CIA/military infiltrating Congress, global arms trade, CEO greed skyrockets

Click here to access the 28:03m video from RT's Redacted Tonight show.

In the first segment Camp is referring to Patrick Martin's series of three reports plus one entitled "The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party" he posted at World Socialist Web Site.

Lee Camp explains the US military/security state’s not-so-secret plan to take over the Democratic Party, and shows how corporate media serve no purpose but a mass distraction and justification for imperialism and exploitation. Naomi Karavani reports on the arms trade while John F. O’Donnell discovers that Google is both helping the state drone foreigners and contributing to mass surveillance.

(Note: I must warn you that you will be watching a Russian sponsored show. To be safe, you must only watch programs and content sponsored by US media corporations. 😉) 

Of a Type Developed by Liars

Click here to access article by Craig Murray from his blog. (Note: I added more content at 8:12 AM and 8:35 AM Seattle time.)

This former member of the British foreign service begins his article with this statement:

I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO  source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve gas as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. [my link]

And after supplying many facts and arguments, he ends with this statement:

Until this week, the near universal belief among chemical weapons experts, and the official position of the OPCW, was that “Novichoks” were at most a theoretical research programme which the Russians had never succeeded in actually synthesising and manufacturing. That is why they are not on the OPCW list of banned chemical weapons. [my link]

Porton Down is still not certain it is the Russians who have apparently synthesised a “Novichok”. Hence “Of a type developed by Russia”. Note developed, not made, produced or manufactured.

It is very carefully worded propaganda. Of a type developed by liars. [my emphasis]

(The propaganda directors of the Empire have become chronic liars and using others to issue lies to promote their self-serving anti-social agendas: wars, social injustice, inequality, etc. Another example of this allegation is furnished today by Caitlin Johnson in her article entitled "The “Alt-Right” Label: What’s Real, What’s Fake, And Why It Matters".

Read this piece by Edward Curtin who writes about the propaganda specialists who are currently engaging in a war on your mind. He sums up his views with this statement: 

... with a massive and unrelenting war on truth being waged by the Western corporate media, an arm of the CIA, capitalism’s invisible army. It is a twisted game show with deadly consequences. Its method is Janus-faced. From one face, repeat over and over again bold-faced lies always lacking in evidence – e.g. Russiagate, WMD in Iraq, the Syrian government used chemical weapons, Russia is an aggressor planning to invade Eastern Europe, three World Trade Center buildings fell into their own footprints in virtual free fall speed because of fires, etc.; from the other face, play the game of suggesting to the public that they know more than they do because they watch CIA-backed shows like “Homeland,” movies like “Zero Dark Thirty,” and are being informed by all the so-called ex-CIA and intelligence commentators that populate the corporate media and explain what’s really going on. The old adage that “you never leave the CIA” has somehow imperceptibly morphed into “Yes, we can; trust us.”

If you are still not convinced, read the article entitled "Lies Can Lead to War" by conservative Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.)

The Anti-Empire Report #156

Click here to access the report by William Blum. 

Blum highlights the hypocrisy of the US ruling class by citing so many historical examples of their use of manipulation, propaganda, and subversion to control elections in other countries. Finally, he ends by citing a basic ideological conflict: capitalist ruling classes cannot tolerate any government that moves toward social justice, societal ownership and control of the economy, and have, indeed, waged wars of one kind or another on various governments that have tried to do so.

At One Million Views, Richard Gage’s Interview Is the Most-Watched C-SPAN Video — Ever

Click here to access article posted by the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Earlier this week, Richard Gage’s 2014 C-SPAN interview surpassed one million views on CSPAN.org, cementing its place as the network’s most-watched video of all time.

.... The interview’s massive reach, both on CSPAN.org and across the Internet, is a testament to the hard work and dedication of hundreds of thousands of activists. It’s also a stark reminder of the disconnect between the public’s continued yearning for the truth about 9/11 and the media’s resolute avoidance of the issue. In the few instances where the media has covered 9/11 Truth seriously, the public has shown tremendous interest.

The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party

Click here to access article by Patrick Martin from the World Socialist Web Site. (I must thank Christopher in northwest Oregon for alerting me to this fine article.) (Some editing done to clarify my views at 4 PM Seattle time, and then added a 9/11 link at 7:20 AM Thursday, 3/15/2018.)

Martin adds a summary to his previous excellent series of three articles (see here and here) examining the takeover of one of the two ruling class parties allowed to participate in "democratic" elections. The Deep State, the network of political activists serving the ruling One Percent, want to preserve the myth of democracy by more closely managing elections with their chosen participants.

Yes, the political climate was much different in the 1970s and '80s when the Church and Pike committee hearings exposed so many of the crimes of the CIA. As Martin describes it: 

The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was widely viewed as “Murder Incorporated.”

Yes, how things have changed since then! The Deep State's solution was for their secret (from us) agencies of the CIA and other "intelligence" agencies to execute the false-flag event of 9/11 that proved so successful in quashing this hostile anti-establishment attitude to where we are today: half of the population believing the lies of the ruling class media and the other half immobilized by bewilderment and fear for their own security.

How times have changed. One of the main functions of the “war on terror,” launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been to rehabilitate the US spy apparatus and give it a public relations makeover as the supposed protector of the American people against terrorism.

This meant disregarding the well-known connections between Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders and the CIA, which recruited them for the anti-Soviet guerrilla war in Afghanistan, waged from 1979 to 1989, as well as the still unexplained role of the US intelligence agencies in facilitating the 9/11 attacks themselves.

Recently our masters in the Deep State decided to take over the Democratic Party to insure that no populist elements like the Bernie Sanders phenomenon could have much influence in the party and that ruling class policies and actions were implemented. Now we as a society are descending into more overt fascist rule.

The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand, the Republican Trump administration has more military generals in top posts than any other previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.

The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state apparatus and its “bodies of armed men” serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.

... working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.   

Protests by restless workers, students and farmers spring up across Iran

Click here to access article by Hamid Alizadeh from Defense of Marxism (Britain). 

Here is another report from Trotsky-oriented socialists in Britain about the ongoing clashes of poor workers and farmers in Iran to end the corruption favoring capitalist elements in Iran's ruling class. This will challenge the thinking of those who justifiably protest against the US-Empire's rampaging actions in their pursuit of world hegemony and overlook seeing the working class current and historic struggles to obtain social justice in the victim-nations of the US-led Empire's and the British Empire's past policies and actions.

The author concludes his report by writing:

When a regime starts talking about reforms to avoid a revolution, as the French historian, Alex de Toqueville pointed out, it is often already too late. The conservative wing of the regime is aware of this. It is warily watching how each protest is radicalising and embolding other layers. But neither crackdowns nor reforms can restore stability in Iran because the contradictions run much deeper. They reflect the sclerotic and impotent state of Iranian capitalism and its capitalist class, which is tied up in the complex web of its own contradictions. It is is incapable of solving any of the fundamental problems faced by society. In the end, this is what lies behind the present crisis.

Why Super-Rich Rush to Buy Nuclear-Proof Bunkers

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

See other photos of the interiors of these bunkers here and here.

The rush amongst the super-rich started after the key event of 2014; this single stunning event suddenly sparked that rush by the super-rich to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, and the rush has been nonstop since that event. Though many news-media in The West have reported on the existence of this suddenly booming market for luxurious and supposedly nuclear-proof bunkers, none has reported on what actually caused it — the event that had sparked it. In fact, that event is still a secret in The West — not publicly mentioned here; it is, practically speaking, banned from being publicly even mentioned, in The West. ... this report, explaining why the super-rich rush now to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, violates that ban.

Later in the article Zuesse implies that the super-rich are immoral:

Any of these billionaires and centi-millionaires could have chosen instead to establish (either alone or in combination with one-another) the first foundation or other propaganda-operation to publicize the fraudulence of the US-and-allied case for sanctions against Russia, and the fraudulence of NATO’s continuing assertions after 1991 that it’s a ‘defensive’ military alliance (it’s no longer that, at all), and the fact (contrasted against that fraud) of NATO’s being nowadays purely an alliance for aggression against Russia and China, as if the Cold War had never ended (and it never really did end except on the Russian and Chinese side, which now recognize that the US and its allies had lied in 1990); so, all of these billionaires rather buy private nuclear-bomb shelters, than establish a foundation to expose to the public the US side’s apocalyptic lies, which actually cause the danger that’s heading to destroy the entire world.

I would like to argue that the super-rich are most insightfully seen as addicts to the power-high that riches produces for them by the system of capitalism. Power, which is the sense of control over other people's lives, is the most addictive "substance" of all, and power over others is insured by concentrated wealth. We must ban the system of capitalism which inevitably and ultimately delivers this drug, and replace it with a system that insures genuine democratic control of all of society's institutions--including most emphatically the economy--by all of the people.

A Texan in Ukraine to the American People - 'Overthrow Your Kleptocratic Oppressors!'

Click here to access article by Russell 'Texas' Bentley from Russia Insider. (Thanks for this article goes to engaged activist Caren in northern Oregon.)

Much like the international brigades that went to Spain during the late 1930s to fight the fascists, Bentley has gone to breakaway eastern Ukraine to fight the current fascists installed in Ukraine's government with the help of the USA. In this open letter to the people of the USA, he writes:

To My Family and Friends, and All Good People of the USA,

.... America, that time has now come for you. The choice is stark and clear, and you must make it soon.

Either bring your rulers to heel, stop the war they are bent on starting, and reap the benefits of stopping the most egregious and wasteful scam in history, or do nothing, allow your parasites to consume you, and let them lead you and your children and your nation to Armageddon and a fiery death in a war that you now know you can never win. The choice is yours. And so is the responsibility.

Platform power is crushing the web, warns Berners-Lee

Click here to access article by Natasha Lomas from TechCrunch. (Edited for clarity at 5:36 PM Seattle time.)

Internet techies understand the technical aspects of the internet, but they flunk out when it comes to the political aspects of social systems. In this article Berners-Lee shows his social system ignorance by naive statements such as these: 

• ... Berners-Lee argues that letting commercial entities pull levers to try to fix such a wide-ranging problem is a bad idea — arguing that any fixes companies come up with will inexorably be restrained by their profit-maximizing context and also that they amount to another unilateral impact on users. 

•  “Companies are aware of the problems and are making efforts to fix them — with each change they make affecting millions of people,” he writes now. “The responsibility — and sometimes burden — of making these decisions falls on companies that have been built to maximise profit more than to maximise social good. A legal or regulatory framework that accounts for social objectives may help ease those tensions.” 

In another article by Andrew Keen entitled "'Facebook co-founder says its rise reveals the fault lines destroying the 'American Dream'" we find a report about Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook along with Zuckerberg, that reveals Hughes' naive and ignorant beliefs about capitalism.

It's not "platform power" that is killing the web, it is ruling class power using the system of capitalism that is not only crushing the internet, but all institutions of society for the benefit of this tiny class. Apparently Oxford and Harvard, both top capitalist ruling class educational institutions where Berners-Lee and Hughes studied, failed to teach them about how the capitalist system works: how the magic of the "invisible hand" and the sanctity of private (economic) property, the foundations of capitalism, result in concentrated wealth which feeds the addiction to power that humans are so vulnerable to, and which, in turn, results in ruling class exploitation over the other social classes, class war, extreme inequality, destructive wars between capitalist nations, etc.

The (Largely Unrecognized) US Occupation of Syria

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from his blog, What's Left. 

I regard Gowans as a top geopolitical analyst and truth-teller. Reading his articles is like taking a powerful antidote to destroy all the lies and propaganda inflicted on us by our masters in the ruling capitalist class.

Atop multiple indignities and affronts to liberty and democracy visited upon the Arab world by the West, including the plunder of Palestine by European settlers and the political oppression of Arabs by a retinue of military dictators, monarchs, emirs and sultans who rule largely at the pleasure of Washington and on its behalf, now arrives the latest US transgression on the ideals of sovereignty, independence, and the equality of nations: marauders in Washington have pilfered part of the territory of one of the last bastions of Arab independence—Syria. Indeed, Washington now controls “about one-third of the country including most of its oil wealth”, [1] has no intention of returning it to its rightful owners, has planned for an indefinite military occupation of eastern Syria, and is creating a new Israel, which is to say, an new imperialist outpost in the middle of the Arab world, to be governed by Kurdish proxies backed by US firepower. [2] The crime has been carried out openly, and yet has hardly been noticed or remarked upon.

 Here are the facts:

A capitalist society

by cartoonist "Mr. Fish", aka Dwayne Booth.

The CIA Democrats -- Parts 2 and 3

by Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site. 

Part 2: 

... the number of candidates who openly proclaim their role in the CIA or military intelligence. In years past, such activities would be considered confidential, if not scandalous for a figure seeking public office. Not only would the candidates want to disguise their connections to the spy apparatus, the CIA itself would insist on it, particularly for those who worked in operations rather than analysis, since exposure, even long after leaving the agency, could be portrayed as compromising “sources and methods.”

Part 3:

There is growing popular hostility to the Trump administration [among the general population], but within the political straitjacket of the two-party system, it is trapped without any genuine outlet. In November 2016, faced with the choice of equally repugnant ruling class figures—Hillary Clinton, the longtime stooge of Wall Street and the Pentagon, and Donald Trump, the corrupt billionaire from the financial underworld of real estate swindling and casino gambling—millions refused to vote. But disappointment and anger over the bankrupt, right-wing policies of the Obama administration led a sufficient number of working people to vote for Trump, particularly in devastated industrial states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, that he could eke out an Electoral College victory despite losing the popular vote. [my clarification]

.... In a sense, the Democratic Party’s promotion of a large number of military-intelligence candidates for competitive districts represents an insurance policy for the US ruling elite. In the event of a major swing to the Democrats, the House of Representatives will receive an influx of new members drawn primarily from the national security apparatus, trusted servants of American imperialism. 

Make-Believe America: Why the US Unemployment Rate Doesn’t Indicate Economic Recovery

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from Foreign Policy Journal. 

The former Assistant Secretary of Treasury under the Reagan administration points to another lie spread by the current capitalist ruling class.

Today the labor force participation rate is the lowest since February 1978, reversing all the gains of the Reagan years, and the Federal Reserve has used an increase in consumer debt to fill in for the missing growth in consumer income for so long that consumers have no more room to take on more debt. [my emphasis]

Roberts might be forgiven for indulging in a bit of braggadocio. As you can see, the participation rate under the Reagan administration was not much higher than it is now, and it increased under subsequent administrations. In addition, one must not forget that the government under each administration provides little employment for workers except in the military. The Reagan administration brought in the neoconservatives and the neoliberals who promoted an aggressive foreign policy and the elimination of borders that were impediments to their profits. It just took them about 15 years to implement their policies. 

This change was brought about by the ruling capitalist class, not by administrations who are the servants of the ruling class. However, Roberts does reveal another lie of this ruling class to hide their attack on American workers in pursuit of cheap labor elsewhere in the world. And he makes another good point: the fact that ordinary Americans are maxed-out in debt is a growing threat to (the capitalist organization of) the economy.

The latest false-flag attack against Russia?

These two articles point to suspicious clues that, indeed, this incident in Britain was the latest example of a false-flag incident to hoodwink people into hating Russia, supporting the armaments industry, and likely a propaganda campaign to prepare ordinary people for a war against Russia.

• The Skripal Incident-Another Anti-Russian Provocation by Christopher Black, an international criminal lawyer from Canada, posted on New Eastern Outlook.

• Poisioned British-Russian Double-Agent Has Links To Clinton Campaign by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

Stop Sessta and Fosta

Click here to access article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The people at this foundation are good, sincere people who naively believe that the political organs of capitalist rule serve ordinary people. They absolutely do not! However, if you have an extra $10,000 laying around, promise your Congress representatives that you will donate to his/her campaign if he/she will oppose these bills.

The CIA Democrats [Part 1]

Click here to access article by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site.

According to Martin in part one of a series of three, it looks like the ruling capitalist class is packing one of its two political parties, the Democratic Party, with "intelligence" operatives and military personnel as candidates for the next House of Representatives 2018 election to insure that the US government follows their imperial agenda. Isn't (fake) "democracy" wonderful?!

The New Blacklist

Click here to access article by Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone.

Even intelligent and moral liberals like Taibbi are becoming upset over the insanity of the Russiagate events which, as he argues, are designed to "become a way of targeting all dissent".

From Trump to Bernie Sanders to Brexit to Catalonia, voter repudiation of the status quo was the story of the day. The sense of panic among political elites was palpable. The possibility that voters might decide to break up the EU, or put a Trump, Corbyn, or Sanders into power, led to a spate of "Do we have too much democracy?" essays by prominent think tankers and national press figures.

Two years later, the narrative has completely shifted. By an extraordinary coincidence, virtually all the "anti-system" movements and candidates that so terrified the political establishment two years ago have since been identified as covert or overt Russian destabilization initiatives, puppeteered from afar by the diabolical anti-Western dictator, Vladimir von Putin-Evil.

Recommended articles for 3/7/2018

• Tell Me More About How Google Isn’t Part Of The Government And Can Therefore Censor Whoever It Wants? by Caitlin Johnstone from The Greanville Post. The author explains how the ruling class does an end run around the Constitution by outsourcing much of its work to corporations. She explains how some major corporations are so integrated into the government, which constitutes fascism, that they are virtually one and the same. 

• Take a look around. This is what annexation looks like by Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man from +972 Magazine. The author describes how the Israelis are annexing the Palestinian territory one small step at a time.

The Weaponization of Social Media

Click here if you wish to access the 15:57m video (or podcast and transcript), that is provided below, directly from James Corbett's website. This is a best post.

Now openly admitted, governments and militaries around the world employ armies of keyboard warriors to spread propaganda and disrupt their online opposition. Their goal? To shape public discourse around global events in a way favourable to their standing military and geopolitical objectives. Their method? The Weaponization of Social Media. This is The Corbett Report.

In the past capitalist ruling classes initially were largely identified with nations which were under their control. Although national constitutions often used extravagant language about "democracy" and serving the people, in reality these ruling classes created governments to promote their interests and to moderate various capitalist factions that would occasionally come into conflict. These capitalists frequently adopted the corporate form that functioned largely within nations. 

However, beginning in the 1980s largely due to the developments in technology, transnational capitalists and their corporations became a dominate faction in Western nations, particularly in the nations that comprised the US-led Empire. These new capitalists promoted an ideology called neoliberalism ("neo" plus the classic meaning of "liberalism") that sought to eliminate trade barriers such as tariffs that interfered with their profits. They have used this transnational Empire to promote their interests of profits and power, much like their national predecessors did, but with a more aggressive use of subversive organizations such as the CIA and the use (or the threat) of their Empire's military forces.

In this video Corbett brings us up to date by revealing the ruling class of the Empire's use of internet technology to manage the views of the general public to be consistent with their global interests. (You may need to wait a few more seconds for this video to upload on your device.)



(For a very good, although very naive, explanation of only one of the tools, algorithms, that social media corporation use, listen to this 30:38m podcast from Mozilla Corporation.)

Fake History. How The Money Power Controls Our Future By Controlling Our Past

Click here to access article by Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty from Information Clearing House. 

These British authors and researchers of real history describe the methods of the capitalist ruling class, who they name as the "Money Power" or "elites", to alter history to support their interests of profit and power, and to discourage any real understanding of history by ordinary people. However, it must be understood that the ruling class insures that all institutions (media, entertainment, education, etc) support their interests. That's precisely why people, who are aware, call them the "ruling class".

To maintain control and stem dissent, the ruling elites maliciously misrepresent and question the integrity of alternative media and non-corporate news sources which broadcast genuine news, and the honest revisionist historians who relate historical truths. George Orwell suggested in his ‘war is peace’, ‘freedom is slavery’, ‘ignorance is strength’ thesis that the masses fall for the ruling power’s lies because their critical thinking has been so repressed they will believe any absurdity in contradiction of the plain facts.