Surviving Capitalism (Not)

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, January 5, 2019

Why One Should Distrust the News [news from media corporations]

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

Zuesse starts out to report on the reporting inaccuracies of major media corporations which is well known to anyone on the left, but then reveals what I have witnessed in the past several years: that the CIA has been posting pseudo-researched articles on Wikipedia, one of the foundation sites of alternative media.

As I understand Wikipedia's policies, anyone can do an entry if its factual material is backed by links to documentation. Zuesse confirms my suspicions that Wikipedia will accept entries if it uses documentation that are faulty--and there is now an abundance of deceptive information spread by corporate media. Knowing what I know about the CIA related to their infiltration of media corporations, I have long wondered when they would get around to posting fake or heavily biased entries on Wikipedia's website. Zuesse cites some dramatic examples of this. To be sure, the overwhelming number of entries are still based on solid research, but one must be alert to this growing trend.

Friday, January 4, 2019

Imperialism Abhors a Void: Guest: Sarah Abed

Click here to access an audio 31:12m audio interview featuring an interview with now Canadian Sarah Abed conducted by Cindy Sheehan from Sheehan's website.

This week, to end the year, Cindy chats with Syrian-born, political analyst and author, Sarah Abed about Trump's recent announcement of US troop withdrawal from Syria. As noted in the interview, the US was an uninvited participant anyway that has sided with the terrorists against the sovereign government of Syria. The Democrat-liberal reaction to Trump's announcement was also very interesting.

Bernie’s Surprising Response To Mail Bomb Threat

I post this for your entertainment. One must strive to keep a sense of humor about things, especially while waiting to join the revolution. Whoever is impersonating Sen. Bernie Sanders is unbelievably perfect. By the way, Jimmy Dore does live performances; and to find out about this, you should access his website.

Society Is Made Of Narrative

Click here to access article by Caitlin Johnstone from Free21.

... it’s psychopathic oligarchs who are keeping us asleep in the Matrix. And instead of code, it’s narrative.

Society is made of narrative like the Matrix is made of code. Identity, language, etiquette, social roles, opinions, ideology, religion, ethnicity, philosophy, agendas, rules, laws, money, economics, jobs, hierarchies, politics, government, they’re all purely mental constructs which exist nowhere outside of the mental noises in our heads.

Thursday, January 3, 2019

The Gathering Climate Storm and the Media Cover-up

Click here to access article by Dr. Andrew Glikson from Global Research.

With the exception of the few who comprehend the nature of a Faustian Bargain[1], some billionaires, captains of industry and their political and media mouthpieces are driving humanity toward self-destruction through the two biggest enterprises on Earth, the fossil fuel industry, which is devastating the Earth atmosphere, and the industrial-military machine leading toward nuclear war. The rest of the world is dragged subconsciously, induced by bread and circuses.

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Native Americans & The New Confusion in US Politics

Click here to access article by Caleb Maupin from New Eastern Outlook.

He clears up most of the confusion about the genocide that has been practiced on Native Americans throughout the history of the European conquest of the North American continent. Because I was running out of time and energy, I mostly scanned this piece which I found to be excellent. I only had one objection which was in reference to President Trump when the author wrote the following:

... in the age of Trump, the terms of discourse have shifted once again.

This is not "the age of Trump". Such a designation puts far too much significance of the Trump presidency. Trump was only elected because Americans did not trust Hillary Clinton. Our masters selected Trump to run against her because they surely thought that Americans would vote for her as the lesser evil. Well, I guess they thought Trump was the "lesser evil", and maybe they were right.

Instead, I would put it as "the Age of Post 9/11" which injects far more meaning to our age. So much has changed in the USA, and I am only beginning to be aware of it. Certainly we lost the anti-war movement, but also there has been a change in the personalities of most Americans. It seems to me that they, for the most part, have become more cruel and intolerant of others, more militaristic, and resist and resent any questioning of authority; and all of this is covered over by a veneer of politeness and a Pollyanna attitude.

Common Schools and the Nationalistic Aims of Public Education in the U.S.

Click here to access article by Tim Scott from Dissident Voice.

This knowledgeable author regarding the US history of education illustrates how a ruling class, based on a system that delivers them power, has exercised overwhelming influence over our education. This is a corollary of a general rule that states that a ruling class will exercise control over every institution of their societies in order to insure their rule and the virtues of the system that delivers them power. He carefully explains the development of education in the USA which reflected the influence of the growing power of the US capitalist class.

In the U.S., a state supported mass educational system was constructed as a means to transform white settler-colonists into citizens (yet restricting suffrage rights of white women) based on the ideological and legal dictates of white supremacy, capitalism, heteropatriarchy and Christian doctrine. To safeguard these undemocratic structures, citizenship in the U.S. was attached to a mythical belief that all citizens are endowed with a legal right of parity of participation in most aspects of political, economic and civic life. Foundationally, this duplicitous project required the construction of a uniform and standardized system of schooling in order to produce a common fidelity to the nationalistic aims of the opulent white elite.

Yet our masters realized that real education could also threaten their rule. To prevent this from happening they loaded their curricula with the "nationalistic aim of shaping future workers, whether 'native or foreign born, rural or urban' into a God fearing, capable and loyal industrial citizenry". In other words, they loaded the curricula of US education with self-serving propaganda. The author explains:

Intent on creating a common culture within the republic, many members of this elite class advocated for common schools as an efficient means to provide a “moral education” for future generations of the labor force in order to instill “character, discipline, virtue, and good habits.” Basic literacy skills fit into this plan, yet “analytical ability” and “knowledge of the world” did not. This righteous calling required an autocratic apparatus, one that could pacify and instill loyalty in its subjects while disciplining their minds and controlling their bodies. It also had to be vested in, and capable of, executing social and cultural reproduction. Common schools were set up to become that instrument: a compulsory mass education system with the nationalistic aim of shaping future workers, whether “native or foreign born, rural or urban” into a God fearing, capable and loyal industrial citizenry. [my emphasis]

Ten Lessons from the Yellow Vests

Click here to access article by Étienne Dolet from It’s Going Down. (At 10:50 AM CT, I added the last paragraph to my commentary for greater clarity of my views.)

The author presents some excellent lessons to be learned from experiences of past anti-capitalist movements. We must study the history of each movement to build on their successes and to eliminate their weaknesses, or we will go down with the capitalist ruling classes in their final acts of self destruction.

I especially liked this passage that emphasized the need to build networks and organization based on bottom-up principles:

... dire need to continue to develop networks of alternative media that provide a bottom-up account of radical social movements. Sites like Révolution Permanente, Wikipedia, and Mediapart are providing some of the more reliable coverage in French, along with Enough Is Enough, CrimethInc., and IGD in English. But these platforms could have greater visibility and support, and be part of a larger network of resources to help educate and agitate for revolutionary social transformation. They are an essential part of the anti-capitalist toolkit, and we need to continue to build autonomous but federated activist media platforms that can inform the public by developing the counter-narratives necessary for the coordination of mass revolutionary movements.

On the other hand, I haven't had much sympathy for anarchists. I think too many of their actions have been informed by a profound lack of historical information. From my experience, the average anarchist suffers from myopia, that is, they can only see in what is in front of them, or their immediate experience of repression. They lack years of study of authentic material that might give them insights on battling the far more sophisticated ruling classes. Thus, they are often deceived and led down paths that accomplish nothing constructive.

A recent post from this website entitled "The Threat to Rojava: An Anarchist in Syria Speaks on the Real Meaning of Trump’s Withdrawal" offers an illustration of this. The author(s) is/are much too close to the Kurds to maintain any objectivity, and his/her/their lack of understanding of the geopolitics of the region also permeates this perspective. The author/authors can only see what is in front of him/her/them.

An effective revolutionary movement must understand what they are doing because the ruling capitalist classes have abundant resources and highly skilled upper-middle-class people, who they have pampered and co-opted, to mislead them down dead-end paths of activity. We must do our political homework to be effective! We must build our own organizations of independent journalists and educators, which are always informed by bottom-up organizing principles, to help us understand what is really going on in the world, and we must support and defend these journalists (Julian Assange is a prime example) and educators from persecution from capitalist authorities.

A sound revolutionary movement will have successes, and these successes will lead to other successful outcomes. You can't expect comfortable, highly educated, upper-middle-class people to abandon their advantages without some promise of success.

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Why are Leftists cheering the potential demise of Rojava’s socialist experiment?

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

Dolack chastises US lefts for being supportive of the withdrawal of occupying US troops in Syria:

... the bizarre and unprecedented case — even if accidental — of an alternative society partly reliant on a U.S. military presence seems to have confused much of the U.S. Left. Or is it simply a matter of indifference to a socialist experiment that puts the liberation of women at the center? Or is it because the dominant political inspiration comes more from anarchism than orthodox Marxism?

Most of the commentary I have seen from U.S. Leftists simply declares “we never support U.S. troops” and that’s the end of it ....

First, notice that he exhibits symptoms of identity politics by asking rhetorically "is it simply a matter of indifference to a socialist experiment that puts the liberation of women at the center?"

Dolack then thinks he bolsters his argument by raising the issue of support of the Allied fight against the fascism of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. I notice that he does not raise any questions about the prelude to WWII when the Spanish Republic was torn to pieces by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy in the Spanish Civil War while the Allies stood by in "neutrality". The Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party was absolutely right when they argued that WWII "was an inter-imperialist dispute". Perhaps Dolack's position is that fascism was defeated in WWII. But, what do we have today under the domination of the US-Anglo Empire but fascism?

The Kurds in this region were very shortsightedly pragmatic in their pursuit of autonomy. They paved the way for US troops and numerous bases in Syrian territory under their control in order to pursue their own Kurdish agendas: the Kurd's version of über alles that included dominance over all the Syrians living in the areas under their military control. Meanwhile, they enabled the USA in their open agenda to remove Assad from power, and caused widespread devastation with millions fleeing for their lives to Europe.

The Kurds and their Western allies like David Gruber were experts at depicting these Kurds as putting "the liberation of women at the center"--another fake use of identity politics. Many independent journalists put the lie to such deceptions; see this, this, and this. Whenever people say one thing and do another, they are attempting to deceive you. Always believe what they do to indicate what they really believe.

In this article Dolack seems to offer an excellent illustration of a comfortable, highly educated, upper-middle-class person living in the USA who has swallowed much of corporate media propaganda and the indoctrination he received in long years of schooling. This experience likely prepared him to believe the revolutionary ideology of the Syrian Kurds that a few "leftists" have spread throughout left periodicals and websites.

Sunday, December 30, 2018

Retailers Rejecting Customers' Cash As More Ban Paper Money

Click here to access article by Tyler Durden from his blog ZeroHedge.

This is the first indication I've seen in the USA that the ruling capitalist class is beginning the process of converting to digital money which they control. They will know when, where, and what you spend money on. But far worse, the next time there is a financial bust by major banks, our masters will be able to simply take money out of your digital accounts to bailout the banks.

... as the WSJ report points out, consider that on every US bill the following words appear: “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” However, currently there's no federal law stipulating that business have to accept cash when offered, though likely no body of lawmakers prior to the modern advent of payment by plastic could have ever envisioned such a dilemma as cash being banned by stores.

While it could be true that "no body of lawmakers" could see this happening, it is very likely that our masters in the Deep State did. There has already been a test run in India where the government was induced by various agents of the US Empire to convert to the digitalization of money.

The US war on China’s economic model

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

Gowans is a long time Canadian political analyst on the left. I regard him as one of a handful of top political analysts in the world.

Stephen Gowns

As far as I know, his first post was on Canadian Content in January of 2001. Later he founded his own blog at What's Left in 2007. His articles have appeared in numerous online websites. A good place to access his political views is in a November 2004 post from San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia entitled "War, Capitalism & Elections: An Interview w Stephen Gowans – Canadian Political Essayist".

In today's post he explains why the US capitalist ruling class has become so concerned about China's technological and economic progress to the point that they are now engaging in an economic war, and even considering a military war, against China. This startling turn of events was historically initiated by Deng Xiaoping in his leadership of the Chinese government back in the late 1970s. His guiding strategy is summed up by his core theme of "win-win strategy" to resolve conflicts. As I wrote in a commentary in July of 2016:

For background material on contemporary China I recommend reading the Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (vol. 3). Ever since 1978 when Deng Xiaoping took control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China has launched a broad policy in pursuit of economic development. To accomplish this they opened China to the outside world, particularly to Western capitalist countries, under a "one country, two systems" policy. This policy combines significant (but not exclusive) capitalist development of their economy which is under the control and direction of the CCP. This policy induced, or one might argue "seduced", Western corporations to transfer a lot of their operations to China by offering cheap labor and other inducements as a method to rapidly obtain the high technology of the West while improving China's economy, while for Western corporations the prospects of increased profits could not be ignored. Since then the CCP has pursued a peaceful strategy that attempts to use economic development as a method to deal with conflicts both internal to China and external in foreign relations.

Deng knew that Western capitalists were obsessed with profits ("profits über alles"). He lured Western capitalists to set up operations in China with the promise to make them rich with China's low-cost labor supply. Sure enough, companies like Apple abandoned their American workers and moved their plants to China and other countries to reduce their labor costs and to become rich. So, the West's capitalists became rich but also China acquired the advanced technology of the West ("win-win"). Gowans goes into details of how the Chinese accomplished this feat, and became a major economic force in so little time.

Friday, December 28, 2018

The Global Power Elite: A Transnational Class

Click here if you wish to directly access this 13:10 video from The Real News Network in which author and researcher Peter Phillips is interviewed.

The author of a new book entitled Giants: The Global Power Elite has obviously done his "homework" and knows what he is talking about. He reports about how much of the world is directed by three private organizations: the Group of Thirty, the Trilateral Commission, and the Atlantic Council. The only thing that he not directly state, but implied with the fact that these organizations are based in the USA, is that they are the "hidden hand" behind the US-led Empire which has its own army called NATO and media (MSM). The Deep State refers to the "hidden hand" behind the US government. Thus, the Deep State exercises considerable influence over these three organizations. This is what George H.W. Bush was talking about when he referred to a "new world order" in 1991 during a speech when he also ordered an attack on Iraq. He meant a world under the control of the US Empire and the transnational capitalists.

This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made great progress in ending the long era of conflict and cold war. We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.

When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.'s founders.

You simply must watch this video, after which you may want to buy the book.

Yellow vests and government disinformation —list of demands

Click here to access article from "THE BLOG OF GABAS / MEDIAPART. FR" and translated by Patrice Greanville from his website.

In this latest news of the "yellow vests" they are now making demands on the French government. We now see our capitalist masters imposing austerity on working people in the various countries of the US-led Empire. They like to engage in economic warfare against other countries they don't like, but this is economic warfare directed against their own working people, and the people, particularly the French working people, have had enough.

There are some indications that the protest is spreading to other countries as reported by RT and George Galloway, a British member of parliament, in the following video:

Syria Sitrep - Army To Regain Northeastern Territory - Political Isolation Ends

Click here to access article by Bernhard from his blog Moon of Alabama. (Updated at 11:48 AM CT.)

I don't know where this German blogger gets his information from, but his information is very reliable. In this post he gives so much information regarding the fluid situation in Syria and in the area, and this information corresponds with other Middle East sources: Al-Masdar News, Al Jazeera, and Press TV.

I previously posted some other source in which it was reported that Trump was withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, but since I've learned that he is withdrawing only some of them, although a substantial number of them.

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Do Russiagate Promoters Prefer Impeaching Trump to Avoiding War With Russia?

Click here to access two audios posted on The Nation featuring Stephen F. Cohen, a longtime expert on Soviet-Russian affairs, together with John Batchelor on his radio show. The article below the two audio tapes summarize his views which he goes into detail on the show. I strongly recommend that you listen to the two audio presentations to see how he builds his argument that we are in mortal danger of WWIII.

I don't subscribe to many of the views presented by Cohen, but I respect his well-informed views on Soviet Union/Russia. Where I differ is that Cohen doesn't appear to understand that the post-WWII period has seen the rise of US-led capitalist Empire which is now in its fascist stage. This means that the core leadership (the Deep State--read my commentary here) of the transnational capitalist class that runs the Empire is now using their total control of corporate media to spread pure propaganda (ex: Russiagate) to pursue their agendas.

I've been currently reading a book entitled The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton in which the author, Jefferson Morley, writes with reference to Cord Meyer who became a high level CIA agent:

In 1954, Allen Dulles persuaded him to take over the Agency's International Organizations division. In consultation with Angleton, Meyer orchestrated the Agency's covert funding of labor unions, newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and Hollywood movies.

The point being that this fascist core, being bent on world domination, were active as early as 1954 to construct their "Fourth (capitalist) Reich".

Members of the now powerful Deep State are now seeing their domination of the world severely threatened especially by the rise of Russia and China; but they are also threatened by financial crises and the unsustainability of their capitalist system due to its collision course with environmental concerns. As a result of these combined threats they are like a wounded predatory animal: they are becoming hyper-aggressive. This is what Cohen is concerned about. However, he doesn't see the history of the development of this predatory animal since WWII.

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

UK And US PSYOP Collusion [a must read!]

Click here to access article by Margaret Kimberley from the Black Agenda Report. (I can't thank an activist enough for alerting me to this article!)

For more than two years the corporate media, elite think tanks, NATO leaders, and most Democratic Party politicians have insisted that Russia interferes in American and European elections. The charge doesn’t withstand scrutiny but the lies are repeated. There is proof that surveillance state meddling in the affairs of democratic nations is real, but Russia isn’t the culprit. It is the United Kingdom and the United States who lead in skullduggery and meddling with the rights they claim to uphold.

Thanks to the Anonymous hacker community the work of the Integrity Initiative has been exposed to the public.

The Anonymous hacker community appears to be furnishing authentic information hacked from the British government front agency officially listed as a charity.

The Integrity Initiative is a British “charity” founded in 2015. Its mission is to “bring to the attention of politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North America.” That mission is suspect in and of itself, a phony trope meant to cover up its own imperialist wrong doing. The Integrity Initiative is an arm of the British government and has received more than $2 million in funding from the British Foreign Office and Defense department. It has also raised money from NATO, Facebook and rightwing foundations.

The author seems to be incredibly naive when she makes this statement:

The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC haven’t covered this story.

These major news outlets, having been infiltrated and subverted by the Deep State long ago, are in on this project. Their executives may or may not know of the details, but they are fully cooperating in the deception of the people of the US-led Empire. (See this, this, this, and this -- a number of similar posts that I've collected over the past few years have been removed from the web.) That is precisely why many journalists that formerly worked for them or similar "news and opinion" organizations have left to go independent or have joined RT.