it is a matter of stupidity as much as it is to the ubiquitous nature of the lies. This has been accomplished by the overwhelming control that our masters have in the Deep State, which is essentially a board of directors of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, over every mass media as well as all ideological institutions like education and the film industry. For as Goebbels, another fascist master of propaganda, once said:
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.