Johnny Versus The News Man

Click here to access article by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

What a beautiful fantasy! Well, if reality is sometimes too distasteful, we can always resort to fantasies.

... one day the News Man announced that Freedomocracy was going to War. All other recourse had failed with the Evil Dictator, he said, and everyone receiving a notice on their pocket Screens was to report to their Enlistment Stations immediately.

But nobody went. Everyone refused to fight this new War, and everyone refused to support the people who were trying to start it. The tangle of lies fell away completely, and everyone saw what was really happening with clear eyes. The people rose up together, and soon even the police joined them, and it wasn’t long before the News Man appeared on the Screen for the last time.

Then the people began creating a country which really works for them instead of keeping them poor and tricked all the time.

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. 

“Remember Pearl Harbor,” “Never Forget 9/11,” “Putin Did It”

Click here to access article by Hiroyuki Hamada from Dissident Voice. (I again thank an activist for alerting me to this fine article.)

After a review of the real history of the capitalist construction of the US Empire, the author concludes with these hopeful words: 

We are looking at the empire disintegrating as its economic sphere is losing its power and legitimacy while “enemies” of the empire are gaining a sphere of influence. Corporate political parties, war industry, government agencies and the rest of the imperialists are struggling to assert their own interests within the imperial framework of corporatism, colonialism and militarism, while picking fights with Russia, China, Iran and any country that defies the imperial hegemony, desperately seeking ways to metastasize for their survival. But the entire imperial order is collapsing.

We must not be a voice for the capitalist lords nor for the hitmen.  This is a time we must reach out to people like us in Russia, China, Syria, Iran, and other peoples of the planet, and people like us in our communities, with messages of peace, sharing and mutual respect. ....  We, the people of the planet, somehow must assert our desire to bring about a new era for our species ....  You might feel isolated.  But we are everywhere on this planet. We want to live as brothers and sisters.  We want to live in harmony with our planet.  We share our angles and facts for a better tomorrow for our children and their children. This is an urgent challenge of our time. Peace to us all.

Recommended articles for 2/20/2018

• On the American Inability to Turn Turkey Around by Salman Rafi Sheikh from New Eastern Outlook. The author provides a very insightful look at the tenuous situation of the illegal occupation of Syria by the US military.

• Cindy Sheehan and the Women’s March on the Pentagon: A Movement, Not Just a Protest by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News.

• "Empire Files: War With North Korea - Propaganda vs. Reality" This 32:45m video features an interview conducted by Abby Martin with Tim Shorrock, author, journalist, and expert on Korean affairs. (You may need to wait a few more seconds for the video to upload on your device. Or view the video directly from YouTube.)

On top of overtly genocidal threats, the Trump Administration has announced new terms: that they "will never accept a nuclear North Korea." But, the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea already has nuclear weapons. Does that mean a war is imminent?

While the bipartisan warmongering is receiving no push-back from the mainstream media, Abby Martin interviews Tim Shorrock--journalist and expert on US-Korea relations--to learn what is left out of the debate and the potential cost of a new war. 

• The Big Pharma Family that Brought Us the Opioid Crisis by Sam Pizzigati from Inequality.

There are more articles that are very good, but I will save them for tomorrow.

Pride, Pain and War

Click here to access poem that was written by Michael John Pike (Spike the Poet) who reads his poem in a video posted by BSNews (Britain).  

Spike is a former [British] soldier, now a poet and peace activist. Once his experiences drove him on a path to self destruction. But through poetry, he has found an outlet. He is now a performance poet and speaker where he attacks the establishment that thrives on war. He is polemic and unswerving in his damning condemnation of the war machine.

It seems to me that many combat veterans like Spike could benefit psychologically by engaging in anti-war and anti-establishment activities that a genuine revolutionary movement could provide for them. The challenge to return such veterans to civilian life is monumental, but mainly the ruling class has taken this challenge by keeping damaged veterans in ideologically controlled "therapy" sessions. In other words, the veterans are lied to by the ruling class to sign up for such killing activities and they lie to them again when they return damaged in body and soul to civilian life by portraying them as heroes, people who have "sacrificed" for some noble cause. It seems to me that a real healing, a real return to psychological health could be provided by a revolutionary movement that would engage these wounded people in activities that would serve to undermine the power of their real enemies: the ruling capitalist class.

Public vs. Media on War

Click here to access article by David Swanson from his blog.

Here is more evidence that the war propaganda issued by corporate media is not having its desired effect.

A new poll from an unlikely source suggests that the U.S. public and the U.S. media have very little in common when it comes to matters of war and peace.

This poll was commissioned by that notorious leftwing hotbed of peaceniks, the Charles Koch Institute, along with the Center for the National Interest (previously the Nixon Center, and before that the humorously named Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom). The poll was conducted by Survey Sampling International.

URGENT: Request for Help from Ukraine

Click here to access article attributed to Larisa Shevchenko, the writer of a letter to the German people asking for their help, and introduced by Paul Craig Roberts.

To whom shall we turn and ask for support, if not to you, to the German people ? We ask you not to conceal the appeal of the Ukrainian people, but to publish and distribute, so that this cry will be heard by the whole world.

As proof of our peaceful intentions and the very broad support of our movement in the population I have collected video material. 


We are writing to you with the request to support our efforts for a referendum because we understand that a peaceful solution to the conflict is no longer possible otherwise.

The junta is not interested in such a solution and is apparently ready to shed a lot of blood of peaceful people in Ukraine. In view of the fact that our media belong to powerful oligarchs, I am convinced that the world public has been presented false information and invented facts about the conflict in Ukraine and will obviously continue to receive such.

Masters of War

Click here to access the 5:14 video with lyrics from Raging Bull-Shit.

This is for those among us who choose life rather than death, cooperation rather than domination, sharing rather than selfishness, and love rather than hate. We also acknowledge that there are weak people among us who choose the opposite because they are seduced by the immediate gratification of profit and power offered by the current reigning capitalist system. 

The Real War Heroes

Click here to access this very moving piece posted on World News Trust. It is the first chapter of a new book entitled Radical Peace:People Refusing War by one of my favorite writers, William T. Hathaway.

[The chapter] presents the experiences of peace activists who have moved beyond petitions and demonstrations into direct action: helping soldiers to desert, destroying military computer systems, trashing recruiting offices, burning war equipment, and sabotaging defense contractors.

A China moment for the Middle East?

Click here to access article from Mediapart (France).

The resumption of negotiations in Geneva on the Iranian nuclear programme is a crucial moment for world peace, argue a group of seven former senior UN, UNESCO and ILO officials in this open letter in which they stress that "the West must understand countries are inhabited by people possessing our common humanity, with the same right to live, and must choose realism that unites over ideology that divides".

No More War for Israel?: The People Against the 800 Pound Gorilla

Click here to access article by Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone from CounterPunch.

An American friend who knows Washington well recently told us that “everybody” there knows that, as far as the drive to war with Syria is concerned, it is Israel that directs U.S. policy. Why then, we replied, don’t opponents of war say it out loud, since, if the American public knew that, support for the war would collapse?

Martin Luther King on America’s Wars Abroad & Their Impact on Civil Rights At Home

Click here to access article from Muftah.

For me, the thing I most admire about Martin Luther King on this legal holiday commemorating his birthday is how this giant of man continued to grow as a leader connecting one issue with another to finally see the whole picture of rule by a wealth-and-war obsessed ruling class. He grew from attacking racism that denied African-American workers opportunities, to understand that racism was used to divide workers in order to exploit them and that all American workers were exploited by this class; and then his final insight that the ruling elite used wars against workers all over the world. This was the last straw for the ruling class. They had to kill him. 

Of course, he knew that he was threatening them and that they probably would kill him, but his life was dedicated to speaking the truth in the face of lies, to social justice in the face of exploitation, and to liberation in the face of oppressive power. His life illustrated the finest characteristics of human nature in contrast to Obama who is someone who has sold his soul to power for the hollow rewards of short-term fame and fortune. During our time, we desperately need the courage of Martin Luther King to continue the fight against our class enemy, and we need his dedication to the establishment of just, sustainable societies.

Come Home, America!

Click here to access poem by one of my favorite writers, Gary Corseri, posted on Dissident Voice.

US War Veterans Toss Medals Back at NATO

Click here to access article from Voltaire Network.

Anti-War Means Anti-War: Voices of Occupy

Click here to access article by Mickey Z from World News Trust. 

The author argues that the present focus on social justice by the Occupy movement must be expanded to opposition to the whole military-industrial complex and their never-ending wars.

Despite the insidious and pervasive pro-military propaganda, the U.S. war machine is not only destroying entire cultures abroad, killing our ecosystem, and pillaging our economy, it also runs on the blood of what it views as "expendable" humans.

Boeing’s Multi-Billion Outsourcing Fiasco

by Yves Smith from Naked Capitalism.

 We’ve repeatedly said that offshoring and outsourcing are often not the big cost-savers that the industry promoting them, Wall Street, and the stenographers among the business press would have you believe.

I live near Seattle and thus I hear a lot about Boeing's problems with cost overruns and delays which the author elaborates in this article. She attributes the cause to "hubris". 

I think that their are two main factors that account for dysfunctional outsourcing: the usual anti-union strategy and to develop support for the military-industrial complex's highly profitable wars. I think that the latter is probably the most important factor to account for the weakened state of anti-war opposition in the US. By spreading the jobs around the county, they build up political constituencies for more war spending. See this. Anti-war campaigns are successfully framed in the media as being anti-jobs. Political support for weapons spending continues even when the military establishment doesn't want particular weapons--see this.

The jobs vs. war dollars dilemma

by Ben Grosscup from Gazette Net.

This article from the US State of New Hampshire reveals how the ruling class undermines anti-war dissent by rationing-out military contracts, and the high paying jobs they provide, throughout the country. 

While firms, that produce goods that people use for life, outsource their factories to countries with the lowest wages, the industries that make the equipment for threatening and bombing other countries keep their production centers sited largely in the United States.

Bradley Manning: An American Hero

by Marjorie Cohn from Common Dreams.

He is a hero! The anti-war movement and all peace-loving people must do all they can to get him out of prison!

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused of leaking military secrets to the public. This week, his supporters are holding rallies in 21 cities, seeking Manning's release from military custody. Manning is in the brig for allegedly disclosing a classified video depicting U.S. troops shooting civilians from an Apache helicopter in Iraq in July 2007. The video, available at www.collateralmurder.com, was published by WikiLeaks on April 5, 2010. Manning faces 52 years in prison. No charges have been filed against the soldiers in the video.

Veterans for Peace discuss Bradley Manning with McCord (7:29m video)

from War is a Crime. 

US veterans are increasingly speaking up against the horrors that the military-industrial complex of the US is inflicting on the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Heroic Americans like Bradley Manning risk so much to bring us the truth. 

Racketeers for Capitalism

by Cindy Sheehan from Common Dreams. 

This courageous, tireless activist, mother of slain US soldier is inspired by General Butler's attacks in the 1930s on the budding US Empire, and she valiantly carries on the anti-war struggle. 

Well, "they," the ones that give the wars are not going to stop. "They" have too much at stake to give up the cash cow of wars for Imperial Profit, Power, and Expansion. "They" use the toady media to whip up nationalistic and patriotic fervor to get our kids to be thrown together with the victims in a meat grinder of destruction and we just sit here and allow them to do it.

The Empire preys on our kids using all the tools at its disposal: Economic panic, high college tuition, high unemployment and a mythology that the U.S. has some existential right to steal the resources of other nations.