Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020

• National Eviction Nightmare! People Chaining Themselves To Eviction Courts! featuring Jimmy Dore exclaiming about the "Eviction Nightmare" (via YouTube).
  

• Boston Marathon Bombing Death Sentence Vacated by Federal Court of Appeals by Paul Craig Roberts from his weblog. First a quote from the article, then my commentary follows:

Nevertheless, the federal appeals court ruling opens a wedge by admitting that something was wrong, and Dzhokhar’s punishment has to be reconsidered in a new trial. If there were attorneys and bar associations that served justice rather than career and money, they could use the opening provided by the First Circuit to blow up the hoax conviction of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev together with the hoax false flag Boston Marathon Bombing. This, I think, is the message from the US Appeals Court of the First Circuit. The Appeals Court opens the opportunity, but if no one cares, the Appeals Court is not going to take the hit for declaring an innocent person innocent.

A country whose lawyers no longer will fight for justice, but only for money, is a lost and destroyed country.

Roberts criticizes lawyers for succumbing to their socialization in a thoroughly capitalist country. Lawyers are human, and they see that taking on the powerful US ruling class is an exercise in futility, worse yet, it may be suicidal, that is, without a public that is conscious of a class-structured society, capitalism, a ruling class that essentially owns the country, etc. For those of you who don't know your history simply because you were never taught it, Marxist concepts have been expunged during the McCarthy period. (Bruce Lerro explained it very well.) The capitalist ruling class has completely taken control of every institution and is dictating the narratives that shape people's consciousness.

• Gigantic Demonstration Against the New Normal in Berlin, Police Crack Down from Anti-Empire. (My reaction: At least in Germany, many people are free to form their own political consciousness. These people are unlike people in the USA and Britain who are mostly thoroughly brainwashed. Be sure to watch the video supplied by "Southern", a commentor (fourth one).)

• Fact Check: Progressive Hero Margaret Sanger Was a Racist Eugenicist by James Corbett from his weblog.
  

• Red Flags Soar As Big Pharma Will Be Exempt From COVID-19 Vaccine Liability Claims by Tyler Durden from his weblog ZeroHedge. (Note: I was confused by this article because I thought the 1986 Act had already granted the pharmaceutical corporations exemption from liability claims, I consulted another activist (he is unnamed according to his wishes). He was confused as I was, but he subsequently sent me an article entitled "Liability for Vaccine Injury: The United States, the European Union, and the Developing World" which addresses this issue. (I thank him for his contribution.)
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, May 19, 2020

• Bill Gates and the Population Control Grid by James Corbett from his weblog.

The question that Corbett poses in his final comment is not "who is Bill Gates?". Gates is simply taking advantage of the advances of technology, which is inevitable, as is his unconscious assumption that capitalism is an uncontravertible fact of reality. He has been immersed with this idea all of his life while living in the center of the capitalist empire and benefiting from the system with enormous profits and power. Gates is not an evil ogre who wants to intentionally enslave mankind. He is merely a brainwashed human wanting to logically take advantage of technology for the benefit of capitalists, like himself. Hence, the real question is: is the existence of capitalism necessary? and the answer is: in the time remaining for the human species is the necessity of comprehensive socialism: a rule by and for the people. Advanced technology should benefit all the people, and not a tiny transnational class of capitalists. 

But the latter class is so addicted to power and profits that it will take a monumental effort, in the time remaining, to overthrow their system and replace it with socialism.

• Security State Using Coronavirus To Implement Orwellian Nightmare from The Jimmy Dore Show (via YouTube) featuring Dore interviewing Whitney Webb who reads from a secret report that was released under the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act).

• INTERVIEW: Can Dr. Judy Mikovits be Trusted? The Truth about her Arrest from FRN (based in Serbia) which features journalist Ben Swann interviewing Dr. Judy Mikovits about "the truth behind the arrest of Dr. Judy Mikovits" and related subjects. (Note: You may also be interested in my re-post regarding Mikovits on May 14.)

• Profiting from Coronavirus by Craig Murray (Scotland) from his weblog. 

• Our Civilisational Quagmire – Looking Truth in the Eye by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• Taxpayers Are on the Hook for 98 Percent of the Fed’s $6.98 Trillion Balance Sheet by Pam and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. 

(Note: This is all I have time for.)

A World Divided by Ideologies

Click here to access article by Graham Peebles from Dissident Voice.

Peebles uses some research to support a major insight: every ruling class has always used every institution to indoctrinate their subjects in their self-serving ideology.

We have all been the victims of such sociological/psychological conditioning, some more, some less. Conditioned images of oneself and of others are unconsciously built up, attachment to content made firm. Far from creating the security we yearn for, attachment to the construct ensures fear is maintained. .... The image of ‘me’ in contrast to the ‘you’ is formed, the ‘us’ against ‘them’ takes root; my country versus your country, my political party against yours, my God versus your God, my opinions versus yours and so on, and on, and on.

Attachment to the image is strong, defense of its beliefs and ideals fierce. From this narrow, conditioned center thoughts emerge and actions proceed, creating multiple divisions and disharmony, endless wars and violent conflict.

You can see how the present capitalist ruling classes, due to advances of technology and the increased concentration of power, have been enabled to vastly increase their ability to condition the majority of people to support their interests of profit and power. Wars have been the most profitable of all their activities, and have resulted in the concentration of power like never before. This self-serving concentration of power is now threatening human habitat resulting in severe doubt the very survival of humans and many other species.

The Game

Click here to access a poem by Ghada Chehade from her website. 

For me this poem by a Palestinian Canadian expresses what many experience currently living in capitalist societies. We are trained to relate to things instead of each other. Our masters in the capitalist ruling classes are obsessed with things of wealth and power, and try to inculcate this same obsession in us to better exploit us.  

Consequently we devalue each other in preference to things; and being socialized in this culture, we often model their behavior by treating each other as things that we can use to accumulate more wealth and control of others. It's all a game in the sense that we feel our lives are being played out by some alien rules instead of living lives centered in our human experience and being creators of our own lives. Those who succumb completely to this experience lose their humanity and end up as sociopaths who inflict unfathomable harm on others. 

If the Chinese don’t believe in democracy, do they believe in meritocracy?

Click here to access article by Robin Daverman posted on The Greanville Post. (This post was originally a long answer to a deceptive question posed on Quora which was repeated in this post.)

My life experience and education, both formal and informal, has shaped my belief that all cultures are shaped by the interests of ruling classes, or at least this is true since the history of ruling classes began roughly when humans began settling in permanent communities. Because the culture in China is much older than those in the Western capitalist countries, much has been lost to explain why Chinese culture is different from the West. Perhaps this can be partially explained by China's self-imposed isolation from the West. I believe that Daverman's insights about contemporary Chinese culture are valid based on what I do know about contemporary China from reading articles and books and viewing Chinese films.

Somehow social ethics became deeply rooted in Chinese culture and present a formidable bulwark against sociopathic tendencies among their people. Hopefully, this bulwark will endure. Therefore, the question in the title of this article comes from a fake Western ideological perspective which holds that elections automatically equal democracy.

Hong Kong’s Paradoxical “Independence” Movement

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook. [Edited for greater clarity throughout the day.]

Using the example of Hong Kong, the author illustrates how well-funded US sponsored NGOs lure educated young people in foreign countries to join in US's subversive activities on behalf of the Empire. These young people are enticed by the many rewards that their wealthy sponsors can provide them and the promise of lucrative future careers serving the Empire. Such rewards in these sociopathic individuals often offset their moral responsibility to others in their own countries. 

There will always be sociopaths among us regardless of any one society. It is the responsibility of well socialized people to see that their influence is minimal. This also means that well socialized adults must strive to provide opportunities for young people to contribute to their societies in a productive way. In addition, they must insure that values of social justice, equality, truth, beauty, forgiveness, empathy, responsibility, cooperation, courage, patience, etc (perhaps you can think of others) are inculcated as an essential part of the socialization process and thereby thoroughly reject the crass, self-serving aggressive, materialist values of the US-led Empire. Could it be that the Chinese Communist Party that controls nearly all policies in China are not sufficiently promoting this kind of socialization? 

A Father’s Search for Truth Reveals Clues to a Controlled Demolition

Click here to access article by Craig McKee from Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

McIlvaine says he doesn’t tell his son’s story that often anymore because most people just don’t want to hear it. Even the 9/11 families don’t want anything to do with the idea that the event was, as he claims, perpetrated by their own government.

“People look at the United States as a father figure, and they just can’t believe their father could do something that evil.”

This statement supports my theory of why the Big Lie works so effectively. The lengthy period of childhood, that is needed to fully develop the marvelous human brain, creates dependency on parental authority, and many people find transitioning into adulthood a challenge in today's society. I think that ruling classes intentionally take advantage of this potentially human weakness in order to sustain their rule.

Ruling classes do so by indoctrinating subordinate classes into believing that authority figures who serve the ruling class have superior knowledge (historically they used religious authorities, nowadays they are more often "experts") to maintain control over their subordinate populations. In today's societies capitalist control over institutions of indoctrination--education, media, religion, entertainment, etc--strongly reinforces authoritarian mindsets. The capitalist ruling classes use these instruments of socialization very effectively by transferring childish notions about the infallibility of parental authority onto ruling class authorities to prevent the transition from the dependency of childhood into responsible adulthood. 

This is especially effective if people are taught in their childhood to always respect authority, that there are right answers to everything and the authorities can provide them with these answers. Most ordinary people are conditioned to trust authorities of the ruling class much like they did their parents. They can't conceive of the fact that authorities often lie to them; and when presented with evidence of lying, especially major lies, they feel very psychologically threatened. If successfully indoctrinated, such people entering adulthood tend to look to powerful persons (bosses) for their material well-being, other authorities on how to live, what to believe, and for their understanding of political and economic issues which, they are taught, are much too complicated for them.

How Schooling Leads to War

Click here to access article by Dan Sanchez from AntiWar.com. 

Like every other institution, in a class structured society the ruling class insures that education serves their interests. In contemporary capitalist America this means the top goals are profit and power in the form of world hegemony. The latter means endless conflicts and wars. Thus our children need to be taught to have allegiance to military and other authorities, and they need to be taught that there are "evil-doers" out there that they must fear--only the police and military can protect them from these "evil-doers".

How did we become so manipulable and herd-like? So easily spooked into hysterical stampedes? So docile and ready to be driven by our government herders over the precipice of war?

In a word, near-universal compulsory schooling. In school, students are not so much taught as they are conditioned. Schooling deeply ingrains certain mentalities that foster militancy: timidity and tribalism, dependency and docility, conformity and credulity. And so schools sow the spiritual seeds of war.

The Neoliberal Self: Some Observtions on the Psychology of Contemporary Neoliberalism

Click here to access article by Mihaly Koltai re-posted on LeftEast from Eszmelet.hu (Hungary).

[Talk delivered at the conference “Человек vs. отчуждение” in Moscow (supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Moscow) by our editor Mihály Koltai.]

In my talk I would like to provide some observations and intuitions on what one might call the psychological basis of contemporary neoliberalism. These are attitudes and engrained habits that one is essentially forced to adopt, contributing to the day-to-day reproduction of the current form of highly unequal and – as I would argue – more and more sadistic form of capitalism, that we can call neoliberalism. 

Gallup Poll Shows Americans Prefer Terrorist Nations Over Iran. Why?

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

What I think is most useful about this essay is that Zuesse by using the results of an opinion poll offers an excellent illustration of the influence of corporate media to distort the minds of ordinary Americans. The poll finding shows that Americans fear Iran as a prime terrorist nation. I have encountered this phenomenon personally and it has baffled me.

What I fault Zuesse for in this piece is when he provides a key bit of evidence about a bookkeeper and quotes this person extensively, but without naming him or providing any linked reference to a source! I had to spend about 20 minutes looking for such a document and found it here. I suppose that people often write pieces for online publication in haste and don't always find the time to research them properly, but I think this mistake is quite improper.

Putting this criticism aside, I think his main point is very well taken. Americans simply cannot trust corporate media, but they still turn to it for information and opinion. This begs the question why. Corporate media have a long record of lying to Americans, but in spite of this most Americans continue to be easily influenced in believing their lies. There are more obvious reasons such as the time required to search out accurate information is prohibitive, that these lies are so ubiquitously spread by corporate media that it is hard to dismiss them, and there are so many distractions offered by our capitalist masters that most Americans are simply diverted away from accurate sources. But, I would like to speculate on another reason: the infantilization of Americans.

We Americans generally have no authentic sense of our history. We have been indoctrinated with a fake history which supports allegiance to the ruling capitalist class and all of its many authorities. As we grow up physically, our loyal obedience to our parents is transferred onto these authorities. We are never taught to think critically. We have had little exposure to the scientific method of inquiry or research in spite of the fact that it has created all the technology that we enjoy daily. (Science, like everything else of value, was also captured by our ruling capitalist class and has delivered to them so much wealth and power.) Instead we are conditioned to look to authorities for what is to be believed. At the same time we are also thoroughly indoctrinated in capitalism's extreme individualism to focus only on our own needs or our family's. This kind of perspective is very characteristic of a young child who views the world only as a means to satisfy his/her needs. 

Intimacy Against Alienation

Click here to access a 55 minute interview with Mitch Mansour provided by KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station in Berkeley, California. Mansour is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the U. of Oregon. His doctoral dissertation focused on this topic.

Is a romantic partner a replacement for the community that people used to rely on to meet their material and emotional needs? Mitch Monsour thinks so; he points to the competitive and individualistic nature of our society, the way economic rationality gets enacted in the romantic arena, and the structural obstacles to real intimacy.

Human beings are quintessentially social animals, and historically humans have received physical and emotional supports from a wide variety of sources within a community. Mansour argues, and provides evidence for, a phenomenon seen in US society of increasing isolation, both physical and psychological, with the result that romantic love is seen as the solution to isolation. This imposes an impossible burden on one's partner to provide the social supports that characterized earlier social relations. 

Capitalist influences has also shaped this relationship by encouraging consumption by these partnerships and individualistic competition in general. The commodification of everything under capitalism interferes with supportive values even within the partnership. This influences how people enter the partnership "marketplace" with pronounced focus on how much a prospective partner person can provide a person in terms of wealth and status. People tend to be interested in what they can get out of a relationship which interferes with real intimacy. Thus, most relationships fail.

Everything You Know About 'Sex Work' is Wrong

Click here to access to this interview with former sex worker Rachel Moran conducted by Mickey Z. posted on World News Trust.

I think that there is an additional reason why so many women and men are supporting the liberalization of the sex trade. Once again I use class analysis contributed by generations of Marxists to understand the hostile division in this debate that Moran describes so well in this interview.

I can offer this analysis only as a theoretical argument because I have nor been in the sex trade or studied it thoroughly. But is the sex trade so unique in capitalist culture from all other issues so that unless one has been involved in it, one cannot understand it?

I think that this hostile divide between proponents of liberalization and those who see it as a very harmful gross exploitation is very similar to low-wage workers in general who know from experience the feeling of exploitation and abuse that they have experienced as low wage workers in a capitalist system versus those who have enjoyed the security of a middle class background. The common element shared by wage or salaried workers in general and those in the sex trade is the commodification of their work. The somewhat unique feature added to sex work is the patriarchal nature of capitalist history which predates capitalism. Thus my analysis will only focus on what capitalism has contributed to work--the commodification of work.

So, what is it about capitalism that results in commodification of nearly everything? That is easy to understand: capitalism results in a society that is obsessed with obtaining money which, not only brings security, but is often accompanied by power in a capitalist organized society. But, what is commodification and why is it so harmful? 

This is much more difficult to understand especially for those of us who have been immersed all their lives in a capitalist society where one has been, and continues to be, thoroughly indoctrinated in the values and practices of a society is which a market oriented economy has assumed the authority of a religion. 

What I see as a process of commodification is the extraction, out of all things social in character, values that can be marketed. It is this extraction that distorts and produces the harm for all social relations. 

This phenomenon can most easily be recognized in the sex trade where the most intimate relations between human beings are refined (much like coca leaves into cocaine) into a commodity to be marketed for private monetary gain by the seller, and into a extracted form which can be enjoyed as the "high" of an orgasm by the purchaser. Gone from the sex trade are the human features of caring, mutual respect, and wanting to share sensuous pleasure with another human being.

Those who have enjoyed the benefits of a middle class background (education, economic resources, opportunities for leisure, etc) can be lured into the sex trade by the easy money it offers especially in a time when opportunities for the middle class are being adversely impacted by the steady concentration of wealth in the hands of the capitalist ruling class. Middle class people are especially susceptible to capitalist indoctrination because they often experience more years in educational institutions and because of the many other benefits they have enjoyed. Their experience has taught them to believe that nearly everything that can be bought and sold is virtuous, or at least acceptable. Thus, they often have little qualms about turning the most intimate of human relations into a commodity. 

Because of the security provided by their middle class background, they are protected from the worst forms of exploitation and humiliation that lower class sex trade workers experience. (This is similar to middle class occupations compared with blue collar work.) Middle class sex workers also likely have middle and upper class customers which provides them with more security. Because these sex workers enjoy easy money, greater security, and respect, they aggressively oppose the criticisms of people like Rachel Moran who have been deprived of opportunities, comforts, security, respect, etc that capitalist society has to offer middle class people. 

Auditioning for Wall Street

Click here to access article by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from Wall Street on Parade. 

Yesterday, Wall Street on Parade reported on how the corrupt tentacles of Wall Street have engulfed the mindset of our newly minted law school graduates.

Getting one’s resume noticed from those of a stack of competitors previously meant using a good grade ivory linen stock instead of cheap white copy paper. Today, the word is apparently out that getting one’s resume noticed at a major Wall Street bank requires advertising one’s special knack, inside track, or secret sauce for ripping off society for the profit advantage of the big dogs on Wall Street.

Parents: This Is How They Mess with our Minds

Click here to access article by Cynthia Peters from TeleSur.

Cynthia Peters is the editor of The Change Agent. She is a longtime activist and a member of City Life/Vida Urbana, and she serves on the board of a youth justice organization called The City School and the alumni board of Social Thought and Political Economy at UMASS/Amherst.

Peters correctly interprets the usual parental advice that ruling class media impose on parents by examining one piece called "Raising a Moral Child" published in the NY Times as an illustration. Ruling class media always place the burden of child raising on the shoulders of parents or parent (in the case of single parents). This emphasis conveniently ignores the real overwhelming effects of the immoral or amoral influences emanating from all major institutions which, of course, are controlled by our masters.

While you’re parsing out these methods for raising a moral child and self-consciously scanning the horizon for an opportunity to role-model being nice, you will wisely block out all the messages about greed and ownership and one-upmanship that your kid is getting from about a billion other sources.

While we parents do mostly all the dirty, hard work of raising children (changing diapers, tending them when they are sick, clothing them, making all kinds of sacrifices for them), the ruling class institutions to a great extent fill their minds with the importance of shopping, of obeying (their) authorities, serving their country by invading foreign lands and killing people living there, etc.

After all, our culture is saturated with messages that acquisition is a moral imperative, that the way to be good is to have lots of stuff, and that the way to be the best is to have more stuff than anyone else. Greed is considered an inherent good; it is the motor that drives our entire economy, and so endless resources are spent justifying it, propping it up, and making it seem like a worthy quality rather than a depraved one.

Always Low Wages, More Pollution: Why Barack & Michelle Obama Relentlessly Shill For Wal-Mart

Click here to access article by Bruce A. Dixon from Black Agenda Report.

I hesitate to criticize a website which has frequently exposed the hypocrisy of the Obama administration, however I think it is necessary in order to attain a higher level of political consciousness.

First of all, the article does little to explain why Obama and his wife have supported Wal-Mart other than a brief reference to Wal-Mart's charitable donations in the Chicago area, the political base of Obama. On the other hand, there is frequent mention throughout the article about how Obama deceived working people and people of color. This is a favorite topic on this website, and I think it reflects an unconscious, but in fact a racist perspective that has so pervasively infected the minds of Americans. Let me explain.

Racism is defined as judging, or arriving at preconceived notions about, a person based solely on one's physical characteristics that are attributed to race. Race as a concept is itself very controversial in its meaning. For example, in the US the states legally defined an African-American in various ways by one's African ancestry. Such rules were enforced in legal cases, while in everyday life identification as an African-American was based on outward physical characteristics. Missing from this identification has always been the socialization of individuals. Thus racist concepts are literally only skin deep.

Such racism, of course, obscures the reality of an individual's behavior and beliefs which is a result of their socialization. This directly applies to Obama, and I believe that the directors of the ruling class cleverly groomed Obama for the presidency because of this confusion between racial characteristics and socialization.

Obama was mostly raised by white upper-middle class people, primarily by his grandmother who was a (white) banker in Hawaii. He was educated in an elite private school in Hawaii (Punahou School) and then on to Columbia and Harvard universities. He understandably identifies with the white power structure because he has been socialized entirely in white mainstream values. It is doubtful that he experienced much racism in Hawaii (and definitely not in his early years in Indonesia) given that it is such a multi-racial state, far more so than any other state in the union. I know that from my own experience living there for five years during which time Obama was in his high school years at Punahou H.S.

I remember well that this website endorsed Obama for President back in 2008 (I can't document this because they have no archives on their website), and I think that writers for this website cannot get over their own feelings of being betrayed by Obama by constantly harping on his betrayal. They endorsed him because he looked African-American which is racism, and not so much because of the deceptions he promoted--all Democratic candidates lie before elections.

Dying for Control: An Exhausted Culture, Founded on Psychological Manipulation

Click here to access article by Arthur Silber from Once Upon a Time.... 

I haven't followed this blog, so I am not absolutely sure what the author really means by this essay. By referencing "culture", it would seem to suggest that this mass neurosis is culture specific. But nowhere in the essay is this made explicit, and it often suggests that it is an inherent human flaw--thus, it cannot be culture specific.

I would argue that psychological manipulation is a coping mechanism that enables people to function well in a capitalist system and a capitalist culture. I agree that the vast percentage of people succumb to this type of socialization, but it is clear even from his essay that they don't succumb without consequences. That is, they don't function well as human beings. This to me indicates that capitalist culture is not conducive to human development. Let me develop my views on this further.

It seems to me that there are two basic types of psychological adjustment to capitalism that people form as they develop. The first is the transference of their allegiance from parents to all authority figures in one's life. Such a person never develops into adulthood, never really develops beyond a rebellious stage, if indeed, they ever experience this stage. They simply and naively adopt the world views of people in authority. The second type I would label as a sociopathic personality: they learn to become experts at manipulating people to obtain rewards and/or to escape punishments, and they are conscious of doing this. The author of this piece seems to emphasize the latter type. 

Although under capitalism such adaptations are, I believe, highly exaggerated because of the enormous control of rewards and punishments of the ruling capitalist class, I believe that these adaptations are found in all class structured societies. Unfortunately, our knowledge about pre-class structured societies is very limited, but there is some evidence that various people have uncovered (see Noam Chomsky's view here and chapter 5 at this link). There is also psychological evidence from studies of people who for various reasons have been insulated from capitalist or class influences in their socialization.

From reading only this piece, I'm not sure what he suggests is the alternative, that is, what his "one in five or ten thousand" personality development is like. What is clear to me is that the latter development usually carries with it huge penalties which the author does not acknowledge in this essay.

The great task for mankind is to develop a classless society in which the highest potential of human beings can be actualized.

Female 'Purity' Is Bullshit

Click here to access article by Lindy West from Jezebel.

The author looks at the issue of the tendency for women to be reduced to sexual objects in a society that is infected with notions of sinfulness associated with sex. Hence, there are "good girls" and "bad girls", Madonnas or whores. This issue in general is, as illustrated by this article, usually dealt with as an issue of men versus women, with the female author arguing that men are evil-doers. As with many other issues, I think that a class-based analysis of the topic sheds much more light. See if you agree with my reasoning.

I think that both cultural phenomena, sexuality as sin and the sexual objectification of women, are fostered by the class structure of capitalism, a system that empowers one small group, "owners" of productive property, over all other people. Because of their privileges of "ownership" that has evolved over time, such people have the power to decide on how much net wealth that is created in productive enterprises go to a class known as workers versus how much they, the "owners", keep for themselves. This fundamental division of humanity has created a pattern that is repeated throughout all institutions in society because "owners" who by the advantageous nature of this division have assumed a leading role in governing societies, that is, they constitute a ruling class of people.

Regarding the sexuality as sin issue, libertinism has often been practiced, and even celebrated, among ruling classes throughout history. You will never find a reference in history to a worker or peasant "libertine". Hence, unrestrained sexual practices have always been the privilege of ruling classes for obvious reasons. Ruling classes want workers and peasants to devote their entire lives to producing things that ruling classes want and they want to accumulate most of the wealth generated by this production.

The other issue, the sexual objectification of women and its corollary, the Madonna or whore syndrome, can also be seen as serving the ruling class. First of all, the Madonna or whore phenomenon applies only to working class women, never to ruling class women. You will find that the latter's prolific practice of sexuality is romanticized throughout most of literature, for example, George Sand. Although you will never see this observed in popular versions of historical dramas about aristocratic life such as is frequently shown over PBS TV, but it was a common practice of aristocrats to regard peasant women, and probably men also, as completely available to provide them with sexual favors (see this and this).

Then there is the fundamental tendency found in capitalist societies to reduce everything to a commodity, and that applies to working class women as "whores" who offer their bodies for sale in the sexual market.

What we frequently see nowadays reflected in "feminist" literature and writings is a ruling class framing of the sexual objectification issue as one of men abusing women. This is precisely the tone of this article. Such framing serves the divide and rule strategy very well. To divide working people on this issue provides a very good distraction from thinking about how the capitalist ruling class continues to thoroughly rob working people of their homes, jobs, pensions, and life savings.

Looking at these issues from a class-based perspective does not for an instant justify any exploitative behavior regardless of who is the agent and who is the victim. I am merely pointing out how the issues are usually dealt with in capitalist society. The framing of these issues are used against working people to serve ruling class interests. 

The real focus should be on the socialization of these attitudes in our current society. The fact is that both sexes are indoctrinated in the same ideas and participate in the indoctrination of succeeding generations in these attitudes. It is not a question of sex, it has more to do with gender indoctrination, that is, how we are indoctrinated and socialized to behave in certain ways. The only real difference between the sexes in terms of behavior is that we act on our socialization according to our sexual identity.

Will we ever reach true equality?

Click here to access article by George Lakey from Waging Nonviolence.

I could really identify with the discriminatory experiences depicted by this author. I have witnessed them in a variety of settings including, and most irritatingly, in progressive groups. Few people are conscious of it; and because of that fact, it often goes unchallenged in many activist groups. Its hidden influence retards any construction of a new counter-culture in which egalitarian forms of relationships can develop. 

As suggested by this insightful author, ranking people is a cultural phenomenon. (He comes close to stating that its human nature.) We are constantly encouraged by the dominant capitalist culture to compete with each other. Although the author focuses much more on group cultures, the broader capitalist culture has an extreme emphasis on competitiveness (especially for the 99 Percent) and the ranking of people in general. This culture is diametrically opposed to an inclusive, egalitarian type of society that progressive people usually say they want.

Deranging America

Click here to access article by Linh Dinh from Dissident Voice.

This is not pleasant reading, but the author accurately observes that there has been a change in the behavior of Americans. Nowadays we too often see Americans acting out with violence against others, regarding their fellow citizens with suspicion, behaving toward others with callousness, and uncritically accepting views from media authorities. I noticed this also after returning in 2006 from living four years mostly outside the US.

Violence, always violence. From infancy, Americans are conditioned to enjoy violence, then lured or pressured to support it at every stage of life.

The Turning Point – Full Film

Click here to access 52:27m video from Press for Truth (Canada). (Note: actually the first 40 minutes is the best part.)

The filmmakers have just uploaded their excellent film on You-Tube so that everyone can access it online. (It is also available as a DVD from their website.) It uses the 60th Bilderberg conference held in Chantilly, Virginia from May 31 – June 3, 2012, as a starting point to investigate the Bilderberg Group as political phenomenon. Because this group is made up of so many powerful people and are highly secretive about their meetings, many activists and others have long wondered what they are really up to.

One important source the narrator in the film referred to was a transcript of a 1965 speech given by David Rockefeller, lifetime chairman of Bilderberg, to the International Industrial Conference in San Francisco. It really sets the tone of this elite group. Of course, it provides a glowing, self-serving justification for the organization, but his concluding statement really sums up their sense of megalomania:

What we are is God's gift to man;
What we become is man's gift to God.

Although I have no special knowledge about this organization, I have followed reports on it over the past 40 years. My impression is that they function more as a method to create a sense of capitalist elite identity and socialization than they do as deliberative body over any specific policies or strategies. This assertion is not to downplay their significance, for socialization is a primary way that global One Percents use to create solidarity and identification with Empire interests. 

This socialization method is often seen in junkets sponsored by Empire sources to fund social events in which foreign military and political leaders are brought to the US to mingle with their counterparts in the US. This creates bonds of trust, affiliation, and promotes loyalties with Empire figures. It fosters the informal integration of powerful figures in other countries with Empire's ruling figures, and, thus, encourages them to align their interests to those of the Empire. (See this for its use with Egyptian generals; see this for its use on US Congressional members by Israel; see this for its use on US state legislators by ALEC, a right-wing political organization; and see this for its general use throughout the world.)