Recommended articles for 12/30/2017

• Russian military advisors work with all Syrian army units — Russian General Staff from TASS, a Russian News Agency.

I learned about this report by way of an article from a Kuwaiti independent journalist posted on his website. I'm not sure one can draw all the implications he does from this TASS announcement, but it is very much worth our attention.

• The Next Financial Crisis Will Be Worse Than the Last One by Nomi Prins from TruthDig.

She takes a gander (def.) at the huge run-up of corporate debts, tax cuts for the rich, and continuing low-interest money available to corporations, and reaches the following conclusion:

What does that mean? Financially speaking, 2018 will be a precarious year of more bubbles inflated by cheap money, followed by a leakage that will begin with the bond or debt markets. The GOP tax cuts won’t technically kick in monetarily for corporations until after the year is over in 2019, but the anticipation of extra funds will fuel more buybacks. This will help to provide cover for any rate hikes the Fed implements, because it provides corporations the ability to boost their own share prices further.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and other smaller regulatory authorities in Washington will push for greater deregulation of the financial systems and banking industry on any level possible. If there is another financial crisis in 2018 or later, it will be worse than the last one because the system remains fundamentally unreformed, banks remain too big to fail and the Fed and other central banks continue to control the flow of funds to these banks (and through to the markets) by maintaining a cheap cost of funds.

•  Venezuela after the municipal elections by Jorge Martin from Defense of Marxism (Britain).

I agree totally with his analysis of the Venezuelan political scene. I observed first hand the bureaucratic resistance to any leftward course of the Bolivarian Revolution that I drew attention to in previous posts. See here and here.

Recommended article for 12/28/2017

• China plans to break petrodollar stranglehold by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times. (Because I am very busy today taking care of personal problems, this is the only article I could find at this time. I may post additional articles later if I have the time.)

The Holberg Debate 2017: "Propaganda, Facts and Fake News" with J. Assange, J. Pilger & J. Heawood

Click here to access a 2:40:40 video featuring the moderator asking each of these participants, Julian Assange, Jonathan Heawood, and John Pilger, a series of questions. (I am updating this post as I listen to this video. Please skip the second speaker. My reaction was that he is a fake speaker and a fake human. I'm looking forward to Pilger because I know he is so very human. 1:49 PM: Yes, Pilger was wonderful as he reviewed the record of Western journalism during the past 60 years. The record was one of fake or omitted news we have received--or not--up until the present, and most of it related to major war crimes. Updated again at 2:32 PM Seattle time after listening to all of it.)

At the 2017 Holberg Debate, Julian Assange, John Pilger and Jonathan Heawood discussed the presence of propaganda in news and social media, and its democratic implications.

The event took place at the University of Bergen, Norway, on December 2nd, 2017.

What really piqued (def.#3) my interest listening to Assange was when the moderator got on the topic of artificial intelligence (at 45:40m) in the context of the information war (the crafting of news and information to get people to believe and do things that would promote capitalist ruling class interests, and likewise, not believe and do things that might interfere with ruling class interests). At this point Julian Assange made this rather startling statement in reference to artificial intelligence: "...it's overwhelmingly the biggest threat to humanity as much as...a much bigger threat than climate change." His following remarks elaborated on this statement which I found most interesting and insightful.

Here are the brief show notes:

About 00:11:00 Julian Assange; About 00:56:00 Questions for Julian Assange; About 01:19:00 Jonathan Heawood; About 01:43:00 John Pilger; About 02:17:11 Las Q&A Session.

I rarely post videos or article of this length; but because this topic is so important, I decided to post it. I recommend listen to Assange's response to a question posed by the moderator at 45:40m regarding artificial intelligence, skip the second speaker, and listen to Pilger's entire address.

About the speakers:

Julian Assange joins the panel via videolink. Assange is an award-winning journalist and the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. He is also a programmer, cryptographer, author and activist. Founded in 2006, WikiLeaks has published millions of leaked documents and several videos. This includes logs that relate to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the controversial “Collateral Murder” video from Iraq, U.S. diplomatic cables, and election campaign related e-mails from the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta.

Jonathan Heawood is the CEO and founder of IMPRESS, the only press regulator to be recognised as independent and effective under the Royal Charter in the United Kingdom. He has previously worked as a journalist and human rights campaigner, and he is a former director of English PEN. Heawood has written on free speech and regulation for various publications, including The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction, Critical Quarterly, Journal of Media Law, Ethical Space and Communications Law.

John Pilger is an Australian journalist, author and documentary film-maker. Pilger has covered military, political and cultural conflicts around the world for more than five decades, and his criticism of American, Australian and British foreign policy is strongly reflected his documentaries and writings. He worked at the Daily Mirror from 1963 to 1986 and wrote a regular column for the New Statesman magazine from 1991 to 2014. Pilger has won numerous awards as a journalist and film-maker, and he is one of only two people to win British journalism’s highest award twice.

The Holberg Debate 2017 is a collaboration between the Holberg Prize, the Fritt Ord Foundation and Norwegian PEN (Western Norway).

Who armed ISIS? A three year study provides some answers (updated commentary)

Click here to access article from Islamic Societies Review. (I have added additional content to my commentary at 10:54 PM Seattle time.)

Supplies of materiel, including advanced light weapons systems the U.S. military, from foreign parties — notably the United States and Saudi Arabia, ended up in the hands of ISIS fighters.

You may be tired of finding evidence of the US-led Empire's and their allied governments' support of ISIS in Syria in order to overthrow the government of Syria and replace it with a government that is acceptable to the Empire's ruling capitalist class. I have (including this article) 37 links to articles offering such evidence. Meanwhile, most Americans continue to believe the propaganda crafted (def.#5) in the ruling class's media corporations that omits or denies this well documented fact. What most Americans are not aware of is that the purpose of media corporations is not to inform them, but to manage their thoughts in support of ruling class interests. 

What you need to know is that this fact is a prime characteristic of the new version of fascism 2.0. In contrast to the earlier German, Italian, and Japanese versions, this updated version doesn't care that you and a relatively small number of people like you know what is really going on in the world. They just need a certain (unknown) percentage of brainwashed people to maintain capitalist rule. With this arrangement they avoid the troublesome task of brutalizing people into acceptance of their rule. However, this arrangement depends on the level of security that their fascist rule enjoys. If I and other observers are correct, we can expect the decline of the power of the US Empire and the ascendance of other nations led by Russia and China. With this decline we can expect that our masters will increasingly go after people like you and me. Should we just wait for this to happen or should we take action now to prevent this from happening? And if we want to take action now, what should we do? 

These are the crucial questions facing us. I don't have the answers--nobody or no one person does, but we might put our heads together and come up with some good answers.  

‘Forces deep within US deep state’ are behind Trump’s national security strategy: Scholar

Click here to access video and transcript featuring Dennis Etler, "a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California" posted on PressTV (Iran). (I again thank Christopher in northwest Oregon for alerting me to this excellent post.)

The video post includes extensive quotes which are essentially a transcript of his talk starting with the section "What is the deep state?". Etler accurately describes the capitalist Deep State that is behind the curtain and in control of their puppets regardless of actors and administrations. The two political parties in the US represent a "heads I win and tails you lose" that is offered by the Deep State to ordinary Americans in their "democratic" elections.

Recommended articles for 12/24/2017

• Pyongyang rejects biological weapons rumors, accuses US of fabricating pretext for attack  This is another example of the psychological term called "projection", a term that I touched on in the third article in the post "Recommended articles for 12/19/2017" entitled "Putin Is Preparing for World War III". I strongly suspect that this charge was made by Trump's regime because the US actually used biological weapons during the Korean War against North Koreans and nearby Chinese populations. Since then the ruling class has devoted massive efforts--and largely successful--to cover up this major war crime. For a recent, comprehensive review of the evidence, the best source is a recent book entitled This Must Be the Place by Dave Chaddock.

• US Congress passes tax windfall for corporations and the rich Excellent analysis of the latest move by the ruling capitalist class to enrich themselves in the face of government budget deficits.

• Western Media Consumed by Myanmar Monster of Own Creation by Tony Cartalucci

  

  Clinton and Aung San Suu Kyi pledge to work together for Burma

  from Land Destroyer Report. The author knows southeast Asia very well because he resides mostly in Thailand (the last I heard), and he has followed political events in that area very closely. It was several years ago under the Obama administration of the world's "indispensable nation" that a "pivot to Asia" was announced. This, of course, meant that the US ruling class was going to put more efforts into containing and curtailing China's influence in the area. Soon there appeared articles in corporate media that looked favorably on certain events there, particularly in relation to the government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar (Burma). Well, it turns out that the attempt to use this character as a useful puppet in their anti-China program backfired. (On the left is another photo from this earlier period when the US ruling class was attempting to recruit her for this project.) 

Catalan independence forces win majority

Click here to access article by Jack Hazeldine from CounterFire (Britain). 

I'm mainly posting this article as an illustration of leftist journalism that very much annoys me. So much of left journalism functions like a cheerleader to lead a more left crowd in cheering for progressive measures, movements, or entire countries, but sadly often at the expense of reporting the truth regardless of its nature. Hazeldine does get around to reporting the rightward political movement of recent elections in Catalonia, but the headline and the opening paragraphs paint quite another picture. If we are to become truly informed about the ongoing ruling capitalist class war against workers, we desperately need, and require, the truth about events. Here is his first paragraph:

Catalan independence forces have won a 5-seat majority and 47.5% of the vote in Parliament on a 82% turnout and against the full political force of the Spanish state which as tried every tactic they could to delegitimise and destabilise them. Unionist parties garnered 43.5% of the vote.

Only when we read further on down do we become aware that the "Unionist" parties are against Catalonia independence. I guess we should have known by the name alone that this was so, but proper names, such as this capitalized one (it should not have been capitalized because there is no "Unionist" party), can mean anything. So, then, should we conclude that 47.5% versus 43.5% is a smashing victory as suggested by the headline and early paragraphs? Apparently not, because after reading several paragraphs down, we learn that the leftist parties suffered defeats, and there was a decided shift toward the right and centrist parties among the pro-independence voters. 

This reminds me of the elections held during the last days I lived in San Francisco when proponents of a new baseball stadium wanted to build it on a site closer to the downtown area. They kept holding such referendums for voters to decide until they finally got the vote they wanted. Then they went ahead to build the stadium. It looks like the Spanish government is using the same strategy and introducing measures to pressure the voters of Catalonia until they get a vote they want. Hazeldine alludes to pressures, but he doesn't elaborate.

A combination of political pessimism and the pressures of repression brought about a quite inward-looking and closed campaign generally....

A better report is, sad to say, from the NY Times. In this report we learn of the difficulties that separatist leaders confronted in the campaign: one was in prison and the other in exile.

The best report I have read this morning comes from a British Marxist website called In Defense of Marxism in a report entitled "Catalan elections: Rajoy's strategy defeated".

Recommended articles for 12/20/2017

• Why Putin Confounds US Media by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• US Germ Warfare Apology to North Korea Could Advance Dialogue by Wayne Madsen from Strategic Culture Foundation. Of course, there will not be any apology issued. The main reason for this article is to advance the case for the fact that the US used biological weapons during the Korean War, a major war crime that the ruling class has devoted massive efforts--and largely successful--to cover them up since then. For a recent, comprehensive review of the evidence, the best source is a book entitled This Must Be the Place by Dave Chaddock. 
  
  And for other war crimes committed by the US on North Korea during this war, read an article entitled "State of Fear: How History’s Deadliest Bombing Campaign Created Today’s Crisis in Korea" by Ted Nace from CounterPunch.

• Class Dismissed: Identity Politics Without The Identity by Michael K. Smith from CounterPunch. This piece provides an accurate description of the social "identity" problems suffered by the white working class that is obscured by corporate media with its emphasis on gender and racial politics. Of course, this is intentionally done by the ruling capitalist class to distract people from the real issues of class war. It also accurately describes one main difference between the work lives of upper-middle class salaried workers from wage workers of the lower classes.

 ...in the optic of identity politics, white people are “privileged” by definition, so downward mobility can only be the result of personal failure. In particular, if you are white and don’t have a college degree, and two-thirds of American adults do not, then you are not part of the good life and have only yourself to blame.

As a result, the white working class is virtually invisible today.

Recommended articles for 12/19/2017

• US Plans Slash and Burn of Middle East to “Minimize” Iranian Influence by Tony Cartalucci. The author is great on accessing publications by the Deep State to determine what they are planning. (The Deep State are top capitalists in finance and industry, who function much like a board of directors for the capitalist ruling class, and function behind a curtain of secrecy, much like puppeteers, to control all institutions, most especially government and media.) I sometimes think that articles published on Brookings' website (or their surrogates) reflect important policies that they want to be considered by the wider capitalist class, but not necessarily implemented. In any case we should be informed about what they are considering as plans for our world.

• War and Conflicting Geopolitical Agendas by F. William Engdahl. (Disregard the opening paragraphs which appear to be a commercial to sell his book Gods of Money.) I am only posting this because I think he makes a disastrous attempt to interpret history of WWII. It is very important to understand history, especially that of the 20th century so that we can understand present day issues. I will not go into a detailed review of this article, because it is not worth the effort. This article illustrates that Engdahl knows a lot about geopolitical facts, but he sometimes errors in interpreting these facts--and he misinterprets big time in this article! In it his one major error is to argue that Churchill and company refused to support the anti-Hitler camp of Germany's ruling class, a mistake that led to war against Germany. He mostly bases this on something Sir Halford Mackinder wrote in 1904! He totally omits the significance of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the obsession by the Western capitalist countries to rid the world of this blasphemy for capitalist enterprise. I wonder if he hasn't lived too long in Germany where he may have been influenced too much by German apologists for the Nazis. For my interpretation of WWII see this, this, this, this, and this.

• Putin Is Preparing for World War III "Lookie" (def.) here at the latest cover of Newsweek magazine! Our masters may be preparing us for WWIII and it will likely be a war fought with nuclear weapons. It seems to me that our masters nowadays are frequently guilty of projection, a psychological mechanism that tries to project onto others what they themselves want to do (or did) to others.

Recommended articles for 12/17/2017

• How Do The People Of Truth Win The Current Information War? by Tim Bryant from The Last American Vagabond. (a "best post").

• Three Unelected Men Just Overrode The Will Of 83% Of The US Population by Caitlin Johnstone from The Last American Vagabond.

• Doctor Who Exposed Clinton Foundation Corruption In Haiti Found Dead by
  Ryan Cristián from The Last American Vagabond.

The Year of the Headless Liberal Chicken

Click here to access article by CJ Hopkins from CounterPunch. (At 8:00 PM Seattle time on 12/15/2017, I added a link and expanded at bit on my commentary.)

I love Hopkins as a writer. Consider this as a masterful antidote to all the ruses that our ruling class have imposed on us especially since Trump's unplanned-for election. However, liberals, mainly the upper-middle class (and their wannabees) who identify with the ruling capitalist class, are the butt of his extended lampoon. They are immune to any antidote because they are the "house niggers" (Big Brother Google, concerned that you might become aware of the history of racism in the USA, removed this video from YouTube--simply because they "own" YouTube. So now we can only videos like this video when Malcolm described them more politely as a "house Negro" and thus passed Google censors) who love their capitalist masters more than themselves while working in their corporate offices. 

Here is a sample of Hopkins' writing in the article:

Look, I know what you’re probably thinking, but it isn’t like liberals don’t actually care about fundamental liberal values like freedom of the press and speech and all that. It’s just that they desperately need the Democrats to take back the House and the Senate next year, so they can get on with impeaching Trump, and if they have to stand by while the corporations suppress a little leftist dissent, or, you know, transform the entire Internet into a massive, mind-numbing echo chamber of neo-McCarthyite corporate conformity … well, sacrifices have to be made.

Harvard Experiment Finds Large Effects From Small News Outlets

Click here to access article by Jason Alcorn from MediaShift.  (Material added at 10:08 PM Seattle time.)

The researchers found that even small internet outlets such as Truthout, Ms., Yes!, etc, can have a very significant influence on people's attention in their communications as measured by Twitter. 

You can see the reasons for doing this kind of research: to further refine how corporate media corporations shape news events.  This has been common knowledge for many decades. That is precisely why our capitalist masters like to invest in major media even though they are by and large not profitable. It's because major media corporations are powerful in shaping news and opinions of the general public which always ends up supporting the interests of the tiny ruling class of capitalists in opposition to the general interest. This is precisely why Jeff Bezos (Amazon corporation) bought The Washington Post. Our ruling class already know this, and they've known it for many years. The tip-off is suggested in the concluding naive questions: 

If mostly small publishers working in small collaborations can influence conversation so significantly, what of non-profit news collaborations, local newspapers, and television news? What of collaborations between all three?

Of course, you and most of the people who follow this blog know that major media have for a number of years collaborated to dumb-down, mislead, and deceive the general public. The challenging implication from this is that we, the people, must find a way to establish our own media. Otherwise we will continue on down the road of ignorance and deception while capitalists, because of their addictions to profits and power, will destroy all of humanity.

The ruling class controls every institution to insure that they serve their interests. As a way of illustration to demonstrate this insight, I recommend reading "How Hollywood sold us the (good) Korean War" by Patrice Greanville. This very popular TV series (M*A*S*H) sold imperialism as entertainment to the gullible American people.

China’s drivers and planetary ecological collapse

Click here to access article by Richard Smith, PhD in economics, posted as a PDF file in the latest professional journal of the Real-World Economics Review.

Unfortunately this author has a very common name which has caused me endless minutes/hours to access his writings or to verify writings by him. However, I have no doubts that this is the same "Richard Smith" who has authored an article (entitled "Capitalism and the Destruction of Life on Earth") which I consider a "foundational" article that supports my concerns about the prospect of climate destabilization that is now facing humans.

I am posting this scholarly article by him because it offers another rather comprehensive view of China's political and economic policies with particularly emphasis on environmental issues. I have had considerable difficulty in accessing unbiased articles in alternative websites about China's policies in relation to the issue of climate destabilization. Recently articles authored by Jeff Brown of China Rising have been posted and re-posted on alternative websites, but I consider him as too much of a cheerleader for all things China nowadays. He is rarely critical of anything regarding China. I offer this to you as a counter-balance to such articles, and I will leave it to you, as a critical thinker, to decide on the merits of Smith's observations about China and its leadership regarding this issue.

Other recommended articles for 12/12/2017

• Bad Moon Rising by Philip Giraldi from The Unz Review.

• The Acceleration of Censorship in America by Joe Lauria from The Unz Review.

Why Assad Believes That Syria Would Not Survive a Transition to a Federal System

Click here to access article by Dmitry Minin from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

Minin merely describes President Assad's position regarding a federal system for that country. I would go much further by asserting that Assad is absolutely right, and that a federal system as proposed is designed to fragment a country and create antagonisms along ethnic lines. It is a thinly disguised weapon that the British ruling class has so often used to create tensions in their former colonies. It is a version of the old divide and conquer strategy to create divisions, conflicts, and chaos. Apparently the British ruling class thought that if they can't control a nation, then the latter should be punished with never ending conflict. 

Probably the most famous example is their breakup of their colonial possession of India into Muslim and predominately Hindu sections which are today represented by Pakistan and India. This produced the ongoing hostile relations between the two countries and the ongoing, never-ending conflicts in Kashmir. Then the British applied this strategy to the Middle East by establishing a European ethnic group, European Jews, as a nation in the middle of their former British colonies. 

This is precisely the weapon that subversive agents of the US-led Empire have been using in Iraq by supporting the Kurds and more surreptitiously the more fundamentalist and disaffected Sunnis to create political weakness in Iraq in the aftermath of their invasion, and more recently by organizing, funding, etc, ISIS, a terrorist army to overthrow the Syrian government. Although failing in Syria with the funding of opposition groups, these agents of subversion latched onto the Syrian Kurds to use them in the same strategy to dismember Syria.

You will notice that I carefully posed my position on this issue by stating "a federal system as proposed" by the adherents of such an arrangement. A federal arrangement that did not divide a country up into ethnic groups or religion would be acceptable. But Empire agents are thoroughly dishonest by disguising their strategy as simply one of federation. In any case, no outside agents should be involved in geopolitical arrangements in the Middle East or anywhere else. But, in this era of advanced capitalism, the scourge of imperialism will have to be defeated by the defeat of capitalists everywhere--or else: the very survival of humans depends on the outcome of this conflict.

The majority of the issues facing all people today derive from one basic issue which I have been developing throughout my eight years of blogging: whether economic property is to be owned and controlled by individuals (either as individuals or collectively as shareholders) or whether such property will be democratically owned and managed by and for the people residing in the various regions of our planet Earth. That is the most fundamental question of our era! The outcome of this struggle will decide whether we humans continue to exist or whether we will become extinct: either in the long term due to catastrophic climate destabilization or in the short term due to nuclear wars. 

Which side are you on? Are you on the side of the overwhelming majority of humanity or on the side of this tiny class of "owners"? Are you on the side of nature and its preservation, or are you on the side of the tiny numbers of "owners" of economic property?

Iran’s 1979 revolution picked up the People’s torch first lit in 1917 Russia

(Edited for errors at 4PM Seattle time.)

Click here if you wish to access an article (posted on A bird's eye view of the Vineyard) that I believe illustrates a profound insight: no one person can be absolutely knowledgeable about everything or anything, there are no absolutely "authoritative sources", there are no absolute experts, there are no enlightened or superior humans who we all must unquestionably follow, etc.  I am sorry for people who believe otherwise, and most people do, as does Ramin Mazaheri, an Iranian-American. I will try to explain why.

First off, I will try to explain why the people did not turn against the Muslim hierarchy in Iran as they did in other places like Russia against the Orthodox Church after the 1917 Revolution, in Spain against the Catholic Church in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-'38, etc; and why the  people supported the Catholic church in various places in Latin America starting in the 1950s during the Liberation Theology Movement and its activist expression in Christian base communities, reached its apogee in the 1970s-'80s, and to a diminishing extent since. However, the Vatican barely tolerated this support even though it was so popular throughout Latin America. There is a very simple explanation for this. The people supported their religious organizations when the latter supported them instead of the regime in power which typically occurs. 

On my trips to Nicaragua in the 1980s after the Sandinista Revolution I witnessed this firsthand. I met many people affiliated with the Maryknoll order (of the Catholic Church) who performed very important roles in the Nicaraguan government and supporting agencies, particularly in education and social services.

In class-ruled societies that have existed during the last 10,000 years (period of civilization) of the nearly 200,000 years of the existence of humans, most people are indoctrinated to obey, and have faith in, authority figures. All ruling classes (theocracies, military chieftains, feudal rulers, and capitalists), once they take power, realize the necessity of accomplishing this in order to secure their rule. Ruling classes have always immediately recognized that using force to intimidate people into following their exploitative rule is impractical. Thus, an authoritarian orientation among civilized people has always been the case. This simply means that humans since civilization and class rule have always looked to authorities for guidance on what to believe, how to ascertain truth, and from whom to acquire this truth. 

Nowadays, the ruling capitalist class culture endows mostly teachers, police, judges and courts, experts, corporate media talking heads, "authoritative sources", church authorities (priests, mullahs, rabbis, etc), etc, with special knowledge about reality. All the latter people are, in turn, supported by ruling capitalist classes. Likewise, capitalists punish any of their appointed authorities if their activities counter the interests of the ruling class. People like Ray Bonner, Phil Donahue, Dan Rather, Jesse Ventura, and many whistleblowers can testify to this.

The Age of Enlightenment (largely in the 18th century) had temporarily challenged these authoritarian notions with its emphasis on seeking truth through reason and evidence, and above all, science with its rigorous methods of obtaining truth. This resulted in the explosive growth of all knowledge about our physical reality ranging from nuclear physics to the farthest reaches of the universe. Soon we humans were able to harness energy to drive machines to make our lives much less burdened by drudgery. 

However, this explosive period of knowledge was nipped in the bud by the rise of capitalist classes who saw the wondrous potential that all this knowledge could bring them if the energy, machines, the products of the latter, money, and even knowledge itself could be "owned" by them. The capitalist classes recruited workers and peasants with deceptive promises that they would enjoy "democracy" (read, for example, the "Declaration of Independence") if they joined them to overthrow the rule of the monarchy and aristocracy whose rule was based on their control over land and its inhabitants. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Although ordinary working people were freed from feudal authorities, they soon found themselves at the mercy of their capitalist bosses.

Today all this "enlightenment stuff" is largely forgotten. People are taught to obey, consume, and work hard for their bosses. Oh sure, a small minority of them are allowed to receive advanced training in technology so that capitalists can own and profit from the products of this technology. Still, these scientists and technologists are thoroughly indoctrinated in the virtues of living in capitalist societies. They are induced to identify with capitalist interests (profit and power) by offering them a comfortable life style, many extra privileges that are denied to ordinary workers, and opportunities to associate often with the ruling capitalist class.

Recommended articles for 12/10/2017

• Why Did the Top Army Officer in the U.S. Do So Little in Response to the 9/11 Attacks? from 911 Blogger.

• Bolivia’s TIPNIS Dispute: How Liberal-Left Alternative Media Becomes a Conveyor Belt for US Regime Change Propaganda from Internationalist 360°.

Look at what media activists in Britain are doing!

Click here to access an alternative British media website.

I am posting this as an illustration of what British activists have accomplished in Britain to counter the propaganda they are fed daily by the BBC and other capitalist controlled media. They stream accurate news and information daily to build on a movement that started small by people who were fed up with propaganda and disinformation. 

Such a media service requires well organized people who will support, and above all, defend alternative media people who want to deliver accurate information about the world we live in, a world that is threatened by nuclear annihilation in the short term and climate catastrophe in the long term. Otherwise we will have journalists who are intimidated, threatened, jailed like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and many others, or who die an early death like the German journalist who exposed CIA involvement in German media.

How I envy the Brits! If only I had an opportunity to receive daily news reports about events in the USA to counter the Empire propaganda that I receive daily from our masters' National Propaganda Radio (NPR). Unfortunately, it appears that US activists, who are devoted largely to social identity issues instead of class issues, are much behind our British peers. And, when they become involved in class issues, they only look to reform the capitalist system, and mostly look to the next election to vote for other candidates that our capitalist masters allow us to vote for.

Missing the Significance of Israel-gate

Click here to access article by Dennis J Bernstein from ConsortiumNews.

Bernstein, who I often listened to on KPFA (Berkley FM community sponsored radio) when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, interviewed Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, and learns that there is considerably more evidence of Israel influencing our government than Russia under the Trump administration. Of course, corporate media doesn't want to touch this subject. 

Ali Abunimah: The Michael Flynn revelation did not show collusion with Russia and certainly did not show any interference in the US election.  What Flynn pled guilty to was lying about two meetings.  Flynn is a serial liar, he lied about his work for the Turkish government.

The facts that were filed in the documents with his plea show that a “very senior member” of the Trump transition team, who has since been identified as Jared Kushner, had ordered Flynn to contact every member of the UN Security Council to try to defeat this resolution criticizing Israel.  It was also reported in The New York Times that Kushner had acted at the urging of Netanyahu.

None of this has anything to do with Russian interference in the elections.  What it does show is clear collusion at the highest level with a foreign government [Israel] to undermine and sabotage the policy of the sitting administration.

But actually the situation is much more complicated by the fact of the existence of a kind of fifth column in the USA consisting of Zionist Jews and Zionist Evangelicals who always promote and fund pro-Israel policies. 

Also related to this is an article entitled "An illegitimate capital for a state without legitimacy" posted on WhatsuPic which might interest you.

State of Fear: How History’s Deadliest Bombing Campaign Created Today’s Crisis in Korea

Click here to access article by Ted Nace from Mint Press News.

The Korean War has often been referred to as "the forgotten war" because of the war crimes committed there by the USA, and the US ruling capitalist class naturally wants us to forget about this particular war. (Our masters want us to remember "the good war" in which we heroically defeated the Nazis and "Japs" and saved civilization. But, as we know now, they only saved fascism to be led by Anglo-American capitalists.) This article only touches on one of the war crimes: firebombing and other bombing of civilian populations which leveled every city in North Korea. 

Our masters have been largely successful in censoring out nearly all information regarding the bacteriological weapons the US Air Force used against mostly civilians in North Korea and nearby China as extensively examined and described in a recent book by Dave Chaddock entitled This Must Be the Place (see this and this). (Notice that Nace doesn't mention war crime at all.) 

These war crimes and the "forgetting" of them is likely due to the racism which influenced our masters' policies in the 1950s and 60s. Asian people were regarded (by them) as "gooks", not humans at all. That is likely why they had no compunctions about dropping nuclear bombs on "Japs" in order to intimidate the Soviet Union.