Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, June 3, 2021

• Bombshell: Fauci wrote in 2012 that benefits of gain-of-function research ‘outweigh the risks’ by Calvin Freiburger from LifeSite.

• Fauci Emails: COVID “Looks Engineered,” A Govt-Funded Immunologist Told Fauci in January 2020 by Arjun Walia & Joe Martino from Collective Evolution.
  

• A scandal is being thuggishly covered up by a regime more interested in propaganda than human life by Stephen Gowans from his weblog.

• Media Rats Jump Off Their Sinking Ship by Dr. Joseph Mercola from his weblog.
  

• Abolish vaccine patents now! from Climate & Capitalism.

• The Campaign against Ivermectin: WHO’s Chief Scientist Served with Legal Notice for Disinformation and Suppression of Evidence by Colin Todhunter, a British independent journalist who has lived a number of years in India, from Global Research, based in Canada.

• The War of Corporations on Our Children by Emanuel Pastreich from Global Research.
  

• The New Domestic War on Terror Has Already Begun -- Even Without the New Laws Biden Wants by Glenn Greenwald from his weblog at Substack.

• CIA (Dis)Information Operations Come Home to the US by Peter Van Buren from his weblog Hooper's War.
  

• A Truly Free Society Would Have No Official Narratives by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog with her American husband furnishing an audio narrative of the script. 

The fact that there can be that drastic of a shift from something no pundit or politician may say to something they’re encouraged to talk about all the time—all at once, at the drop of a hat—says so much about what the political/media class is and how it works in our society. How utterly uninterested in truth and facts it is. How arbitrary its dictates are. How completely made-up its ongoing story of the world is. It just says what’s convenient for the powerful, and when that’s not convenient anymore it switches to something else. 

• The Etymological Animal Must Slip Out of the Cage of Habit to Grasp Truth by Edward Curtin from his weblog Behind the Curtain.
  

• Biden’s Disastrous ‘Infrastructure’ Bill by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook. My brief commentary follows: 

Engdahl argues that the "infrastructure bill" is mostly propaganda to fool the American public (once again), but will actually promote the transnational capitalist Empire's virtuous sounding phrase "Green Agenda". The latter is, in turn, promoted to hide "Agenda 21" to seem more palatable to the brainwashed American public. Here is what the editor of Technocracy says about Agenda 21:

 

From its inception in 1992 at the United Nation’s Earth Summit, 50,000 delegates, heads of state, diplomats and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) hailed Agenda 21 as the “comprehensive blueprint for the reorganization of human society.” The 350-page, 40 chapter, Agenda 21 document was quite detailed and explicit in its purpose and goals. They warned us that the reorganization would be dictated through all-encompassing policies affecting every aspect of our lives, using environmental protection simply as the excuse to pull at our emotions and get us to voluntarily surrender our liberties.

 

But what this editor doesn't understand is that the capitalist ruling class's motive is to try to salvage the capitalist system, which has brought capitalists so much wealth and power, in their recognition that a finite planet cannot accept a system that results in unending growth. Or, to put it differently, this plan is a desperate attempt to save capitalism in a limit-bound finite planet. The editor compounds this misunderstanding with his well-indoctrinated ignorance about socialism.

• Crypto: Congress Dawdles as $1.7 Trillion Con-Game Goes Unregulated, Threatening Reputation of U.S. Markets by Pan & Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. They write:

 ... for reasons that have yet to be explained to the American people, when it comes to the $1.7 trillion cryptocurrency market – which is effectively a con-game based on the greater fool theory, nothing is regulated. Not the crypto currency; not the promoters; not the crypto exchanges; and not the firms that are providing as much as 100 times leverage to fuel this “rat poison squared,” as the legendary investor Warren Buffett has characterized Bitcoin. (See The Smartest Guys in the Room Call Bitcoin “Rat Poison Squared,” “a Colossal Pump-and-Dump Scheme” and “a Big Criminal Scam” but Federal Regulators Look the Other Way.)

• Inflation on the agenda at Fed and European Central Bank by Nick Beams, an Australian, from World Socialist Web Site.
  

• Notes on Turning Seventy by John Steppling from his weblog. Steppling, who presently lives in Norway, is an American playwright, author, etc. who writes like somebody who has been extensively educated. And, it takes such a person (with a lot of time) to fully understand his writing. A few quotes from his article reveals much:

The most profound artworks demand something impossible from the viewer ... One problem is this idea that Kafka (but substitute any major novelist) is tracing out the shaping of the modern subject — through capitalism (or mastery over nature, etc) but then leaving capitalism as a universal. As if God created Capitalism on day 8. One cannot write criticism without being critical, of all things. Of oneself. If not, the class system is absolved, class struggle and political repression. They become a form of Nature.

 

And he concludes his article with this insightful statement:

Culture is an indicator for the mental and physical health of a society. The trend toward fascism is sickness. The fascist state is the apotheosis of sickness; physical and moral. The ruling class has no respect for anyone outside their small circle.

• A Decade On: West’s War on Syria Continues by Brian Berletic from New Eastern Outlook. My reaction: The two main corporations that feed Empire's "news" agencies with propaganda, AP (Associated Press) and Reuters, keep the people of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire in ignorance about what is actually happening in the Mid-East.

• Israel’s New Mossad Chief Threatens More Assassinations and Attacks Inside Iran by Dave DeCamp from Anti-War. 

On Tuesday, the new head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency suggested more Israeli covert attacks and assassinations inside Iran should be expected even as the US and other world powers are negotiating a revival of the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.

• Dan Kovalik on Elections, Rebuilding and the Ongoing Proxy War in Syria featuring Kovalik in a video interview conducted by Mnar Muhawesh Adley, the founder of Mint Press News. 

• Biden Administration Proposes to Allow Oil Companies to Disturb Polar Bears, Walruses in Alaska’s Arctic from Center for Biological Diversity.
  

• Greenhouse gas levels keep rising at accelerating rates from Arctic News.
  

• Self-Reinforcing Feedback Loop #21, Climate-Change Summary featuring Prof. (retired) Guy McPherson, an independent scientist (via his YouTube channel--02:40m), who has focused on the climate crisis, listing scientific articles regarding the climate crisis.
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020

• Politics and Violence Go Hand in Hand by Thomas Knapp from CounterPunch. My commentary follows:

This article touches more on true wisdom than it appears. But it only touches the surface. There is a whole lot more beneath the surface that I would like draw your attention to. It is the ultimate question on how we humans should live. Unfortunately for our species, we are just cognizant enough to realize that our individual existence is only temporary. But this insight is an unacceptable truth which becomes an ultimate evil.  This realization has caused humans to neurotically believe in delusions: an after-life and an obsession with acquiring power, and especially power over other humans.

You see, we humans think that we are unlike other species which are doomed to only a temporary existence. Most religions teach us that there is some sort of an afterlife. Also we frequently believe that other species exist in order to serve our needs. We humans have long held belief systems, or religions, that put our species at the center of the universe. But religion is only one method to overcome this dreadful consciousness. Domination of other humans has become a major means to ward off this unthinkable fate. Thus, our human history has been marred by attempts to use violence to coerce others to serve our needs. Only recently we have become aware that we humans are only a tiny part of the web of life on our planet Earth; and while we search the universe for other life forms, we haven't yet found any. 

It is apparent that a major part of our existence is in families and clans, and down through the ages we humans have used this organic structure to impose power over other families and clans, and this often has taken some form of violence: outright physical violence, the threat of such violence, and/or the deprivation of the material means of existence such as denying them access to water, food, shelter, jobs, etc. 

Our species' history has produced various systems to socialize entire societies, along with the assistance of religious authorities, to inculcate beliefs among populations that their system was divinely sanctioned, and of course it is the best and only system possible. But people eventually noticed that a certain segments of their societies held more power and material benefits than others. These were designated as ruling classes which consisted of families and clans that used their systems to obtain disproportionate rewards, and sometimes these rewards were extremely disproportionate.  

Human history can be considered as a series of changes of systems, and the latter all have the same characteristics: use of physical force or the threat of such force with a supporting ideology to impose their disproportionate rule on other classes of humans.  Social scientists have identified such systems as rule by military or religious classes; feudalism: rule by those who, or their heirs, of conquered lands; and in our present- day, capitalism. Capitalist families continue to place special value only on families and clans instead of whole societies, but uses a hidden class commitment to capitalism which enables and sustains a ruling class.

Our existing capitalist ruling class continues this sordid history via the private purchase of the economy and awarding the owners of property of nearly unlimited rights. This system uses the denial of life sustenance needs, in addition to the use of violence, mostly directed on those who oppose the system. Capitalists have a built-in tendency to reduce the sustenance needs of workers to a bare minimum, and to deny aid to those who do not contribute to the wealth and power of the capitalist ruling class.  

Currently there is a growing awareness of the unsustainability of capitalism: of the extreme inequality of wealth distribution that is inherent in the capitalist system, the contradictions that are obvious in the capitalist requirement of infinite growth on a finite planet, the lack of awareness by our masters that we humans constitute minuscule part in the web of life on our unique planet Earth. Under capitalism, militaristic ruling classes are currently threatening a nuclear war catastrophe which will end our very existence.

• Social media fact-checking, brought to you by the Deep State by Daniel Espinosa from Off-Guardian. (Note: This is a best post.)

• The political battle over a COVD vaccine: your health is of no concern by Jon Rappoport from his weblog.

• Gates' Keepers of Journalism by Dr. Joseph Mercola from his health weblog.  

• EXCLUSIVE: Covid Vaccine Patent Warned of Deliberate Coronavirus Release from ISE. (Note: Ben Swann reports on a surprising discovery.)

• Bipartisan effort to oust the outsider Trump makes 2nd US stimulus unlikely by Ramin Mazaheri from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

• In the Footsteps of Rome: Maybe It No Longer Matters Who's Emperor by Charles Hugh Smith from his weblog Of Two Minds.

• Meet the “Violet” Successors to the White Helmets’ Syria Propaganda Throne by Vaneesa Beeley from BS News (based in Britain).
  

• Will Self-Taught, A.I. and Robotics Be the End of Us? from 21st Century Wire. (Note: In a one hour video program, a panel of artificial intelligence (AI) experts contribute their understanding to this topic.)

• From 9/11 to Covid-19: 19 Years of Media Lies. By Dr. Eric Beeth from Global Research.
  

• Why Aren’t Insurers 9/11 Truthers? – Questions For Corbett #067 from The Corbett Report.

• What Could Happen, Part 2: Time for a New Revolution by Alan Johnstone from Dissident Voice.
  

• Triple Crisis in the Anthropocene Ocean, Part One: Corrosive Seas by Ian Angus from Climate & Capitalism.
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, Sept. 7, 2020

• Exclusive: Interview With InDoctorNation's Dr. David Martin featuring David Swann (from ISE) who interviews Dr. Martin who reviews the evidence that the covid-19 was created in our nation's laboratories.
  

• At A Time Of Rapidly Creeping Authoritarianism, Assange’s Freedom Is More Crucial Than Ever by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• Media Freedom? Show meSM Journalist Opposing the Torture of Assange by Craig Murray (a Scotsman) from his weblog. 

• The “Stalinist” Trial of Julian Assange by John Pilger from Global Research.
  

• From Terrorists to Viruses: Dystopian Progress by Edward Curtin from his weblog Behind 
• the Curtain.

• Whitney Webb Interview – 2020 Election Chaos Being Used To Set Stage For The Final Technocratic Push from The Last American Vagabond. (Note: This daily report by interviewer Ryan Cristián, who is also the found of this weblog, is a little short of one hour followed by a short film (an exception to his often two to three hours of commentary.)

My reaction:

I regard Webb as a top investigative journalist. In this interview she uses her encyclopedia knowledge, gained from her research, to shed light on the Deep State, their various organizations, operatives, and their deceptive propaganda in the run-up to the November election and their Transition Integrity Project. All of these deceptive projects are treated by media corporations as protecting the security of the people, but in reality are designed through their well-honed chaos strategies to create fear in order to increase their neo-fascist control of the population. This is a best post.)

• Russia – Nord Stream 2 vs. Poisoning of Alexei Navalny by Peter Koenig from Global Research. (Note: I could not access the post from the original source, New Eastern Outlook, my usual policy.)

• U.S. govt-linked PR firm ran fake news networks for right-wing Latin American regimes by Ben Norton from The Grayzone.
  

• Season 2, Episode 1 of “TRUTH” with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. from Children's Health Defense. (Note: Kennedy is interview by Polly Tommey.)
  

• REVIEW: The people need to take back control by Tony Sutton from Off-Guardian (based in Britain). (Note: Sutton reviews a book entitled The Sport & Prey of Capitalists: How Capitalists Are Stealing Canada’s Wealth.)
  

• Time for a New Revolution Part 1: What Happened by Alan Johnstone from Dissident Voice.
  

Recommended articles for Saturday, April 27, 2019

• The War on WikiLeaks: Which Side Are You On? by Danny Haiphong from Black Agenda Report.

• Racism in Venezuela: “People Who Never had a Voice Now Have One and will Never Give it up Again” by Eva Bartlett from Global Research.

• Fast Arctic melt could cost $70 trillion by Tim Radford from Climate News Network.

• Gallup Polls Show America Is Dangerously Moving in the Wrong Direction by Pam and Russ Martens from their blog Wall Street on Parade.

Maduro Apologizes to the Community Councils – Is This the Real Thing?

Click here to access article by Bruce Lerro from Planning Beyond Capitalism.

Because he asks a very significant question--"is this the real thing?", I am posting this brief article on the above website which is based on a longer report posted on Venezuelanalysis. 

I was dismayed following my two week visit to Venezuela in 2005 by what I saw there which has been confirmed by subsequent events. It seems that leaders, how ever radical they are to begin with, cannot get over the allure of power that all leaders since recorded history (the last roughly 2% of the 200,000 years of human existence) are drawn to. Hugo Chavez talked a lot about the community councils as a revolutionary core of the Bolivarian Revolution but he went on to simply use them as his political power base. Having said that, I admit that it's not for me to judge any revolutionary struggle because I don't know all of the powerful forces they confront which are usually backed by the all-powerful US Empire. 

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.

The American Brainwash: Guess what, Ma, capitalism is not Americanness

Click here to access article by Patrice Greanville from The Greanville Post. 

Virtually unchallenged to this day, corporate media are accustomed to using a number of misleading “cultural equations” to hide the existence of undemocratic institutions at the core of the American system. Thus, capitalism, a “hierarchic tyranny” as Chomsky calls it, is usually identified by its euphemisms: “Free Enterprise,” “market system,” “private enterprise,” “the American Way,” etc. Academia also cheerfully participates in this deliberate cosmetisation [def.] of what otherwise many people would begin to recognize as something unhealthy and malodorous in their midst. But of all these quaint labels and false equations the most outrageous and cynically deceptive is that which makes “Americanness”—the very national identity of the United States— identical with capitalism, both concepts one and inseparable. [my link]

Our masters in the capitalist ruling class play all sorts of tricks on our minds by conflating the "American way of life" with capitalism and the latter as simply a state of nature or as the highest state of achieved by humans in their quest for the perfect economic and political system. Hence, the "end of history" argued by Francis Fukuyama, a noted capitalist ideologist. But what Greanville overlooks is the fact that every ruling class puts its ideological stamp on every society over which they have ruled since the beginning of civilization. Ideology, or the belief system of a society, is critically important to maintain a ruling class in power. They must convince their subjects to be loyal to their rule or else they must maintain their rule by force which is very expensive. 

That is why capitalist regimes, when they get in trouble, always revert to fascism. That is precisely why fascism was so attractive to the ruling capitalist classes of Western countries (and Japan) during the Great Depression of the 1930s when the Soviet Union was improving their economy by "leaps and bounds" (def.) and where there was no unemployment. And, that is why we are witnessing today the growing rise of fascism  in the USA after the collapse of the economy in 2008 known as the Great Recession from which many economists argue that we still have not recovered. 

In this fake form of democracy capitalist elites control all the political institutions ranging from the original adoption of the constitution to their control over political parties that are allowed to function. Only when humans have gotten rid of all class structured societies and achieve something like true equality can real democracy exist. That means control by the people, and for the people, every institution of society including especially the economy.

The Russian Revolution: Chapter 8: Democracy and Dictatorship

Click here to access the final chapter of the book The Russian Revolution authored by Rosa Luxemburg while she was in prison in 1918, and only a few months before she and Karl Liebknecht, left-wing members of the German Social Democratic Party, were assassinated.

In this final chapter Luxemburg returns to the anti-democratic nature of the Bolsheviks touched on in Chapter 4. While she recognizes the deficiencies of democracy in the Russian revolutionary government, she forgives the Bolshevik leaders because of the overwhelming obstacles that confronted them. In addition to the epidemics, war, lack of food, counter-revolutionary armies, invasions by capitalist nations, she refers also to the lack of international support for the Russian revolution by socialist organizations in the more advanced capitalist countries. I remember reading somewhere that this concern was also shared by Lenin and Trotsky who saw the need for revolutions in other capitalist countries in order for the Russian revolution to be successful.

Let the German Government Socialists cry that the rule of the Bolsheviks in Russia is a distorted expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If it was or is such, that is only because it is a product of the behavior of the German proletariat, in itself a distorted expression of the socialist class struggle. All of us are subject to the laws of history, and it is only internationally that the socialist order of society can be realized. The Bolsheviks have shown that they are capable of everything that a genuine revolutionary party can contribute within the limits of historical possibilities. They are not supposed to perform miracles. For a model and faultless proletarian revolution in an isolated land, exhausted by world war, strangled by imperialism, betrayed by the international proletariat, would be a miracle.

Necessity: The Mother of Invention Or The Mother of Strife? [a "best post"]

Click here to access article by Bernard Marszalek from Ztangi Press. (Amended for clarity at 10:18 AM and at 5:35 PM Seattle time.)

The author takes us on a mind-expanding tour from current research through history and archeology to uncover evidence that humans need security and peace in order to realize our collective powers (as social creatures) of creativity. (Is not "creativity" the ability or power to influence an outcome in a new way?) It is clear that our Western civilization that is anchored on the dynamic engine of capitalism is becoming increasingly dysfunctional regarding these needs. This is the inevitable end result of the overwhelming power of a tiny class of capitalists who are increasingly hoarding not only wealth but power to satisfy their addiction to the latter. The power to create must belong to all the people because it is embedded in their human nature, but for this class it has become an end in itself. Sadly they have brainwashed us into being their willing accomplices or (to stick with the addiction theme) their co-dependents.

Our jobs prevent us from being creators. Or to put this another way, the false scarcity that compels us to obediently perform our daily sacrifices to maintain our miserable survival veils the real, but unacknowledged scarcity of creation. ...our condition of enslavement frustrates our species-work – the creation of culture. It is as if we are the compliant, if not the eager, agents of our own demise as evolutionary beings.

Collective intelligence manifests on a material basis as everything from jewelry to gigantic public works like the reservoirs of the Indus cities.

His tour brings us to this apt conclusion: 

Given the reality of economic trends however, no matter how important it is to retrieve from the bosses every ounce of the value of labor that they are stealing, we need to confront the fact that jobs are not only increasingly precarious and stupid, they are disappearing. No effort to ignore this fact by focusing on immediate demands will make it disappear. There can be no effective political movement that does not meet changing reality with radicalism.

I have difficulty with the last sentence. To me, it should read something like this. "There can be no effective political movement that does not insure security and peace for its inhabitants, and to accomplish this we must radically change the way societies currently function."  

Are We Moving Away From Fossil Fuels? Separating Facts from Fantasies

Click here to access a first part of an article with a PDF link to the entire article by Sean Sweeney of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. Here are some concluding remarks:

The  challenge  facing  human  civilization  is  sobering.  But  the  challenge  appears  more  manageable when it is connected to a narrative that is  prepared  to  confront  existing  ownership  relations.  The  struggle  for  democratic  control of  energy  (and  other  key  sectors)  is  today  crucial  for  many  reasons. Achieving  such  control  over  energy  production,  distribution,  and use is a means (but not the only means) to confront the expansionist dynamics of the political economy while at the same time reconfiguring our approach to defining and meeting human needs on the basis of a more equitable distribution of wealth and a qualitative extension of democratic control over major economic decisions.

Energy  systems  controlled by ordinary people in partnership with well-run and accountable public  agencies have the potential to manage and reduce energy demand for certain economic activities while providing electrical power to everyone for basic needs  and truly sustainable forms and levels of human and social development.

I recommend that you view the following 5:26m video by them (via YouTube) entitled "This Is What Energy Democracy Looks Like":

Trump's Cabinet, the Church of Neoliberal Evangelicals

Click here if you wish to access the transcript of the following 11:36m video interview with Prof. Henry Giroux directly from The Real News Network. (Minor editing for clarity at 4:30 PM Seattle time.)



I'm posting this as a prime illustration of liberal thinking (in the modern sense) which had its heyday in the 1930s under the Franklin Roosevelt administration to counter the threat of revolutionary ideas that were fueled by the successful Russian Revolution of 1917. Its roots were in President Wilson's administration, and its slow demise came after WWII when its philosophy was vigorously attacked by right-wing capitalists (fascists) during the McCarthy period as a reaction to liberalism as practiced by members of FDR's administration. This modern sense of liberalism had a brief resurrection under the Kennedy administration, but was soon extinguished with his (and his brother's) assassination by the ruling class's CIA.

This concept is to be distinguished from classical liberalism which included the core concept of private ownership of the new economy that was arising in Europe in the 17th & 18th century characterized by the harnessing of various forms of power (water, coal, petroleum) with machines operated by workers. A new class that came to be known as capitalists wanted the same exclusive control over these new productive units that feudal authorities had over agriculturally based landed economies.

Originally the words relating to liberalism were influenced by the need of the new class of capitalists to attract peasants and other workers in their struggle to take power away from feudal authorities consisting of monarchs, aristocracies, and the Catholic church which was the ideological ally of the feudal authorities. Hence the new capitalist ruling classes always publicly presented classic liberalism, which included private ownership of the economy, as promoting various freedoms such as speech, association, vague notions of equality, and promoted notions of a social contract (under capitalist governing structures called states) which promised peasants and workers that the new capitalist class rule would insure their welfare. Their ideas appealed to many because they promised that one could achieve prosperity based on one's merits and hard work, and not on connections or social rank as had been the case under feudalism. As you can see, these deceptions worked to bring this tiny class of "owners" to the overwhelming power and wealth that they enjoy today.

Since the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people during the latter half of the 19th century known as the Gilded Age (in the US), capitalist ideological authorities started dropping notions of private economic property from public discourse in order to prevent any notions among the hoi polloi that other systems existed, most especially systems without their class rule which was based on ownership of economic property. 

Hence the success of the Russian Revolution profoundly threatened the capitalist classes, and they mobilized every weapon they could to crush the Soviet Union. This viscerally hostile reaction by leading capitalist classes to the Soviet revolution colored so much of the history of the 20th century. Early on around 13 capitalist nations invaded Russia immediately following the revolution and many of these nations also funded the White armies that were in opposition to the new Soviet government. During the 1930s capitalist ruling classes in Europe and North America heavily backed the rise of the Nazi party in Germany (see this, this, this, and this) with the idea in mind of Germany attacking the Soviet government (Hitler had written this in Mein Kampf). These ruling classes insured that their countries remained "neutral" while the fascist governments of Germany and Italy destroyed the republican government of Spain. Here in the US the FDR administration pursued liberal policies (in the modern sense) in order to counter radical ideas that began taking hold in the US during the Great Depression when 25% of Americans were unemployed amidst full employment in the Soviet Union.

Neoliberalism is an ideology whose exponents want to do away with the rest of the propaganda baggage of the original classic liberalism by eliminating the costly programs of the "social contract" in addition to weakening constitutional protections of civil liberties (as they have already done under the Patriot Act), and strictly promote the narrow interests of major economic property owners (capitalists) throughout the globe by eliminating border restrictions on commerce.

This introduction was necessary to explain Giroux's liberal views regarding political forces today. Notice that he makes no reference to capitalism. Such liberal views represent the last gasp of contemporary liberals who still cling to notions of a kinder, gentler form of capitalism which he, along with other liberals, refers to as "democracy". This is because he as been so completely indoctrinated in capitalist ideology by having spent many years in academia to the extent that the subject of capitalism can no longer even be questioned. The sooner this view dies, and the ascendance of revolutionary ideas of bottom-up authority structures and public ownership/control of the economy, the better for the survival of humans.

AI & Biotech: Striking a Technological Balance of Power

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from LocalOrg. 

Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and other forms of emerging technology must be viewed by each nation, state, community, and individual not as a mere novelty or potential industry, but also as a potential means to grant those who develop and monopolize it economic, political, and even military superiority history has taught us they most certainly will abuse. 

However, I believe what we need most is the development not of newer technologies that can be used for good or evil, but the creation of radical grassroots social systems to replace a class system based on the ownership of property that is tearing humanity apart with never-ending wars, widespread poverty, and environmental devastation. Until then we, as humans, are only gambling with our ultimate fate, and the best we can hope for is a lengthy "stay of execution" of our extinction.

The forgotten workers’ control movement of Prague Spring

Click here to access an excerpt from a 1978 book posted by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder. 

This is an excerpt from It’s Not Over: Learning From the Socialist Experiment, officially published February 26 by Zero Books. Citations omitted. The omitted sources cited in this excerpt are: Robert Vitak, “Workers Control: The Czechoslovak Experience,” Socialist Register, 1971; Oldřich Kyn, “The Rise and Fall of the Economic Reform in Czechoslovakia,” American Economic Review, May 1970; and several articles anthologized in Vladimir Fišera, Workers’ Councils in Czechoslovakia: Documents and Essays 1968-69 [St. Martin’s Press, 1978]

In the past I have alluded to the fact that ordinary people have little knowledge of their history. Instead we are fed a history that capitalist ideologues have contrived to celebrate their leaders, their perspectives, and their interests. This always instills in students a sense that ordinary people must look to capitalist authorities for wisdom and guidance because ordinary people are incapable of organizing their own economy or governance. Capitalist class history keeps us docile and ignorant of our own power. Dolack with this post does his part in keeping us informed of one important incident in our history.

Thoughts on Rojava: an interview with Janet Biehl

Click here to access this interview (posted on Reflections on a Revolution) conducted by Zanyar Omrani, who is an Iranian Kurd and an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker, with American Janet Biehl who was Murray Bookchin’s companion and collaborator for his last 19 years.

The interviewer, Omrani, asked various questions that were designed to get Biehl's opinion as to how much conformity there was in the actual decision-making operations as practiced by the people in Rojava with the ideology of Bookchin's bottom-up political ideology.

Specifically to Bookchin, the institutions of democratic self-government that they described corresponded to much of what he had envisioned (under the name libertarian municipalism). At the base of democratic confederalism is the citizens’ assembly (in Bookchin) or commune (in Rojava). The commune sends delegates to the confederal council at the neighborhood level, and the neighborhood council sends delegates to the district, and the district to the canton. In this multi-tiered structure, as Bookchin described it, power is to flow from the bottom up.

Has the vision become real?

Although Biehl's observations were interesting, I finished reading the interview without any conclusive answers. And I think one should not expect any conclusive answers at this point in time.

One part of the interview compared the historical experience of the Russians during their revolution and their subsequent war with the West which supported factions that were inclined to capitalism (the White armies). 

People in Rojava seemed very aware of the danger that a bottom-up system can turn into a top-down system. That’s what happened, after all, in Russia. In 1917, the multi-tiered system of soviets, or councils, all over Russia, was originally supposed to carry power from the base to the summit. But once the Bolsheviks came to power, they were able to use those very institutions as conduits for top-down power, indeed for totalitarian domination. 

Essentially this question dealt with the question whether such a bottom-up political apparatus could survive particularly in a wartime situation. The specific Russian experience and the latter general question has always intrigued me. My studies of various writings particularly by Trotsky, who commanded the Red Army, and Isaac Deutscher, who studied and wrote about the revolution extensively, caused me to reach a tentative conclusion about what went wrong with the Russian Revolution. 

Trotsky and others both in the Bolshevik party and outside did not question the authoritarian structure of a military command once the war began in earnest. Thus they readily adopted it. After the Bolsheviks won the war, they relied on this structure to defend the revolution from all the problems they faced after victory: widespread famine, poor crops, epidemics, destroyed infrastructure, etc. Then it was only a matter of time when the top-down command structure completely replaced any independent power of the Soviets. People such as Stalin, who were particularly susceptible to the addictive power of control and domination (like people predisposed to alcoholism are particularly susceptible to alcohol), took over the command structures of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union.

This always led me to the following questions. Could the Russian Revolution have succeeded if they had adopted a bottom-up command structure to prosecute the war against the White and Western capitalist armies? Given that wartime conditions often see people supporting a tight and efficient command structure, how can a people suddenly dismantle a military command structure and foster a bottom-up political structure after the war is won?

Of course the Communist party leaders always explained the success of the revolution depended upon the revolution immediately spreading to other advanced capitalist countries, especially to Germany, and when this did not happen, deterioration of communist practice was inevitable. 

The Struggle As The Women We Are: Communiques From The Zapatistas

Click here to access article by the Zapatistas from Upside Down World. 

The article provides an illustration of how the indigenous people in the Chiapas region of Mexico are empowering women as well as men, and constructing bottom-up authority and radical egalitarian political structures to defend their lands and people from the predations of capitalist agencies. In this region activists are fully conscious of the necessity of empowering all people so that the truth expressed in the slogan "the people united can never be defeated" can be fully realized. A "united people" requires that all, or most, people are educated in the realities of existing power structures as well as being empowered themselves within activist organizations.

Meanwhile, read in a Nation report how the people in Central America are fighting back against exploitation of their lands by US and Canadian corporations and interference in their political affairs by US agencies. Better yet, read a piece from Latin American in Movement entitled "7 Reasons to Scrap the $1 Billion Aid Package to Central America". This is another US "aid" bill which would actually worsen conditions for ordinary people in Central American countries while strengthening the existing dictatorships.

SYRIZA in power, social movements at a crossroads

Click here to access article by Theodoros Karyotis from is blog atonomias. (Note: Theodoros Karyotis is a sociologist, translator and activist participating in social movements that promote self-management, solidarity economy and defense of the commons in Greece. Like most Greek writers, he frequently makes reference to the word "imaginary" which in English appears to be a word that is only used by sociologists. Here is an excellent definition. ) 

The dire circumstances in Greece compel the social movements to reposition themselves in front of the SYRIZA government.

This writer for Greek grass-root social movements clearly see the need for the grassroots' social movements to formulate a plan of action now that the middle class Syriza party has caved in to the neoliberal demands of European capitalists.

...at the end of February a forum of thinkers and activists of grass roots movements took place in Athens, with hundreds of participants, under the title “Prosperity without growth”, with the explicit goal of translating their activities into concrete proposals, addressed as much to the political powers, as well as to society. Starting from the premise that economic growth is already incompatible with social wellbeing and environmental sustainability, the grassroots movements seek to complement the creative resistance to neoliberal politics and the construction of viable alternatives from below with the demand for radical reforms: from the introduction of a basic universal income, to the institution of new regimes of management of the commons, to the creation of a legal framework that permits the operation of recuperated factories, like Vio.Me in Thessaloniki. ....

.... ...one of the most relevant initiatives that emerged from the forum was the effort to connect and integrate antagonistic projects in defence of the commons into a political agent capable of playing a protagonistic role in a postconsumerist society, helping thereby to overcome the artificial dilemma between austerity and growth.

Living co-operatively: everyday dissent

Click here to access article by Amy Corcoran from Red Pepper (Britain).

We cannot override the current system overnight; revolution relies on popular will. How can we hope for this to happen without demonstrating that there is an alternative (particularly when we have been indoctrinated to consider neoliberal capitalism the only viable modus operandi)?

To do so, we must be that alternative. In how we treat one another, in how we treat the environment, in how we live and think. This may feel like a daunting, unachievable task, but we can all make changes – and by sharing the responsibility we lighten the load, and can secure achievements far greater than the sum of our parts. 

An Essay on Collectivist Economics

Click here to access article by Bruno Lima Rocha from Conjuncture.

About the author: 

Bruno Lima Rocha has a PhD and MSc in political science, is a professor and researcher in geopolitics-strategic studies and international political economy. Bruno teaches at 2 universities located in the Brazilian southern state.

The essay suffers a little from an awkward translation, but I don't think you will have much difficulty in understanding it. I think it represents an excellent preliminary work as a part of a vital project that needs to be expanded if we humans are to overcome the ravages of capitalism and create a world that is sustainable, socially just, and peaceful.

This essay is the beginning of an attempt to develop a left libertarian approach toward an economic model, specifically to a model which is compatible with the political formations of Democratic Confederalism, also referred to as Libertarian Municipalism. At this stage the goal is the development of a working set of tools of analysis, and foster learning among the Libertarian Left. To this end I submit this relatively simple text to provide accessible notions for those struggling to build a society based on Democratic Confederalism.

.... We start with the analysis of some [eight] premises that may provide direction and parameters to the discussion.

Cracking Capitalism vs. The State Option

Click here to access this interview with John Holloway by Amador Fernández-Savater posted in Guerrilla Translation (run by a cooperative based in Spain).

This is the best article I've found which offers the best explanation of Holloway's basic views regarding issues related to building an alternative to capitalism.

In 2002, John Holloway published a landmark book: Change the world without taking power. Inspired by the ‘¡Ya basta!’ [Enough is enough!] of the Zapatistas, by the movement that emerged in Argentina in 2001/2002 and by the anti-globalisation movement, Holloway sets out a hypothesis: it is not the idea of revolution or transformation of the world that has been refuted as a result of the disaster of authoritarian communism, but rather the idea of revolution as the taking of power, and of the party as the political tool par excellence.

He discerns another concept of social change is at work in these movements, and generally in every practice—however visible or invisible it may be—where a logic different from that of profit is followed: the logic of cracking capitalism. That is, to create, within the very society that is being rejected, spaces, moments, or areas of activity in which a different world is prefigured.

He counter-poses his ideas with the failed history of worker's taking control of the state.

If we’re not going to accept the annihilation of humanity, which, to me, seems to be on capitalism’s agenda as a real possibility, then the only alternative is to think that our movements are the birth of another world. We have to keep building cracks and finding ways of recognising them, strengthening them, expanding them, connecting them; seeking the confluence or, preferably, the commoning of the cracks.

If we think in terms of State and elections, we are straying away from that....

I think that this is correct simply because the "state" is a creation of capitalism. The state is to capitalism what kingdoms were to feudalism. Creators of a new societies must build their governing/coordinating institutions on an edifice of bottom-up authority. Federated communities? Who knows? Holloway doesn't know, and I don't know. That, in addition to weakening capitalist rule, is another task awaiting all revolutionaries and creators of a new world.

Rojava: only chance for a just peace in the Middle East?

Click here to access article by Jeff Miley and Johanna Riha from the University of Cambridge website. (Note: the article also contains a link to a one hour talk delivered by Miley at the University of Cambridge.)

The authors visited the Rojava region on a nine day trip in December of 2014 as a part of an academic delegation "to assess the strengths, challenges and vulnerabilities of the revolutionary project under way."

The revolutionary forces in Rojava are not fighting for an independent nation state, but advocating a system they call democratic confederalism: one of citizenry-led self-governance through the formation of neighborhood-level people’s councils, town councils, open assemblies, and cooperatives. These self-governing instruments allow for the participation of diverse political, ethnic, and religious groups, promoting consensus-led decision-making.