A truly historical month for the future of our planet

Click here to access article by "The Saker" (Andrei Raevsky) from his blog A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. 

We are fortunate to have our own Russian expert (I'm convinced that he is a descendant of White Russians) living on our shores and interpreting Russia for us.

In this article the author leads us into what looks like a descent into a war between the "Anglo-Zionists" (essentially the US-led Empire) and Russia. However, the meaning of his last clause completely eludes me.

... the fact that today Trump replaced McMaster with a warmongering psychopath like John Bolton is a clear sign that the Neocons are in charge in the USA and that the Axis of Kindness is about to get a heck of a lot “kinder”.

I am mainly posting this article to ask my readers if you can explain what he meant by writing "the Axis of Kindness is about to get a heck of a lot 'kinder'". Sarcasm? I don't remember reading any references to "Axis of Kindness" before. If it's sarcasm, the author seems to join several others into concluding that a war with Russia is inevitable. If so, I think such an attitude is beyond cynicism.

Then They Came for the Globalists

Click here to access article by CJ Hopkins from CounterPunch. 

Hopkins scores a bullseye with this satire on the neoconservative (transnational) section of the ruling capitalist class which have been on a rampage against the neo-nationalist capitalists and people like Hopkins who use words such as "globalist". Such people are "Nazis" and their worst crime of all was duping ordinary Americans to reject their candidate, Hillary Clinton, in 2016. Hopkins explains what this is all about.

Seriously, though, all satire aside, this stigmatization of terms like “globalist,” “globalism,” and “global capitalism” is a key component of The War on Dissent which the global capitalist ruling classes have been waging against a broad assortment of insurgent elements for the last eighteen months. It isn’t just a question of delegitimizing dissidents by smearing them as anti-Semites, Russian agents, and conspiracy theorists. The goal is also to conceal the essential nature of the conflict itself.

The neoconservative solution?

So what the global capitalist ruling classes have to do is … well, they have to lie. They have to disseminate a different narrative, a narrative that has nothing to do with the hegemony of global capitalism, the dissolution of national sovereignty, and the privatization of virtually everything. Because people aren’t total morons, this narrative needs to bear some resemblance to the actual conflict taking place. So, all right, a little rebranding is in order. Global neoliberalism becomes “Western democracy,” neo-nationalism becomes “Nazism,” and Vladimir Putin becomes Adolf Hitler.

Presto! Now things are nice and simple!

Unfortunately, this contest between neo-national capitalists and transnational capitalists (neoliberalism) is distracting attention from the anti-social nature of capitalism itself. Sooner or later capitalists were going to turn into transnational capitalists simply because the latter find national boundaries too restrictive, that is, they are no longer able satisfy their addictions to wealth and power within national boundaries. (Hint: The only real solution is to abolish the addictive system of capitalism so that ordinary people can create systems that guarantee equality, thereby preventing this drug-addicted ruling class from putting an end to all of us.)

Google sets up “news initiative” to censor political opposition and promote mainstream media

Click here to access article by Andre Damon from World Socialist Web Site.

The campaign for Internet censorship has been spearheaded by the major media outlets, including the Times and the Post, who have seen their subscription base eroded by the growth of oppositional news outlets and “citizen journalism.” By working with the technology giants and intelligence agencies to censor smaller news outlets, the media giants hope to regain the monopoly over the distribution of news they held before the rise of the Internet.

In April of last year, Google announced measures to promote “authoritative content” over “alternative viewpoints,” which led search traffic to left-wing, antiwar, and socialist web sites to plunge by over 50 percent.

I can't put a percentage on this effort against my own website, but the "hits" that I currently receive are substantially down from a year ago when they were accelerating at a rapid pace.

Is the North Korea Deal a Stalking Horse for Trump’s Mid-East Makeover?

Click here to access article by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

I think that Crooke in this article very astutely develops an argument that there is a new version of the Trump administration, which is compatible with the Zionist-laced neoconservative branch of the Deep State, and leading the US down a very dangerous path. 

The main components of his analysis are "the Art of the Deal" and a Zionist paper that ties North Korean's nuclear program with Iran's missile technology that forms a foundation for a very risky strategy that is being pursued by the Trump administration. Crooke thinks that this is a very high risk strategy because these components together with the recent changes in his administration "suggest that we are heading for war with Iran and Russia".

Christopher's recommended articles for 3/20/2018

• Teachers in Jersey City begin strike as demands for walkouts expand across the US from World Socialist Web Site. Good current example of how the unions serve the ruling class.

• Growing Apart: A Political History of American Inequality by Colin Gordon from Inequality.

Evolutionary Dead-Ends

Click here to access article by "xraymike79" from Collapse of Industrial Civilization. (Once again, I thank Christopher, an engaged activist in northwestern Oregon, for alerting me to this article.)

While the Earth is literally burning up, while the oceans increase their acidification, while numbers of wildlife are disappearing, etc, the thoroughly addicted (to profits and power) capitalist ruling classes and their dumbed-down supporters continue to play showing little concern about the future. The author points to these contradictions among a number of others.

Have things improved since I wrote my last essay a year ago for this blog? Have we miraculously transformed our entire energy system into one that does not poison and degrade the natural world? Have we slowed the onslaught of plastic pollution choking the planet’s rivers, lakes, and oceans? Have we done anything meaningful to halt the deterioration of the planet’s biodiversity toward mass extinction? Has this global, hi-tech civilization done anything significant to avert its own demise?

Despite a constant flow of warnings from the scientific community and even a letter signed by more than 20,000 scientists, the simple answer is no.  [my formatting]

Police State Rising: Partisan Politics Wielded to Ensure Our Oppression

Click here if you wish to directly access from YouTube the nearly 3 hour video which features Debbie Lusignan on her Sane Progressive channel discussing many topics related to the title.

I had doubts about listening to this when I have so many important tasks in front of me, but I decided to listen to the video as a background while I do the tasks. However, this plan was put aside after I listened to the first 20 minutes. Then I had to view and listen to her video directly from my desk's computer. I was so impressed about her breadth of knowledge about fake news, PSYOPs, even gatekeeping that seems to be infecting people in alternative media that I have decided that she is one of my well-informed, prime truth-tellers along with Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, Stephen Gowans, and a few others. I now feel that the long video was well worth my time to view/listen to it. 

She stumbles a bit on the various ideologies and at one point seems to imply that only a regulated capitalism is possible, and I didn't hear her say that any one course was possible to overcome the totally corrupted, criminal system of capitalism that we have today. She does urge us to try to talk to people about what is going on according to her understanding of it (which I think is completely accurate).

A very long discussion that covers my current mindset about the state of the world including psych ops, political division, how the alternative media is in the process of being coopted....I know its lengthy, but it is a discussion with our core community and it is meant as such. Thank you. Please go to my our videos on youtube and Bitchute to see the documentation of what I am talking about in the video descriptions of each of those topic videos. Most of my Florida Vegas stuff is on Bitchute HERE: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/sane...

Triggering War. A Manufactured “Catalytic Event” Which Will Initiate An All Out War? Are We Going to Let this Happen Again?

Click here to access article by Prof. Graeme McQueen from Global Research. 

McQueen has extensively researched the subject of managed and manufactured triggers of past wars, which he shares with us, and reaches the following conclusion:

We would do well to remember that the on-going production of managed and manufactured war triggers takes great resources and cannot forever remain leak-proof. It carries serious risks for war planners. The successful and definitive exposure of even one of these frauds before the people of the world could affect the balance of power overnight.

Our task is clear. We must mobilize both our investigative resources and our communication resources to nullify the efforts of those who specialize in the construction and encouragement of war triggers and who wish to keep the war system robust. We lost over 100 million people to war in the 20th century. Are we really going to let this happen again?

Books—The Doomsday Machine – Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Daniel Ellsberg [a must read]

Click here to access article by Jim Miles, a Canadian educator, posted on The Greanville Post.

I am close to the generation of Jim Miles and thus share his concerns about a nuclear winter and the future of the "western world" (the US-led Empire). This piece is divided into two parts: 1) the impact the book by Ellsberg had on Miles, and 2) "Final Thoughts" which he writes more generally on the implications of the geopolitical scene we are witnessing today. 

The dominant factor in all this is the U.S. geopolitical view of global domination – hegemony – under the guise of a neoliberal economic outlook and a neoconservative political perspective. It is a society based on consumer consumption promoted through a lifetime of advertising propaganda in the material sense, the pretentious and unrealistic “rugged individualism” of Reagan and Rand, and in the emotive ideas of being the world’s indispensable nation. To support the material side, the corporate world – ranging from the military industries, the financial corporations, through the large media outlets – supports the ongoing wars and subversions around the world in order to harvest the resources and use the cheap labour required to keep the domestic economy going.

This is aided and abetted by their many sycophantic allies [the trans-national capitalists of the US-led Empire].

Trump Wants Her Running CIA, Germany Wants Her Arrested

Click here if you wish to directly access the following 7:05m video by Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks from YouTube. (I thank Christopher in northwestern Oregon for alerting me to this post.) (Minor editing was done to clarify my views at 9:46 AM Seattle time on 3/19/2018.)

Uygur points out the contradiction between the "rule of law" and Trump's appointment of Gina Haspel to head the CIA. This is a contradiction that is so widely misunderstood by ordinary Americans because they have been led to believe not only in the "rule of law" which applies to everyone, but in other mythologies spread by the ruling class who control the institutions of education, media, entertainment, etc: that we live in a country ruled by a democratic system, a fair economic system where anyone can achieve anything if they work hard enough, and our their government seeks only humanitarian objectives in their foreign policies. (You may need to wait a few more seconds for the following video to upload on your device.)



Uygur, like others, appears shocked by Trump's CIA appointment because he, like they, has been so thoroughly indoctrinated in these mythologies. What they fail to understand is reality. 

The reality is that our nation is governed by a capitalist ruling class who have constructed a number of fairy tales to secure some form of legitimacy for their tiny class to rule over the larger society. These fairy tales take an enormous and very expensive effort by the capitalist ruling class to ensure that most Americans believe them. During the past decades the contrast between reality of their actions (such as this appointment to the CIA) and these fairy tales have become especially dramatic, and the lies their media have spread have become more and more outrageous. However, most Americans have been so thoroughly conditioned to obey authorities and to seek individual solutions to their problems that it is questionable that they will ever recognize the need to organize a revolution before some catastrophic event occurs.

Uygur entertains the fantasy of her being arrested if she steps foot in Europe. Nonsense! The European governments have been so thoroughly brought under the control of their own ruling capitalist classes who are allied with, and take orders from, their Anglo-American friends that they will quietly dismiss any such notions to arrest Gina Haspel.

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: