Recommended articles for Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Updated at 4:04 PM CT--added one post by Magnier.

• It’s a Gas… Germany Outraged by US Colonial Arrogance by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• The US Mainstream Media Prefer Confrontation to Cooperation by Brian Cloughley from Strategic Culture Foundation.

What the author doesn't seem to understand is that mainstream media are the media of the Deep State which fumbled their control of the last election in which US citizens voted the wrong way (for them, because Russia, along with China, stands in their way of world domination). I am confident that they will never allow this to happen again.

• Mainstream Media Is Now Killing People Directly by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

Now our Deep State masters and their allies have come up with a diagnosis for the sick American people who voted the wrong way in the last election--"Trump Anxiety Disorder" (sarcasm).

• Guantanamo Prison Turns Seventeen by Elaine Pasquini from Washington Report.

• Press TV anchor Marzieh Hashemi jailed in US on unspecified charges from PressTV (Iran). 

The same treatment (likely worse) by Empire agents await Julian Assange if he should walk out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

• How To Survive Dangers of 5G, a posted 5:22m video from the Rick Sanchez show posted on RT.

The fifth generation of wireless technology (5G) is being rolled out worldwide, without safety testing. Scientists, doctors, and environmental organizers are saying the side effects of wireless radiation are linked to cancerous heart tumors, brain tumors, DNA damage, infertility, autism, Alzheimer’s and more. RT’s America Michele Greenstein joins The News with Rick Sanchez to discuss.

I would like to see the scientific evidence from scientific resources. If you find any, please let me know (goatmeal36@yahoo.com).

• Israel has been weakened by the war on Syria: only 5% of the Iranian and Hezbollah arsenal has been destroyed in Syria by Elijah J Magnier from his blog.

Private Prisons in US Turn a Profit, Ruin Black Lives

Click here to access article by Val Reynoso from TeleSur.

Private prisons are a billion-dollar industry which exploit prisoners who are predominately Black and non-white Latinx people for profit. These prisons are run by private companies and have been on the rise since the mid-1980s, especially following the crack epidemic during the Ronald Reagan administration. Over half of U.S. states today depend on for-profit prisons holding approximately 90,000 inmates each year.

Racial profiling perpetuates white supremacy and the subordination of non-white people. For instance, oppressed nationalities living in marginalized communities have been receptors of police misconduct and a heavy police presence in their neighborhoods.

The Myth of Liberal Policing

Click here to access an approximately 52 minute interview with Alex Vitale, Assoc. Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College, NY City from the studios of KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station in Berkeley, California. (Note: if you access this interview at any other than the "Listen" link, the interview and program entitled "Against the Grain" starts at 5:33m.)

Each week brings another tragic account of the police injuring or killing someone, usually poor and of color.  So shouldn’t we support reforms to make the police more accountable? Alex Vitale has a surprising answer.  The sociologist discusses how liberal police reforms legitimize an illegitimate institution.  He argues instead that the reform we should get behind is reducing the number of police.

The professor supplies an excellent history of the origins of police forces used in Western countries. Like any good sociology professor he places the origins and the entire history of Western policing in the context of capitalist systems, but he doesn't do this very well directly. Rather he does it mostly implicitly in such a way as to protect him from crossing a red line of attacking the capitalist system which our masters in the ruling class do not tolerate. Otherwise his teaching career, or at least tenure, would be put in jeopardy. At the end of the program he does offers some progressive solutions, but they are all methods that are strictly within the acceptance of capitalism. The fact that they are so difficult to implement belies belief that such measures can be significantly introduced in a society such as ours than is heading in the direction of fascism.

Although there is more or less token allegiance to liberal practices historically in the US or in other capitalist countries, this appearance has to do with the historical origins of capitalism and its espousal of "democratic" propaganda to obtain the allegiance of the lower classes by the rising capitalist classes in order to overthrow the established feudal ruling classes. Thus fascist rule is capitalist rule without this fake liberal ideological element. However, police forces are expensive to maintain, therefore advanced capitalist ruling classes also put a lot of investment in organs of indoctrination and perception management. With the US going in a fascist direction, such reform measures that he suggests are all but impossible to implement. Hence our ruling class has placed far more resources in brutal police forces. Revolution is the only real solution!

Although many thinking people can recognize this insight regarding police forces as an institution that protects the ruling capitalist class, but they have a harder time recognizing that this is true of every institution (justice, media, education, entertainment, health care, etc) of all capitalist societies to a lessor or greater extent.  

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.

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.

Hats Off To Mother Jones [and privatization of public services]

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

The first part relates to the headline by applauding the Mother Jones' investigation of privatized prisons which, if you read the link to their report, you will find quite disturbing. But then he puts this in the context of a more general trend of privatization promoted by the compulsively wealth seeking ruling class. 

Being a retired person trying to live on Social Security benefits, I was especially drawn to his remarks about this subject. 

Republicans intend to privatize Medicare and Social Security. The road to Medicare privatization is the small percentage of medical billings that Medicare pays. Medical care providers are beginning to find that it is unprofitable to provide care to Medicare patients. When doctors cease to provide care under Medicare, the massive payroll tax revenues will be diverted into the hands of “more efficient” private providers.

The road to Social Security privatization is the “reform” of the consumer price index, which under-measures inflation in order to deny Social Security recipients cost-of-living-adjustments. The continuing decline in the real value of Social Security benefits will result in large-scale economic distress. This distress will be used to discredit the Social Security system and to privatize it.

I can personally attest to the validity of the above statement. My cost of just my living quarters in a one bedroom apartment has increased over the past 10 years by 75.2% while my Social Security benefits have only increased 18.2% for the same period. And I have been unable to find a private practice doctor who will take me on as a patient once they learn that I don't have additional private insurance.

Life after Wartime

Click here to access article by Christy Rodgers from Dissident Voice. 

What a powerful writer! Rodgers expresses, like no other I have found, what it is really like to be a veteran of US wars and having a hard time fitting back into civilian life.

After reading this, I recommend another entitled "What If?" which gives you the experience of a long life in prison: "Today I got my release papers from the Castle. Twenty years I served behind its ...."

The differing lifestyles of low-level drug offenders vs banksters

as posted on Occasional Links & Commentary.

The Incarceration Industry – 2 graphs

Click here to access article by David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review Blog. 

We're number one! Again! We are number one spending our national treasure on military weapons, and we are also number one in the world for locking up our citizens! We are truly an exceptional nation--who can argue against that? I wonder how many other ways that we are exceptional: percent of population that are homeless? percent of population that wants but cannot afford health care? percent of population that wants to go to university but can't afford it?

How Corrupt the U.S. Is: An Extraordinary Example

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from The Peoples Voice. 

...for imprisonments, the U.S. really does have no close second: it’s the unquestionable global market-leader, for prisons and prisoners.

Historian Zuesse examines one significance aspect that law-breaking has regarding the legitimacy of a nation's governance.

...by definition, people are presumed to be in prison for law-breaking, irrespective of whether the given nation’s laws are just — and, if they’re not just, then this fact reflects even more strongly that the nation itself is corrupt. So: a high incarceration-rate does strongly tend to go along with a nation’s being highly corrupt, in more than merely a technical sense — it’s almost more like being the definitive measure of “corruption.” So, the correlation between incarceration rates and corruption must be assumed to be high, and any measure of corruption which fails to at least include countries’ incarceration rates should be rejected.

Debtors’ prisons fill up in deep South

Click here to access article by Minnie Bruce Pratt from Workers World.

Jailing someone for debt who is too poor to pay is a civil rights violation under the 1966 U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is also illegal under the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Bearden vs. Georgia.

But though debtor’s prisons are not allowed de jure — by law — they are on the rise de facto.

The Prison State Of America: 5% Of World’s Population But 25% Of World’s Prison Population

From RT via Mint Press the following important video featuring Chris Hedges exposing the exploitation that is going on in the ruling class's vast prison system. 

For-profit prisons have created a “neo-slavery” in the US, according to award-winning journalist Chris Hedges. Inmates work eight hours per day for major corporations such as Chevron, Motorola, Nordstrom’s and Target, yet only have the possibility of making up $1.25 an hour. In addition, companies that provide services like phone calls overcharge prisoners on even the most basic services, making hundreds of millions in profits annually. RT’s Ben Swann speaks to Hedges, who explains how this shadowy system came into existence.

Cecily McMillan on Prisons, Profit, Protest, and Privilege

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

Recall that McMillan was an activist in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in which she was groped by a cop, fought back against the cop, and was subsequently arrested for assaulting a policeman, a felony for which she was facing a sentence of seven years. However, she was lucky.

Following an international leniency campaign, McMillan was sentenced to 90 days at the Rikers Island Correctional Facility. In July 2014, she was released on good behavior after serving 58 days.

In the interview she gives us a very moving and realistic picture of what it is like to be in prison, who ends up there, how the justice system really functions, the overwhelming stigma attached to prisoners, some of the real reasons why they are there, and other astute observations about ruling class prisons for those who cannot, or refuse, to adapt to a dog-eat-dog, racist capitalist society.

Released Occupy Activist Cecily McMillan: "There's No Sense in Prison"

Click here to access the interview with McMillan conducted by Sarah Jaffe from Truthout.

There's no sense in prison. There's no rehabilitation; there's no citizenship; it is completely at odds with everything that we call democracy. It doesn't make any sense. People have called me a political prisoner; that's weird for me. But if I have to really think about that title and really come up with a definition of what a political prisoner is, it's someone who goes against the law or goes against the social rules or norms in order to stand up for the things that they believe in or the people that they care for, to do what is right by their communities. There's not a single woman in Rikers who isn't a political prisoner by that standard.

This privileged, educated, white woman has learned a lot about the realities of racism, ruling class police forces, and US prison systems; but judging from her comments in this interview (I did not think that the interview as reported here was well done), I think she has a lot more to learn. 

Of course, the way the police and "correctional" system works makes perfect sense if you understand--and it seems to me that she should--that all the nonsense about a "democracy" is just that. To see how confused she remains, just look at the contradictions in this paragraph:

...I do think that the NYPD as a force has become the arm of the corporatocracy. The way that they treated Zuccotti Park, the way that they go out and seemingly round up undesirable people, especially at times that gentrification is in full swing, but never happen to be around in times when the same people actually require assistance or help. What are our police doing? Why are they doing it? Who are they responsible to? Why don't we have more community oversight? Why don't we have a democratic hand in selecting the commissioner?

She initially recognizes in an intellectual sense that our society is a "corporatocracy"; but judging by her questions, she still clings to fake ideas from her indoctrination that our society is some sort of democracy. Thus, her experience makes "no sense" to her. The interviewer failed to point out these contradictions to her and encourage her to dig deeper in her understanding. It's as if "corporatocracy" exists in some separate compartment away from the larger "democracy".

Of course, her police and prison experience makes perfect sense in a society ruled by a tiny class of people who literally own our economy under a capitalist system which rewards them with overwhelming wealth and power. They must constantly control the people they exploit, with racial minorities being the most numerous, by first of all, methods of indoctrination, and finally by a racist, classist, police force, kangaroo courts, and an elaborate prison system. Once people who are seen as dissidents, malcontents, or simply cannot function in their "corporatocracy"  get caught up in their police state systems, the kid gloves come off to reveal the hidden fist of fascism. Such people of necessity are subject to dehumanizing, humiliating experiences to break them psychologically into compliant subhumans.

McMillan's views, as reported in this interview, are another illustration of shallow thinking about our society, and as such, is a major problem among many US activists. It is preventing them from moving more seriously to discussions about the necessity for revolution as the solution to a whole range of problems: wars, poverty, police state methods, climate destabilization, resource depletion, etc.

A Death Before Dying: Solitary Confinement on Death Row.

Click here to access article by Anthony Graves, Death Row Exonoree #138, from American Civil Liberties Union.

When I was on death row, I saw guys come to prison sane and leave this world insane, talking nonsense on the execution gurney....subjecting anyone in prison to solitary confinement is torture.

Hunger Strike in the Empire of Dungeons

Click here to access article by Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report. 

Prisons – especially prison systems designed by diabolical American minds – are meant to break men’s wills, to make them non-persons, groveling masses of flesh. Solitary confinement is the ultimate tool of the man-breaker, narrowing the scope of human activity to the bare functions of processing food into waste. For a person so restricted, the only mode of resistance available is to refuse to eat.

One day in 1990 I drove by Pelican State Prison in Crescent City, California--I was horrified. I saw an enormous, windowless concrete structure that looked like a scene from a film about a future fascist state. This picture--the best I could find--does not fully capture what I saw.  

See also this, this, and this.

The Shame of America’s Gulag

Click here to access article by Chris Hedges from Truthdig.

The author shines a much needed light on US prison practices that really constitute torture. Their methods have advanced from the well-known bodily forms of torture used in foreign prisons to forms that leave the body intact, but attack the minds of their victims. Yes, torture and many other oppressive methods used against foreign populations by Empire agents are coming home to be used against dissidents. For example, we are now seeing surveillance drones circling overhead, and I think we can expect that killer drones will be used next against rebellious US citizens. After all, our Obama appointed Attorney General didn't rule this out. Agents of the Empire regard everyone as a potential enemy regardless of citizenship. Remember, they think and act globally in this age of globalization--we must also.

The author learned of these prison practices through his contacts with Bonnie Kerness of the American Friends Service Committee who had been communicating with Ojore Lutalo, a prisoner at a New Jersey state prison.

Lutalo’s letter was Kerness’ first indication that the U.S. prison system was creating something new—special detention facilities that under international law are a form of torture. He wrote to her: “How does one go about articulating desperation to another who is not desperate? How does one go about articulating the psychological stress of knowing that people are waiting for me to self-destruct?”

The techniques of sensory deprivation and prolonged isolation were pioneered by the Central Intelligence Agency to break prisoners during the Cold War.

One Thousand Days When One is Too Many

Click here to access article by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers from Dissident Voice.

Think of that, count it off . . . 1,000 days; that is how long Bradley Manning has been incarcerated without a trial.

US Empire agents violate laws whenever it suits the interests of the One Percent ruling class. Laws and the legal system only apply to us. They are only another weapon to oppress us and to keep us as labor commodities to feed their profit machine.

In more than 55 cities this weekend and around the world, people will rally, hold forums, protest – take whatever action they can to lift the veil and expose the truth.  Join them or create your own.

The Other Bradley Manning

Click here to access article by Nozomi Hayase from CounterPunch.

Ruling class authorities are targeting hackers, those who expose ruling class secrets, for cruel and unusual punishment. The only way we, the people, can protect our heroes is to insure that they are not forgotten.

Once they are behind bars, they become incognito, losing connection to the outside world. Inside the cage is a twilight zone where laws and conventions can be bent by those who are powerful, with little oversight or accountability.

Western Banks 'Reaping Billions from Colombian Cocaine Trade'

Click here to access article by Ed Vulliamy from The Guardian. 

Notice the introduction to the article provided by the liberal British media source: 

While cocaine production ravages countries in Central America, consumers in the US and Europe are helping developed economies grow rich from the profits, a study claims

Even when capitalist media report some real news about elite crimes, they go out of their way to frame these reports in such a way as to distort their meaning. If you ignore this framing by a careful reading of the report, you will see that the study done by two Colombian economists clearly indicates that large US and British banks are the ones profiting from this drug trade while drug enforcement agencies largely look the other way. Clearly when major banks such as Wachovia are caught using drug money, nothing whatsoever happens to them. The banking drug profits do not benefit the developed economies to any great extent, they create huge problems for countries such as Columbia and Mexico, and they only help the banks that are owned and controlled by ruling elites.

The economists surveyed an entire range of economic, social and political facets of the drug wars that have ravaged Colombia. The conflict has now shifted, with deadly consequences, to Mexico and it is feared will spread imminently to central America.

Those who suffer are the poor and desperate customers who look for some escape from their misery and the low level drug pushers who are jailed. Enforcing drug laws only against the latter constitutes the widely ballyhooed "war on drugs" that has served to equip local police forces with military grade weapons and pass onerous laws permitting stop and frisk actions against minority populations and the poor. In the US these laws have greatly contributed to warehousing the largest prison population (on a per capita basis) in the world.

Of course, this is not news to people who follow alternative media and read books. Gary Webb (Dark Alliance), an outstanding journalist with the San Jose Mercury newspaper, was hot on the trail in the 1990s examining the involvement of the US government in drug running before his findings were trashed by ruling class media led by the Washington Post and the NY Times. He lost his job and career, and ultimately died under rather mysterious circumstances that was ruled a suicide. (Another excellent source of information is The Blood Bankers by James S. Henry.)