Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, February 26, 2021

• US doctors propose ‘Vaccine Bill of Rights’ to protect citizens from forced shots by Patrick Delaney from Life Site. 

• What Could Go Wrong? WHO Launches Global ‘No-Fault’ COVID Vaccine Injury Compensation Program by Wayne Rohde from Children's Health Defense.

• Coronavirus Fact-Check #10: Why “new cases” are plummeting. This post is from Off-Guardian.
  

• Capitalism and Political Violence at Home and Abroad by Rob Urie from CounterPunch. My reaction: The article requires a real knowledge of history which has been substantially removed for most people by the rewriting of history by "historians" employed by the ruling class and colluding Hollywood producers of films. I found his thesis that violence is used by the capitalist ruling class, both at home and abroad, to maintain their system is somewhat obscured by his writing style. But Urie fulfills the function of giving CounterPunch a superficial radical cachet (def).

• Journalists and the Looming Superstorm of Climate Disinformation by Andrew McCormick from Covering Climate Now.

• US Bombs Syria And Ridiculously Claims Self Defense by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. 
  

• Heating the Planet Through a New Cold War by Michael Klare from Tom Dispatch. (Note: I only recommend the first section that carries this title. The rest is how Joe Biden is largely responsible which is very naive. Biden is just a figurehead--the capitalist ruling class is in charge of all major policies.
  

Articles recommended for Tuesday, June 25, 2019

• Briefing: The Effects of the Economic Blockade of Venezuela by Venezuela Solidarity Campaign (British) from Venezuelanalysis.

• The Ongoing Restructuring of the Greater Middle East by master satirist C. J. Hopkins from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc.

• Trump Finally Confirms: John Bolton is a Menace from 21st Century Wire.

The Unrelenting State

Click here to access article by Craig Murray (British) from his blog.

I have been led to believe that the Empire's tenable and increasing tenuous position is expressing itself in the controllers of this Empire to increase their desperate attempts via their disinformation agents to crush those who, like Assange, have broken through their fabricated "realities" and published accounts online that totally deconstructed their "realities".

Signs of Assange's decreasing health while in the custody of the British government may be a perfect example of the desperation that is driving governments of the Empire to use extreme measures. Murray appears convinced that this is the case with Assange.

I confess to feeling an amount of personal relief after his arrest that at least he would now get proper medical treatment. However there now seems to be no intention to provide that and indeed since he has been in Belmarsh his health problems have accelerated. I witnessed enough of the British state’s complicity in torture to know that this may be more than just the consequence of unintended neglect. That the most lucid man I know is now not capable of having a rational conversation is extremely alarming.

Brainwashing in Action: Pence Hails Virtue of ‘Certain War’

Click here to access article by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation.

In an address to West Point military graduates, US Vice President Mike Pence told them they will one day fight for America. “It’s a virtual certainty,” said Pence who was swelling with pride as he spoke, rather than lamenting.

Well, at least, he is being candid.

Cunningham goes on to expose Empire propaganda for what it is: a deceptive and deceitful cover for the outright fascist commitment to the use of force to attain ever greater power and profits. 

Failed Coup, Medicare 4 All, Embassy Raid & More

Lee Camp and others satirize US policies on his Redacted Tonight Show carried on RT's website.

US policies and actions are so obviously criminal, and coverage by media corporations are so ridiculous that they provide abundant material to satirize. I post this for those people who believe it is better to laugh over our predicament by living in the USA than it is to cry. But notice the alert warning provided by the owner of YouTube, Google, warning us about Russia--you may want to avoid this video ... or not.

The Prisoner Says No to Big Brother

Click here to access article by John Pilger from his blog.

Pilger reports on a recent visit with Julian Assange in which the parallels between Julian Assange and George Orwell's characters and themes are striking.  He uses Assange's courageous example to inspire all of us to:

... stop scrolling. Organise. Occupy. Insist. Persist. Make a noise. Take direct action. Be brave and stay brave. Defy the thought police.

War is not peace, freedom is not slavery, ignorance is not strength. If Julian can stand up to Big Brother, so can you: so can all of us.

MASSIVE Breakthrough In 9/11 Investigation! - Must WATCH (with Richard Gage & Barbara Honegger)

Click here if you wish to access the video directly from YouTube. The 33 minute video (the last three minutes was a pitch to donate to WAM) was produced by WAM (Winnipeg Alternative Media) and featured prominently on AE911Truth (Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth) website. The founder of WAM is Josh Sigurdson who functions largely as a moderator for this excited discussion by Richard Gage and Barbara Honegger.

Josh Sigurdson talks with Richard Gage AIA of Architects & Engineers For 9/11 Truth as well as Barbara Honegger who famously exposed the truth behind the Iran Contra scandal in the 1980s as a member of the Reagan White House with her book 'October Surprise' and now works with the Lawyers Committee For 9/11 Inquiry.

Some massive news has come out in recent days regarding a petition originally filed in April of 2018 asking for a new investigation into 9/11. Just a few days ago, LCfor9/11 got a letter back from a US attorney agreeing to comply with a Federal law requiring submission to a special grand jury of report by Lawyers' committee and 9/11 victim family members of "yet to be prosecuted 9/11 crimes."

The implications of the case they are pursing are staggering. They do have a mountain of evidence that the government's interpretation of this event was false, and events since then overwhelmingly suggest a coverup. It's obvious that the government led by the Deep State and its "security" and "intelligence services" were involved to bring it off. Cui bono? This is also obvious which leads Sigurdson to ask a most obvious question at 7:38m--essentially that the government cannot investigate itself with any credibility. 

The people at AE911Truth and the Lawyers Committee For 9/11 Inquiry are, as the names suggest, consist of professionals in the engineering, architecture, and legal professions. As professionals they have gone through long years of education and have enjoyed the perks that all professionals enjoy in a capitalist economy. Thus, they have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the ideology of capitalism, specifically with regards to the much vaunted "rule of law". Now they will find out how shallow this part of capitalist ideology is. 

Yet, I don't expect that their futile efforts will change many of their minds because they, who have served an indispensable function for capitalists, have enjoyed so many advantages. They will not "bite the hands that feeds them" in spite of the fact of their mountain of evidence (which they cite at length in the video), the fact that some of them lost loved-ones in this false-flag operation, and millions of people have been terribly impacted throughout the Middle East. Barbara Honegger clearly has not lost her faith in the system because of the Kennedy and other assassinations (the Zapruder film she mentions in the video was given immediately to the authorities), and her own experience with exposing the October surprise which the Reagan operatives engineered to get him elected. Nobody was held accountable for any of these crimes!

It will be interesting to see how the Deep State handles this grand jury investigation. It doesn't take much political intelligence to predict that it will be given minimal coverage in corporate media, the process will be drawn out and will take many years, the litigants will be offered some non-consequential legal rewards, but in the end nothing will come of it. I don't expect to still be alive when the case is ultimately concluded even though I am in very good health at the age of 82.

Recommended articles for Thursday 4/5/2018

• "It's The Cover-Up" - UK Foreign Office Deletes Tweet, Posts False Transcript, Issues New Lies from Moon of Alabama. Also, on the same subject: Theresa May – Wannabe Con Artist of the Year? from New Eastern Outlook. But the damage has been done. Diplomats have been expelled from the Empire's nations and the gullible public has been lied to. Now, how much do you think that the denial issued by Porton Down laboratory in Britain will be publicized in the Empire's media? 

• Google workers demand end to company’s involvement in drone murder by Andre Damon from World Socialist Web Site. 

• Donald and the Easter Bunny by Mike Small from Bella Caledonia (Scotland)

Easter is a confusing time. The dates change and the interface between chocolate, the Judeo-Christian faith and bunnies is vague at best.

What has become clearer this holiday however is that the United States of America is governed by an imbecile.

• The Secret Way the NRA Controls Congress in a 5:53m video features James D'Angelo explaining to Abbie Martin how the NRA works Congress to influence their votes. (Hint: it's not all bribery.)

Is Washington the Most Corrupt Government in History?

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his website. (I thank Christopher in northwest Oregon for sending me this article.)

I think such a question (in the headline) is the wrong one. It leads one down the wrong path that will lead to nowhere. I doubt that Roberts does this deliberately. He has been so well indoctrinated in capitalist ethics that he simply can't see that once you espouse a system that puts rich individuals at the center of it, that puts individuals who "own" substantial parts of the economy at the center of a social system, that totally organizes all parts of the social system that is usually called patriotically the "American Way of Life" or more benignly, "Western Civilization", then you will have what he now sees as widespread "corruption". I will argue that once you have such a system, you will almost automatically and eventually have widespread "corruption".

At this point we need to define what "corruption" really is. I think we can agree that it reveals itself when behavior, particularly despicable behavior, is at wide variance with the theory of how the system is supposed to function, that is, behavior does not conform to the rules that supposedly govern a society. 

You can find these rules nearly everywhere: most prominently in history textbooks, in the way corporate media frame news events, in the way politicians expound about the glorious "American Way of Life", in some laws passed by governments, particularly in the official founding documents of a nation, etc. All of these rules are described as representing "democracy": the rule of the people by representation, that is, people choose others to represent them in congresses or parliaments and executive branches of government. 

However, laced throughout these rules are another set of rules that sanctify the private ownership of property. Here, I'm not talking about personal property, but property of economic value that has been created by people as a result of their work and their imagination. This property is in essence social property because it is property that has been the result of efforts by more than one person: by the efforts of present living members of society and previous generations of humans throughout the roughly 200,000 years of human existence. 

I'm referring to the set of rules of a social-economic system called capitalism which is a system that has turned nearly everything into a commodity to be bought and sold. You won't find the word "capitalism" often used because the supporters of capitalism prefer other more nice sounding or obscure words such as "free markets", "Wall Street", and even more imaginatively, "democracy". This set of rules which virtually sanctified the "ownership" of social property by individuals resulted over time in a class of people, called capitalists, who were able to accumulate considerable social property which they could essentially use and dispose of as one would personal property. And they as a class soon discovered many other advantages.

Another class of people simultaneously arose under the operation of this system called workers. These people were essentially rented by capitalists to produce value for them. Within this very large group of workers there evolved sub-classes that are nowadays roughly referred  to as professionals, highly skilled, and unskilled workers. Probably a more meaningful way to divide these rented workers is between two categories: salaried and hourly workers. Salaried workers function much more independently than hourly workers who tend to be carefully supervised and must function according to well-defined rules. Among other advantages capitalists have found that dividing up workers this way serves to divide workers which are natural antagonists of capitalists. Also, by giving salaried workers more perks serves to identify these workers with their capitalist masters, their values, and their behaviors.

Actually a third class of worker arose in the history of capitalism, and they were called "slaves". They were also treated as private property to be used as the "owners" saw fit to accumulate wealth. However, this practice was largely abandoned (though it still exists) primarily because owners regarded the renting of workers much more practical and efficient to accumulate wealth. (Think of renting tools when you need them versus owning a large inventory of tools that you have to store and maintain.) 

Capitalists noticed over time as they accumulated economic property and employed large numbers of workers that they had much more influence over decisions of government, over the selection of governors, and over every institution of societies including most especially education and media. Naturally they installed people in every institution that promoted their interests in relation to the accumulation of social property. It almost naturally followed that they began to see the ownership of property brought them not only fabulous wealth, but even more importantly, POWER. (Power is, of course, the ability to have others behave the way you want them to.)  

Thus, the accumulation of wealth was no longer an object by itself, instead the accumulation of power became the prime driving force behind all of capitalist endeavors. The history of capitalism became the history of wars because different national capitalists would compete for power until one faction ruled over the whole world. This is essentially where we are today with the existence of the US-led (capitalist) Empire trying to eliminate every last competing power such as posed by Russia and China. 

There are many directions one could go with this analysis of capitalism, but I will only take one road which many are bothered by--the current media issue of today: sexual harassment. Have you noticed that largely only one class of people have been affected by this: high profile salaried workers? You won't find any major capitalists like Donald Trump being fired from his job over accusations of sexual harassment. Many salaried workers, who often identify with their capitalist bosses, have learned the lessons about sexual behavior from their bosses who routinely take advantage of their powerful positions vis-à-vis their subordinate workers (of either sex). 

I strongly suspect that the capitalist ruling class's current media focus on sexual predations of high profile salaried workers, like their focus on Russiagate and in the recent past on gender-neutral bathrooms, serves to distract people from any coverage about the Empire's war crimes that they are committing in many places of the world and other embarrassing issues such as the decline of living conditions of American workers.

Cheap dignity of the Ukrainian revolution

Click here to access article by the editorial board of the Oriental Review (independent website based in Russia--no doubt Russian propaganda--sarcasm).

If you followed the Ukrainian coup, engineered by Victoria Nuland of the US State Department and the CIA, as closely as I did, you will not be surprised by this article and the following videos which the article refers to. Still the videos offer more concrete evidence that the US paid snipers to create chaos in Kiev during the anti-government protests, and brought about the coup. I'm sure our ruling class masters consider the $5 billion spent on the coup as money well spent. (The videos may take more than a few seconds to appear.)

The Gentrification-to-Prison Pipeline

Click here to access article by Lacino Hamilton from TruthOut.

Hamilton explains what people experience as they are removed from their neighborhoods under the policies known as "gentrification" (a very nice sounding word). Usually the people who are being removed are low income and powerless people of color who find it very difficult to fight back to preserve their homes and neighborhoods. The most vulnerable people of our society are targeted by developers and bankers who see the prospects of making loads of money if these people can be removed so that they can develop the property and sell or rent it to higher income people. Hamilton describes the aggressive nature of this removal process and what typically happens to the people who are forced out.

...the city of Detroit's approach to "social development" came to rely so dramatically on the bricks and mortar of prison at the expense of other responses that would have been both more humane and more effective -- such as social development with people in mind, not profit.

If we are willing to take seriously the consequences of a justice system that is the extension of money and power, it should not be difficult to reach the conclusion that enormous numbers of people are in prison simply because someone else's vision for the future did not include them. We were sent to prison not so much because of the crime we may have indeed committed, but largely for the expropriation of land (i.e., gentrification), which requires getting rid of the people who live on the land. Social development, urban renewal and the like are just new words for what sociologists in the past called imperialism, and what we can loosely refer to as colonialism. Gentrification and colonialism are the same processes largely because they share the same goals -- dislocation, expropriation and the pursuit of profit.

The Elite Consensus on Syria

Click here to access article by Branko Marcetic from Jacobin.

I am really concerned this morning about avoiding another nuclear holocaust from my reading of various articles--and not only this one (see this, this, this, and this among several others).

The last time I was this concerned was in October of 1962. That time we had a sensible president as commander-in-chief. John Kennedy paid with his life for his opposition to war, but this time we have a power-hungry maverick in charge and egged on by a combination of ziocons (aka neocons) and so-called "liberals" in Congress who are lusting for war. Meanwhile ordinary people, who should be out in the streets vigorously protesting, seem be resorting to their lack of attention to foreign affairs by saying that "it's all so complicated".

... unlike the Trump administration’s half-baked attempt to yank health insurance from millions of people, its utter failures in instituting a racist immigration program, or its ongoing efforts to round up and break apart millions of families, Trump’s bombing of Syria likely won’t be met with a wall of “resistance,” certainly not within the halls of power. That’s because for nearly all liberal and conservative pundits and politicians, foreign wars — particularly those launched in the name of “humanitarianism” — are an issue where no leader, even one as disliked as Trump, can ever go wrong.

Crime, starvation and incarceration in America (2 charts)

Click here to access article from Real-World Economics Review Blog. (Note: This is an extract from a longer paper by Gary Flomenhoft.) 

The author uses the charts to illustrate how US application of neoliberalism has used "the threat of starvation [to] motivate people to seek employment", and I may add, to create a more docile workforce. Also I think these policies were a ruling class form of revenge or reaction to all the anti-war militants during the Vietnam War and the Black nationalist movement during the same period. For example, "war on drugs", which resulted in a disproportionate number of African-Americans and poor people being incarcerated, was facilitated by the CIA. This was revealed years later first by journalist Gary Webb who investigated and found that the CIA was importing drugs from South America which ended up in the Black ghettos of US cities.

Obama administration split on “Plan B” for Syria intervention

Click here to access article by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

The author reviews the recent items in the Washington Post which report on the secret meetings of the National Security Council (NSC) regarding strategies to pursue in Syria. (Unfortunately WSWS's policy is not to include any links to relevant articles, and I don't have time to search for them.) The NSC is a top agency that decides on the imperialist policies of the US. Because the meetings are secret, the substance of the Post's articles must have been leaked to the Post.

Although no decisions have been reached yet, the Post reports seem to indicate that the preponderance of opinion is for the most aggressive strategy which would likely result in the shooting down of Syrian and Russian airplanes.

I fully agree with the author's concluding remark: 

The recklessness of such policies, aimed at deliberately provoking military confrontation with Russia, a power that controls the world’s second-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, is staggering.

Attorney Daniel Sheehan Gives Sage Advice on Bringing a 9/11 Civil Action [a must watch/listen-to video]

Click here if you wish to access this video recording directly from YouTube. 

Attorney Daniel Sheehan was speaking to those attending the Justice in Focus symposium recently held in NY City on the weekend of September 10-11. This event was sponsored and organized by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth). In this talk he gives advice on how AE911Truth should proceed with any legal actions based on his 50 years of experience litigating lawsuits against the government. 

By listening to it you will learn about similar cases that brought suits against government agencies where major crimes were alleged by the plaintiffs. In his talk Sheehan warns that this would not be any kind of normal case. They will face all kinds of problems trying to seek justice, and he gives several examples of such cases that he was directly involved in: the Karen Silkwood case, the Iran-Contra affair, and his work with the Christic Institute which exposed many other crimes that were being committed by US agencies in Central America during the 1970s and 80s. 

He argues that the legal system that was created by the financiers (Alexander Hamilton, Robert Morris, etc) of the American Revolution was designed to serve and protect the government which was established by them. He further argued that to have any chance of winning, they will need three things: a major mass-based movement, a supportive media that will expose accurately what's happening in the case, and grass roots organizers. 

While he was litigating such cases, I was involved in many grass-roots organizations in support of such legal actions. I can with great confidence assert that nothing short of a dedicated revolutionary movement will rid our nation of such a criminal ruling class. And, I think Sheehan's experience and recommendations suggests the same conclusion.

Are You a Mind-Controlled CIA Stooge?

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his website.

Do you smirk when you hear someone question the official stories of Orlando, San Bernardino, Paris or Nice? Do you feel superior to 2,500 architects and engineers, to firefighters, commercial and military pilots, physicists and chemists, and former high government officials who have raised doubts about 9/11? If so, you reflect the profile of a mind-controlled CIA stooge.

Well, not to worry if you are one of those "CIA stooges". There is an excellent antidote to this CIA inflicted disease in the form of a book lauded by Roberts entitled Conspiracy Theory in America by political science professor Lance deHaven-Smith. Seriously, the book looks very promising. If you are not a CIA stooge, you surely know someone who is, and you could send them this book as a cure.

Confronting the Violence of the State

Click here to access article an editorial from The Spark. 

During two nights in mid-August, on Milwaukee’s north side, angry crowds pelted the police with rocks and bottles, smashed police cars, while several businesses were engulfed in flame.

As usual, the police, the politicians, the media, and the supposed experts called this “a riot.” They decried the so-called “senseless violence.”

Yet, their police are armed to the teeth. And when police unleash their violence on a regular basis, these same authorities, politicians and news media don’t condemn it. They don’t decry the “senseless violence” of the police. No, they justify it!

And that’s exactly what happened after the Milwaukee police shot and killed 23-year-old Sylville K. Smith during a routine traffic stop.

Obama Prioritizes War in Europe Over War on People of Color

Click here to access article by Eric Draitser from Stop Imperialism.

...the same military-industrial complex is driving both US imperialism and state-sponsored police murders.  While US military trains Poles and Latvians and Lithuanians and Georgians to kill Russians, so too do security firms in Israel and the US train police officers to act as occupiers and kill citizens in America.  In effect, the belligerent foreign policy of Washington has been brought home.  Perhaps it could be more accurately said that war and occupation have always been the status quo in communities of color, that the killings and violence are only being highlighted today because they have been brought to the attention of White America.

The lack of respect for peace and human life is evident both on the streets of Ferguson, Baltimore, and Baton Rouge, just as it is on display with US saber-rattling in Eastern Europe.

Call for a National Debate on U.S. “Regime Change” Policy

Click here to access article by the Center for Citizen Initiatives delegation from their website. 

While 50 people from the State Department appeared to have gone insane, there are others who are working for peace and trying to get the US to stop violating international laws.

The Voting Delusion

Click here to access article by Dmitry Orlov from Club Orlov.

Orlov lists many of the barriers preventing ordinary people (non-capitalists) from participating in elections, but he misses the 800 pound gorilla that guarantees that nobody interferes with the capitalist agenda to gain more wealth and power. 

The gorilla is capitalism, a system that a tiny group of people imposed through violence on the vast majority of humans over the past several centuries. Their system enshrines the right to take possession under rules of "ownership" of all the products and services created by working people. The capitalist ruling class have sought to legitimatize their dominance of society mainly by establishing the so-called "rule of law", and of course these rules, which they made, were designed to serve and protect their system of ownership. And they have many other means that they use to promote the legitimacy of their rule: their domination over every institution of society which they use to indoctrinate people in pro-capitalist values, especially the fake mythology of democracy and their sponsorship of elections. The capitalist class monopoly on the means of indoctrination has been so successful that many critics like Orlov completely miss this 800 pound gorilla.

Capitalism is a system born in the belly of feudalism. Feudalism was based on territory captured through the use of violence imposed on people who lived in those territories. Theirs was a system controlled by these victorious families who laid claim to everything that existed in the territory under their control: the food and crafts produced by working people and on the people themselves. This form of family domination was passed down through patrilineal and primogeniture rules which established the permanent power hierarchy known as monarchs and aristocracy. This ruling class reinforced the legitimacy of their rule by promulgating myths about the "divine right" of monarchs, and religion in general had a very important role in buttressing the rule of feudal authorities.

Feudalism was born in the belly of the rule by military chieftains who imposed violence on others to obtain war booty, slaves, etc. Such is the history of humans, about 2% of human history called "civilization", after the days when primitive communism existed for 98% of our history, but then ceased to exist after military chieftains imposed their violence on humans.

No doubt you have detected a pattern: the history of ruling classes are all ultimately based on violence or the threat of violence imposed by a tiny minority on the vast majority of humans. All else is subterfuge. And this includes elections.