The Return of George Orwell and Big Brother’s War: On Israel, Ukraine and Truth

Click here to access article by John Pilger from CounterPunch.

George Orwell learned his profound insights about the skullduggery of Western capitalist propaganda agents while fighting in the battlefields of Spain (Spanish Civil War) serving the cause of the newly liberated Spanish people from the threat of fascist forces gathering all across Europe who feared the threat of a great example established by freedom-loving Spanish revolutionaries. While German and Italian capitalists turned to their fascist thugs to quell the rising tide of people yearning to be free not only in Spain, but all across Europe, Anglo-American capitalist gangs, who also hated the leftist character of the new Spanish republic but with their own ambitions to plunder the world, stood by with a pretense of neutrality as fascist forces gradually crushed the International Spanish Brigades. 

Meanwhile, on the home-fronts in England and the US, the propaganda machinery worked overtime to maintain their phony neutrality. Likewise, the Soviet ruling class under Stalin's leadership initially supplied some military equipment to the newly established popular Spanish government, but their support was abandoned as they became aware of the threat to their own survival posed by the rising tide of capitalist sponsored fascist forces in Europe. It is tragically clear from more recent historical events that Orwell's warnings about ruling class propaganda were wasted on future generations. The warnings which were so dramatically described in his classic book 1984 have long since turned into prophecy.

In politics as in journalism and the arts, it seems that dissent once tolerated in the “mainstream” has regressed to a dissidence: a metaphoric underground. When I began a career in Britain’s Fleet Street in the 1960s, it was acceptable to critique western power as a rapacious force. Read James Cameron’s celebrated reports of the explosion of the Hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, the barbaric war in Korea and the American bombing of North Vietnam. Today’s grand illusion is of an information age when, in truth, we live in a media age in which incessant corporate propaganda is insidious, contagious, effective and liberal.

Spin and Self Delusion: Ignorance Is Bliss

Click here to access article by Meltem Arikan from the News Junkie Post.

I don’t understand how violence escalates in the world while thousands of people make an extraordinary effort to build peace within themselves with meditation and within the world with the power of thought or breath control. Ignorance is bliss.

While journalists are imprisoned in countries which their leaders claim to be democratically ruled, while corruption of one leader after another is revealed, and while people waste year after year of their lives in jail simply because they’ve voiced opposition, how is it that these countries’ citizens continue to choose to believe in their leaders? How can they believe that they are democratically ruled?

Prince Bandar back in the Driver’s Seat in Riyadh

Click here to access article by Wayne Madsen from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Yes, the mysterious "Bandar Bush" seems to be back at pursuing his nefarious schemes.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulazia bin Saud is the godfather behind the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), now called the «Islamic State» or «Islamic Caliphate». Without Saudi support for the most radical of the Islamist opposition forces battling Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, it is doubtful that ISIL would have ever incubated beyond a fringe group in Syria. 

Obama and the CIA—who runs Washington?

Click here to access article by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

Referring to Obama, Van Auken writes:

He has no separate interests from theirs, serving as their figurehead “commander-in-chief.” His job is not to rein in the military and the intelligence agencies, but rather to provide them with public relations services, trying to convince the American and world public that wholesale spying, drone assassinations—whose targets he helps select at the White House’s “terror Tuesdays”—and military massacres are all necessary instruments of the “war on terror,” and in harmony with democratic rights and methods of rule.

The last president that was determined to control the military-industrial-financial complex (the shadow government) was John Kennedy, and you know what happened to him and his brother. 

Chomsky, BDS And The Jewish Left Paradigm

Click here to access article by Gilad Atzmon from Veterans News Now.

Atzmon's critical review of a recent article by Noam Chomsky provides an outstanding illustration of the role of a left-wing "gatekeeper" who even went to the extent of fabricating an historical fact (I cannot excuse Chomsky on the grounds of sloppy reading of historical facts.)

In his latest article in The Nation, Noam Chomsky selectively cherry picks the facts that fit his preferred narrative, while ignoring and disguising relevant details that contradict his thesis.  One would expect an academic of Chomsky’s stature to perform at a much higher standard of intellectual integrity.

Reviewing Chomsky’s latest criticism of the BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] reveals that the MIT linguist borders on deception. It is especially fascinating to examine Chomsky’s tactics in light of the current violent events in Israel/Palestine.

Federal Reserve talks jobs, but (in)action speaks louder than words

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

Dolack addresses two issues in this latest article: inequality that appears to be forever and the Fed's creation of money as debt owed by us to the bankers and the über-rich. They have a nice name for the latter: it's called "quantitative easing" or QE.

Judge Griesa: It is just not to pay an illegitimate and immoral debt

Click here to access article by Adolfo Pérez Esquivel from the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt.

An open letter from Nobel Peace Laureate, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, to Thomas Griesa, the US judge presiding over the ‘debt trial of the century’ between Argentina and two vulture funds in New York.

Where’s the Evolution?

Click here to access article by xraymike79 from his blog Collapse of Industrial Civilization.

As cracks and holes in the Earth’s biosphere grow ever larger, the natural response of capitalist carbon man ensconced within his protective energy shell is to try to put a price tag on what is being burned, i.e. fossil fuels, rather than deal with the deeper root cause of an unsustainable economic system and way of life which demands such exorbitant consumption of resources.

Strikes by public sector workers largest in three years [Britain]

Click here to access article by Matthew Taylor and Rowena Mason from The Guardian.

Britain is to witness the biggest round of industrial action for three years as teachers and firefighters join care workers, refuse collectors, librarians and other civil servants at picket lines and rallies across the country.

Up to a million people are expected to take part in the protest on Thursday, as workers protest about the public sector pay freeze, falling living standards and pensions.

See also "#J10: the people strike back" from CounterFire (Britain). 

We need further co-ordinated strike action. But at the same time as pushing for further strikes we need to develop the alliance between unions and the majority who are under attack.

If we are divided there is a danger that the government can force through austerity despite the anger people feel. If the unions keep up the action and build stronger and stronger links with the wider public, they could be in a position to spearhead a great movement for change.

IDF's Gaza assault is to control Palestinian gas, avert Israeli energy crisis

Click here to access article by Nafeez Ahmed from The Guardian.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is clearly not all about resources. But in an age of expensive energy, competition to dominate regional fossil fuels are increasingly influencing the critical decisions that can inflame war.

Makerspaces: More Than a Fad

Click here to access article from LocalOrg.

While the business model aspect of a makerspace can be compared to a health club, the output of a makerspace is quite different. While makerspaces are meeting and workspaces where both business and socialization (and a combination of the two) can occur, they also serve as local educational institutions, SME (small and medium enterprises) incubators, skill training centers, as well as a focal point where communities can gather and collectively pool resources and pragmatically, technologically solve problems.

Here are some other illustrations of this concept:

US military studied how to influence Twitter users in Darpa-funded research

Click here to access article by Ben Quinn and James Ball from The Guardian.

“Through the program, Darpa [Pentagon's research arm] seeks to develop tools to support the efforts of human operators to counter misinformation or deception campaigns with truthful information."

However, papers leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden indicate that US and British intelligence agencies have been deeply engaged in planning ways to covertly use social media for purposes of propaganda and deception.

Although it is important for all activists to be aware of the issue of our the ruling class government's attempt to engineer favorable public reactions to their policies, it really should not be surprising. To start getting an intellectual handle on this, one needs to be aware of who is in control of the government. It's a fairly simple logical process that proceeds from the fundamental belief that today's societies are class structured with a ruling class at the top that exercises control, although variable from one society to another, over all important institutions. 

I think that there is considerable evidence that the US ruling class has excelled in this control to where it has become pervasive. That belief is founded on my nearly 60 years of adult experience both as an activist and an intellectual who has read widely about related matters. In the US I think that the process of control has advanced to a stage in which the ruling One Percent (based on private ownership of the economy) has obtained overwhelming control over all institutions of socialization and indoctrination: education, information and entertainment media, and government. Thus, nowadays when they want to advance certain ideas favorable to their interests, they use all these institutions simultaneously. There is a history behind this development because it didn't just magically appear one day.

They have attained such success over the last 100 years through their experience with manipulating public opinion to serve their interests of wealth accumulation and power. Their first experience occurred in events leading up to the entry of the US in WWI. 

Major US banks, particularly the J. P. Morgan bank, had lent enormous amounts of money to England and France to finance military expenditures in their war with Germany and Austria-Hungary which began in 1914. In fact, the "House of Morgan" was designated by both England and France as their agent in selling war bonds to American investors amounting to half a billion dollars in addition to the direct loans by the banks. Thus, the ruling US capitalist class, which had already concentrated their ownership over every important economic enterprise, had a lot of money invested (several billion dollars) or bet on England and France, the Allies, winning the war. By 1917 the war did not look good for the latter, thus the US ruling class led by major banks decided that the US would have to enter the war to insure that the Allies would win, and their debts repaid. However, there was one major problem: public opinion in the US was very much against participating in the war, and something had to be done to change that.

That "something" was a major publicity campaign. J. Pierpont Morgan and Company were not merely a leading bank in the US, they had major holdings in nearly every sector of the US economy. Collectively, all these holdings comprised what was called the "House of Morgan". Major industrial corporations such as Bethlehem Steel saw the potential for huge profits if the US entered the war. Thus, the US ruling class led by financial and industrial corporations initiated a publicity campaign to get the American public on board with their interests. 

The campaign went into high gear after the Lusitania, a luxury passenger ship, was sunk by German U-Boats because--somehow unbeknownst to passengers for some mysterious reason (a type of Gulf of Tonkin incident or 9/11?--it was carrying munitions to England as was much later revealed. Anyway, to make a long story short, the ruling class learned from their success in turning American public opinion around in support of direct US participation in this war the tremendous value of what they referred to as a "public relations". The latter developed into a major industry which has greatly expanded ever since then to what it is now: a very sophisticated and coordinated method used by some kind of directorate of the ruling class to shape US public opinion through news and entertainment media and government official announcements.

TTIP: debunking the business propaganda over investor rights

Click here to access article from Corporate Europe Observatory.

In the face of fierce public opposition to the granting of these extraordinary powers to foreign investors, business associations as well as lawyers who make money from investor-state claims have begun a misleading propaganda drive. Their strategy: to appease the public by downplaying the risks of investment arbitration and to divert attention from the fundamental problems of the system by publicly supporting the EU’s cosmetic reforms around the edges. Behind closed doors, however, they are lobbying hard to ensure that the reforms don’t go too far.

The article deconstructs ten claims used by the propaganda campaign to persuade the European public that the terms of the agreement are in the public's interest. 

Washington’s Corporate Media and the Imperial War on Korea

Click here to access article by Danny Haiphong from Black Agenda Report.

From my own experience I have found a way to distinguish factual reporting from deceptive reporting with regard to areas of the world. In areas where there are few independent journalists, one will find considerable distortion of factual material presented by mainstream media to fit with ruling class interests. This is especially true of stories reported in mainstream news about Africa (see this, this, and this) and North Korea. 

There is no limit to the slanders spewed by U.S. corporate media – from so-called journalists to filmmakers to comedians – against North Korea, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. “The racist and inaccurate discourse around the DPRK helps justify the almost daily military operations the US backs in South Korea.” The 60-year long propaganda campaign is “part and parcel of the US imperialist agenda to militarize the Asia Pacific.”

Of course, this is modified by another consideration: the extent to which the report relates to vital interests of the ruling class. The latter consideration has a major impact on whether any news coverage is provided on any given area in the world. US mainstream media coverage has become so political that almost no coverage is given to stories where US ruling class interests are unaffected. Or, when incidents that happen that are an embarrassment to this class, they may go entirely unreported (for example, see this and this).

On US TV, Israel is 'Striking Back'

Click here to access article by Peter Hart from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.

Framing Israel's actions as a form of retaliation is problematic, since the airstrikes, arrests and house raids are directed at people who had nothing to do with the murders.

A Dark Alliance: European Union Joins Forces With Wall Street

Click here to access article by Don Quijones from Wolf Street. (Formerly of Raging Bull-Shit, this is Quijones' new website home.)

I have posted a number of articles by this perceptive author on my website, but I now see evidence of some impairment of his vision in this article. Referring to the watering down water of all forms of financial regulation, he seems to have discovered a new phenomenon:

...contrary to popular wisdom, it’s not the U.S. government that is leading the charge, but rather an unholy alliance between the European Commission, Wall Street, and the City of London. 

Too often, even the most astute political observers accept the fabricated lies that the ruling One Percent must use in order to hide the realities of their class rule behind carefully constructed facades that pretend to represent the workings of "democracy" and national constructs of political institutions. Many have yet to catch up with a new world being constructed by global elites who have a global vision in which national boundaries no longer apply. The following statement in Quijones' article is an example of this type of analysis:

To its credit, the U.S. government continues to hold firm against EU pressure. U.S. treasury secretary Jack Lew has repeatedly stated that he opposed the inclusion of financial regulation in the TTIP on the grounds that “normally in a trade agreement, the pressure is to lower standards on things like [financial regulation or environmental regulation or labor rules]”. He also said that the U.S. would “not allow these agreements to serve as an opportunity to water down domestic financial regulatory standards”, or “dilute the impact of the steps that we’ve taken to safeguard the US economy.”

However, in the very next paragraph Quijones acknowledges:

However, given how often and how easily the Obama Administration has caved in to Wall Street’s demands since the financial crisis, it’s probably only a matter of time before the Commission and banking lobby groups get their way.

And, of course, his headline suggests a very different reality. 

Lew was only playing the "smoke and mirrors" game that elites must play to hide their class rule behind operations of mainstream political institutions. Sec. of the Treasury Jack Lew is a well tested and trusted member of the One Percent who always have loyal members such as Lew assume this role in order to have their hands in our national pocket (Treasury Dept).

The reality is that we now have an Empire governed by US and loyal European capitalist elites who have their own army called NATO. National boundaries are being removed by them and their representatives in secret meetings of the TTIP, TISA, and TTP. For this ruling class national boundaries are only useful in order to control the movement of workers to, and within, their Empire.

Amid Populist Surge, Hillary Clinton to Wall Street's Rescue?

Click here to access article by Jon Queally from Common Dreams.

Financial elite reportedly sees Hillary Clinton as "a solution" to those calling for stronger economic reforms and regulations

Well, selecting a candidate that looks different to suggest different policies worked in 2008, didn't it? Judging by a NY Times article endorsing her, it appears that the liberal wing of the One Percent have selected Hillary to assume this role in 2016. Of course, if we don't vote for her, arguably we will get a worse candidate from their other party. The political game that our masters like to play must be very amusing for them.  If it weren't so deadly for us, it's possible that we, too, could sit back and enjoy it like any other sport.

Kurdistan and the Caliphate

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from VoltaireNet.

In a few weeks, two entities to which few people gave a future are taking shape: Kurdistan and the Caliphate. Thierry Meyssan’s analysis indicating these two entities are being propelled by Washington is confirmed by events. He examines the latest developments.

Geoengineering SRM: Dark Clouds and Shady Solutions

Click here to access article by Jim Lee posted on Climate Viewer News.

This post contains a considerable amount of information on geoengineering methods (solar radiation management, or SRM) to cope with the growing amounts of greenhouse gases that are being spewed into the atmosphere by the growing capitalist economies and causing global warming which, it turn, is causing climate destabilization and related disasters. It appears to be a last desperate attempt by ruling capitalist classes to have growth, which their system requires, and a stable climate. The only other method involves the fantasy of fusion fuel, and it is becoming apparent that they have given up on this idea for the foreseeable future.

Geoengineering SRM is a dangerous idea. Scientists think they can mimic volcanoes’ natural process of cooling our planet by spraying sulfur into the sky using planes, drones, and floating hoses.  You cannot solve pollution with more pollution, and Geoengineering SRM proponents cannot predict nor control the weather.  After 60 years of cloud-seeding, the weather modification industry cannot accurately predict the outcomes of their “experiments” on a small scale so why would anyone believe it is possible to regulate global temperatures using weather manipulation techniques worldwide? Let us start with a video explaining exactly what SRM is.

World of Resistance Report [Part 3]: Davos Class Jittery Amid Growing Warnings of Global Unrest

Click here to access article by Andrew Gavin Marshall from Occupy.com.

Reports issued by the World Economic Forum, a major meeting of the global capitalist elites, indicate that this global ruling class is very worried about the growing inequality resulting from the operation of their system, and especially worried about the younger generation who they refer to as a "lost generation".

It’s an interesting paradox for an organization to see the greatest threat to its ideological and social power being “the future of the youth” when it has already written off the present generation as “lost.” However, this is a view shared not only by the World Economic Forum but, increasingly, by other powerful institutions creating something of an echo chamber through the mainstream media.

They have written off the "lost generation" because they are fully aware that their system cannot solve the crises that capitalism is causing: increasing costs of energy and other resources needed to fuel their growth system due to the depletion of readily and cheaply accessible resources, the destabilizing (and costly) effects on the climate caused by the use of fossil fuels, and the steadily increasing concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands. They can only respond with police state methods of surveillance and violence against dissenters. There is a lesson here for the world's 99 Percent: if we limit our resistance to traditional peaceful methods such as candlelight marches, we will inevitably lose the struggle for our very survival.  

Everything Is for the Best: The US and Egypt one year after the coup

Click here to access article by Norman Finkelstein from his blog.

While Empire propagandists make enormous efforts to cover the crimes of their friends in the Middle East, Finkelstein insists that we look at the hideous facts.

It is now a year since the coup took place, and barely a week passes without the media reporting yet another human rights atrocity committed by the Egyptian government. Still, the Obama administration, like Dr. Pangloss, optimistically maintains that Egypt is passing through a democratic transition. How does it manage to reconcile the shocking facts with its unshakeable faith? 

The "Threat" of Iran? Or the Threat of Saying "No" to Washington?

Click here to access article by SteveMC from his blog Reports from Underground.

A ruling class of an imperial nation must always convince its citizens that its aggressive actions are always legitimate. Whenever another nation stands in the way of its imperial ambitions by objecting to their actions, such nations become a target. To do this, they often portray the other nation as a threat. The author in this article explains how the Empire currently uses this ruse in the face of startlingly contradictory facts, and comes to this conclusion:

...we should look critically at the validity of any media or politicians claims in relation to the existence of an outside threat, we should understand that the US is the world’s largest and quite possible will be the only truly global, hegemonic superpower, and that a superpower of this magnitude, and power systems in general, necessitate a perceived outside threat as a means of mobilizing popular support for imperialistic military ventures, as well as to justify the containment of other powers, the domination of strategic regions, and the acquisition of resources conducive to global power and influence.

Free Is A Lie

Click here if you wish to access directly the YouTube 32:34m video presentation of a talk given by Indie Phone founder and lead designer, Aral Balkan.

Balkan argues that Google, Facebook, and other corporations are just following their business model (a capitalist plan for profitability) by offering "free" services. But he also makes clear that by offering "free services" that you are essentially a quarry that is being mined for data to be sold to whoever. It is a con (confidence trick) to obtain data from you to be sold in the data market. They have discovered that your private information is just another commodity that is highly profitable--especially with government being one of the biggest customers. 

It appears that the people at Independent Technology realize that without privacy, we do not have civil rights; and they are determined to develop "beautifully designed and easy to use free and open consumer products that empower people to own their own tools and data."

It's time for a design revolution in open technology. Companies like Google and Facebook that dominate the Internet promise us free services in exchange for the right to watch and study us; to mine and farm us. Like quarries, like livestock, we are natural resources to be exploited in a brave new digital world of corporate surveillance that threatens our most fundamental freedoms. 

There are open alternatives but they are too difficult for most of us to use.

It is time to bring design thinking to open source and build beautiful, seamless open consumer products that are easy to use and which respect our fundamental freedoms.

And Our Readers Spoke!

Click here to access article by Andre Vltchek from CounterPunch.

One month ago, I asked readers, “How should we write and fight?” in the essay bearing the same name.

I posed several questions:

“Why are the streets of New York, Washington D.C., London and Paris so orderly, so quiet?”

Are we – opposition investigative journalists, philosophers and documentary filmmakers – doing such a terrible job? Are we not providing the North American and European public with enough information, enough proof about the monstrous state of the world? Enough so they – the citizens of the Empire – finally get thoroughly pissed off, detach their backsides from their couches and chairs, and flood the capitals and business centers with their bodies, demanding change, demanding the end to atrocities that are being committed all over the world… the end of this imperialist and neo-con madness?”

In the essay I posed a set of questions: not rhetorical but real. 

And people replied.

Astroturf kingpin deploys front groups to support drilling

Click here to access article by Rob Galbraith from LittleSis. (I just discovered this website this morning and I am very impressed. The producers of the website require a free subscription which I urge all of the followers of my website/blog to do, and they invite editor-volunteers to help them produce their website. We simply must support such websites in any way we can.)

This report reveals the use of ruling class ideological networks that engage in an integrated, ideological attack on any public resistance to shale fracking.

Last week, the Salt Lake Tribune ran an op-ed entitled “‘Bean-counting bureaucrats’ at BLM are locking up Utah’s future,” advocating the opening of federally owned lands to oil and gas drilling. The column, essentially the same as an op-ed that ran a week earlier in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, relies on a report by Timothy Considine, a University of Wyoming economics professor whose work we have profiled in depth in our reporting on the “frackademia” phenomenon. That report was funded by the Interstate Policy Alliance, a project of the corporate PR firm Berman and Company which has created myriad front groups to advocate the interests of the tobacco, food, and alcohol industries and to attack unions, animal rights, and environmental regulations. ....

In their foray into the fracking debate, Berman and Company seems to have deployed a vertically integrated astroturf campaign wherein the firm funded research from a notorious pro-fracking academic through one of its fronts and then deployed another front to cite the research in various newspapers in the Rocky Mountain region. [my emphasis]

The Dogs are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan

Click here to access article by Helen Redmond from CounterFire (Britain).

The dramatic title of the article refers to an actual book title by a former journalist at The Globe and Mail, a major Canadian newspaper.

A slew of new books by an international crew of journalists are being churned out to explain the complete failure of America’s thirteen-year long, $753 billion dollar war and occupation of Afghanistan.

The vast majority of these books share a similar template and selective amnesia. These journalists believe Afghanistan was ‘the good war’, the Taliban had to be overthrown, al-Qaeda evicted, that Pakistan and poppy are intractable problems, the war was to bring democracy and President Karzai is crazy. Then, after cheerleading and providing cover for the war, occupation and troop surges, they admit that it all went horribly wrong. But after a decade of ‘missteps’ and ‘folly’, these ‘objective’ journalists declare that Nato troops must stay in Afghanistan to ‘repair and mitigate the damage’.

How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet

Click here if you wish to directly access the posting of this 8:58m video from The Club of Rome website. 

The Club of Rome originally brought the world's attention in a 1972 report entitled "Limits to Growth" the fact that we are living on a finite planet which cannot experience growth forever. It was widely criticized by left-wing intellectuals and others because of the solutions it offered largely centered on population control. 

Bearing in mind that The Club of Rome is a global ruling class organization which benefits from the system of capitalism, you will understand that their solutions avoid any discussion of the deleterious effects of their system on the planet. They are desperately worried about these effects on the system which sustains their power and wealth. Thus, they focus on other other measures to cope with the problems that their system is causing. 

Notice in this video presentation that the focus is on energy efficiency, recycling, and finding new energy resources. Regardless of their misleading solutions, their analysis of the problem--diminishing opportunities for cheap resource extraction--is accurate. 

In this Report to the Club of Rome,to be released on 12 June, Ugo Bardi delivers a sweeping history of the mining industry, and illustrates how the gigantic mining machine is now starting to show signs of difficulties. Having thoroughly plundered planet Earth we are entering a new world, says Bardi, and he draws on the world’s leading mineral experts to offer a compelling glimpse in the new world ahead.

Modern day slavery for clothing in the Western World

A 6:01m video from Truthloader.

Truthloader is a new daily YouTube show bringing investigative and citizen journalism together. We investigate the things that our audience tell us is important.

So, how is wage slavery better than classic slavery?

Capitalist indoctrination agencies in media and education would have you believe that wage slaves won their "freedom" when classic slavery was abolished. But, what kind of freedom is this if a small segment of the population owns all the tools which inventor-workers and scientific workers created in the past, and they won't let present day workers use them unless they compete to be employed by capitalists for wages in a labor market? Freedom to starve? Freedom to live under a bridge?

Think about the advantages of classic slavery for workers. If some person or corporation has purchased you in order to work on "their property", they have an investment in you and are likely to take good care of you like they do with the machinery they "own". Thus, they are likely to maintain you in good health, train you, and provide you with shelter so that they can keep exploiting the value you produce, recover their investment, and make a profit. That isn't the case with wage-slavery where they can simply and immediately replace you with someone else who is in better health and has more training purchased at their own expense.

'Buzzword List' Reveals What State Officials Can't Say About Fracking

Click here to access article by Nadia Prupis from Common Dreams.

This report by Prupis is a perfect illustration of the power of important corporations and their owners among the One Percent to control government employees whenever their interests are threatened. Contrary to what many people believe, the complete capture of government by industrial and financial corporations happened a long time ago--it happened at least by the time of the gilded age around 1900. 

Corporations were only the logical development of an ownership class who have always ruled the US since its founding. Following a mercantile and agricultural economy, in the latter half of the 19th century rapid technological advances were created by working people, but became the property of the One Percent. The latter used this technology in mines and factories to create very profitable enterprises, followed by the concentration of ownership into huge industrial and financial monopolies. This concentration of wealth and power permitted the ruling class to expand voting rights beyond only white male property owners which, in turn, strengthened the facade of "democracy" which was a core theme of their indoctrination agencies.

Opposing this logical development were farmers in the Midwest (Populist Movement) and workers in urban areas who suffered from 10-12 hour workdays, dangerous working conditions, and low pay. Farmers were increasingly oppressed by onerous interest rates on loans from banks, high prices from commercial supply companies and railroads, and low prices from milling companies--all owned by the One Percent. Labor organizing faced huge obstacles from companies whose owners often used private armies to attack worker organizers, used their media to smear the labor movement, and the power of the state against workers. A dramatic illustration of the latter was the kangaroo court that prosecuted and hung four labor leaders in the Haymarket massacre of 1886. 

Unfortunately, farmers and labor organizers were unable to combine their forces in their battles with the One Percent, and, as they say, "the rest is history". (Three excellent books cover these events in detail: Democratic Promise by Lawrence Goodwyn which gives a thorough history of farmer struggles, and The Lords of Creation by Frederick Lewis Allen and Triumphant Plutocracy by Richard F. Pettigrew [1921] describe the rise of an overwhelming plutocracy that took control of all institutions of society.)

EU Association Agreement with Ukraine Is a Gift to Kleptocrats

Click here if you wish to access the transcript of this 10:59m interview with Michael Hudson from Real News.

The interviewer starts off by asking Hudson about the significance of the economic association agreement that Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine signed with the E.U. last week. He begins his answer with this general observation: 

...this is a form of colonialism almost identical to what Europe did in Africa and Latin America and the Near East. What it did in the 19th century in Africa, where property was owned communally, was it would go to the chieftains of a given tribe, as it did to the Saudi Arabian chieftains, and it would say, well, to make an agreement, you have to register all this oil of your country, but you register it in your own name. And once they registered it in their own name, then Britain or France or the other European powers could make a deal that the chieftains could then sell this property or make contracts on behalf of oil or minerals with the European colonial powers. And that's how the colonial powers pried away all of this property from what had been tribal possession or communal possession.

Crushing Occupy Wall Street: It Was All About the Pitchforks

Click here to access article by Pam Martens from Wall Street on Parade.

Whereas Martens places the emphasis on the fear that Occupy movement instilled in our ruling class, I'd like to emphasize their response which expresses the willingness of capitalist elites to use overt force to defend their system in spite of all the "democratic" facades they have placed around it. When their system is threatened, they have no compunctions about showing where real power lies in a country ruled by capitalist elites. As revealed in the article, a brutal response which ignored all constitutionally guaranteed rights to protest was put in place by a close collaboration of ruling class agents and their police forces to crush dissent. Thus has revealed the naked hand of fascism which capitalist elites always ultimately rely on whenever they feel threatened.

The same phenomenon is now being played out in the regime established by Empire operators in Ukraine for us to see in a more overt fashion as revealed in a report by Clara Weiss at WSWS entitled "Kiev deploys fascists against political opponents". Empire agents used self-proclaimed fascists from the very start of their violent overthrow of the elected government in Ukraine.

Of course, the same pattern played out for all the world to see in Germany in the 1930s when German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen and other industrialists brought the Nazi party to power when they were feeling threatened by communists and socialists. 

Financiers seek to have fondest dreams come true through own secret trade deal

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

Dolack has a special knack for explaining the machinations of our ruling class to subvert what is left of national laws protecting workers. In this article he explains the latest secret negotiations called TISA going on by the core of the world capitalist class, the banking/financial elites, to circumvent national restrictions on the movement of money across borders to exploit workers and the environment.

The financial industry has grown ever more powerful in recent decades, so perhaps the world’s governments believe it is only fitting that it has its own secret treaty. Similar to “free trade” agreements that curtail regulation of manufacturers, the Trade In Services Agreement’s Financial Services Annex, if passed, would eliminate the ability of governments to regulate the financial industry.

As Iraq Burns, US Plans $500 Million to Terrorists in Syria

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

Cartalucci asks a very important question, the answer to which undermines the entire Empire propaganda about the ISIS project currently being played out in Iraq.

If the US and its regional collaborators have provided “moderates” with hundreds of millions in aid, who has provided Al Qaeda with even more to explain their now state-sized holdings not only in Syria but now in northern Iraq?

The answer is simple. 

“We want our freedom!” Refugees resist in Berlin

Click here to access article by Joris Leverink from Reflections on a Revolution.

Refugees, immigrants and asylum-seekers coming to Europe are faced with increased threats and hostility from governments and society alike. Through populist media and right-wing political discourse they are depicted as parasites and bloodsuckers free-riding on “our” national wealth, without contributing anything. This kind of racist rhetoric is unfortunately characteristic of and inherent to a global economic system where capital and commodities move freely across borders, while new walls are being erected everywhere to halt the resulting flows of human beings. 

The flight of people from both economic and war-related disasters is not tolerated by capitalist regimes which often cause the disasters. They are far more interested in removing barriers to their commercial operations.

Ukraine’s Gangster State

Click here to access post from RT which includes video interviews with Michael Hudson and William Engdahl. Posted on Hudson's website with a transcript.

Hudson writes: "Hard and fast insights on Ukraine’s land-grabbing, with some frightening developments unfolding. .... This could well be another test on how far things can be pushed, building on Latvia."

Capitalist Industrial Civilization = M.A.D.

Click here to access article by xraymike79 from his blog Collapse of Industrial Civilization.

No one does graphics better than this blogger who is passionately concerned about what capitalism is doing to our Earth-sanctuary.

Structuring a society to reward the most sociopathic and ruthless amongst us, create grotesque levels of inequality and political disenfranchisement, deify material wealth as the primary metric of success, privatize and profitize war, and use the planet as a garbage dump for toxic waste is a recipe for disaster.

Former NASA Chief Scientist: "We're Effectively Taking a Sledgehammer to the Climate System"

Click here to access article by Dahr Jamail from Truthout.

Jamail interviews a scientist, who is loaded with qualifications related to this subject, to find out what he means when he says that we are "taking a sledgehammer to the climate system".

Capitalism & Climate Change – Part IV: Geoengineering and Sustainable Energy

Click here to access article by Alyssa Rohricht from Black Cat Revolution.

Capitalist propagandists, having finally acknowledged the reality of the climate crisis, have now out of desperation changed their message to this: technology will save us (and our beloved system).

Technology will save the planet; at least, that’s the assertion. The claim is that capitalism, if allowed to flourish, will naturally lead to technologies that are more sustainable and cause less harm to the environment through market pressures. The sheer power of the human mind to innovate will be our redemption. Production can continue unabated, meanwhile our emissions and use of natural resources will decrease.

This is the idea of dematerializing the economy – or reducing the throughput of raw materials and energy into the system without decreasing the system’s output of goods and services. Basically, the economy will do more with less.

It is time to wake up

Click here to access article by Hugh Tiernan from Renegade Optimist.

It's not really that complicated, but first we must wake-up, says Tiernan, and face the stark reality that there is no alternative: we must take control away from sociopaths.

At this point it seems to me that the problems are rather obvious.  The world is controlled by a small group of sociopaths for their benefit. Consequently all the systems that we take for granted were designed by them or manipulated into a form that supports their agenda of exclusive control and personal benefit.

Facebook reveals news feed experiment to control emotions

Click here to access article by Robert Booth from The Guardian.

This report on experiments conducted via Facebook illustrates both the kind of research done by corporate dominated universities and the level of sophisticated technology developed to manipulate citizens to serve the needs of the ruling class.

As one critic incisively put it,

"They are manipulating material from people's personal lives and I am worried about the ability of Facebook and others to manipulate people's thoughts in politics or other areas." 

Because of the gross violation of the ethical principle of research that subjects be informed that they are subjects in an experiment, Facebook is facing widespread criticism. Thankfully Facebook reported this experiment, but think of all the types of manipulation that is not being reported by corporate owned media empires which are unrestrained by any ethical principles. Then, you might imagine the extent of mind control that our ruling masters are using, or willing to use, to manipulate us to go along with their wars, their austerity policies, their practices that destroy the environment and destabilize the climate. Such manipulation, along with control of elections and institutions of government, enable our ruling class to maintain the illusion that they govern with the consent of the governed according to democratic principles. 

However, if you, in contrast to most of your fellow Americans, have been wide awake, you know that they are not putting all their eggs in the basket of their fake democracy. They are ready with militarized police forces, around the clock surveillance, Patriot Acts, and suspension of the Constitution to deter any forms of actions by a riled citizenry.

Wikileaks: Leaked TISA Text Shows US, EU Aggressively Rolling Back Regulations

Click here to access article by Carey L. Biron from Mint Press News.

It's difficult to keep up with all the secret negotiations going on to make it easier for global capitalist elites to break down national restraints on business operations that harm the health and welfare of the public, the 99 Percent. Thus far we've learned of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and now we have the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) which seems to focus on breaking down national restraints on financial/banking operations. We can thank Wikileaks for another exposé of what our capitalist masters are doing to circumvent national laws that we've fought for over the centuries designed to protect our interests from predatory capitalists.

Civil society groups have been expressing concerns since the talks, around what is known as the Trade in Services Agreement, or TISA, began a year ago. Yet because the negotiations have been held in secret, watchdog groups have never been able to base their analyses on anything concrete. Now that they can, many are warning that the results appear to be even more problematic than they expected.

“The leaked TISA text is worse than I could have imagined — it’s pretty shocking,” William Waring, a trade expert with Friends of the Earth....

Capitalism & Climate Change – Part III: Commodifying Nature & the Market-Based Approach

Click here to access article by Alyssa Rohricht from Black Cat Revolution.

Capitalism dominates the globe. It has become so enmeshed into the cultural narrative that it seems almost axiomatic. Private owners (of capital) control the means of production. The goal: build profits. The best part about it is that if everyone pursues self-interest, the market will grow and society will benefit. The invisible hand helps the market to self-regulate, creating socially desirable results.

Simple? 

No. When it comes to dealing with issues such as poverty, the income gap, unemployment, economic crises, human rights, war, imperialism, and the externalization of costs on society and the environment, the invisible hand that Adam Smith once imagined is not invisible, it is nonexistent.

The author provides the most devastating attack on the method of purchasing carbon credits to permit the externalization of pollution that I have seen. 

Cold War Renewed With A Vengeance While Washington Again Lies

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from World News Trust.

Roberts makes a lot of startling, although reasonable, allegations in this essay, but unfortunately he doesn't provide any documentation to support them. However, he does make a convincing argument that the goal of the US-led Empire is world domination, much like the German Empire of the 1930s. The establishment of capitalism in Russia and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union didn't really change the fact of Russian independence. Hence, the anti-Russian policies pursued by the US Empire, and the same fate confronts China. 

Putin’s dilemma is that he is caught between his heart-felt desire to reach an accommodation with Europe and Washington’s desire to demonize and isolate Russia.

The risk for Putin is that his desire for accommodation is being exploited by Washington and explained to the EU as Putin’s weakness and lack of courage. Washington is telling its European vassals that Putin’s retreat under Europe’s pressure will undermine his status in Russia, and at the right time Washington will unleash its many hundreds of NGOs to bring Putin to ruin.

This was the Ukraine scenario. With Putin replaced with a compliant Russian, richly rewarded by Washington, only China would remain as an obstacle to American world hegemony.

We will see no peace in the decades ahead. At best, we might avoid a major war conflagration. We, the ordinary people of the world, face two monstrous foes that threaten our very existence; and both are rooted in the capitalist system that rewards hyper-aggression: unending wars for domination and climate destabilization.

US army manual details plan to co-opt NGOs

Click here to access article by Yazan al-Saadi from Al Akhbar.

Amongst the many fascinating pieces of information that shed light on the mindset and tactics that drive the American war machine are sections that discuss the role of humanitarian NGOs in a manner that presents them as a vital cog – or in the document's own words as part of “comprehensive efforts” – in achieving military objections within the murky arena of asymmetric warfare.

At face-value the language used appears vague and benign, yet when deconstructed and understood in the context of counter-insurgency, the implications are significant.

ISIS CRISIS: $500 Million Sought in ‘War Funds’ for Rebels in Western Proxy War & Israeli Oil Shipments

Click here to access article by Shawn Helton from 21st Century Wire.

As this latest Western manufactured ‘terror nightmare’ continues to unfold in Iraq and Syria, we’ve learned that US President Barack Obama has now asked Congress to authorize direct military aid and equipment to be sent to ‘the rebels’ in Syria. This latest stage of Washington’s project in Syria is said to total $500 million, expanding the covert CIA/FSA training facilities that have ties to ISIS in both Jordan and Turkey…

See also "Syria: Obama Prolongs The Conflict" from Moon of Alabama. 

Creditocracy and the case for debt refusal

Click here to access a review of a book by this title authored by Andrew Ross posted on CounterFire (Britain).

This debt fuelled economy, or ‘Creditocracy’ is the subject of Andrew Ross’s book. Ross is an academic and activist in the USA who has been involved in debt resistance initiatives arising out of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Ross’s view the USA is currently a ‘full blown creditocracy’, which is his definition of  liberal [capitalism's fake version of] democracy coupled with a heavily financialised economy, where the costs of social goods such as education, health and social care are debt financed. As more responsibility for welfare is privatized and falls to individuals, private debt financing becomes more significant. He also points out that debt, and the austerity measures associated with it, is not only part of the re-structuring of neoliberal capitalism but also exists as form of social control where people are afraid to risk their jobs or are ashamed to ask for help in repaying debt. [my emphasis]

Capitalism & Climate Change – Part II [of ?]: The Externality Problem

Click here to access article by Alyssa Rohricht from her blog Black Cat Revolution. (Part 1 is here)

A discussion of the capitalist economic system would not be complete without an examination of the issue of externalities incurred within it. An externality is a cost or benefit that is thrust upon a group that did not choose or cause it. Externalities are a natural byproduct of a capitalist, free market system and are a major factor when considering the causes of global climate change. These externalities would include such things as industrial manufacturing causing extreme air pollution, which effects human and non-human life, water pollution caused by the runoff of chemicals in industrial farming practices, massive over-fishing that depletes the fish stock for small communities and individual families, a high unemployment rate and extreme income disparities, and so on.

Why Are Honduran Children Leaving?

Click here to access article by Suyapa Portillo Villeda & Gerardo Torres Zelaya from CounterPunch.

Because corporate media omits so much about what corporations and their ruling class agents are doing in Honduras in their news coverage, most Americans have no idea why Honduran children and many adults, not only from Honduras but most of Central America, are fleeing their countries. These authors are trying to fill that gap with this article which most Americans will overlook in the plethora of dumbed-down corporate news coverage.

While the Honduran president enjoys World Cup soccer games in Brazil, over 50,000 children, many Honduran, are detained in detention centers and warehouses on the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. Republicans and even Hilary Clinton have called for immediate deportation and for these children to be “sent back.” Politicians claim these children are migrating because of DACA or the possibility of gaining legal resident status. While the U.S. media has focused on wild sensationalist stories about kids being told to migrate, their reports obscure that crossing Mexico is perilous and most Central American immigrants face rape, assault, dismemberment, hunger and even death.

Global Police State Calls for Globalization of Dissent and Protest

Click here to access article by Gilbert Mercier from News Junkie Post.

A report from The International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations presents alarming case studies of protest suppression and criminalization of political and social dissent around the world.

It seems to me that there are three other obstacles preventing the overwhelming majority of the world's population from asserting power for themselves: the insistence of dissent only in the form of non-violence to counter ruling class violence, the belief in the legitimacy of elections managed by ruling classes, and ruling class's 24/7 indoctrination programs in media and schools.

The insistence on only the most passive non-violent forms of protest by "peace" activists such as Chris Hedges in the face of increasing violent methods of police forces regardless of constitutional guarantees has discouraged many from engaging in any public displays of protest. I think it is imperative that citizens throughout the world recognize that constitutions are not worth the paper they're printed on when tiny ruling classes control the means of violence. Participating in elections rarely change in a significant way the policies of ruling classes. At most, they can delay the worst policies. Finally, the 24/7 indoctrination programs colonize the minds of citizens to confuse and distract them from a real understanding of the oppression they are suffering from.

To counter the four obstacles--the violence of police forces, the belief that we must only engage in the most passive forms of non-violent protest, participating in meaningless elections, being dumbed down by ruling class indoctrination--we, the people of the world, must be willing to consider other forms of protests; participate only in elections if we can delay the worst of ruling class policies; establish our own media and think about establishing our own schools if we cannot exercise sufficient control over public schools.

Tony Blair Sectioned For ‘Delusional Behaviour’

Click here to access article from The Daily Currant. (parody)

Tony Blair was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital in London this morning following what doctors describe as an extended period of delusional behaviour.

Stresses of the super rich

Click here to access article by Emily Jane Fox from CNN Money.

This is another contribution to my occasional practice on Saturdays to run articles about our fellow citizens of the One Percent (actually .01 of the 1%, or one out of every 10,000 of us) hoping that by doing this that we don't lose touch with their world and their concerns--you know, to promote understanding. It is important that we become better acquainted so that we can serve them better and make it easier for them to carry out the daily burden of making important decisions, decisions which affect whether we go off to war in foreign lands to kill their enemies, if we have jobs, if we live in a home or under a bridge, if we can afford their health care services, education, etc. 

Unfortunately, for some reason they tend to hide their lives from the rest of us behind walls of secrecy, literal walls of guarded gated communities, private clubs, esoteric publications, by traveling with private jets, etc. We should not let that deter us. 

From CNN we learn that the One Percent have worries too--I'll bet you are surprised. 

Just because you make seven -- or eight -- figures, doesn't mean you live on Easy Street. The rich are just as stressed about money as the rest of us. Here are five things that keep the 1% up at night.

According to Emily they go to bed worrying about the hassles of where to park their yachts and Lear jets. Now, I'm sure those are things that you don't have to contend with. But, that's not all--another major worry of theirs that we don't have is hiring the right help. So, consider yourself lucky!

The ultra wealthy need a lawyer, an accountant, at least one housekeeper, a nanny, a chef, chauffeur, landscaper, decorator, personal assistant, security, and possibly a crew for a yacht or jet. 

And their standards can be high. It's not easy to find a nanny who speaks three languages and knows martial arts, or a body guard with a concealed weapons permit who can travel the world.

Rise of ISIS: West, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are Responsible for Talibanization of Iraq

Click here to access article by Gilbert Mercier from News Junkie Post.

Although this writer could have done a better job of documenting his allegations, his analysis of the operations of US ruling class directors, their allies, especially rulers of the Gulf Cooperation Council in creating ISIS, the general chaos in Iraq, and nearby areas is very accurate based on my own close observations of events in the Middle East. US actions were engineered largely by neocons in the Bush administration and still active in the Obama administration who, of course, closely identify with the interests of Israel.

An all-out regional sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites might not have been the goal, but it is certainly the result. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the region should have known that Iraq, Libya and Syria, without strongmen like Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Bashar al-Assad at their helm, were likely to implode into chaos. Who might ultimately profit from fueling a fratricidal war within Islam? Could this be a strategy of ash and ruins, preliminary to the expansion of the Jewish state into the so-called Greater Israel?

See also "The rise of ISIS in Iraq is a neocon’s dream" from Al Arabiya, "US-Sponsored Terrorism in Iraq and “Constructive Chaos” in the Middle East" from Global Research, and "Fear and loathing at Hotel Babylon" (Pepe Escobar) from Asia Times Online.

Teachers to Gates Foundation: Stop Pushing Corporate Education Reform!

Click here to access article by Andrea Germanos from Common Dreams.

Teachers in Seattle are standing up to plutocrats like Bill Gates to oppose their view of education:

In 2014 political power resides in monetary wealth and public policy is being determined by the mega-rich not the expert practitioner-in many professions. No one is asking teachers what schools need. .... People must stand up to this oligarchical shift and reclaim public schools with the whole child at the center. Business reformers need to spread their expertise in places where they know what they are talking about. Teachers are experts when it comes to student learning. Ask us what kids need to thrive and learn. We are happy to tell you.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, 2014 Update: How the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally

Click here to access article from The Commonwealth Fund.

The Chairman of the Largest Private Company in America Just Told the 1 Percent to Worry About Climate Change

Click here to access article by Robert S. Eshelman from The Nation.

Eshelman describes a report supported by some highly influential capitalists warning about the economic consequences of climate change to their capitalist enterprises.

The report, titled "Risky Business," is the first comprehensive assessment of the economic risks of climate change to the United States. It was commissioned by a panel of influential business leaders and former government officials, including hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

I scanned the report for any specific recommendations, but could find none. So, I don't think we can infer from the report that our masters as a ruling class will do anything substantial about this threat. The goose of capitalism lays far too many golden eggs of wealth and power for this tiny class for them to seriously do anything about it. Too many of them are aware that to do anything serious would result in the killing of their goose. Like alcoholics most of them will continue to deny that their habits are destructive, and continue with fantasies about having their goose and a sustainable planet. So, the question remains: are we going to allow them to destroy the planet's biosphere that can support human and other life forms?

...Page's [Executive Chairman of Cargill and co-author of report] concern about the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change on US food production has been rejected by the members of Congress who most benefit from Cargill's political contributions. Among the leading recipients of Cargill campaign cash are House Committee on Agricultural Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK), Vice Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), all of who seek to strip the US Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Cargill did not respond to a request for comment on how Page's call for action on climate change conflicts with the views of those the company supports financially.

What Piketty forgot

Click here to access article by Noel Ortega from Foreign Policy in Focus.

Ortega explains not only what Piketty forgot, but provides a good summary of his thesis in Piketty's important tome entitled Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Exactingly empirical and deeply multidisciplinary, [Capital in the Twenty-First Century] is an extremely important contribution to the study of economics and inequality over the last few centuries. But because it fails to address the real limits on growth—namely our ecological crisis—it can’t be a roadmap for the next.

GMOs, Corporatocentrism And Economic Plunder: The Right To Challenge And Refuse

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from CounterCurrents.

In order to press ahead and open economies to private concerns, proponents of economic neoliberalism are always fond of stating that ‘regulatory blockages' must be removed. The continued pursuit of such economic policies serves to widen the chasm between rich and poor and is putting the livelihoods of hundreds of millions at risk. If particular ‘blockages' stemming from legitimate protest and dissent cannot be dealt with by peaceful means, other methods will be used. W hen increasing mass surveillance or widespread ideological attempts to discredit and smear do not secure compliance or dilute the power of protest, beefed up ‘homeland security' and paramilitary force is an ever-present option.

Across the globe, powerful corporations and their compliant politicians seek to sweep away peoples and their indigenous knowledge and culture in the chase for profit and control. They call this ‘development'. They will allow no one to stand in their way. 

Pirate Radio Station for $55 Could Help Decentralize Big-Telecom

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from Land Destroyer Report.

...accessible pirate radio transmitters built from Raspberry Pi boards can join projects like PirateBox, Project Byzantium, Serval, and other tools to create local communication networks. While PirateBox and Project Byzantium create localized Internets and Serval connects mobile phones without the need for network coverage, pirate radio stations create localized radio content that can be used to connect us to our neighbors and greater community for entertainment and useful information - and help during dire emergencies when centralized infrastructure fails. 

While many appear frozen in perpetual fear of Internet "kill switches," the growing surveillance state, and a creeping Orwellian control grid, others are building alternatives that circumvent, undermine, and will eventually replace the increasingly unappealing nature of big-telecom. Indeed "kill switches" and invasive surveillance are problems, which is precisely why communities must unite and build alternatives that eliminate dependency on compromised infrastructure in the first place. 

The open source revolution is coming and it will conquer the 1% - ex CIA spy

Click here to access article by Nafeez Ahmed from The Guardian.

Ahmed has recently discovered the works of Robert David Steele and is quite impressed with his vision and optimism about the future. Ahmed first discovered Steele's vision by reading his books. Then he followed this by a recent interview with the author which is detailed in the article.

Last month, Steele presented a startling paper at the Libtech conference in New York, sponsored by the Internet Society and Reclaim. Drawing on principles set out in his latest book, The Open-Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth and Trust, he told the audience that all the major preconditions for revolution – set out in his 1976 graduate thesis – were now present in the United States and Britain.

Steele's book is a must-read, a powerful yet still pragmatic roadmap to a new civilisational paradigm that simultaneously offers a trenchant, unrelenting critique of the prevailing global order. His interdisciplinary 'whole systems' approach dramatically connects up the increasing corruption, inefficiency and unaccountability of the intelligence system and its political and financial masters with escalating inequalities and environmental crises. But he also offers a comprehensive vision of hope that activist networks like Reclaim are implementing today.

Although people like Ahmed, the people at Reclaim, and Occupy Wall Street are very impressed with Steele's vision, I remain rather skeptical. There is nothing that I've read in this and related articles about an economy centered on the core concept of private ownership of socially produced wealth. Such an economy is the cornerstone of the powerful edifice of capitalism and its tiny ruling class. This system not only provides enormous wealth to its owners, but the more addictive substances of overwhelming power and control. Addicted people do not give up their drugs of choice lightly. In spite of all the neat charts and the mantra-like repetition of "Open Source", I don't see much hard evidence to support Steele's optimistic vision. Nevertheless, with such people behind it, I think it is worth our examination.

The Next Generation of GM Crops Has Arrived—And So Has the Controversy

Click here to access article by Brandon Keim from Wired.

The first of a new generation of genetically modified crops is poised to win government approval in the United States, igniting a controversy that may continue for years, and foreshadowing the future of genetically modified crops.

Referring to what Dow Chemical calls the Enlist Weed Control System, Keim reports:

If there’s any common ground, it’s this: If the Enlist system is approved, much more herbicide will be used in the United States. According to the USDA, somewhere between 78 and 176 million pounds of additional 2,4-D could be used on U.S. crops by 2020, up from 26 million in 2011. 

Global Report on 'Neonicotinoid Disaster' a 'Wake-Up Call' to Save the Bees, say Groups

Click here to access article by Andrea Germanos from Common Dreams.

A widely used class of insecticides poses a threat on par with that of DDT and is harming ecosystems worldwide, a global team of scientists finds.

Their damning analysis based on 800 peer-reviewed reports, the Worldwide Integrated Assessment of the Impact of Systemic Pesticides on Biodiversity and Ecosystems (WIA), puts a spotlight on neonicotinoids, or "neonics," whose use they say poses a threat to global biodiversity.

According to Wikipedia, the pesticides are produced and marketed by some of the largest chemical corporations across the globe: Bayer, Dow Chemical, Sumitomo Chemical, Sygenta, etc.

See also this article from Friends of the Earth: "New tests find bee-killing pesticides in 51% of “bee-friendly” plants from garden centers across U.S. and Canada".

Report: World's Oceans on Brink of Collapse

Click here to access article by Nadia Prupis from Common Dreams.

The world's oceans face irreparable damage from climate change and overfishing, with a five-year window for intervention, an environmental panel [Global Oceans Commission] said Tuesday.

The Soaring Profits of the Military-Industrial Complex, The Soaring Costs of Military Casualties

Click here to access article by James Petras from Global Research (Canada).

In terms of cost to the United States, hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had served in the war zones have sustained severe physical and mental injuries, while thousands have died directly or indirectly through an epidemic of soldier suicides. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has cost the United States trillions of dollars and counting. Despite the immense costs to the American people, the military-industrial complex and the pro-Israel power configuration continue to keep the US government on a wartime economy – undermining the domestic social safety net and standard of living of many millions.

The story of the unsung heroes: Black Bloc Brazil

Click here to access article by Esther Solano Gallego and Paulo Rogério Lugoboni Filho from Reflections on a Revolution.

The two authors provide us with an excellent examination of Black Bloc tactics as recently practiced in Brazil.

Due to the explicit distrust that the majority of Black Bloc supporters have towards the media, especially the mainstream channels, it is really hard for society at large to obtain access to the ideologies and reasoning that guide their actions on the streets. The key, and most provocative, element that causes a big fuss in public opinion is the use of violence as a legitimate tool of protest. The arguments given by Black Bloc participants to justify their sometimes violent direct actions are essential to understanding all the dimensions of that phenomenon. Still, the ideological motivations and reasoning behind these actions is not well understood by the great majority of the population, whose only contact with the Black Bloc is through the mainstream media. 

David Graeber: “Spotlight on the financial sector did make apparent just how bizarrely skewed our economy is in terms of who gets rewarded”

Click here to access the interview Salon's Thomas Frank did with David Graeber.

David Graeber is an American anthropologist who teaches at the London School of Economics. .... Last year, he wrote a much-discussed essay asking what happened to society’s old promise of more leisure time for workers; for the tasks that have come to occupy the hours that were once promised to be ours, Graeber invented the delicate and slightly obscure label, “bullshit jobs.”

Graeber seems to be the current American left's contribution to radical thought, but I have my doubts. In this commentary I am going to argue that he is functioning more as a gatekeeper for the capitalist ruling class than undermining their rule and their system. See if you agree.

I charge him with "gatekeeping" because the thrust of his thesis about the many jobs which he alleges serves no purpose diverts attention away from the capitalist system onto unspecified others. Thus, no one is to blame or everyone is to blame. It seems that everyone is stupid or irrational by working in "bullshit jobs". Graeber's use of this expletive reminds me of many people who use such words when they don't have a solid argument: an expletive serves to drive a point through its shock value. 

Initially in the interview he seems to be blaming socialists for the emphasis on work as a value in and of itself. Later he makes a tentative reference to a system, but immediately directs your attention elsewhere: mostly onto a universal "we". Examine two key passages:

1. I think we need to attack the core of the problem, which is that we have an economic system that, by its very nature, will always reward people who make other people’s lives worse and punish those who make them better. I’m thinking of a labor movement, but one very different than the kind we’ve already seen. A labor movement that manages to finally ditch all traces of the ideology that says that work is a value in itself, but rather redefines labor as caring for other people. 
2. I think we need to start by redefining labor itself, maybe, start with classic “women’s work,” nurturing children, looking after things, as the paradigm for labor itself and then it will be much harder to be confused about what’s really valuable and what isn’t. As I say, we’re already seeing the first stirrings of this sort of thing. It’s both a political and a moral transformation and think it’s the only way we can overcome the system that puts so many of us in bullshit jobs. 

We see in the first passage that he mentions an "economic system", but then immediately directs our attention to a labor movement. Instead of explaining why the system produces "bullshit jobs", most of his arguments in this interview seem to imply that the unnamed system is simply stupid. (In his original essay of last year, he mentioned the capitalist system, but only once!) He totally overlooks the radical fact that the controllers of the capitalist system, from which they derive so much wealth and power, have provided many "bullshit" jobs in their economy in order to make the system function. I'll give one example from my own experience.

For about six years I worked as a Rehabilitation Counselor serving adults with a wide range of disabilities: from drug/alcohol addiction to physical disabilities. Theoretically, we provided job counseling, training, and medical services in order to make them employable. However, under a capitalist bureaucracy our jobs inevitably evolved into "bullshit jobs" in order to crank out numbers of successful "rehabilitation closures" to justify bigger budgets and bigger bureaucratic empires. 

To accomplish the latter, we were pressured to accept for services everyone who entered our building, workup an extensive file on them, and then close them as successful. At one time I estimated the amount of time I was doing the actual work of making real disabled people employable versus the others. I realized that I was spending 50% of my time doing "bullshit" work. The ruling class directorate didn't really care about putting people with disabilities to work. What they really wanted and got was providing jobs for educated, angry young people during the period when so many were protesting against the Vietnam War.

During these years I was sufficiently aware of why these jobs were created by the system and why they functioned the way they did. They were set up under the Lyndon Johnson administration in order to pacify the anti-war movement and generally stifle dissent among the college student population by providing them with jobs. In those days young people were questioning everything, particularly the Vietnam War, the oppression of minorities and women, the assassinations of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Black Nationalists, and other activists. Thus, "bullshit" jobs were needed to pacify the population. There are many other reasons for such jobs, but there are always reasons as to why they exist in terms of serving the system and its ruling class. Hence, they rarely are "bullshit" to the masters of the system.

However, this sort of analysis is completely missing from Graeber comments. He seems to suggest that we are all responsible and need to re-orient our thinking. He refers to an ideology, but fails to elaborate on how the ideology serves the system and how a labor movement could overcome this powerful weapon of the ruling class. I wonder if this sort of political analysis is the reason that Graeber was hired by a major ruling class university in their economics department.

Iraq Insurgency: Who's controlling who as ISIS gains momentum?

Click here in you wish the YouTube posted source of a 11:02m interview in London with Sami Ramadani from RT via YouTube. (The interview is the first 11:02m of a longer program.)

From Ten Yeas On we learn:

Sami Ramadani was a political refugee from Saddam's regime, and is now a senior lecturer in sociology at London Metropolitan University. Sami was active in campaigning against the brutal sanctions imposed on Iraq in the '90s, and against the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation.

Jihadism and the Petroleum Industry

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from VoltaireNet.

Although US corporate media constantly portray the current conflicts in Iraq as sectarian, Meyssan develops the unique argument that such reports provide cover for the real competition of giant oil corporations.

While the Western media portray the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant as a group of jihadists reciting the Qur’an, the ISIL has started the oil war in Iraq. With the help of Israel, it has cut off Syria’s supply and guaranteed the theft of oil from Kirkuk by the local government of Kurdistan. The sale will be assured by Aramco who will camouflage this diversion as increased "Saudi" production.