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

Friday, October 10, 2014

What’s Wrong With The Trans Atlantic Trade And Investment Partnership?

Click here to access article and 4:08m video posted by Don Quijones of Raging Bull-Shit.
Most Europeans and Americans are still blissfully unaware of even the existence of the Transalantic Trade And Investment Partnership (TTIP), nevermind how it could impact their own existence. Here’s a four-minute, eight-second summation of many (but far from all) of the things that are wrong with the soon-to-be-signed treaty (told from a largely European perspective).
To have even the slightest chance of stopping TTIP from melding together the U.S. and European economies into one giant forced-trade zone where the giants of corporate America and Europe are granted the right to do whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want — and always at our expense — people on both sides of the Northern Atlantic must first wise up to its existence.
What ruling class fascists were intent on doing in the 20th century (eliminating annoying capitalist forms of "rule of law" and "representative" government) using police state methods, ruling capitalist classes of this century have added another strategy to their weapons arsenal--transnational agreements such as NAFTA, TTIP, etc. It will have the same ultimate effect: corporations über alles. Because of the secrecy imposed on these negotiations, ruling class media are not informing us ordinary people about what is happening. Without media of our own, we are easy victims: passive, compliant, unaware, and distracted sheeple who will only wake up as they are led into the slaughterhouse of global corporate rule. 

Of course, our masters are also maintaining the old-fashioned 20th century method of surveillance over what we say, write, or do, but they now have benefit of the sophisticated technologies of the 21st century.

ISIS, Turkey, and the Propaganda of Intervention

Click here to access article by Eric Draitser from New Eastern Outlook.
Today’s headlines are filled with reports of the imminent fall of the Syrian city of Kobani to forces of the Islamic State (ISIS). There are terrifying descriptions of an imminent massacre and the looming threat to Turkey as Islamic State forces move ever closer to the Turkish-Syrian border. ....

And yet, somehow lost amid the din of cries for intervention is the simple fact that it is US policy and the actions of the aforementioned Erdogan along with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Israel that created ISIS, nurtured it in its infancy, promoted its development, and unleashed it on Iraq and Syria. And now, for those same leaders, along with a chorus of interventionist voices in the media establishment, to sound the alarm is not only cynical and utterly disingenuous, it is a shining example of the arrogance of empire.

As fighters of the Islamic State (IS) continue their charge towards the mostly Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish-Syrian border, deep cracks in the edifice of the US-led coalition against IS have begun to emerge.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

A bigger pie doesn’t mean you are getting a slice

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

Dolack once again aids working people in understanding how the capitalist system works for the capitalist class as a whole and against working people. However, the focus of the article is on disputes within the capitalist class, a fight over their "big slices of the pie". He does this by way of illustration provided by a major multi-national corporation--The Coca-Cola Company.

Under the rules of capitalism capitalists "own" the fruits (or the "pie") produced by working people and thus have major influence over how the wealth (the "pie") created by working people is divvied up. These people can be separated into two sub-classes that make up the capitalist class: 1) people who have purchased and thereby "own" some portion of a company (referred to as "financiers" in the article); and 2) top company managers whose income is derived in part from the work they perform, but in substantial part in share ownership (stocks) of the company along with bonuses. The pure capitalists in the first class long ago realized the importance of co-opting top company managers and highly skilled technical people into their system by giving them a significant "slice of the ownership pie". (Of course, this arrangement leaves only a small piece for those who actually make and bake the pie.)

I think this latter development was brought about most substantially by the publication of James Burnham's classic 1941 book The Managerial Revolution which foresaw the probability of top managers displacing pure capitalists as a ruling class. This creative response by pure capitalists provides another illustration of their ability to respond to any threats to their capitalist system, the goose that lays for them so many golden eggs in the forms of wealth, and-- what has become even more important--power.

The future will not be impressed

Two videos featuring important commentaries about activism by Mickey Z. posted on World News Trust.



 

The Neoconservative Hit List: Iraq, Libya and now Syria? A Plan for Global US Military Supremacy

Click here to access article by Steven MacMillan from New Eastern Outlook.

The author notices a consistent pattern in pursuit of wars in the Middle East which has been implemented by the deep state (shadow government) regardless of which party or person holds office. (You see, it matters not whom we are allowed to vote for in the "democratic" elections managed by the ruling capitalist class.) Such plans were almost spelled out in detail in several important documents written by neoconservatives who from all appearances constitute a major faction within the deep state.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

The Problem Is Capitalism

Click here to access article by Fred Magdoff from MRZine.

Magdoff's adaptation of this famous cartoon.



In this essay Magdoff focuses on the environmental and climate crises. He first disposes of the many explanations for these crises, and continues on to explain how they are rooted in the dynamics of capitalism. Finally he suggests solutions that could create sustainable environments as well as a socially just world.

Shut Up, Conspiracy Theorist!!!

Click here if you wish to access the source posting of this video from The Corbett Report.

This five minute video is loaded with satire by James Corbett directed against those who attack and smear with the label "conspiracy theorists" anyone who questions explanations given by ruling class authority figures such as TV pundits, mainstream news sources, government officials, etc.

Encroaching Tides

Click here to access article from Union of Concerned Scientists.
Tidal flooding, driven by sea level rise, will dramatically increase in U.S. East and Gulf Coast communities over the next 30 years. 

Oceans Getting Hotter Than Anybody Realized

Click here to access article by John Upton from Climate Central.
Ocean warming is exacerbating flooding caused by the melting of glaciers and other ice. Seas have risen 8 inches since the industrial revolution, and they continue to rise at a hastening pace, worsening floods and boosting storm surges near shorelines around the world. Another 2 to 7 feet of sea level rise is forecast this century, jeopardizing the homes and neighborhoods of the 5 million Americans who live less than 4 feet above high tide, as well as those of the hundreds of millions living along coastlines in other countries.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The Syrian opposition: who's doing the talking?

Click here to access article by Charlie Skelton from The Guardian. (I was reminded of this 2012 article by its recent posting on The Analyst Report. I made reference to it in my blog at that time from a posting from another site--see this.)

I was remiss by not posting this article directly on my website in 2012. I am absolutely amazed at the re-reading of Skelton's in-depth investigation of the Syrian opposition and his revelations about the numerous ties of the directors of this opposition with top ruling class organizations of the Empire. This is the best piece I've seen to examine how the capitalist ruling class manages its media to cover news in support of their class interests. Thus, if you missed it in 2012, it is a must read, and studied, not only because of the Empire's renewed interest in removing Assad from power in Syria and replacing him with someone who will serve the Empire, but also as a lesson about the ruling class's management of news and information generally.

CIA document details cover-up of drug trafficking by Contras

Click here to access article by Thomas Gaist from World Socialist Web Site.

Finally we get a correct interpretation of the recently released CIA document entitled "Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story" after three weeks since The Intercept and its author Ryan Devereaux offered quite a different interpretation. The fact of this delay and that this source is the only one to provide a correct analysis of the CIA document provides further evidence of the anemic quality of today's critical journalism on the left within the US. Over many years I have found that WSWS offers the most consistently accurate interpretation of events in which the US ruling class had some involvement. However, I also have one major criticism of their coverage, but more on that later.

In my review of Devereaux's take on this CIA document, I viewed his interpretation as excessively friendly to the CIA's position with regard to the sensation caused by Gary Webb's 1996 series of articles in the San Jose Mercury which cited evidence of  CIA connections to the proliferation of crack cocaine in US urban areas in the 1980s. 

This phenomenon paralleled another US sponsorship of a terrorist organization known as the Contras: this time to destabilize Nicaragua's Sandinista government which threatened by a good example the Empire's domination of the region. Although CIA involvement in the latter leaked out in various media as an exchange of weapons sales to Iran to fund the Contras, it was Webb's articles that really caused a sensation in the US which supposedly was engaged in a War on Drugs. Whereas, the former was treated by US authorities as limited to some out-of-control CIA agents, the Webb's revelations created a huge scandal that had to be covered up.

But because my focus in this blog is to provide access to alternative media and their interpretations of political events, I often do not have time to examine lengthy government documents. Besides my personal life in the 1980s brought me in close contact with the core issues of this issue, and I had complete confidence in my basic understanding of the event. 

I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I managed public housing properties where crack cocaine spread like wildfire, I visited Nicaragua twice during this period and witnessed first hand the results of the Contra's terrorist activities, and I followed alternative media which gave me accurate insights about what was going on.  

Thus in my commentary on Devereaux's analysis, I did not directly challenge his analysis of the CIA document by arguing that there were plenty of other methods that US ruling class directors could have put pressure on the media to discredit Webb's work--and this is true. While generally accepting Devereaux's take on this CIA document, I was confident that it was far too friendly toward the activities of our ruling class to discredit Webb's investigations which the latter had only begun.

Now with this analysis by Gaist of the WSWS I felt it my duty to scan the CIA document to see whose interpretation was correct. Gaist's is correct while Devereaux's still looks suspiciously like damage control on behalf of the CIA.

Now, as to my major criticism of WSWS and their journalism, I am constantly irritated by their failure to include links to relevant documents.  This is typical of websites directors who do not want readers to wander onto other websites by providing links. This is disrespectful of the intelligence of readers, and is very self-serving. This policy of WSWS seems to assume that people should take everything they state as completely factual. This sort of arrogance is typical of Trotskyist organizations (like WSWS) who tend to believe that they have a monopoly on truth, that they are the vanguard that everyone should unquestioningly follow.

Awareness = Overrated

Click here to access article by Mickey Z. from World News Trust.
In defense of the recent People’s [sic] Climate March, I’ve often been told: “But at least it raised awareness.”

Awareness (noun): knowledge or perception of a situation or fact; concern about and well-informed interest in a particular situation or development

Everywhere we hear about the need to raise "awareness." So much so, that awareness and consciousness appear to have become the goals: ends in and of themselves.

If only we were conscious of “what's going on” in some place like Syria or aware of “how prevalent” this or that disease has become or whatever else it is we need to recognize, it seems most folks would be mighty satisfied.

My sincere question: When exactly does all this goddamned awareness translate into authentic solidarity, productive action, and tangible change? 

Seizing Silwan: Come Steal More Parts of Palestine For $136 A Day! (But Keep Guns Loaded)

Click here to access article by Abby Zimet from Common Dreams.

She writes about the latest "facts on the ground" in Palestine.

Monday, October 6, 2014

Is Former Israeli IDF Officer Behind Fake Videos of Beheadings?

Click here to access article by William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook.
The infamous youTube “beheading” videos of two US journalists by the ISIS in Syria/Iraq, ... bear more serious attention. The details are emerging that show both videos are entirely fake events, staged apparently by professional actors to create the popular support for a US bombing of Syria to finally depose the democratically-elected Bashar al Assad.

War Propaganda Continues On Corporate Media

Click here to access article by Peter Hart from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. 
When government officials launch an ill-defined war based on dubious claims about a threat to the "homeland," you might hope that would be the time for reporters to aggressively examine and question government claims. But corporate media see things differently; war time is when TV screens are full of former generals and hawkish politicians, and reporters are busy transmitting official claims. 

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Fundamentalist Theology is Bleeding Us Dry: Stop the TTIP

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from his blog East by Northwest. 

Despite some major conceptual flaws that contaminate this article, most of it provides an excellent description of what is happening under neoliberalism across the world that goes larger unreported in mainstream media. This is fact does not represent an oversight--it is a deliberate strategy to keep the world's Ninety-Nine Percent unaware of the erosion of national laws and subordinating them to supra-national neoliberal bodies created by, and serving the interests of, the trans-national capitalist elites.

So, please excuse his references to "democracy" as residing in nation-states and being subverted by neoliberal investors. This is much like asserting that nation-states are like innocent, pure virgins being seduced by rapists. Such a view fails to recognize that nation-states were created by the capitalist classes largely to mediate competition between enterprises within the geographical boundaries they controlled. 

Also, framing the issue as caused by a "fundamentalist theology" is very misleading. To be sure, there is a lot about capitalism that is faith-based, but what we see happening today is not some narrow interpretation of capitalist theology, it is an advanced form of capitalism.

Like many other critics of neoliberalism, Todhunter does not understand the nature of capitalism and its various stages of evolution. Such critics fail to understand the growth imperative of capitalism which results in ever greater concentrations of wealth and power. We have now merely arrived at a global stage in the growth of capitalism made possible by technological advances. 

Of course, technology, like everything else, was created by working people, but under capitalism it does not belong to them and will not be used to serve the interests of ordinary people. No, it will be used to serve investors who insist that they "own" it--and, of course, they do under the rules of capitalism. And, no, it is not possible to reverse its development back to some mythical golden age of capitalism.

The point so well illustrated in this article is that capitalist elites now see nation-states as providing barriers to their enterprises and the financial institutions which feed off the latter. Thus, neoliberal capitalists are erecting supra-national institutions to override the authority of nation-state institutions. Todhunter provides an excellent description of this phenomenon and the devastating consequences it is creating for ordinary people throughout the world.

Obama Reconsiders Attacking Assad

Click here to access article by Shamus Cooke from The Smirking Chimp.
Sometimes bad ideas die slowly. It was only one year ago that Obama announced he would bomb the Syrian government, only to change his mind at the last minute. Now the same fetid war talk is sprouting fresh roots in the ever-fertile U.S. military. Various media outlets reported that Obama might “enforce a no fly zone in Syria to protect civilians from the Syrian government.” 

Entire "Occupy Central" Protest Scripted in Washington

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

Cartalucci has dug up more background information about the "Occupy Central" protests in Hong Kong. By doing so, he reveals the true nature of the Empire's support for the protests.
It is not about having Hong Kong vote for who they desire to see in power, it is about getting the foreign-backed political cabal behind "Occupy Central" into power, and disarming Beijing of any means to prevent what is for all intents and purposes the "soft" recolonization of Hong Kong, and a further attempt to divide and destabilize China as a whole.

‘Biden tries to distance US from the mess in the Mideast’

Click here to access article from RT in which RT interviews Annie Machon, a former intel­li­gence officer for the UK's MI5 and whistleblower.

Machon seems as mystified as most other people with Biden's remarks, but tries to speculate on Biden's motives for his latest gaff (see this and this): this time in relation to the Empire's closest allies in the Middle East. I am referring, of course, to the Medieval kingdoms of Saudi Arabai, United Arab Eremites, and Qatar, in addition to Turkey.

I offer my own speculation. It was just another gaff by someone who has never completely mastered the art of lying especially when addressing an audience that is much more savvy about world affairs. In contrast to Obama, he is much less skilled at using Empire rhetoric to deflect attention away from the realities of Empire politics. I think he is more motivated by a desire to gain approval from his audience. Of course, what he told Harvard students is far from the whole truth. Now after telling some of the truth about these shady allies, he's having to clean up the mess. 

Weekend Funnies for the Depressed Collapsitarian #9

Click here to access article by XrayMike79 from Collapse of Industrial Civilization.

I love this first one, but there is a lot more. 

Capitalism’s onward march to self-destruction

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Prof. Diana Ralph: There's Little Doubt That the US Was Involved in the 9/11 Attacks

Click here to access article featuring an interview conducted by Kourosh Ziabari with a Canadian retired professor posted on FARS News Agency (Iran). 
I do not believe that the American people, or likely the Israeli people, understand the underlying economic and political reasons for the post 9/11 assaults on their civil liberties and the huge economic costs of waging these brutal military attacks. They are subjected to enormous propaganda from the media, the educational system, and government announcements about terror threats, to believe that these “anti-terrorism” measures are necessary.
Although a number of her observations about 9/11 corresponds well with facts and interpretations I learned from a wide variety of other independent sources that I've followed since that incident, I also learned a few more very interesting items. Prof. Ralph has clearly done her research very thoroughly.

Imagine a system better than capitalism

Click here to access article by Gary Engler from New Commune-ist Manifesto.
...for those of us who believe human beings are in control of our own destiny, or at least the rules that govern our economy and politics, it is time to come together and imagine a better system, one that promotes environmental sustainability, equality and international cooperation.
The way to begin is by identifying the most critical issues we face then think about how our current system makes those problems worse or prevents us from dealing with them.

Too Big to Jail?

Click here if you wish to access the source posting and introduction from Moyers & Company, a PBS program, to this 23:21m video featuring William Black, a former bank regulator.   
While large banks have been penalized for their role in the housing meltdown, the costs of those fines will be largely borne by shareholders and taxpayers as the banks write off the fines as the cost of doing business. And by and large these top executives got to keep their massive bonuses and compensation, despite the fallout.
But the story gets even more infuriating, the more Black lays bare the culture of corruption that led to the meltdown.
Black leaves little doubt that banksters in the financial industry have the government thoroughly corrupted and under their control. He leaves us with little hope by offering a vague suggestion about fighting back to where he thinks democracy once existed. Of course, he has been thoroughly indoctrinated in the capitalist version of democracy which has inevitably led to where we are now. No, we can't go back. Our only hope is to destroy the cancer of capitalism which has enabled a small segment of the population to take complete control of our society.

What I found most disturbing is his conviction that we are headed for a much bigger economic disaster (20:02m). Unfortunately, it appears that only a huge disaster can wake people up sufficiently to make the necessary radical changes.

What's Wrong with this Picture?

 From Lisa, the intrepid political humorist and satirist at All Hat No Cattle:

Friday, October 3, 2014

Top German Editor: CIA Bribing Journalists

Click here to access article from Russia Insider.




Members of the German media are paid by the CIA in return for spinning the news in a way that support US interests, and some German outlets are nothing more than PR appendages of NATO, according to a new book by Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's largest newspapers. 

Terrorism and Turmoil: US Containment of China

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

Cartalucci continues his examination of the Empire's use of NGOs as a Trojan Horse to stir up unrest and opposition to enemies. Of course, one of the designated enemies is China which the directors of the Empire see as a competitor who pose a threat to their hegemony over the world. 

Anyway, we are now witnessing huge demonstrations in Hong Kong over the right to select candidates for political office: local capitalist oligarchs or capitalist members of China's "Communist Party". I'm sure the controllers of the NGO Trojan Horses couldn't care less about the substance of the issue, they just want to stir up opposition and thus weaken China's central government--the old "divide and conquer" strategy in its new 21st century's version.

Cartalucci first delves into the history of this containment strategy followed by some interesting details about which NGOs are serving the Empire's strategy in China and are behind the current protests. The analysis leads him to this conclusion:
For the mobs of "Occupy Central," many have good intentions, but the leadership is knowingly in league with foreign interests seeking to subvert, divide, and destroy the Chinese people - not unlike what China had suffered at the hands of European powers in the 1800's to early 1900's.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

US Openly Approves Hong Kong Chaos it Created

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

Cartalucci has dug up a lot of information to support his argument that the "Occupy Central" protests in China have been to a considerable degree engineered by the usual subversive agents of the Empire:
Behind the so-called "Occupy Central" protests, which masquerade as a "pro-democracy" movement seeking "universal suffrage" and "full democracy," is a deep and insidious network of foreign financial, political, and media support. Prominent among them is the US State Department and its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well as NED's subsidiary, the National Democratic Institute (NDI).
I certainly wouldn't go so far as to argue that many people in these protests are not genuinely concerned about democracy, but would there really be a significant difference between candidates selected by the capitalist oriented Communist Party of China and those selected by the ruling oligarch's in Hong Kong? Can either create, or even have an interest in creating, a real democracy in Hong Kong? 

Here is a followup report from Cartalucci which I have only scanned.

Obama Targets Free Expression

Click here to access article by Stephen Lendman from Uncommon Thought Journal.

This whole article is total nonsense, nonsense written by an American liberal who otherwise offers many good critiques about the political direction of US society. It also illustrates how conventional thinking can lead one down to various (political) dead ends such as cynicism, voting for the other party, dropping out of all political action, etc. In contrast to conventional thinking which caused him to write such nonsense, a class analysis (capitalist, middle, and working class), which I use throughout my commentaries, offers a powerful understanding of the hows and whys of political events that happen in our capitalist world. 

The fact that a class analysis is missing from conventional thinking is testimony to the powerful actions of modern capitalist indoctrination agencies. Capitalists who enjoy enormous power and benefits from their system learned a long time ago that a class analysis must be purged from the thinking of its subjects, and replaced by superficial, formalistic thinking which obscures how the system actually works. 

Capitalism inherently promotes inequality which the recent French economist Thomas Piketty argued so well in his recent tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century that it created quite an embarrassed stir in capitalist circles. Capitalist ruling classes have always had to hide their system behind rhetoric that claims the system's legitimacy is based on the "rule of law": courts, "due process", representative governments, and constitutions that promise freedom of speech, a free press, and all sorts of human rights. Thus the power that the concentration of wealth based on private ownership of the economy provides people and corporations as well as the inherent tendency toward inequality must be suppressed in their institutions of indoctrination: media, schools, and entertainment.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

People need to face reality regarding 9/11 if they want to truly grasp what’s currently going on in the Middle East.

Click here to access article by Joseph Davis from his blog. 

The headline says it all, and the article is packed with links to sources that support this profound truth. Most Americans not only fail to understand what is now "going on in the Middle East", but do not understand everything that has gone on in the region since 9/11/2001.

Smooth Talkers: Marketing Imperial Civil Society

Click here to access article by Jay Taber from The Wrong Kind of Green.


This brief article packs a lot of condensed insights about the ruling capitalist class's use of these three Chiefs of Public Relations and NGOs to support their class's never-ending wars, ever increasing debts for ordinary people both personal and sovereign, austerity policies, and the growing split between a small number of the very rich amidst huge numbers of the poor in the US. 

Until the Rulers Obey: Learning from Latin America’s Social Movements

Click here to access an excerpt from the introduction to Until the Rulers Obey: Voices of from Latin American Social Movements, edited by Clifton Ross and Marcy Rein and posted at Upside Down World.

This article appears to give an excellent, up-to-date summary of the political conditions throughout Latin America with emphasis on "progressive states" in South America (Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil) and the problems encountered by radical movements who aligned themselves with these states. 

It seems that after the brutal overthrow of the Chilean socialist government in 1973 and the Nicaraguan government ultimately in 1989 by subversive forces of the Empire, the Empire favored the implementation of soft power to continue their neoliberal policies especially in states that harbored revolutionary movements.
The Conquest of the Americas continues as an ongoing process of “primitive accumulation,” that is, through brutal dispossession, only changed in detail. The looting, once only of gold and silver picked or shoveled from mines by slaves to satisfy the greed of Conquistadores, has increased exponentially in recent decades to feed transnational Capital. This behemoth has left behind the sword to devastate the region with an arsenal of new tools for plunder: strip-mining “megaprojects” with giant machines that dig for lithium, copper and gold, laying waste to landscapes; countless drills for oil, poisoning rivers; dams for hydroelectric power that flood indigenous lands; battalions of tractors sowing industrial soy for cattle and biofuel, or cane for sugar and biofuel, or eucalyptus for paper mills, or other monocultures that raze entire ecosystems and steal peoples’ ways of life….
Still, there is hope given the unique cultural fact of strong communitarian values of the indigenous people in this area. They have achieved some successes, and more promising is that they are learning a lot of lessons which may serve them in overcoming these powerful neoliberal forces. We activists in North America can learn much from their experience.
Some form of socialism or communitarianism is embedded in the cultural matrix of the entire southern continent, in the indigenous concept of the “minga,” “minka,” or “cayapa,” meaning “community work for the collective good without self-interest.” The Roman Catholic Church—especially Liberation Theology— posed community as the way to redemption, unlike Protestantism in which salvation has generally been considered an individual matter. When left to their own devices, Latin Americans have often chosen communal forms of mutual aid and populist, corporatist or even socialist governments that advocated for the interests of the working majority.  In any case, in the neoliberal globalizing world of TINA, Latin America seemed not to have gotten the memo that socialism was dead and Capital was writing history’s final chapter. 

“The Lone Gladio” Reviewed

Click here to access this 23:16m podcast by James Corbett from his website.

Corbett starts his review of Sibel Edmond's new book by explaining the origins of Gladio operation in post WWII history and its more recent "B" version that is being applied in operations in Eurasia and the Middle East. It's all about the Empire's efforts to gain control over energy in these regions using Islamic related terrorist groups. Edmond's has had access to important secrets of the Empire through her work as a former FBI translator of communications from and to the Middle East. 

Sick-Outs and Walk-Outs: Students and Teachers Escalate Fight Against Censorship of History

Click here to access article by Deirdre Fulton from Common Dreams.

It's wonderful to see students actively opposing education in the form of indoctrination in an area best known through ruling class media for a school massacre. I very much doubt that you will see coverage of these protests on your corporate TV broadcasts this evening. Instead, they will cover the protests in Hong Kong which meets with the ruling class's approval because they are directed against one of the latest targets of the Empire--China.
The actions are in response to a proposal from the conservative, five-member school board to establish a committee that would review the district's Advanced Placement history course in order to ensure its materials "promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights" and don't "encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law." Conservatives nationwide have claimed that the AP history course is "revisionist" and overly focused on the "negative" aspects of American history.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

What Does Corporate Personhood Have to Do With Climate Change? Everything.

Click here to access article by Carl Gibson from Occupy Wall Street.

After furnishing an outline of steps in which the capitalist class in the US have gradually perverted provisions of the Constitution to serve their class interests, the author then launches onto the issue of communities and their legal ability to determine how and if corporations are allowed to function in their communities. Following this, he introduces the experience of people in Humboldt county (northern California) to prevent Walmart from establishing a retail store, and a lumber company from cutting down redwood trees. Since then the people of this county, who played by all the legal rules and processes, have suffered one legal defeat after another. But this does not discourage Gibson from proposing a fix in the form of another legal, and very expensive, process within a society that now exhibits overwhelming capitalist control of all institutions: a Constitutional amendment taking away "personhood" from corporations. 

Most ordinary Americans abide by the "golden rule" and most of the Biblical commandments, especially "thou shalt not kill". Yet, our ruling capitalist class have never had any difficulty getting us to stop what we're doing and go off to kill people in foreign lands as we are now doing in Syria and Iraq. Our ruling class have assassinated people in our own country who stood in the way of their access to wealth and power. So, do you think that they won't be able to stop such an amendment, ignore it, or reinterpret it to suit their needs by judges they appoint? Do you Gibson and others seriously think that a piece of paper will get in their way of plundering the Earth?

No, I insist that American activists grow up and realize that having been defeated by these criminal forces throughout US history in their efforts to promote social justice, the only real solution is to attack the system on which their power is derived. Any efforts short of that are like pissing in the wind, and will only result in the eventual extinction of human beings either through nuclear wars or catastrophic climate destabilization. Somehow, this reminds me of a song:



The Radicalization of Phil Donahue - Reality Asserts Itself (1/3)

Click here if you wish to access the transcript of this interview conducted by Paul Jay from Real News Network. 

From Wikipedia we learn:
The Phil Donahue Show, also known as Donahue, is an American television talk show hosted by Phil Donahue that ran for 26 years on national television. Its run was preceded by three years of local broadcast in Dayton, Ohio, and it was broadcast nationwide between 1970 and 1996.
I was fascinated by this first of three segments of the interview because I was curious how such an "all-American" boy could have attained so much success in mainstream media. Also, I could identify with him and his experience growing up in roughly the same time period as myself.  

I was not at all surprised when his popular show was cancelled. Although I watched his program only very occasionally, I was always surprised by its content and guests, and that it was permitted to exist at all. It's clear that the directors of the Empire learned from this, and have tightened their control over media considerably since his firing. So, I think that this is evidence to support an argument that media up until this time had slightly more opportunities to present alternative views on controversial issues than they do today where they exclusively broadcast pure, well-designed propaganda in support of ruling class interests. 

Study Finds Treated Fracking Wastewater Still Too Toxic

Click here to access article by Andy Tully from OilPrice.  

This website focuses on all issues related to energy and is mainly directed at investors of energy companies. Thus, it is particularly interesting so see in this online publication an article like this which provides additional evidence of the hazardous nature of the new shale-fracking technology which capitalists are so excited about.
One of the biggest concerns about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is that the vast amount of wastewater produced by the process of extracting oil and gas from shale rock deep underground is incredibly toxic. 

Most often, the wastewater is injected into disposal wells deep underground. But a process does exist to convert contaminated water into drinking water that involves running it through wastewater treatment plants and into rivers.

Now a new report says that treated wastewater could be fouling drinking water supplies.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Will the US use ISIL to attack Assad?

Click here to access article by Jim Dean from New Eastern Outlook.

Although I think that Dean offers an excellent analysis of events related to the new ISIS "threat" to Western Civilization, I fault him for not providing any links to substantiate his argument that the "West is engaged in a War on Terror, and a War of Terror at the same time." The most damning omission is a link to the charges posed by EU’s ambassador to Iraq that the EU was supporting ISIS by buying oil from them. 

The TTIP Trojan horse: Selling Out Europe To US Corporate Plunder

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from his blog East by Northwest.
Do people in Europe want the likes of Monsanto determining policies in secretive meetings in Brussels?

Would they like Unilever, Kraft or Nestle determining what is allowed in their food? Do they want big business removing or weakening health and safety standards and undermining consumer and workers’ rights?

In other words, do they want their parliaments to be sidelined by powerful corporations that determine policies behind closed doors with bureaucrats and officials in Brussels?
The directors of the Empire are only doing what all such directors of empires do: consolidating the wealth of their subsidiary regions to serve the center of the empire. This is the result of the integration of European states into the US Empire since WWII which the working people of Europe failed to prevent. It is little late now to complain of this arrangement, but hopefully not too late to change it.

Will Russia and China Hold Their Fire Until War Is the Only Alternative?

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from Institute for Political Economy.

Having served in the Reagan's administration at a high level, Roberts is very well connected with the levers of political power. Although his outlook is constrained by a multi-polar capitalist world perspective, he has many valuable insights about the existing power arrangements in the world. 

This article, I think, contains some of the most useful in understanding what is going on in the global world of capitalist elites in which national boundaries are increasingly being erased. Here I am thinking of the information he provides about the subversive influence of Empire-based neoliberals that he locates within the ruling classes of Russia and China. 

The solution, of course, is not a return to nationally based capitalist elites--which is impossible--but the replacement of the very system that has produced the dangerous and destructive world we live in. Only the world's underclasses can do that. But, will they? Stay tuned. Better yet, stay active and informed.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

The commons as an approach to governance, sustainable resource management and social wellbeing

Click here to access a summary article and 49:15m podcast interview with David Bollier from the Norwegian website Levevei. (I accessed this from P2P Foundation where Bollier has written articles.)

David Bollier is widely recognized as a leading advocate of the exciting paradigm of “the commons”, and he has recently written a book on the subject entitled Think Like a Commoner. The article provides an excellent summary of sections of this interview which can guide you to sections of interest if you do not have time to listen to the whole interview. Important topics that Bollier addresses is the concept of the commons, human nature, examples of existing commons, its contrast with existing capitalist organization of society, etc. 

My only comment on Bollier's views is that he at one point exhibits a political naïveté when he talks about communities negotiating with the state to establish a legal framework for a commons-type arrangement. Such an attitude fails to understand that the state is really a construction by the capitalist class to mediate competing capitalist interests. Thus, one must not see the state as separate from this class. Likewise, it follows that the capitalist state will never voluntarily permit the growth of this type of societal organization.

The invasion of corporate news

Click here to access article by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson from Financial Times Magazine. (One can access at no cost a limited number of articles from this website by registering.)

I regret having to post an article like this from a primary ruling class source. Because this excellent report on the growing trend of directly produced corporate news did not come from alternative media, it is a very bad sad sign of the times we live in. 

While news organizations with concentrated ownership are increasingly covering news with a pro-corporate bias and frequently publish corporate-sourced articles in their media, corporations are now engaging directly in their own form of journalism by publishing "news" on their websites using the talents of professional journalists who can no longer find employment in traditional media. This excellent article tells that story.

Referring to "Coca-Cola Journey", an example of a corporate news platform, Ashley Brown [the former director of Coca-Cola’s content marketing program] provided these revelations:
Much of the content...is produced by former journalists.... Brands need storytellers, and journalists represent the greatest pool of storytelling talent out there, he says. At Coca-Cola, we wanted people who know how to package up a story with tension and emotion, and more importantly know how to do it quickly and efficiently.
Very frequently such "news" reports get picked up and spread throughout social media.

A Too Complicated Game: Obama's Deals With The Saudis And Al-Nusra

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.
According to the Wall Street Journal Obama made a deal with the Saudis. They will lend legitimacy for his attacks against the Islamic State and AlQaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra) and he will later overthrow the Syrian government under president Assad. Like the Saudi prince Bandar, who nurtured the Jihadists, was ousted over it, but is now back in the deal, the neocon editors of The Economist are doing victory jumps. They managed to get the U.S. back into their war. Hurray!
Like most political analysts, Bernhard assigns too much agency to Obama, and the latter's concerns about the next elections, instead of a deep state functioning behind him and giving him instructions. I also doubt that Bandar (formerly known as "Bandar-Bush") was ever really ousted; it is far more likely that he was intentionally dropped out of public sight in order to organize ISIS.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Inside the New York Fed: Secret Recordings and a Culture Clash

Click here to access article by Jake Bernstein from ProPublica.

ProPublica's stated mission is to be the nation’s authority on professional, investigative reporting by “producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.”  However, because ProPublica is so well-connected, well-funded, and well-embedded in the US ruling class, it can only manage a pretense of an exposé of the Fed and its inability to head-off the banking crisis of 2008 as illustrated in this article. Their investigative report, while very interesting, doesn't really lead to any insightful conclusions other than that the "culture" of the Fed was a major contributing problem that resulted in the banking crisis. WTF does "culture" mean as an explanation? 

Actually, I argue that these is a much larger problem of culture that is endemic to the entire capitalist ruling class. Any ruling socioeconomic class has a common interest in maintaining their rule and maintaining any systems that support their rule. The end result is the creation of a ruling class culture to establish the norms of conduct acceptable to this class, and their primary focus will be to maintain their power and interests, and the system of capitalism which supplies them with such fabulous wealth and power. The Fed is at the nerve center of their class rule, and as such it plays a key role in this class's control over society. And, because ProPublica is also a part of this ruling class, it cannot seriously offer an exposé of this key institution. Hence, the author concludes with bland conclusion that the problem with the Fed is "culture" without analyzing what this culture consists of.

Nothing will come of this report, as well as nothing will come of the lawsuit by the fired employee, Carmen Segarra, who seriously tried to do her job as a bank examiner for the Fed.

Americans have no idea how unequal the distribution of income is

Click here to access article by David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review.
...American respondents estimated the ratio of estimated incomes of CEOs to unskilled workers to be 29.6, whereas the actual ratio was about 354....
Tyler Durden suggests that there is one way to survive: befriend a rich person by hanging out in places where the rich are. And, he helpfully provides us with a "The Billionaire Social Calendar". Maybe we of the poor might run into each other at these occasions. If we get bored, we can swap notes and tips on how to make friends with a rich person.

Climate Blah, Blah, Blah, Change

Click here to access a great animated portrayal of UN Summits and climate destabilization, by Mark Fiore from his website.
With another UN climate summit under way, I wish we could all be more excited and hopeful about the results.  Besides the fact that all eyes are focused on ISIS right now, there is plenty of pessimism about the latest UN meeting.

This climate summit may very well be the most important one ever held.  In fact, every climate summit from here on out is the most important one ever held.  (If you’re driving your car towards a cliff at high speed, it can be argued that each move you make becomes more important than the preceding move because you’re, um, about to go over a cliff!)  Countries of the world started to hold meetings to discuss what to do about global warming way back in 1992.  Remember the Earth Summit?
Do you think that this phenomenon has anything to do with capitalists' control of the UN?

Friday, September 26, 2014

Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb

Click here to access article by Ryan Devereaux from The Intercept. 

In this article Devereaux reviews a recently released CIA document about CIA concerns in relation to Gary Webb and his sensational 1996 series of articles which exposed considerable evidence of CIA involvement in the spread of crack cocaine in California. I found in this article a number of troubling signs of bias with regard to the author's treatment of Gary Webb and the CIA. Devereaux' treatment of the CIA which seems to be based largely on this released CIA document suggests to me that he is engaging in damage control for the CIA. This early paragraph describes in summary form his whole treatment of the CIA's relationship with this incident.
Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the document offers a unique window into the CIA’s internal reaction to what it called “a genuine public relations crisis” while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry. Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists,” the CIA’s Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.
While the CIA may have played a minor role in media attacks on Webb's revelations, this criminal agency played a major role in the proliferation of illicit drugs among poor urban areas of the US. By focusing attention on the discrediting of Webb's investigative reporting and the CIA's minor role in it, he deflects attention away from the crimes of the CIA. As far as who was discrediting Webb's work, there were others in the US ruling class directorate that were interested in controlling the powerful influence of his work, and ended up destroying his career. His series of articles in the San Jose Mercury only reached the attention of the wider American public because his revelations corresponded so well with widespread suspicions among people in the African-American urban communities.
 
Devereaux takes the CIA document as a serious argument that the CIA, and by extension the ruling class, had little to do with the subsequent smearing of Webb's reporting in major newspapers like the NY Times and the Washington Post, which then spread throughout major US news media. Instead he suggests that the discrediting was mostly due to rivalries and jealousies among other journalists in major newspapers. 
Discussing the newly disclosed “Managing a Nightmare” document, Schou says it squares with what he found while doing his own reporting. Rather than some dastardly, covert plot to destroy (or, as some went so far as to suggest, murder) Webb, Schou posits that the journalist was ultimately undone by the petty jealousies of the modern media world. The CIA “didn’t really need to lift a finger to try to ruin Gary Webb’s credibility,” Schou told The Intercept. “They just sat there and watched these journalists go after Gary like a bunch of piranhas.”
As the German journalist, writer, and former newspaper editor Mathias Broechkers wrote in his book on conspiracies:
The intimate involvement of western intelligence agencies with organized crime and illegal arms and drug dealing may be proven and documented a hundred times over--yet this conspiracy will still not be publicly exposed.
I strongly suspect that the recent release of this CIA document was timed precisely because of the upcoming release of the film covering this subject.

The Good War

Click here to access article by Alex Doherty from Telesur (Venezuelan government owned multi-media corporation).

Doherty examines the frequent use of the Hitler and Nazi metaphors targeting enemies of the US Empire to provide propaganda cover for the Empire's military interventions. In this piece he offers an excellent correction to the false history reported widely in the US about what is often referred to as the "good war" (WWII). In reality it was essentially an inter-empire conflict in the 20th century's "multi-polar" capitalist world.
Public support for western interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere depends very heavily on the belief that the Western democratic states are fundamentally benign actors in world affairs. Since that assumption is difficult to square with the ugly reality of Western imperialism, WWII is routinely invoked in an effort to demonstrate that supposed benevolence. Indeed it is hard to think of a post-Cold War era conflict involving the United States and her allies in which Nazi comparisons have not been drawn - from Libya to the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and beyond. If we wish to restrain the Western powers from routine intervention in the global south we would do well to blunt the power of this particular propaganda tool by endeavouring to see that a more critical picture of the Second World War is known to the publics of the imperial societies.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Kids Killing Other Peoples’ Kids

Click here to access article by Roland Vincent and Patrice Greanville from The Greanville Post.

I can easily identify with these two authors and their perspective as activists against an earlier war engaged in by the Empire--the Vietnam War. This war brought in a huge cross-section of young Americans by the ruling capitalist class to kill people in Indochina who had been fighting the French to gain independence. It was during the buildup to this war that saw other events that created opposition to the war from many sections of the society: the Cuban missile crisis, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, of Martin Luther King, Malcolm  X, and many people in radical type organizations like the Black Panther Movement. While all of these events were contributing to a huge opposition to the war, the ruling capitalist class were learning many lessons from this experience which they then proceeded to implement in the years that followed. 

There were two main lessons that resulted in profound changes in US society: increased control over media coverage by the capitalist class to transform mainstream media into a pure propaganda organ, and the embedding of a secret deep state to take direct control of the official organs of the nation, Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court, whose independent powers were greatly diminished. 

As a result of these changes, the ruling capitalist class, also known as the One Percent, have succeeded in engaging in military aggressions, directly or indirectly, against many countries across the globe without significant opposition from the well-indoctrinated people of the US. And, whenever the American people get tired of war, the ruling class will always whip them in line by creating new fears, new evils, and new bad guys that will come to the US and kill them. The 9/11 project was a hugely successful example of this. The creation of ISIS is the most recent illustration.

In this article the two authors demonstrate a clear understanding of the root causes of war in our era, and end on a note of hope:
Sadly, war will continue as long as capitalists run the country and the world.

War is highly profitable. And almost without competition. The carefully masked fascist war machine already controls the US government, it has already bribed government officials. The payoff comes with every new plane, ship, bomb, missile, mortar, gun, and bullet ordered by the military. Not to mention unlimited access to the US treasury.

The enemies of war are the people who value the lives of everyone’s children, their own lives, and the lives of animals, and the destiny of this planet—our only home. Precious as they are, they have no place in the current capitalist paradigm.

Yet they are the future of mankind.

They are the revolutionaries.

EU Fracking Wedge

Click here to access a link to 12:57m recording of an interview with Michael Hudson conducted by Radio Voice of Russia and posted on Hudson's website.
An interview with Radio Voice of Russia, World Service on Ukrainian sovereignty in the face of IMF loans, the push for fracking [and GMOs] by US interests and how corruption lurks in the background.
Hudson explains the devious strategy of the IMF and US corporations which are using Ukraine to induce European acceptance of fracking and GMOs.

Not just ironic

Click here to access article by John Cowsill from his blog Safe Planet. 
John Cowsill is a socialist and environmental activist. He lives in Islington, London. After a 20 year career as a systems analyst and programmer, he changed tack and gained an MSc in Architecture: Advanced Energy and Environmental Studies at the University of East London and the Graduate School of the Environment in Wales. He was the principal researcher on storage and Vehicle-to-Grid technology for the ZeroCarbonBritain (2007) report.
Cowsill in this article is writing about some irrationalities that have been showing up in the UK over energy used to supply their National Grid. Lately it appears that they have had an oversupply of energy which ruling class authorities have dealt with by shutting now renewable energy sources. They provided cover for this irrational action by claiming the shutdowns were for many phony reasons. Cowsill has spotted the real reason. 

Under capitalist rules private enterprises exist to make a profit, and cheaper renewable energy is adversely affecting the profits of energy corporations. With capitalists in control of societies, they are dictating policies like this which from a social system point of view are irrational, but rational from a capitalist point of view.

Unmentioned by the author, there is another reason for the shutdown of renewable energy resources. The current oversupply must be seen as only a temporary phenomenon given the growth-imperative of capitalism. Hence, the future demands for energy can only increase and such demands cannot be met by renewable energy resources. Thus, they must continue to develop fossil energy resources to keep their system going, a system what supplies these addicts with their drugs of power and wealth. They are finding that new fossil fuel sources are becoming ever more expensive; thus energy companies require huge investments which must be recouped through profits. They can't tolerate having cheaper renewable energy competing with them.

And, worst of all, they are so drugged-out that they refuse to seriously look at the reality of climate destabilization, much less the likelihood of nuclear wars between capitalist gangs to gain control of diminishing fossil fuels sources.

Prepare the Child For the Path: Banning Charlotte's Web and Native Son

Click here to access article by Abby Zimet from Common Dreams.

Unlike mainstream media, Zimet and Common Dreams does us a favor by informing us that we are in the middle of Banned Books Week. The event is about the banning of many books from libraries and schools with emphasis on the worst offender, Texas. This is worrisome because, as an article from The New York Review of Books explains, Texas has crucial influence over textbooks selected for classrooms across the country.

Climate Change's “Evil Twin”

Click here to a link to a 55 minute interview with Meg Chadsey regarding ocean acidification broadcast from listener-sponsored KPFA Berkeley, California. 

 ...Meg worked with the University of Washington School of Marine Affairs, the Marine Stewardship Council and Seattle Chefs Collaborative. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a doctorate in microbiology from the University of Washington. She's (practically) a native Seattleite and is interested in everything that happens on or beneath the waves.





Carbon dioxide generated by the burning of fossil fuels is being absorbed into the oceans with already serious -- and potentially catastrophic -- consequences for marine life and human life. Meg Chadsey describes the phenomenon of ocean acidification and the myriad physical and social threats it poses.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Operation Tomahawk The Caliph

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online.

Because the directors of the Empire like to play to its home crowd in themes of morality, humanitarianism, and rule of law, the twists and turns of their imperial ploys often require rather absurd twists and turns in their propaganda. Then we have Escobar who can smell hypocrisy miles away, and loves to ridicule it wherever he finds it. With directors like those running the Empire, he has no difficulty satisfying his love of ridicule. He feasts on the abundance of hypocritical newspeak that these directors must serve to their home subjects in order to appear as humanitarian cooks.
The Obama administration's unison newspeak is that Khorasan includes former al-Qaeda assets not only from across the Middle East - including al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra - but also Pakistan, as in an ultra-hardcore extension of the Pakistani Taliban.

What a mess. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is the embryo of ISIS, which turned into IS. Jabhat al-Nusra is the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, approved by CEO Ayman al-Zawahiri. Both despise each other, and yet Khorasan holds the merit of bundling Caliph's goons and al-Qaeda goons together. Additionally, for Washington Jabhat al-Nusra tend to qualify as "moderate" jihadis - almost like "our bastards". Too messy? No problem; when in doubt, bomb everybody.
 
If ridicule is not your "thing", then read a more conventional report by Tony Cartalucci on the same subject. Some will argue that Escobar's article is more effective.

False Fronts for Wall Street

Click here to access article by Jay Taber from CounterPunch.

NGOs (non-profits, foundations, other "charitable" organizations) often function as front organizations serving our corporate/financial overlords in support of their neoliberal and imperial policies abroad and austerity policies within the US. Our rich ruling class use this method to funnel their vast amounts of wealth to such organizations which appear to be engaged in merely humanitarian efforts. It is often effective in protecting their system and policies from resistance by the Ninety-Nine Percent (that's us!). Aren't they clever?
As a fifth column of fascism, imperial civil society – funded by such entities as Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Ford Foundation, and Soros Open Society Institute – operates worldwide (in tandem with official false fronts like USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, and U.S. Institute for Peace) to subvert sovereignty and derail democracy in favor of US hegemony.

The NGO-ization of Resistance

Click here to access article by Arundhati Roy from Libya 360°.
A hazard facing mass movements is the NGO-ization of resistance.
Roy draws on her experience watching NGOs function in India to explain how some NGOs function in support of neoliberal "structural adjustment" programs by pacifying populations and containing dissent. 

For a lengthy description of how such NGOs function in another country, Eritrea, read this article.

Streams Of Profit And Rivers Of Poison: Big Agritech’s Lasting Legacy

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from East by Northwest.

Britisher Todhunter, who has lived in India for a number of years, has learned a lot about the way global corporations function in developing countries. He explains how the agricultural corporations' exclusive dedication to profits adversely affects the health and well-being of ordinary people.
With each new ‘fix’, with each technology, with each new pesticide, herbicide, GM innovation, we become further removed from with nature as powerful corporate entities attempt to dominate it with some or other biotechnology that further damages both ourselves and the environment. But, it’s all good business. And once peasant economies are destroyed and remaining farmers are forced onto the treadmill of chemical inputs and GMOs, it can be difficult to get off. There’s always money to be made from a continuous state of crisis management (aka ‘innovation’ and bombarding farmers with a never-ending stream of new technologies).

“The Lone Gladio” Blows the Lid Off Of Gladio B

Click here to access this book review by Corbett Report of Sibel's new book, posted on Boiling Frogs.

In her new work of "fiction", it appears that this former FBI translator and whistleblower reveals more Empire secrets.
What the mainstream sources do not tell you about Operation Gladio is that it is not merely a NATO-led operation, but a CIA-sponsored and Pentagon-connected one; that it is not merely operative in Europe but throughout the world; that its main area of operations is not Italy but Turkey; and that it did not end operations after the fall of the Soviet Union, but merely changed tactics, from fostering right-wing paramilitary groups (original Gladio) to fostering Islamic terrorist groups (Gladio “B”).
And if you are interested how censorship is exercised in this "land of the free...", you need to read about her experiences with book publishing.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Propaganda’s Triumph

Click here to access article by Ben Schreiner from CounterPunch. 

With a string of failures including what many believe to be videos of staged beheadings broadcast over and over to get the war-weary American public behind another war, the Empire's propaganda directors continued their work and have finally achieved success.
...all the tales of the besieged Yazidis being rescued by those great M16 toting humanitarians of the U.S. military didn’t quite suffice to fully move the American public onto a proper war footing.  The hangover from the Iraq war (part II) still lingered.  Understandable, considering the war launched to prevent a war (“preemptive defense”) blew a three-plus trillion dollar hole in the American coffer, let alone having left thousands of American GIs killed and maimed (in addition to claiming millions more “unworthy” victims in Iraq).  So try as they might, the “respectable press” could not sell the prevention of “genocide” as a casus belli to a still war-weary public.  The responsibility to protect mantra of the liberal interventionists clearly has its limits.

The time had come, then, for the propaganda system’s trump card.  Enter fear.
Meanwhile, the Empire's propaganda directors ignore occasional reports showing how the Empire and its Arab allies have promoted ISIS (see this and this), and cover such purported beheadings in a very selective manner.

Obama Admin’s TPP Trade Officials Received Hefty Bonuses From Big Banks

Click here to access article by Lee Fang from Republic Report.

This article also documents many other nefarious aspects in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations.

US plans to invest $1 trillion in nuclear weapons arsenal

Click here to access article by Niles Williamson from World Socialist Web Site. 
While the Times article is couched in the language of defense, in relation to both Russia and China the US has played the role of aggressor. The US and its allies in Europe organized a right-wing coup in Ukraine that has been followed by a campaign of sanctions and war threats against Russia. And the Obama administration has been carrying out a “pivot to Asia,” asserting its control over the Asia-Pacific while encouraging the remilitarization of Japan.
These confrontations, as well possible conflicts with European powers, pose the danger of nuclear war.

Patients Last

Click here to access article by Shane Danaher from Jacobin. 
Prime Healthcare Services — like the rest of the for-profit health industry — shows capitalism as its worst.
....
...Prime Healthcare’s history suggests an organization determined to view the sick as a resource for exploitation, an attitude that has led, unsurprisingly, to a dramatic rift between Prime’s management and the workers that staff its hospitals.

True Heroes Behind Kiev Ceasefire

Click here to access article by William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook.

Engdahl provides a summing up of one of the Empire's latest adventures, Ukraine, which could have brought about a nuclear conflagration; and offers thanks to the "true heroes" who averted such a catastrophe. It illustrates once again that "the people united can never be defeated." Hence, the powerful efforts by Empire agents to divide people.
We should all thank God it has not happened, and that Russia has acted with remarkable restraint in the situation. Instead, a rag-tag citizens’ militia across eastern Ukraine, fighting for their homes, their lands, for their families and friends, whether or not in part helped by Russians, have fought an incredible battle. It has been a battle to stop the insanity put in power in Kiev that US State Department neo-conservative Assistant Secretary Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland and CIA Director John Brennan and others in the Obama Administration have brought.

.... Finally with the declaration by Ukraine’s Poroshenko of a ceasefire, it is time to recognize the debt of gratitude all lovers of world peace and civilized people everywhere owe to the citizens of eastern Ukraine whose refusal to allow the destruction of their lives by a criminal band of US-financed barbarians in Kiev just might have helped avoid a world war.
[my emphasis]

NGOs are Cages

Click here to access article by Stephanie McMillan from her website.
We really need to understand the methods used by NGOs to undermine radical political organizing efforts and divert us into political dead ends. ....

.... NGOs will descend on any organizing effort and try to take it over, dilute it, and bring it eventually to the Democratic Party. We can also see an identical set-up with the established labor unions and many other organizations. 
This is so true, much more than we realize. However, this piece only lightly touches on the problem. We need a much deeper examination of the methods used by NGOs to divert energies and criticism into safer (for the ruling class) channels and away from real change strategies.

Are Apple and Google Really on Your Side Against the NSA?

Click here to access article by Bill Blunden from CounterPunch.
In the past couple of days both Google[i] and Apple[ii] have announced that they’re enabling default encryption on their mobile devices so that only the user possessing a device’s password can access its local files.
....
Quite a sales pitch? Cleverly disguised as a news report no less. Though it’s not stated outright the tacit message is: open your wallet for the latest gadget and you’ll be safe from Big Brother.
Blunden deconstructs the latest deceptions from corporate America.

Monday, September 22, 2014

The Next Crisis – Parts one and two

Click here to access article by David Malone from his blog Golem XIV. (I haven't read much of the lengthy Part two yet, and apparently we can expect more. The whole series looks very promising.)
If you line up the S&L, the Junk Bond and the Dot Com bubble, America has had a major home-brewed financial crisis every ten years. If you consider that none of these events happened in isolation nor limited their effects to the country of origin then we have to conclude that the global financial system is prone to crises. You can, if you see the world through resolutely libertarian glasses, blame everything on interfering governments – it matters little. The fact remains that the system as is, is unstable and run by the myopic, the greedy and the corrupt. Where they draw their salary, which side of the revolving door they happen to be on, on any day seems to me irrelevant. The worst of them don’t understand and are easily bought. The best have no concern for anyone or anything beyond their next bonus.

And here we are being led by them.

...we should be thinking what our leaders, what the people they work for – the global overclass – might already have in mind or have already put in place, for what they want done next time.
Then in Part two he speculates about what the One Percent have planned for us in the next crisis; and argues that if we understand their plan, there might be hope that we can save ourselves.
An alternative to Democracy must be introduced and praised. That alternative must be the Rule of International Law as written and controlled by the lawyers of the 1%. People must be told that this is all that stands between them and an increasingly hostile and anarchic world. But that it can only keep them safe if it has absolute authority over democracy. People must voluntarily bow to it out of fear and its decisions must be as absolute and unquestionable.
...I suggest that this amounts to a dystopian version of the old environmentalist idea of Spaceship Earth. A corporate version where we are just passengers who must pay our passage in a ship someone else owns. No longer inhabitants or citizens with the same inalienable right to be there and be heard as anyone else. 
And yet, dark as all this may seem, victory for the 1% depends on no one understanding what is happening. If we are already beginning to see the outlines of what the Over Class wants, then their victory is not assured. If our ignorance is their bliss, then our understanding is like sunlight on a vampire’s skin.

This Changes Nothing. Why the People’s Climate March Guarantees Climate Catastrophe

Click here to access article by Cory Morningstar from The Wrong Kind of Green. 

After being misled down the path of fake anti-capitalism as performed by Naomi Klein, I have decided to focus much more attention on astroturf non-profit organizations (NGOs) operating here in the US to manage dissent and consent in relation to US-led Empire interests. I have run a number of articles describing such NGO operations in foreign countries, but I think I have been somewhat remiss by a lack of focus on the same type of operations here in the US. After all, Empire operatives have a global perspective to go along with their global Empire aspirations, and thus there is no reason to separate their functions abroad from their domestic efforts to manage the views and opinions of ordinary people. 
 
In this article Morningstar provides considerable evidence of recent operations of astroturf organizations being funded by the well-connected rich hidden behind many non-profit foundations. Such foundations appear to funnel money of the rich from one such organization to another in an effort to head off growing criticism from the new-economy movement and their focus on changing the system, from those who fear climate destabilization stemming from fossil-fueled capitalism, and many who are opposed to foreign adventures of the Empire to extend its control over the remaining resources of the world.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

In the Ashes of Civilization

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

The author is expert at describing where we are headed if we continue down the path of "business as usual". It ain't pretty, but it's real.
From its inception, capitalism paved a one-way path to annihilation, predicated as it was on unmitigated growth, the extraction of finite resources, the exaltation of individualism over communal ties, and the maximization of profit at the expense of the environment and society. .... Capitalist industrial civilization was built on burning the organic remains of ancient organisms, but at the cost of destroying the stable climatic conditions which supported its very construction. The thirst for fossil fuels by our globalized, high-energy economy spurred increased technological development to extract the more difficult-to-reach reserves, but this frantic grasp for what was left only served to hasten the malignant transformation of Earth into an alien world. 

Like a Dull Knife: The People’s Climate “Farce”

Click here to access article by Quincy Saul from TruthOut.

In this article Saul advises people "to bear in mind the potential dangers and drawbacks of such an endeavor" of which he suggests some. He also offers suggestions about how the event could be useful.

I think that if all people do is gather in mass in New York and march through the city with a lot of corporate embedded NGOs, then it will be all for nothing. But to the extent that The People's Climate March raises peoples' consciousness of the seriousness of climate destabilization, then it could be promising if afterwards people at the grassroots build organizations to confront the goliaths of capitalist ruling classes along a series of battlegrounds--control of media, government, education, and most important of all, the economy.