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

Saturday, April 10, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, April 10, 2021

AMSTERDAM — Investigative site Bellingcat is the toast of the popular press. In the past month alone, it has been described as “an intelligence agency for the people” (ABC Australia), a “transparent” and “innovative” (New Yorker) “independent news collective,” “transforming investigative journalism” (Big Think), and an unequivocal “force for good” (South China Morning Post). Indeed, outside of a few alternative news sites, it is very hard to hear a negative word against Bellingcat, such is the gushing praise for the outlet founded in 2014.

This is troubling, because the evidence compiled in this investigation suggests Bellingcat is far from independent and neutral, as it is funded by Western governments, staffed with former military and state intelligence officers, repeats official narratives against enemy states, and serves as a key part in what could be called a “spook to Bellingcat to corporate media propaganda pipeline,” presenting Western government narratives as independent research.
Because most Americans believed that they were the "good guys", partly as a result of understandable WWII propaganda but also because of post-war propaganda throughout all institutions (media, entertainment--Hollywood, and education) that continued unceasingly to the present time. Most Americans believe that they are still the "good guys", the "commies" were the new "bad guys", and the rest of the fairy tales the TV and radio corporations told them in the post-WWII years. 
 
The fascist-leaning, world-dominating aspiring ruling class grew inside the State Department initially through efforts like Wall Street lawyers like John Foster Dulles, Sec. of State, and his brother, Allen Dulles, the eventual head of the unaccountable CIA, together with key members of the Council of Foreign Relations. A subversive coterie of people in both organizations swore an oath of secrecy as to their aims of building an empire after defeating the equally gross ambitions of the German Nazis and their dreams of establishing a German Reich.
 
I need at this point to make a slight detour in my essay to deal with the positive implications of two fairly recent posts (here--9th post and here--2nd post) by authors who I hold in much esteem--Alastair Crooke and Pepe Escobar.  On the strength of these positive references, I ordered the book shortly thereafter. But I was severely disappointed. Stephen Wertheim, the author of Tomorrow the World, has written with huge doses of gaslighting approval of these subversive Americans and their quest to build what is now (what I call) the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Although the description of pro-fascist tendencies of corporate leaders supporting fascist ideas in the 1930s (also here, and my commentary here) is missing in his book, Wertheim devotes almost his entire book on peripheral issues such as "isolationists" vs internationalists with the latter, due to force of circumstances, morphed into imposing American might on the rest of the world to ensure a Pax Americana from a world faced with endless wars! His book is an apologia for this fascist coterie's secret project of building an empire! I have read widely and from a variety of sources on the lead up to WWII, and I have reached a different conclusion (see here and here). This fascist coterie had to swear an oath to secrecy, which Wertheim admits, because they were going against the wishes not only of the FDR administration but the American people. (FDR didn't trust them.) You can read the history of that period by reading a real history of that period in my recommended books section.
 
Back to my commentary on the above article: I was living in Honolulu, HI in the late 1970's when I met a Korean War veteran and prisoner of war who opted to stay in China after the War because he was so disgusted about the US using bio-warfare against the Koreans and Chinese troops that he didn't want to return home (along with many others who refused repatriation). I don't remember his name, but he was given special permission by the State Department to return home to visit his family. I filed this experience away in my memory. Then in early 2017 I read This Must be the Place by Dave Chaddock and I was convinced that US forces used bio-warfare against Koreans and Chinese. (Read my previous posts here and here.) 
 
I also think that the CIA were so taken by their cover story that American prisoners were somehow brainwashed that they began to study methods of controlling individual's minds. I was convinced of this when I later read reports (like this and this) that the CIA had been pursuing such research at McGill University in Montreal. I wondered if they didn't use these techniques on Sirhan Sirhan to assassinate Robert Kennedy after listening to this interview with a lawyer, William Pepper, that attempted to defend Sirhan Sirhan. I wondered further if they didn't use these techniques on domestic "terrorists" reportedly engaged in mass shootings many of whom were mentally ill or unstable.
Presidents come and go, elections take place periodically, but the power and policymaking resides with deep state planners whose loyalty is not to any particular party but rather to the furtherance of imperial objectives regarding America’s presumed global position and privileges.

Thursday, April 8, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, April 8, 2021

  • 💥Glenn Greenwald: Why American Journalism Sucks featuring Jimmy Dore (via his YouTube channel--19:31m) interviewing Glenn Greenwald regarding the deterioration of American journalism as a profession. This is a best post. My reaction: Greenwald attacks mostly the Democratic Party, but he doesn't know that the capitalist ruling class has completely taken over the political party, which has traditionally favored working people, in order to convince most Americans of the validity of their news coverage. But he offers the crucial insight that the ruling class uses their control over careers to control any potentially dissident journalists.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and an assortment of high-profile figures and policymakers are pushing for unregulated gene-editing technologies, the rollout of bio-synthetic food created in laboratories, the expanded use of patented seeds and the rollback of subsidies and support for farmers in places like  India.

These neoliberal evangelists despise democracy and believe that state machinery and public money should only facilitate the ambitions of their unaccountable mega-corporations.

  • What is Australia’s Problem with China? by Brian Berletic from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. My reaction: Berletic exposes that the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire is engaging in an information war to cover up their opposition to China's rise.
In late January 2021, NATO think tank, The Atlantic Council, published a paper termed, The Longer Telegram, which sets out a proposed strategy for the United States to achieve domination of the world, a strategy which focuses on China as the main obstacle to that domination, with Russia now considered an “irritant.” It is the fantasy of megalomaniacs who sit in dark rooms dreaming of world power and achieving it using any means necessary, including world war.

It is in essence a propaganda document designed to not only proclaim a new world war, the American war against China, but to try to justify this war. It describes a China that does not exist except in the fantasies of these right wing ideologues.
  • The Real Reason We’re Still In Afghanistan featuring Lee Camp, an online comedian, in a 6:40m YouTube video, parodying why Trump was countermanded in a peace deal when Trump ordered it at the beginning of his administration. (Note: Camp in his parody reveals that some other entity, probably the Defense Department, rules America more than the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, that is, the president.) My reaction: This experience demonstrates that the Defense Department answers to the ruling US capitalist class over which they control. This, in my opinion, is not necessarily bad because Trump with his impulsive personality was more likely to use nuclear weapons than the ruling class.

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, April 7, 2021

  • Stand in the Park featuring James Corbett from his weblog urging us to get outdoors while some of us still can.
  • From Debs to the DSA? Rescuing America’s Revolutionary Tradition by Ben Fredericks from Left Voice. (Note: I believe, based on a rapid perusal) that this is a rare, honest attempt to look at the history of left revolutionary movements within socialism. The article is for those who have read widely on leftist movements and revolutionary parties.)
I found this post initially on The Unz Review (I always try to post articles from their original sources) which is an old-fashioned conservative website. I have re-posted some of their article in the past that I thought were well-written and documented. But this piece touched off a series of thoughts in my brain that related to my increasing curiosity related to what I have noticed recently on TV. TV, I believe, is heavily influenced by the secret services who see this medium as a powerful propaganda tool to be used to propagate their insidious propaganda themes on behalf of the capitalist ruling class.

I have a well-tuned sixth sense about media corporations and their collaboration with the secret services that are under the control of the capitalist ruling class. I have noticed an increasing trend that suggests that mind manipulators in the secret services are up to something: the rather startling nearly consistent use of African-Americans in nationwide commercials. 
 
But I was mystified as to what use this trend suggested ... that is until I read this article. I think this almost consistent use of African-Americans in commercials plus the recent widespread publicity about racist attacks of Asian-Americans by Black-Americans fit well with the favorite ruling classes strategy to sow interracial wars among Americans. You know--the old divide and conquer strategy.
 
Although I agree with the author of this article when he argues that these attacks on Asian-Americans represent an intermediate stage, but I differ when he predicts that the ultimate purpose is for a UN takeover of the USA. I see that these two recent trends fit well with the chaos strategy that the secret services have used to destabilize other countries beginning with Chile and El Salvador (see my commentary here, my reaction here (1st post), and my commentary here (7th post). I now believe that the two rather startling developments signal a chaos strategy designed against the American public to usher in a new authoritarian regime as was the case when the chaos strategy was used to target the destabilization of other nations. 

Perhaps the transnational ruling capitalist class of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire now see ordinary Americans as the target to be conquered and prepared to fit in their New World Order, or the latest version of this--the Great Reset. What do you think?
 
  • 💥Whitney Webb Interview – Tanzania Coup, Rising Technocracy & The 4th Industrial Revolution featuring Webb who has returned from Chile, where she was needed to conduct personal affairs, interviewed by Ryan Cristián, host of this show from The Last American Vagabond. This is a best post. My reaction (based on only 15 minutes of listening to this program which lasts nearly an hour and a quarter--I will listen to the remainder after finishing this weblog): In this fascinating interview, Webb describes Chile as exemplifying the worst aspects of the USA, but if you think Chile is divorced from the reality in the USA, think again. The transnational capitalist class, who have homes scattered all over their Empire, doesn't divide up the world into nations. Remember, they see the world, or at least, their Empire as a whole. You, as American citizens, don't matter to them.

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, April 6, 2021

  • Biden’s Infrastructure Plan by Jack Rasmus from Alternative Visions. (Note: Rasmus discusses the deceptions related to Biden's vaunted infrastructure plan in a 57:13m audio recording.)
  • Pepe Escobar Joins Jeff J. Brown for a Great Conversation about the US, EU, China, Russia, Iran and DPRK [North Korea], plus much more. This is posted on The Greanville Post. (Note: I especially recommend listening to Escobar's opening statement (first 20 and half minutes) regarding diplomatic efforts of the US vis-à-vis China and Russia. Brown, who has lived and worked in China for about 16 years, and Escobar are good friends. Brown, who is now retired, lives in Brussels. Escobar lives in Thailand. Escobar is, in my opinion, is one of the top geo-political journalists in the world. I recommend the rest of the conversation (the whole 1 hr 10m interview) for those who are well informed about international politics.
I agree with Crooke's argument that following the meeting at Anchorage between the USA and China, and that China no longer believes in a cooperative arrangement that can be obtained with the US or the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. However, I cannot agree with his following assertion:
 
Socialism versus capitalism? No, it is a long time since the U.S. was a capitalist economy; it’s hardly even a market economy today. It has become, more and more, a rentier economy since leaving the gold standard (in 1971). 
 
Capitalism, like all other systems, has stages that it goes through just like the old colonial relationships that Euro-Americans had prior to WWII with the relatively pre-industrialized countries of the world in contrast to the essentially neo-colonial relationships the former had with the latter since WWII. The post-WWII era saw the frequent use of financial weapons that was first exposed in the writings of John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
 
Similarly capitalism in the Empire has moved beyond industrialization to the financialization stage by their pursuit of neoliberalist policies which accumulate wealth with the less risky interest of loans from the IMF, World Bank, and international banks located in the Empire. Also, these finance capitalists use loans as weapons to pry open less advanced economies for exploitation by Empire corporations. Crooke is evidently too influenced by the writings of Michael Hudson who ignores the exploitation of American workers by "captains of industry" (to the chagrin of his Trotskyist parents) and champions the previous phase of capitalism--industrialization.
 
Now we, who reside within the Empire, increasingly witness the use of censorship and manipulation of information that has replaced to a considerable extent more authoritarian methods of old-fashioned fascism. We, who reside in the Empire, are now in a neo-fascist phase of capitalism where capitalist ruling classes rely much more heavily on the control of information that is allowed to ordinary people. (To be sure, if the latter methods fail, the ruling class uses police and soldiers to crush all opposition.) Those who reside outside of the Empire are frequently subject to subversive efforts by agents of the hyper-aggressive capitalist Empire.
  • Dealing With Demons by Larry Romanoff from "The Saker" weblog. My reaction: This is a very lengthy post, but also a very interesting one from an author who is probably Canadian (based on his spelling of "organisers" below), retired and living in Shanghai, China. His report refers to the city of Wuhan and a single province, Hebei, of China which, I believe, was the only province that had numerous temporary restrictions imposed on its citizens. See the province in the center of China on the map below:
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d6/31/0f/d6310f7b860e46be5b26f24008263ef5.jpg

 
 I include two paragraphs from the article which offer some significant reasons why China dealt with the corona virus much more effectively than other Western countries including our own:
 
One reason the Chinese were able to deal with the epidemic while the UK and USA stumbled in the dark is that the Chinese think, with considerable justification, that they have been under biological attack, on and off since c.1950, and were therefore prepared with well-laid plans and competent organisers to respond to such an event. As soon as the central government learned the specific nature of the outbreak, it responded massively and to a very large extent the population understood the necessity of what was asked of them and cooperated.


The main objective of China’s Government is the rejuvenation of China, in part demonstrably evidenced by the determined efforts made for the betterment and the well-being of its population, which is reflected in the credibility and high level of trust the Chinese people place in their government. These concepts don’t exist in the west. In the US, the “world’s model for everything”, a virus epidemic is seen through lenses of profiteering by large corporations, sick people not being humans in need of assistance but merely a new lucrative “market” – for those with money to pay. An American hospital is not a place for healing the sick but a kind of barnyard filled with cash cows to milk. This is one fundamental reason underlying America’s chaotic and hopeless approach to dealing with the epidemic. The Trump administration failed to help itself and refused to help even its friends, on the one hand ignoring the suffering and extreme difficulties in China and wasting its time scoring cheap political points on the world stage, happy with the loss of life and the economic damage China was suffering.
 
 
I want to add only two fundamental reasons for the difference of outcomes. One, is that Americans have been lied to so often in the past 70 years (the assassinations, 9/11, invasion of Iraq, etc.) that many Americans no longer believe what the authorities and major media corporations tell me--whereas the Chinese completely trust their authorities and follow their instructions to the letter. Two, I believe that the ruling capitalist class has zero interest in the health of ordinary Americans. They see them as only sources of profit. 

Monday, April 5, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, April 5, 2021

  • Real COVID death rate 0.15% from Left Lockdown Sceptics: Socialist anti-lockdown news and analysis. My reaction: This figure was furnished by a research study conducted by Stanford epidemiologist John P.A. Ioannidis, and was peer-reviewed. But the ruling class has its approved "experts", and Ioannidis is not on the list. Therefore, it will be totally ignored by the ruling class's major media corporations. Instead, we will get uninterrupted fear campaigns with their insistence that we should wear masks, experience soul-crushing lockdowns, and take our "medicine" in the form of untested, experimental vaccinations. 
You cannot understand the present unless you were furnished with accurate information about the past (history). Unfortunately for you, you have been given a history written by the secret services of the USA, mainly by the CIA. However, Cynthia Chung, who has done enormous research, has liberated true history from the fake that you have been fed by institutions that are all under the control of the capitalist ruling class.
  • New Yorker Uses Cartoons to Boost “Uyghur Genocide” Myth by Brian Berletic from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. My reaction: The busy, trying-to-survive ordinary Americans usually swallow US imperialist propaganda, but Berletic makes a herculean effort trying to expose it for what it is--lies.
... capitalism cannot do anything but accumulate more and more capital. And capital is virtually everything that exists, from the raw minerals and petrol deep in the earth’s crust, to the fish in the sea and trees in the boreal range, to governments and politicians, to our own personal information and preferences. It has created a global arrangement of power that must use obfuscation and violence, or its threat, as a way of keeping the engine running. 
 
Orphan forgot to include racism in the weapons that the tiny class of capitalists has used against the survival of humans. Racism has been used to divide humans so that capitalists can continue plundering and destabilizing the Earth's miracle ecosystem that supports all life.