They Want You to ‘Punch a Nazi’: Enacting Violence Keeps You Distracted From the Real Issue

Click here to access article by Matt Agorist from The Free Thought Project. 

There is absolutely no chance of an outspoken, swastika toting white supremacist, hell bent on a 2nd Holocaust, taking over the country and locking you up. This is why battling white supremacists is futile. There is, however, a very real system of oppression on the rise in this country that does oppress minorities, kidnaps them, cages them, and also kills them on a large scale. It was here far before Trump too.

And later he writes:

America’s real white supremacists don’t identify themselves with flags—they use the seals of government agencies and company logos to officialize their corporatism into policy. They hide behind marble walls, built by slaves, and move armies around the planet like chess pieces on a board. America’s real white supremacists want you paying attention to the serfs fighting over statues so they can continue to rape the planet, extract the fruits of your labor, and spread empire all in their hellish mission to maintain their ‘order.’ 

You may also be interested in Jay Syrmopoulos's similar interpretation of the remarks made recently by Noam Chomsky entitled "Noam Chomsky: ‘Antifa is Wrong in Principle — a Major Gift to the Militant Right’".

As Russia-Gate Story Stalls, Cue Trump Neo-Nazi Scandal

Click here to access article by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Minor editing to add greater clarity to my commentary.)

...the concerted, massive media campaign to nail Trump as some kind of new Fuhrer seems way over the top. The media frenzy smacks of Deep State opponents scouring for a handy new pretext for ousting him from office.

The enthusiasm for whipping up the new anti-Trump campaign seems due in large part because the erstwhile Russia-gate story has patently failed to gain any traction. For nearly seven months since Trump’s inauguration, the relentless claims pushed by Democrats, the media and anonymous intelligence sources that his election last November was enabled by Russian interference have shown little impact in terms of discrediting Trump and ultimately forcing him out of the White House. The Russia-gate theme has failed in its soft coup objective.

The Irish journalist argues that Deep State operatives are now exploiting the increasing revelations that Trump has racist inclinations as demonstrated by corporate media coverage given to the recent incident in Charlottesville, Virginia. Having largely failed with the Russia-gate strategy, the racist card looks more promising. Of course, this overlooks the fact that nearly all Americans (I include myself) in the US have harmful racist feelings ranging from people in the White nationalist groups to the Deep State to African-Americans (who are, in many cases, affected psychologically negatively) simply because one cannot avoid the racist indoctrination that is laced throughout US culture. The Deep State exploited the African-American superficial features of Obama to promote him as president in order to camouflage their own racism and to bolster their propaganda that the US was no longer a racist nation.  

Racism is a ubiquitous fact of life in the US because the capitalist ruling class has always seen it as a useful weapon to weaken labor movements by playing off various groups of workers against each other. Other groups affected at various times in our history were the Chinese, Asians as a whole, brown Latin Americans, southern and eastern Europeans, and even the Irish. The Deep State may now be seeing it (stirring up racial conflicts) as a useful strategy to dump Trump. As I argued yesterday, the evidence suggests that the entire Charlottesville incident was carefully planned by not only White nationalists but local police agencies as well.

“Start Throwing Rocks”: Washington Post Op-Ed Calls For More Violence In The Streets

Click here to access article by Daniel Lang from SHTF Plan. (My thanks goes to Christopher in northwest Oregon who alerted me to this article.)

Although I don't like the wording in the third paragraph, otherwise I totally agree with him. I think the media agents of the ruling class play ordinary Americans like a circus calliope. I have been "entertaining" the idea that this might be the opening salvo of the ruling class's war against dissenters. From what I've learned so far is that the Charlottesville incident looks engineered with the cops' role part of the engineering. The ruling class might have decided to take out their frustrations over Syria on what constitutes the left domestically, especially with a right-wing racist in office who is not of their choosing. Time will tell. Keep in mind that ruling class agents have developed an expertise and a lot of experience with regard to creating social chaos.

It's articles like the one entitled "Chaos in Charlottesville: No One Gave Peace a Chance, Including the Police" that reinforces my theory.

Life under capitalism: Early deaths a ‘silver lining’ for corporations

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder. 

Dolack illustrates how the "disorder" of the inevitable development of the system of capitalism, which results in ever greater concentration of wealth in the hand of a diminishing number of rich, can actually be measured by using certain statistics like longevity. However what is very bad news to us is good news to the tiny ruling class of capitalists as reported to them in an article in one of their news publications (Bloomberg) entitled "Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions". This is another example of the contradictions of capitalism that our masters like to hide from us, but are completely candid about in their news sources.

So what does this have to do with an article published by Bloomberg? The headline on this particular article says it all: “Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions,” complete with a subhead declaring “lower pension costs” a “silver lining.” As not only a proud member of the corporate media, but one specializing in delivering news to financiers and industrialists, extolling a benefit to corporate bottom lines and ignoring the, ahem, human cost of said benefit is only to be expected. The article is not at all atypical of the business press, even if this one is a little more obvious than usual.

Thus, you can be dead certain (pun intended) that such news shapes their policy decisions to diminish resources for health care for ordinary people as very well illustrated in their attempts to weaken the already inadequate (for us), pro-insurance company Affordable Care Act that the last Congress passed with Obama's support.

Cornel West & Rev. Traci Blackmon: Clergy in Charlottesville Were Trapped by Torch-Wielding Nazis [Parts 1 and 2]

Click here to access 44:26m video and transcript of the interviews posted on Democracy Now!. (Note: The interviews and Goodman's report (in Part 1) of the Charlottesville incident is interrupted from 9:09m to 15:46m when Amy Goodman reported the regular news.) (Updated at 5:42 PM Seattle time with links to documentation added.)

...violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend as thousands of neo-Nazis, KKK members and other white nationalists began descending on the city to participate in the "Unite the Right" rally. Thousands of counterprotesters met in Charlottesville, including clergy, students, Black Lives Matter activists, and protesters with the antifascist movement known as "antifa." We are joined by two clergy members and a local Black Lives Matter activist who helped organize the demonstration. Rev. Traci Blackmon is executive minister of Justice and Witness Ministries of the United Church of Christ. During a live interview with MSNBC at the march on Saturday, she was forced to flee as counterprotesters were attacked around her. Cornel West was also on site and describes the scene. We also speak with Jalane Schmidt, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia.

Then this coverage continues in Part 2:

Cornel West:

...our concern has to be...to empower those of us who are willing to fight. We need prophetic fightback, progressive fightback. It’s got to be multiracial, but it’s also got to be critical to capitalism and the empire, along with patriarchy and white supremacy. White supremacy certainly is at the center, but it can’t just be a matter of talking about race isolated from these other very ugly realities.

Of course, as usual (see this, this, and this), because this dramatic comment made Amy Goodwin uncomfortable because she knew that such remarks would make her rich funders (for example, this) unhappy which might threaten her several hundred thousand dollar salary she enjoys (see this, this, and this), she did not pick up on it by having West expand on it. She simply ignored it by quickly asking another question of Traci Blackmon.

(Democracy Now! is providing other followup coverage of the incident that you may want to follow.)

Oakland's NFL Star Marshawn Lynch Sits During US Anthem

Click here to access article from TeleSur. 

A former star running back for the Seattle Seahawks joins quarterback Kaepernick in refusing to stand for the national anthem. Last night his friend and former teammate Michael Bennett also refused to stand as a protest against racist injustice in the exhibition game against the San Diego Chargers. In contrast to Lynch he explained his reasons in an interview after the game.

Seahawk defensive lineman Michael Bennett sat during the national anthem prior to the team’s preseason opener against the Chargers in Carson, Calif., Sunday night, a stance he said he will continue throughout the 2017 season in an effort to “continuously push” a message against injustice in society.

Delcy Rodriguez to Lead Constituent Assembly in Venezuela

from TeleSur. 

The rise of such people to leadership as Delcy Rodriguez in the Constituent Assembly, whose task is to propose a new constitution for ratification by the Venezuelan people, holds much promise for the salvation of the Venezuelan people. At 1:50m she confronts President Macri of Argentina at a Mercosur meeting for supporting a known opposition terrorist in Venezuela.

Sloppy reporting "to scare people to death"

by Ron Horn for this website.

This morning while perusing articles, I came across the article posted in Defend Democracy Press entitled "Is America Trying to Start a World War? This Is How It Would Happen" in which I became alarmed at this statement:

North Korea has been on the receiving end of a U.S.-led sanctions regime for years, as well, and the American military is now flying bombers over its airspace, provoking the country to respond in kind.

Immediately I checked the link the author provided. It took me to a report from Reuters in which I found the following statement in the first paragraph: 

The United States flew two supersonic B-1B bombers over the Korean peninsula in a show of force on Sunday and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said China, Japan and South Korea needed to do more after Pyongyang's latest missile tests. 

This was repeated further down under a picture of a B-1 bomber. The ambiguous reference to the "Korean peninsula" is what really really disturbed me. Eventually I found a more precise location where the two bombers flew in the Independent:

A pair of US supersonic bombers have flown over the Korean Peninsula, less than 48-hours after North Korea’s successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Flanked by South Korean fighter jets The B-1 bombers carried out a low-pass over the Osan Air Base, near South Korea's capital Seoul. [my link]

However the author did not furnish any link to a source of this information. 

Unfortunately this Anti-Media report was also posted in Global Research as well as the Defend Democracy Press, and I don't know how many others. I wondered why Reuters was so vague about their path over the "Korean peninsula". Then I recalled a statement made by Brian Williams on MSNBC who said that "our job tonight actually is to scare people to death on this subject". Well, it looks like Reuters is also doing their job. It makes me wonder if all the corporate media executives were given this instruction and by whom.

But I also am critical of the reporting by Darius Shahtahmasebi on the staff of Anti-Media. This website is already suffering from being blacklisted by Media Bias/Fact Check, so I would think that they would be especially careful about their reporting.

It's later than you think

by cartoonist Niels Bo Bojesen.

The planet has just a 5% chance of reaching Paris climate goal.

Why Siding with Washington on Korea May Be Dangerous

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

Cunningham recognizes that China and Russia in going along with UN sanctions likely seek to start negotiations that can produce a peaceful settlement to this long developing crisis. 

What appears to be in the calculus by China and Russia is that by giving a sop to the American desire to get tough on North Korea, they are anticipating that the US will agree to calls for multi-party talks and a freeze on military activities on the Korean Peninsula.

Both the Chinese and Russian ambassadors to the UN coupled the latest resolution for sanctions against North Korea with the reboot of the six-party negotiations involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the US. Those talks were abandoned in 2009 when the US and North Korea broke off in recriminations.

His main objection about the agreement of China and Russia to go along with the Empire's demand for UN sanctions against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) can be summed up with this paragraph:

It is misplaced for China and Russia to pander to the US over sanctions and to expect something by way of concessions in return. The arrogant Americans don’t know the meaning of concessions, they only perceive weakness and will move to capitalize on weakness.

Google is the Engine of Censorship

Click here to access article from 21st Century Wire. 

Late last year, search engine giant Google announced its plans to protect users from the horrors of ‘fake news’ by changing the way it presents search results. According to corporate officials, they hope to shelter  readers by limiting access to what the company deems as “low-quality” information – while promoting what it calls ‘established’ mainstream sources. Critics believe that the company, which now has a virtual monopoly on internet traffic, is now playing god over the info-sphere. 

Actually, from my experience Google is the best of a very bad selection of data search engines. If you know of a better one, please let me know. Someone needs to design a search engine that only includes reliable sources of information. But that takes funding and the rich of the Empire have nearly all of the funds.

Facing Defeat in Syria, ISIS Inexplicably Expands Globally

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.

For ISIS – fueled by resources found only within the boundaries of its meager and shrinking territorial holdings in Syria and Iraq – to be simultaneously fighting the national armies of Syria and Iraq, backed by Iran, Russia, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and allegedly a US-led coalition including dozens of countries, all while expanding its reach worldwide, including full-scale military operations in Southeast Asia, begs belief.

Having long followed news reports in independent media and from reliable journalists regarding the sudden appearance of the well-equipped and technologically advanced ISIS army in Syria, I immediately drew some inferences about their sudden dramatic appear in the Philippines. Cartalucci provides in summary form the evidence and logic which supports the reality that ISIS is the US-led Empire's and allies' well-funded project to spread its brand of terrorism all over the world in order to justify the Empire's global military operations. 

If you are like me, you don't need to read the article. However, most Americans timidly never venture outside of corporate media, and thus they accept the ruling class's constructed "reality" as truth. Remember what that right-wing advisor Karl Rove said in a brief moment of candor?

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

He wasn't only referring to their actions as reported by independent media, but to their construction via media corporations of the "reality" of their actions.

Eve of Destruction…Or Revolution?

Click here to access a commentary of a book by Ron Jacobs from CounterPunch. 

“In order to replace capitalism with an ecological society we need a revolution.” That modest sentence is how Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams, the authors of Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation, begin the last chapter of their new book. Although the chapter is the end of the book, it is also an opening to a new direction, a new movement. It is also the essence of the entire text. Capitalism is the reason our biosphere is collapsing and the only way humanity and the rest of earth’s species can survive is by ending capitalism.

Magdoff and Williams make some very good arguments, which Jacobs summarizes, that capitalism is ultimately going to destroy the habitat that supports human life. I particularly like their material about human nature and its gross distortion under capitalist culture. 

However, saving the biosphere to protect human habitation is only one of the reasons why we should should put an end to capitalism. Capitalism is also the root cause of widespread poverty and wars. Wars nowadays between major powers that are equipped with nuclear weapons are likely to extinguish humans much earlier than the destabilization of the biosphere. I have striven for the past nearly eight years to argue and document all three reasons with this website. (I have also written a proposal on the best way to end capitalism: A Revolutionary Model.)

I notice that more and more people are beginning to realize that revolution to end capitalist rule must be considered. (See here, and here.) I googled "revolution" on Google (selected "past week" under "tools") and found many recent entries referring to Bernie Sanders (see this). This suggests to me that ruling class agents are once again attempting to herd confused young Americans back into the fold of the Democratic Party or at least into a political dead-end.

Yesterday I noticed numerous articles (for example, see this) in liberal media about the recent convention held in Chicago by the Democratic Socialists of America who seem to be enjoying a revival with the injection of many former Bernie Sanders followers. Although occasionally they play lip service to the abolition of capitalism, their past actions indicate that they are far more interested in working politically within the capitalist system to promote social democracy or a generous state welfare system.

What few people who want to substantially change conditions today fail to realize is that 1) the capitalist ruling class will never allow substantial change to be voted on and selected; and 2) that the descendance into fascism that today's capitalist rule exhibits is not the fascism of the past, but a new form using corporate media to thoroughly confuse and distract people in order to promote their policies and preserve their rule. 

Thus any effective revolutionary movement must counter the fake news and analysis with authentic news and analysis that enables ordinary people to understand what is going on in the world and awaken an awareness of how they can bring about real changes. This, too, I have firmly embedded in my revolutionary proposal. In addition the proposal uses prefigurative political elements to empower ordinary people and prevent any kind of ruling classes in the future.

Latin American School of Medicine: A beacon of fraternity, solidarity and collectivity

Click here to access article by Nuria Barbosa León from Granma (Cuba). (Note: I'd like to thank Caren from northwestern Oregon for alerting me to this article.)

Cuban medicine is famous all over the world except here in the US where media corporations don't want you to know about it. Their research has led to new medicines, their Latin America School of Medicine has trained more than 28,500 doctors from 103 countries, and Cuban doctors have served in numerous countries which are lacking in health facilities. I know from my trip to Venezuela in December 2005 that the Venezuelan people very much appreciate the work they have done in their country.

The article mostly reports on the author's interviews with recent graduates of the school to hear from them about their experience at the school.

"It's Barack Obama Marries Dick Cheney" All In One Think Tank

Click here to access article by Tyler Durden from Zero Hedge. 

Durden covers several new events that suggest a movement is on (no doubt by agents of the Deep State) to curtail reports you are getting from various alternative websites. This includes a new "think tank" that's been organized to do just that--it's called the "Alliance for Securing Democracy". (Don't you just love the way they in their unique Orwellian style so frequently dress up their nefarious projects with the warm-fuzzy word "democracy"?)

...who specifically is behind the Alliance for Securing Democracy? For that we should turn to Col. Pat Lang's blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, which artfully summarizes its origins. Pat Lang is a retired former high ranking Pentagon intelligence officer who oversaw all military intelligence for the Middle East, and was a presidential intelligence briefer under past presidents. ....

Who Has Your Back?

Click here to access report issued by Rainey Reitman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 

Note on 10/24/2017: I very much regret posting this article. See my recent post entitled "Pew Survey Examines 'Future of Truth and Misinformation Online'" for an explanation.

While many technology companies continue to step up their privacy game by adopting best practices to protect sensitive customer information when the government demands user data, telecommunications companies are failing to prioritize user privacy when the government comes knocking. Even tech giants such as Apple, Facebook, and Google can do more to fully stand behind their users.

EFF's seventh annual “Who Has Your Back” report digs into the ways many technology companies are getting the message about user privacy in this era of unprecedented digital surveillance.

We evaluated the public policies at 26 companies and awarded stars in five categories, with nine companies earning a perfect five-star score this year: Adobe, Credo, Dropbox, Lyft, Pinterest, Sonic, Uber, Wickr, and Wordpress. Each has a track record of defending user privacy against government overreach and improved on their practices to meet the more stringent standards in this year's Who Has Your Back.

AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, and Verizon scored the lowest, each earning just one star. While they have adopted a number of industry best practices, like publishing transparency reports and requiring a warrant for content, they still need to commit to informing users before disclosing their data to the government and creating a public policy of requesting judicial review of all National Security Letters.

You can check details on each company and other information below the chart provided by the report.

Nuclear War: An Unrecognized Mass Extinction Event Waiting To Happen

Click here to access a speech given by Kenneth Starr to a Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction held at The New York Academy of Medicine, 28 February - 1 March 2015.   

Yesterday I receive this link to Kenneth Starr's speech in an email from Dave Ratcliffe of ratical.org regarding the current dangers of a nuclear war which our masters seem to be preparing for. Although it violates my rule to post only current material (less than one month), I share Ratcliffe's and many others concerns about the lack of information in today's several generations regarding the devastating effects of a nuclear war. Starr reports that earlier generations knew full well about the effects of a nuclear, but according him this seems to have changed around 1980. 

I myself was not really aware of this change, but I think that this explains why so many people today are quite unconcerned about the bellicose anti-Russian statements and actions as well as NATO's military preparations for a war with Russia. I lived through the terrifying days around the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I am beginning to experience similar feelings today. I have been confounded by the apparent lack of concern today about a nuclear war and the absence of any significant anti-war movement. Hence I am posting this. 

(I have been seeing frequent references by today's pundits and commentators to the old TV program Star Wars which began after the film Star Wars was released in 1977. I keep wondering if this space opera about intergalactic wars as entertainment did not create this lack of concern.) 

In this post you can listen to Starr's address via YouTube (the first 19:36m) or read the script. (I found the audio rather deficient for my old ears.)

Colin Kaepernick dilemma: The NFL really is a plantation

Click here to access article by Mel Reeves from Rhymes Media Group.

Reeves explains the similarities of NFL's actions of today with the slave-plantation system of our history, and he also castigates today's racists and "Uncle Toms". The Civil War may have freed African-Americans from classic slavery, but otherwise for most of them conditions don't seem to have changed substantially. Now it seems the ruling capitalist class finds African-Americans not only as a source of cheap labor, but as a useful group to divide, control, and fool white workers.

The Colin Kaepernick situation reveals all you need to know about the US Big Business and its most popular non profit the National Football League. Kaepernick remains unsigned because he stood up against racism and police violence, both of which are important to the rich powerful in maintaining their hold on US society.

The NFL owners are hypocrites.

Western Think Tanks as an Actual Weapon of Mass Destruction

Click here to access article by Ollie Richardson from Oriental Review. 

The author explains how many US-led Empire "think tanks" (in contrast to primary "deep state" think tanks that decide major policies), in reality serve as propaganda organizations, and use well-funded lobbyists to spread propaganda (to upper middle class professionals and mid-level businessmen) to support ruling capitalist class interests. In Syria and other places this means spreading disinformation about the Empire's support for various terrorist groups with weapons and training. He particularly "outs" (def. #2) Charles Lister as one such lobbyist. 

...the only thing that has changed [since the Iraq war in 2003] is the signature under the calls for war. There are some recurring figures, of course, but in general a whole new pool was formed from the latest available “talent” concerning serving liberalism. One such “genius” is a Mr Charles Lister. He can be described as today’s equivalent of Judith Miller. They both first and foremost are lobbyists – the former for Israel, the latter for Qatar, they both were/are paid for their work (selling war), and they both have been exposed on more than one occasion for severely alarming incompetence.

Being Honest About Venezuela

Click here to access article by Mike Gonzalez from Defend Democracy Press. 

This piece represents the best assessment of the current political conditions in Venezuela that I have seen. Today we see numerous articles in corporate media which go to great lengths to smear the Bolivarian government of Venezuela with distorted information, but on the other side in small blogs we frequently find ideologically obsessed purists who gloss over the sins of the Venezuelan government and characterize any criticisms as simply capitalist propaganda. As political activists and revolutionaries we simply must give up the juvenile habit of seeing various groups as either "good guys" or "bad guys" that our ruling class likes to do.

Based on my trip to Venezuela in December of 2005 when I witnessed the beginning indications of a self-serving bureaucracy, this view by Gonzalez has the pure ring of authenticity. I posted many articles back in 2010 reflecting this concern: for some examples, see this, this, and especially this.

Because "Mike Gonzalez" is a very common name, the following is an accurate description of the author that I borrowed from The London School of Economics and Political Science:

Gonzalez is one of Britain’s leading scholars in Latin American studies. He has written extensively on Latin American politics and culture, social movements, and revolutionary figures. He is author of volumes on Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution, the Nicaraguan revolution, on the situation in Chile in the 1970s, and has recently written articles for the magazine Jacobin in which he analyses the current political turmoil in Venezuela.

Also, if you still have doubts about the author, listen to the following 12:10m talk that Gonzalez gave in 2014 (before the collapse in oil prices) regarding Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution since he took control at the end of 1998.



The Bolivarian Revolution is not over yet, but Gonzalez accurately reports most of what has gone wrong up till now. Hugo Chavez did create many coops and popular councils and educated many ordinary Venezuelans that radicalized many people, and these people may yet save and advance the revolution before it is taken back by the old oligarchy in collusion with the US.   

You might also be interested in an article by Peter Koenig entitled "Venezuela – The National Constituent Assembly is in Place – But the fight for Sovereignty isn’t Over" in which he describes the current situation in the country.