Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, June 16, 2021

• Alternative Visions - Inflation, Infrastructure ‘Smoke & Mirrors’, & Keynes’ Economics by Prof. Jack Rasmus from Alternative Visions in a 53:43m audio presentation. (Note: Rasmus attempts to explain what is the reality of the economy in contrast to what corporate media is reporting.) My reaction: Although he often frames events too much in the economy as Republican versus Democrats, I believe his interpretation of what corporate media currently reports is on the right track versus what is really going on. From my own experience, I also can agree with him in his introduction that readings of outstanding authors in the original is different from careerist and indoctrinated academics who provide skewed interpretations of what these authors wrote. To his credit, Rasmus has read much by these authors. I look forward to future posts in this series.

• It’s Now Official: The Financial House that Jamie Dimon Built Is the Riskiest Bank in the United States by Pam & Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• Tupac Shakur Would Have Turned 50 Today–If He Hadn’t Threatened Deal Between Drug Traffickers and U.S. Banks Making Billions Laundering CIA Drug Money by John Potash from Covert Action Magazine.
  

• Creating enemies: China reacts to NATO targeting it by Rick Rozoff from Anti-Bellum.
  

• Biden wants NATO to project the strength it doesn’t have by Scott Ritter from RT.
  

• Science Update: Climate Change Leads to Reduced Atmospheric Oxygen featuring Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist (via his YouTube channel--07:45m), who has fearlessly focused on the climate crisis, examining a research study reported in the Guardian.
  

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, May 14, 2021

• The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan? by Nicholas Wade from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Science is supposedly a self-correcting community of experts who constantly check each other’s work. So why didn’t other virologists point out that the Andersen group’s argument was full of absurdly large holes? Perhaps because in today’s universities speech can be very costly. Careers can be destroyed for stepping out of line. Any virologist who challenges the community’s declared view risks having his next grant application turned down by the panel of fellow virologists that advises the government grant distribution agency.

The Daszak and Andersen letters were really political, not scientific, statements, yet were amazingly effective.

• How the CIA cultivates a fake left: From the cultural cold war to intersectional imperialism by Ben Norton posted on this article from Moderate Rebels.
  

• 💥The Markets Are Rigged by James Corbett from The Corbett Report with audio, video (47:11m) & transcript. This is a best post. My reaction: Corbett keeps on investigating the capitalist Wall Street markets and discovers in this post that the "markets are rigged", with government collusion, by top capitalists who are in control of central banks throughout the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. This discovery might lead him to adopt a Marxist perspective, which will replace his anarchist (agorist--a specific type) ideology, with a self-serving ruling class. But that is verboten in a capitalist society, especially in the heart of a capitalist Empire. So, we will continue on with descriptions of "oligarchic billionaires" who control the stock market for self-serving ends. Corbett will likely not conclude that a ruling capitalist class controls every institution in a capitalist society, that is, that they control media corporations, education, opinion shapers (thesaurus) like Hollywood films, etc.
  

• 💥Denying the Demonic by Edward Curtin from his weblog Behind the Curtain. This is a best post. My commentary follows: 

This is a "best post" because Curtin exposes the insight that demons are a part of what it is to be human: "For they are part of ourselves, not alien beings, as the tragedy of human history has shown us time and again." And Curtin ends with a death-bed confession by James Jesus Angleton, who many believe was a sinister "devil" along with his boss Alan Dulles of the CIA. It seems that we are all susceptible to the classic conditioning of Ivan Pavlov, and it appears that power is the irresistible drug that we all occasionally aspire to have. People who designate others as being "evil people" are the latter who find this drug to be irresistible. It may be, and probably is, our "Achilles heel" that now threatens us with extinction as a species, in addition to so many others, on planet Earth--or elsewhere should a few of us manage to migrate to other planets.

 

But, what if a ruling class consists of these people that are sometimes designated as "evil people"? What if these people infest all ruling classes? What if the nature of ruling classes infect all advanced societies? These questions suggest a Marxist perspective which is heavily censored throughout all advanced capitalist societies. What about mixed societies (mixed between privately owned and controlled enterprises and those which the government owns)? I do not know, so I will confine my comments to capitalist societies represented by the leading nations under the control of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire (US, Britain, and Israel)  

• Latest Bizarre Chapter of “War on Drugs”: U.S. Special Forces Train Drug Cartel Enforcers Linked to Rape, Torture and Decapitation of Victims by Zach El Parece from CovertAction Magazine.

• We Should All Be Worried About The United Nations Food Systems Summit. From A Growing Culture.
  

• Palestine: It is Not a Conflict, It is Colonialism by Carolina Bracco from Internationalist 360°. (Also I especially recommend Vanessa Beeley's elaborate take on the ongoing strife in a 1:05 hr interview conducted by Gordon Dimmack, a Brit who has a channel on YouTube. Beeley currently lives in Syria.)
  

Israel sought not only to sustain its military supremacy in the region but also, like any colonial project, to present itself as a superior and more civilized population. The identification of the Palestinians as a primitive and violent rabble in contrast to the sophisticated, cultured and European Israeli society supports this feeling of superiority, while reinforcing the unequivocal link with its European origin and American endorsement. After all, it is these states that finance Israeli military policy. Hence the immanence of the security discourse, which in turn enables the practices of oppression, discrimination and murder by transforming them into practices of defense and revenge.

• Fifteen Thoughts On Palestine by Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian independent blogger, from her weblog.

• Silencing Supporters Of B.D.S. featuring Max Blumenthal (of The Grayzone) on Jimmy Dore's YouTube channel expressing his views on the subject. (Note: You will need to know what B.D.S. means.)

• Escalation In Palestine - Hizbullah Is Ready To Join The Fight by Bernhard, an independent German blogger, from his weblog Moon of Alabama.

• Turning The Clock Back To 2001 - CIA, Others Prepare A New Resistance Against The Taliban by Bernhard from his weblog Moon of Alabama.
  

• Explained: Strona and Bradshaw 2018 features Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist who has focused on the climate crisis, starting a series on his YouTube channel discussing reports from peer-reviewed websites (this one is from Scientific Reports) published in 2018).
  

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, April 19, 2021

• EU not to renew AstraZeneca, J&J Covid-19 vaccine contracts on expiry from Business Standard. 

• Another day, another dollar | Pfizer defends price for its COVID vaccine from RT's channel on YouTube (3:18m)

• If Johnson & Johnson Coronavirus Vaccine Shots Are Halted Because of Blood Clots, Why Have Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Shots Not Also Been Halted? by Adam Dick from Ron Paul Institute.
  

• Pathogens in One Lesson, Courtesy of Sunetra Gupta by Jeffrey A. Tucker from American Institute for Economic Research. (Note: This is essentially a book review of Gupta's book entitled Pandemics: Our Fears and the Facts.)

• Gates Unhinged: Dystopian Vision for the Future of Food by Colin Todhunter (a Brit) from Off-Guardian. 

• The truth about doublespeak: Is it lying or just being persuasive? by researchers at the University of Waterloo from Phys Org.
  

• Cold War Liberalism and the Labor Movement: The Epic Fail by Richard Moser from CounterPunch. 

• Wall Street’s Mega Bank CEOs To Be Hauled Before Congress in May; Nobody Will Say Why by Pam & Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. Note: The Martens soon dash hopes that anything substantial will come of the hearings.

If past is prologue, which we pray it is not, the hearings will use such a buckshot approach to questioning the witnesses that there will be no meaningful takeaway to the public from the hearings.

 

Later they go on to argue:

 

While each of these issues are critical to the national debate, dumping them all into one hearing where the Congressional questioner together with the witness get just a combined five minutes does a disservice to the seriousness of each issue. In fact, this approach has served to hold back change on Wall Street as news reporters simply grab the single most titillating detail from each hearing and put that in a headline. 

 

I argue that the purpose of the hearings will be to give the appearance that Congresspeople are protecting the people from the shenanigans of the major financial institutions. The bank CEOs are closer to the ruling capitalist class (if not a part of it) than the Congresspeople who are treated as mere employees of the ruling class. 

• How the US Enforces Exploitative Economic Policies: The IMF and the World Bank by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room.

• Biden Approves DAPL! Betrays Native Americans Again featuring Jimmy Dore citing various mainstream reports regarding that the wealthy who contribute far more than the poor and Justin Jackson offering his comments on Dore's YouTube channel (9:08m).
  

• Deliberate Attempts to Downplay the Science: Karl Grossman Interviews Dr. Devra Davis  in a 29 minute YouTube video from Environmental Health Trust.
  

• Western US States Prepare For 1st-Ever Water Shortage Declaration; Hoover Dam Hydroelectric Generation At Risk by Tyler Durden from his weblog ZeroHedge.

• Opium poppy production in Afghanistan from Global Research. (Note: This article is posted on Esri a company that is devoted to "A geographic information system (GIS) is a framework for gathering, managing, and analyzing data." However, because there is no date or an author on this post which originated from Esri, I have decided to post it from Global Research as an exception to my usual policy to post articles from their original websites.
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, February 17, 2021

• Beyond Lucrative: Jeffrey Epstein’s Billionaire Tax Avoidance Assistance Business by Daniel Hemel and Bob Lord from Inequality.

• US Election 2020: From Conspiracy Theory to Conspiracy Fact by Andrew Korybko from Off-Guardian (based in Britain).
  

• How Gov’t Hides The Real Unemployment Rate featuring Lee Camp charges the government with lying about unemployment, but he doesn't explain how in this 4:05m YouTube video.

• The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot by Glenn Greenwald from his weblog on Substack. My reaction: What Greenwald misses is that the Deep State has taken over completely what honest journalism ever aspired to be throughout the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Only getting rid of capitalists, and all other hegemonic social-economic classes, can there ever be an honest media.

• The Empire Attacks BDS For The Same Reason Nixon Started The Drug War by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. My reaction: Nixon's anti-(illicit) drug policies were well understood by activists in the early 1970s, but the public completely bought the lies. Now mainstream politicians, who are employed by the capitalist ruling class, are trying to profit off of marijuana sales to the consternation of the older-age public--the same people who bought the lies of the ruling class in the 1970s and beyond.

• News Anchor Suggests Using Drone Strikes on Trump Supporters featuring Ben Swann of ISE trying via a 13 minute video presentation to correct the lies of contemporary "journalists" that have contributed to actual terrorism using the actual history of lies spread by ruling class media corporations. Such sociopathic "journalists" will still be hired by media corporations and will enjoy comfortable careers in the future, and a gullible public, while also pursuing comfortable careers, will continue to believe them. This self-reinforcing phenomenon will continue until sufficient numbers of the public will not accept such lies because they have been exposed to independent media.

• The Empty Promise of Western-Style "Equality" and "Democracy" by Brian Berletic patiently giving a corrective presentation via a 5:27m video to mythical concepts like "Illuminati". Capitalist ruling class media like to encourage such myths that detract their gullible listeners from them and their dastardly deeds.

• How Governments and the Media Help Corporations Get Away With Their Crimes by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room.
  

• 💥Global Coup d’État: Mapping the Corporate Takeover of Global Governance. This 31:14m video (and transcript) appears to be a collaboration between two non-profit agencies--Global Political Economy (GPE) and Transnational Institute (TNI). This post is undoubtedly a best post. My commentary follows:

I have posted numerous articles from the latter organization, but I've only recently discovered GPE. This video features Lynn Fries of the Global Political Economy (GPE) conducting an interview with Nick Buxton of TNI. This essential post points out the subversion of the United Nations by corporations. Previously, I've posted articles that have explored the ways that secretive capitalist agencies like the CIA have subverted governments to promote Empire interests, but now they are corrupting the UN with their class-based motives of profit and power.

My impression of TNI was of a do-gooder (def) type of organization that believes that capitalism and a meaningful democracy were not incompatible. Reflecting on Buxton's remarks, I believe they are waking up to their contradictions. (See my remarks about this organization a year ago.)

(Note: Every time I consider retiring from maintaining this website, I encounter an excellent article that I want to spread far and wide. As long as this keeps up, I won't retire until forced to by ill-health. If there is someone out there in the blogosphere that can help out, I would greatly appreciate it.)

• China overtakes U.S. as the EU's largest trading partner by Katherine Berjikian from CGTN (China's main newspaper). 

• The Reshaping of Global Agriculture: The WEF Agenda Behind India’s Modi Government’s “Farm Reform” by F. William Engdahl from Global Research. 

• Update on Syria by Vanessa Beeley, an independent British journalist, from her weblog The Wall Will Fall. You may also be interested in an update provided by South Front.
  

• The Arab Spring Failed But the Rage Against Misery and Injustice Continues by Patrick Cockburn from CounterPunch.

• US, OAS, Colombia Try to Steal Ecuador’s Election from Popular Socialist Candidate, While Spreading Fake News from Internationalist 360°. 

• Science Update: Arctic Permafrost, Mines Releasing Carbon, a 6:21m video featuring Prof. Guy McPherson (retired) giving an update from the latest scientific news (peer-reviewed journals) about the climate crisis. 

Articles I especially recommend for today: Wednesday, September 25, 2019

• Just Three Of World's Top Ten Banks Signed UN Climate-Goals Commitment by Tyler Durden from ZeroHedge.

• Pesticides in the Dock: Ecological Apocalypse but Business as Usual by Colin Todhunter from CounterCurrents.

• Did CIA use LSD to create Charles Manson’s madness? from RT.

Articles recommended for Friday, July 19, 2019

• Hidden in Plain Sight: The Shocking Origins of the Jeffrey Epstein Case by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News.

• Inside the Yellow Vests: What the Western media will not report (Part 3) by Ollie Richardson from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

• Sergey Lavrov’s interview with the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty (transcript) from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

• Western intellectuals freak over ‘Frankenstein’ China by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times. 

• WikiLeaks Editor Kristinn Hrafnsson, Michael Isikoff, Pepe Escobar, As’ad AbuKhalil on CN Live! Friday 2pm EDT from Consortium News.

• Drug companies poured 76 billion opioid pills into US neighborhoods in just six years by Genevieve Leigh from World Socialist Web Site. 

Superbugs in the Anthropocene: A Profit-Driven Plague

Click here to access article by Ian Angus from Monthly Review.

The subject of superbugs is not new, but this author explains why such antibiotic-resistant bugs have appeared. 

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is a global health crisis driven by a pharmaceutical and health care system that puts profit before people. In addition to devastating climate change, the Anthropocene may be defined by epidemics that medicine cannot cure.

But this was not inevitable. As Angus further explains:

Those who hailed the first antibiotics as miracle drugs were not wrong. What those chemicals could have been was a way to work with nature, to use natural processes to overcome diseases that had plagued us for thousands of years. Used with appropriate humility and careful stewardship, in conjunction with a global drive to eradicate the conditions that cause infectious diseases, penicillin and its successors could have been boons to humanity for centuries. But that would have required a radically different economy and society.

With ruling capitalist classes' obsession to obtain profits instead of human welfare, such a result was inevitable along with all the other assaults on our habitat that has produced the threats of climate destabilization, environmental pollution, and species extinctions.

Capitalism always operates in the short term and its defenders always insist that new technology will solve any problems that might arise. For several decades, antibiotics seemed to confirm that superstition—for every drug that stopped working, new ones were discovered. But that did not last. The early discoveries were low-hanging fruit and searching the higher branches has been hard and largely unsuccessful.

Mainstream economists like to claim that the market solves all—if there is a need, customer demand will produce solutions. But today, when bacteria have found ways to resist every available antibiotic, most pharmaceutical companies have abandoned the search for others. Not because new antibiotics would not be profitable, but because they would not be profitable enough. Big Pharma makes double-digit profits from drugs it sells for thousands of dollars a dose to patients who must take them frequently for many years. Antibiotics just do not fit that business model.

Articles/videos I read/viewed and recommend to you on Wednesday, November 21, 2018

• Revenge Is Mine Saith Washington by Paul Craig Roberts from his blog. 

Also, on the same subject of the persecution of Julian Assange by agents of the US Empire, RT America clarifies the legal issues regarding Assange: 

• "Time for opioid makers to feel the pain" from RT America featuring views by Rick Sanchez.

  

Nuking Sounds Fun When You’re High as a Kite

Click here to access article by Martin Berger from New Eastern Outlook. (Although I regard Berger's arguments in most of his articles as consistent with reality, I often see signs that they were written in haste and this article is no different. Some examples in this article: I would like to have seen some documentation for the phrase "According to one of the Pentagon press conferences given in 2014" which referred to commanding officers distributing drugs to their soldiers, some of whom controlled nuclear missiles, and some documentation about the BZ agent; and the use of the "OPCW" instead of Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.)

Berger points out how many commanders of armies throughout history have drugged their soldiers in order to prepare them to engage in all sort of horrible acts in war time, and juxtaposes this with a more recent startling documentation that the Pentagon is drugging soldiers who are in control of nuclear weapons.

Why Super-Rich Rush to Buy Nuclear-Proof Bunkers

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

See other photos of the interiors of these bunkers here and here.

The rush amongst the super-rich started after the key event of 2014; this single stunning event suddenly sparked that rush by the super-rich to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, and the rush has been nonstop since that event. Though many news-media in The West have reported on the existence of this suddenly booming market for luxurious and supposedly nuclear-proof bunkers, none has reported on what actually caused it — the event that had sparked it. In fact, that event is still a secret in The West — not publicly mentioned here; it is, practically speaking, banned from being publicly even mentioned, in The West. ... this report, explaining why the super-rich rush now to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, violates that ban.

Later in the article Zuesse implies that the super-rich are immoral:

Any of these billionaires and centi-millionaires could have chosen instead to establish (either alone or in combination with one-another) the first foundation or other propaganda-operation to publicize the fraudulence of the US-and-allied case for sanctions against Russia, and the fraudulence of NATO’s continuing assertions after 1991 that it’s a ‘defensive’ military alliance (it’s no longer that, at all), and the fact (contrasted against that fraud) of NATO’s being nowadays purely an alliance for aggression against Russia and China, as if the Cold War had never ended (and it never really did end except on the Russian and Chinese side, which now recognize that the US and its allies had lied in 1990); so, all of these billionaires rather buy private nuclear-bomb shelters, than establish a foundation to expose to the public the US side’s apocalyptic lies, which actually cause the danger that’s heading to destroy the entire world.

I would like to argue that the super-rich are most insightfully seen as addicts to the power-high that riches produces for them by the system of capitalism. Power, which is the sense of control over other people's lives, is the most addictive "substance" of all, and power over others is insured by concentrated wealth. We must ban the system of capitalism which inevitably and ultimately delivers this drug, and replace it with a system that insures genuine democratic control of all of society's institutions--including most emphatically the economy--by all of the people.

How far can the Americans be pushed?

Click here to access article by Ghassan Kadi from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. (Added a relevant quote by the author at 9:40 AM Seattle time.)

... after the petro-dollar loses its world dominance, and this doesn’t seem very far away, a time will come when it will become virtually impossible to keep propping up the American economy with quantitative easing (aka printing money). And as America loses its economic stature, its only remaining prowess and might will be in its nuclear arsenal. The question is this. If America is imposing sanctions and bans right left and centre right now, and for no good reason at all, will a much more desperate America use its nuclear power to restore its dominion?

Such questions have been troubling me for some time. With all I know about the desperate, sociopathic ruling class, I can't reach any other conclusion but that they will risk all in their determination to rule the world and to salvage their huge run-up of debts. They are totally addicted to the drugs of power based on concentrated wealth that capitalism has supplied them with. Anyone who has had any experience with addicts knows that they are likely to engage in desperate acts while under the influence of drugs.

We are now witnessing the end games that they are engaging in by converting every ounce of information into self-serving propaganda, subverting nations, activating military operations all over the world, and issuing bellicose threats to nations that stand in the Empire's way. 

Nobody likes to be lied to, but the information that the ruling class's media corporations are spreading are riling all sorts of honest and aware people from right to left on America's political spectrum (which is mostly skewed to the right). We see almost daily articles by Paul Craig Roberts and Pat Buchanan, who are on the right of the spectrum, American libertarians like Ron Paul and James Corbett, and numerous liberals (people who believe that only reforms are needed to the capitalist system) who are all extremely troubled by the lies and other aggressive acts of the Empire's transnational capitalist ruling class.

I think that only the American people can stop them, but I don't hold much hope for this to happen given that so many Americans believe their lies while others who know that they are lying, but due to capitalist indoctrination of individualism, are mostly preoccupied with their who own security concerns.   

Recommended articles for 1/28/2018 by my website followers who are obviously engaged activists

I have been ailing from symptoms of a bad cold or moderate flu. I am grateful that these engaged activists, Caren and Christopher from northern Oregon, are helping me maintain my site and contributing to posts. Here are the best of their recommendations:

• The Atlantic Council & Latin American Regime Change  The Atlantic Council is one of most powerful organizations that make up the Deep State, the transnational capitalist ruling class that make all major decisions behind the facades of US-led Empire governments.

• Unpacking the Shadowy Outfit Behind 2017’s Biggest Fake News Story 

• Robert Parry's Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews  We have lost one of our great journalists.

• Empire Files: Death & Biostitutes - The US Opioid Crisis

• Not Even Orwell or Huxley Could Have Imagined 'Totalitarian' Threat Posed by Facebook and Google, Warns Soros  "WTF? Soros defending free speech???" Wonders never cease!

• Octopus Genes In Industrial Pot?  Derrick Jensen discovers the inevitable dynamics of capitalism in the growing concentration of the marijuana industry.

The Opioid Epidemic in America - Killing One Million Workers: The Triumph of Capital (Creating a Domestic ‘Shithole’)

Click here to access article by James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya from Petras' website.

After a short introduction regarding the use of addictive drugs to open up the China market to British and other advanced capitalist countries, the article continues on in PDF format to describe how Big Pharma in collusion with the government, which they largely control, has decimated mostly the white working population in the USA with modern highly addictive drugs. The authors see this as another manifestation of class warfare to enrich the ruling capitalist class along with many rewards for their compliant, highly educated upper-middle class scientists, technologists, and medical professionals.

There are historical precedents for the successful elimination of drug lords, both
elite and criminal and for bringing addicts back to productive social life. 

Recommended posts for reading/viewing on 12/2/2017

• Abbie Martin interviews Mike Papantonio, a lawyer fighting for opioid sufferers in Ohio and against pharmaceutical corporations.

• The Houthis: Revolutionaries Pegged as Religious Extremists from TeleSur. 

• Yemen: Today’s Guernica from Strategic Culture Foundation.

A selection of today's must-read articles

by Ron Horn.

I simply do not have the time today to do my usual review of articles which, in my view, have major importance in understanding critical and other major issues currently facing humans. In place of this I will simply list some articles that I hope you will read and think about.

* Pharmaceutical Firm Makes Billions by Fueling Opioid Crisis

Related articles: Afghanistan: It’s the Heroin, Stupid;  Making Afghanistan Safe for Heroin

* The Deep State’s JFK Triumph Over Trump 

* What is really wrong with Russia Today and Sputnik?

* The Kurdish Push For Federalization Of Syria  

DEA Whistleblowers Take Down Nominee, Expose Govt’s Role in US Opiate Crisis

Click here to access article by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News. (Updated at 11:03 PM Seattle time.)

Although Webb emphasizes regulatory capture by the pharmaceutical industry and only points to some facts--like heroin production is booming in US occupied Afghanistan (before under the Taliban government it was banned) and that US troops guard their poppy patches--I think we will likely learn in the future that US government agencies actively colluded with criminal organizations to refine and especially distribute heroin, much of which ultimately ended up in the hands of Big Pharma and resulted in opiate addiction in the US.

I well remember from my days in the San Francisco Bay Area that the CIA was directly flying in heroin and other drugs from southeast Asia into Oakland using their Air America airline (see this, this, and this).

You may also be interested in an article entitled "Make Big Pharma Pay for the Opioid Crisis" by Karen Hicks posted on CounterPunch.

The CIA: 70 Years of Organized Crime

Click here to access this interview with Douglas Valentine conducted by Lars Schall and posted on CounterPunch. (Edited at 7:35 PM Seattle time for clarity.)

Although it begs belief (def.) that Valentine was able to completely fool the then CIA Director William Colby about his mission to study the CIA, nearly everything he's written in his book The CIA as Organized Crime is corroborated by many other independent sources. But his entrée (def. 1b) provided by Colby allowed Valentine to interview many other CIA officers.  This access enabled him to become probably the foremost expert outside of the Deep State on this nefarious organization due to the compartmentalization that usually occurs among their officers. And the knowledgeable Lars Schall makes this a top-notch interview.

LS: How important is mainstream media for the public perception of the CIA?

DV: It’s the most critical feature. Guy Debord said that secrecy dominates the world, foremost as secret of domination. The media prevents you from knowing how you’re being dominated, by keeping the CIA’s secrets. The media and the CIA are same thing.

Pablo Escobar’s Son Reveals His Dad “Worked for the CIA Selling Cocaine” — Media Silent

Click here to access article by Claire Bernish from The Free Thought Project. 

Juan Pablo Escobar Henao, son of notorious Medellín cartel drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar, now says his father “worked for the CIA.”

In a new book, “Pablo Escobar In Fraganti,” Escobar, who lives under the pseudonym, Juan Sebastián Marroquín, explains his “father worked for the CIA selling cocaine to finance the fight against Communism in Central America.”

“The drug business is very different than what we dreamed,” he continues. “What the CIA was doing was buying the controls to get the drug into their country and getting a wonderful deal.”

“He did not make the money alone,” Marroquín elaborated in an interview, “but with US agencies that allowed him access to this money. He had direct relations with the CIA.”

A valiant verbal warrior demythologizes the CIA

Click here to access the review by Edward Curtin of a recent book entitled The CIA as Organized Crime authored by Douglas Valentine.

I confess that I don't remember reading any of Valentine's books because I felt that I already knew much about what he was writing. But Curtin's outstanding review of his works explains that his books offer unrivaled depth and width to the subject of the CIA's subversion of the US and it's Empire in service to their masters in the ruling capitalist class. I'm convinced that Valentine' books have the key to an understanding of many of today's seemingly incomprehensible events. Here is only one such tidbit from Valentine's recent book that promises an intellectual feast that awaits your reading:

“Journalism in the US is a traditional cover for CIA officers. And when the owners of the media aren’t covering for the CIA, they’re selling commercial time slots to the multi-national corporations that in turn are selling you commodities made in sweatshops in foreign nations that have been subverted by the CIA. You could almost say there is no such thing as factual reporting. . . . The CIA and the media are part of the same criminal conspiracy. You’re never going to learn anything substantive by reading what mainstream reporters dish out about the CIA. You can’t take a journalism course in CIA Criminal Conspiracies 101.”

Big Media’s Contra-Cocaine Cover-up

Click here to access article by Robert Parry from Consortiumnews.com. 

Given the current "fake news" campaign by various spokespersons for the ruling class, Parry attacks major corporate media for their coverups of the CIA drug distribution scandal that was exposed by minor investigative journalists mostly in the 1990s. 

I followed these revelations closely when his investigations first broke in the San Jose Mercury, heard Gary Webb speak in Eugene, Oregon after he lost his career in journalism following his blacklisting, and read his book Dark Alliance and many other materials on the subject. In earlier decades I had personally witnessed the devastating effects of the influx of drugs in HUD subsidized low-income housing which I managed. On a visit to Nicaragua in 1982 I personally witnessed the devastation of the CIA sponsored Honduran Contras who targeted mostly schools, hospitals, and cooperatives which were organized and supported by the Nicaraguan government. 

In a campaign which began earlier in the 1970s, major media gave widespread coverage to the War on Drugs that was heralded by President Nixon. In ensuing years under this campaign I witnessed aggressive actions by militarized police forces that were used to confiscate properties of mostly marijuana growers in California and small time distributors in the African-American ghettos of major cities. But then leaked reports started coming from independent investigators such as Gary Webb that clearly suggested the involvement of the CIA, their illegal funding of the Contras, and ties to drug distribution in the US.

Recently I've seen many major corporate media reports on the growing problem of heroin addiction. The coverage is always on the sensational aspects and never on what police agencies are doing about it. One would think that the estimated $50 billion dollars devoted annually to police illicit drug crimes would have prevented this. The fact that heroin related production has vastly increased in Afghanistan while under the control of the US is never referred to in corporate media coverage related to the current addiction problems. Thus, you will never find articles like this in corporate media: "Afghanistan: Opium, the CIA and the Karzai Administration", "Making Afghanistan Safe for Heroin" and "Afghan Opium Production Hits New Highs"--all from credible independent websites.