- As Long As Mass Media Propaganda Exists, Democracy Is A Sham by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (My reaction: Propaganda is an
indispensable element added to fascism to create the neofascism of the
US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. It is a crucial weapon along with the re-writing of history added to the traditional weapons of fascism (example: the militarization of police) in order to control their populations.
"Democracy" has nothing to do with fascism of either type.)
Prof. Wolff is what we are left
with to expose the weaknesses of capitalism after the great ideological
purge of the late 1940s and '50s (see this and this).
This period that saw the careers of Hollywood producers, directors, and
actors destroyed along with true leftist intellectuals was very well described by Bruce Lerr.
As a result, we now we see a very few tamed leftists who pose as true socialists like Wolff attacking the weaknesses of capitalism regarding the provision of health services of our country. (Or we see intellectuals like Wilkinson avoiding the topic of capitalism as a class-based system
in preference to the highly abstract and meaningless "Business".) Wolff
has been playing to the crowd, and "dissident" websites like CounterPunch, as a safe "Marxist" by promoting worker cooperatives within
a capitalist system. He knows, or should know, that worker cooperatives
cannot compete with private enterprises because the former serve the
welfare of workers, whereas the private enterprises regard workers as
expensive commondities that they must reduce in order to compete in the
marketplace vis-a-vis other companies.
By
attacking capitalist health services he stays on very safe ground
because the capitalist system cannot serve the whole population with
health services--it was never designed for this purpose. Capitalism is
inherently a class based system. It was designed to serve a tiny class
which has over the centuries accumulated capital in ever concentrated
amounts and in ever smaller hands. Today major capitalists hold more
money than entire countries along with their enormous power to subvert
entire countries (and even the UN),
including our own, and today's events reflect that fact. It is obvious
that capitalists could never prepare for a pandemic. It's simply not
"efficient" use of resources that were designed only to serve the needs
of a tiny minority--capitalists.
Bevins has learned much about a key event in the establishment of the transnational capitalist (US, Anglo, Zionist) Empire from his research and employment at the LA Times and as a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, two of the mainstream media corporation complex. But his knowledge has only been obtained 50-60 years after the event which resulted in a million lives lost and another million locked up concentration camps in Indonesia after the CIA coup against President Sukarno. At the time I and a few other anti-capitalist activists knew sparse details of this massacre from reading left-wing publications. We obtained only superficial and propaganda-laced "knowledge" from mainstream corporate media.
The point is this: Much of the foreign crimes of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire have been covered up, and it takes years of research and foreign travel to piece together the details of this horrendous history of the Empire. Now we face similar events in the USA, but now the agents of this Empire have gained so much successful experience lying to, and censoring information from, ordinary people that they are at a considerable disadvantage. Tony Cartalucci provides an explaination.
- Conspiracy Theories Malign And Benign – Face Masks And Israeli Training Of US Police by David Edwards, an editor of the Media Lens (British) weblog. I direct you to his examination of a "conspiracy theory" regarding the official advice about wearing face mask beginning with "Last week, Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens" and ending just before "Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory". I don't want people to think that I cherry-pick my independent sources (from government, corporations, and the ruling class) in order to support my points. Edwards gives the best argument that I have seen that supports the official advice to wear a face mask during the pandemic. He regards the opposing arguments as a conspiracy theory. My commentary follows:
I think that Edwards defends obedience to authorities as the best way to deal with health issues. The problem is that government officials been so often discredited in the past (see only one example) by leaks, evidence, and corruption that they can no longer be trusted. The trust in government officials has been so undermined in the past 60 years that they have very little credibility with many of the public, especially with our more astute and informed members.
He cites as one such authroity, "Cambridge University". I did a
little research on his claim and found that the lead professor was a plant epidemiologist. According to Wikipedia,
"Plant disease epidemiologists strive for an understanding of the cause
and effects of disease and develop strategies to intervene in
situations where crop losses may occur." Doesn't Cambridge U. have no epidemiologists that specialize in human diseases? And, what about Stanford University's Dr. John Ioannidis (epidemiologist for humans) who found that the coronavirus was similar to the seasonal flu which was met with draconian measures to combat it. Also, see an excerpts from research studies regarding use of face masks.
- Leigh Dundas, an attorney in Orange County, California, whose message on Facebook argues against stringent measures that may be imposed upon students in public schools.