Website Claims To Pay Anti-Trump Protesters $2,500K A Month and $50 An Hour

Click here to access article by Aaron Kesel from We Are Change.

It appears that protestors, like terrorists in Syria, can be bought by our capitalist masters.

...the website was recently registered, according to a who.is search, yet the organization claims to be the largest private grassroots support organization in the United States. The second anomaly is the website was registered anonymously, and there is no background to this website, to determine it’s validity.

Although rumors were running rampant on 4chan that this site is financed by George Soros, there is no proof to back this claim that came to light. So it’s unclear if the website is legitimate, or a fraud that someone created for attention, or to just troll the internet.

Martin Luther King’s Death Disappears Down the Memory Hole. “He Was Assassinated by a U.S. Government Conspiracy”

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from Global Research. 

As Martin Luther King’s birthday is celebrated with a national holiday, his death day disappears down the memory hole.  Across the country – in response to the King Holiday and Service Act passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1994 – people will  be encouraged to make the day one of service  (from Latin, servus = slave).  Etymological irony aside, such service does not include King’s commitment to protesting a decadent system of racial and economic injustice or non-violently resisting the warfare state that is the United States.  Government sponsored service is cultural neo-liberalism at its finest. 

He goes on to argue that the holiday is being transformed into a day of service, meaning a day of unpaid service instead of honoring a man who heroically resisted the police and other capitalist authorities who tried to continue racist practices and to promote racism in order to divide Americans. 

A Foreign Nation Did Interfere in a US Election: in 1980

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

Well, to be more specific and accurate, a foreign nation was used by a section of our ruling class to interfere in the 1980 election to swing it for the Zionist infiltrated Republican party and their puppet-candidate and super salesman/grade B Hollywood actor, Ronald Reagan. The event was another illustration of managed fake elections, along with fake news, that are constantly used in the capitalist ruling class's ersatz democracy to insure their interests of profit and power--not our interests of peace, equality, and sustainability.

In 1980, Democratic President Jimmy Carter, running for re-election under the cloud of the U.S. embassy in Tehran having been seized by radical Iranian students and 52 members of its staff being held hostage, was trying desperately to pull off an "October Surprise" to salvage his presidency. Unbeknownst to Carter, the campaign of his Republican rival, Ronald Reagan, had secretly negotiated an «arms-for-no-hostages» deal with the Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime in Iran.

In return for the shipment of embargoed military items, including spare parts for Iran’s U.S.-supplied F-14 Tomcat fighter planes and Phoenix air-to-air missiles for the planes, before the November 4 election, the Reagan team was promised by the Iranians that Tehran would hold the hostages until after the November election. Upon Reagan’s defeat of Carter, Iran held true to its promise and did not release the American hostages until noon Eastern Standard Time on January 20, 1981, the very moment Reagan raised his hand to take the presidential oath of office.

From Obama to Trump: The Failure of Passive Revolution [a must read article]

Click here to access article by sociology Professor William I. Robinson posted on TeleSur.

I regard Robinson as one of the most astute analysts of political-social events in today's world. He has a solid understanding of history from a class-based leftist perspective.

He begins his analysis by delineating various aspects of what he refers to as the "passive revolution" that occurred under the Obama administration:

The Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci developed the concept of passive revolution to refer to efforts by dominant groups to bring about mild change from above in order to defuse mobilization from below for more far-reaching transformation. Integral to passive revolution is the cooptation of leadership from below and the integration of that leadership into the dominant project.

I am not enamored of this term although I agree with much of it. There is nothing revolutionary about it. It is simply the capitalist ruling class's attempt to pacify and delude the public into accepting its hegemonic role and to pretend to be serving the public while actually serving its own tiny class interests. People like Obama and Bernie Sanders for varying reasons are rather easily co-opted into serving the ruling class's liberal wing to pacify the general public. The ruling capitalist class loves to divert people's attention from the class war onto other subjects like terrorism, the drug problems, and identity politics.

I think he accurately describes the significance of Trump's victory.

Trumpism’s far-right agenda – contrary to superficial interpretations – constitutes a deepening, not a reversal, of the program of capitalist globalization pursued by the Obama administration and every U.S. administration since Ronald Reagan. The crisis of global capitalism has become more acute in the face of economic stagnation and the rise of anti-globalization populism on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. Trumpism does not represent a break with capitalist globalization, but rather the recomposition of political forces and ideological discourse as the crisis deepens and as international tensions reach new depths. 

And, I think he places "Trumpism" in a correct historical context:

Whether in its 20th or its emerging 21st century variants, fascism is, above all, a response to deep structural crises of capitalism, such as that of the 1930s and the one that began with the financial meltdown of 2008. I have been writing for the past decade about the rise of 21st century fascist currents in the context of the new global capitalism. One key difference between 20th century fascism and 21st century fascism is that the former involved the fusion of national capital with reactionary and repressive political power, whereas the latter involves the fusion of transnational capital with reactionary political power. Trumpism is not a departure from but an incarnation of the emerging dictatorship of the transnational capitalist class.

Trumpism and the sharp turn to the extreme right is the logical progression of the political system in the face of the crisis of global capitalism.

There is so much substance included in this article. I recommend listening to his remarks in the early 2015 interview (16:40m) in which he addresses questions about the history of the OAS in the context of neoliberalist agenda, the differing US strategies toward Venezuela versus Cuba, and his expectations about the OAS summit of April of 2015. (If you have difficulty viewing this on your computer that uses a Firefox browser, I might be of assistance. The other videos are not very important.) 

I also like his advice about fighting back against the latest iteration of ruling class strategy, Trumpism, and for the interests of working people.

Fake News: The Latest Weapon in Information Space

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

In any struggle, adaptation is required. With Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms joining the so-called war on “fake news,” those who seek to maintain the rise of the alternative media and a balance of power across information space must identify the special interests driving this agenda, as well as various means to undermine and overcome it.

Because Facebook (which I don't use) has joined the directors of the US Empire to spy on you and to limit what you read as real or significant news and opinion, it is urgent that activists find another means of sharing information among each other. Cartalucci presents another alternative (which I have not yet used) in the form of Freenet.

Geopolitically, a successful, widely used, and disruptive P2P social networking platform that undermines or entirely breaks Facebook’s control over social media evens the playing field and allows individuals and states to once again get their side of the story out to the public on equal footing to the “fact checkers” seeking to combat “fake news” on Facebook, Twitter, and other centralized platforms dominated by Western tech-giants.

Former Newspaper Editor Who Exposed CIA Found Dead

Click here to access article by Baxter Dmitry from YourNewsWire. (additional link added 7:30 AM Seattle time.)

I was wondering how long he would last after the widespread publications of his book and RT video (linked to in the article). See what Sen. Schumer says about the CIA.

Ulfkotte was an editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the largest newspapers in Germany, when he published Bought Journalists, the bestselling book that cost him his job and perhaps his life.

He was 56. German media, who were banned from reporting on his work in recent years, are reporting he died of “heart failure”.

Acknowledging that his life was under threat, Ulfkotte explained that he was in a better position that most journalists to expose the truth because he didn’t have any children who could be threatened.

Trump Recruits Another Goldman Sachs Bankster

Click here to access article by Kurt Nimmo from Another Day in the Empire.

I guess the moral of this story is...the more things change, the more they stay the same (under capitalist rule).

How is the anti-establishment establishment supposed to fulfill its promise to restore the economy if its top people are former banksters and hedge fund managers?

How are guys associated with a firm that packaged and sold toxic securities while betting they would fail and screw over investors good for America? How in the hell are they anti-establishment?

view this graphic on LittleSis

The Radical Left in the Age of Trump

Click here to access this brief article which points to a gathering of leftists by Bruce from Planning Beyond Capitalism.

The world capitalist system is in its worst crisis. As  this election shows, along with the elections in Europe, centrist politics is also in its worst crisis. Yet here in the US the left has been fragmented for at least 45 years. Now more than ever, the economic and political crisis requires a united radical left. A well-respected comrade of ours has organized a public meeting in NYC on February 5th to discuss how the radical left can be a force. Please check Insurgent Notes for updates.

Details in Insurgent Notes

Letter From Mexico

Click here to access article from Insurgent Notes.

The 20% rise in gas prices in Mexico has resulted in widespread turmoil among the populace.

Editor’s Note [editor of Insurgent Notes]: We recently sent a couple of articles on Mexico from the Financial Times to our Mexico correspondent to check their accuracy. The following is his reply. 

Look who's talking via corporate media

by editorial cartoonist Nick Anderson.

Why Ridiculous Official Propaganda Still Works

Click here to access article by C J Hopkins from CounterPunch.

Chief among the common misconceptions about the way official propaganda works is the notion that its goal is to deceive the public into believing things that are not “the truth” (that Trump is a Russian agent, for example, or that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, or that the terrorists hate us for our freedom, et cetera). However, while official propagandists are definitely pleased if anyone actually believes whatever lies they are selling, deception is not their primary aim.

The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an “official narrative” that can be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and those who support and identify with them. This official narrative does not have to make sense, or to stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny. Its factualness is not the point. The point is to draw a Maginot line, a defensive ideological boundary, between “the truth” as defined by the ruling classes and any other “truth” that contradicts their narrative.

The Scheme to Take Down Trump

Click here to access article by Daniel Lazare from ConsortiumNews.

The corrosive and subversive spy services, aka "intelligence" services in the US and Britain, appear to be coordinated in the goal of bringing down the presidency of Donald Trump (see also this report). Lazare analyses the latest "leak" which was reported by a former British spy and distributed widely to US government officials by US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a known liar to Congress. It was distributed so widely by Clapper that Lazare suspects that it was done to insure that it would be leaked to the media.

Trump is a rightwing blowhard whose absurd babblings about Saudi Arabia, Iran and Yemen reveal a man who is dangerously ignorant about how the world works. But he has managed to seize on one or two semi-good ideas over the years. One is that Obama administration’s confrontational policies toward Russia are a recipe for disaster, while another is that toppling Syria’s Bashar al-Assad with Al Qaeda and ISIS still up and about will only hasten their march on Damascus.

Both views are perfectly sensible. But because Washington’s endlessly bellicose foreign-policy establishment is wedded to the opposite, it sees them as high treason.

Although it should seem wonderful to see dissension among the capitalist ruling class, I would be much more comfortable if anti-capitalist forces were more effectively organized to take advantage of their squabbles.

(For another piece of investigative reporting regarding this incident, I recommend an article entitled "Former MI6 Spy Paid By Jeb Bush Super PAC To Create Fake Trump Report".) 

AfD youth leader: ‘Russia is no threat to Europe’

Click here to access a transcript of an interview with Markus Frohnmaier, a German activist and leader of a protest movement. Posted on Free West Media.

Mr. Frohnmaier: Ships unloaded US tanks, self-propelled howitzers and hundreds of other fighting vehicles in the northern German port of Bremerhaven, that are to be moved into Eastern Europe to bolster NATO’s deterrence against “possible Russian aggression” as media reports show. German mainstream politicians and media are welcoming this operation, but you are not. Why?

Frohnmaier: I don’t even agree with the justification of this operation. There is no “possible Russian aggression” against Europe. Moscow didn’t make any move which would justify such a massive military reaction by NATO. The arrival of US war materiel in Europe is a sign of confrontation.

Frohnmaier is referring to what NATO officials call "Atlantic Resolve". Here are some images of the deployment of US armor, other weapons, and troops in Europe.

(For more information about this military exercise and concerns about possible continuing threats to Russia under the Trump administration based on statements issued by his cabinet nominees, listen to Luke Rudkowski, founder of We Are Change website.)

Trained to obey, not educated to think, by ruling class

 

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: What is BDS?

Click here to access article by Hilary Aked from Al Jazeera. 

This article will give you basic information about the boycott movement (BDS).

For more specific information about how to participate in BDS, check out this link.

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii reports on her contact with Donald Trump

The following is an interview of Tulsi Gabbard on (of all places) Fox TV! (A must watch)

This Iraqi veteran and now Congresswoman tells of her discussion with Trump and about her views regarding the Syrian conflict. 

Syria and the US: More Truths Emerge

Click here to access article by James ONeill from New Eastern Outlook.

On 17 September 2016 aircraft of the so-called ‘coalition’, led by the United States, bombed Syrian Army troop positions at Deir Ez-Zor. Aircraft from the United States, United Kingdom, Denmark and Australia took part in the attack. Between 62 and 90 (reports vary) Syrian troops were killed and more than 100 injured. The attack allowed ISIS forces to take control of what was a vital area protecting the airport.

At the time, the attack was labeled a “mistake”.

This Australian attorney includes this incident and two additional recent pieces of evidence to make sense out of the conflict in Syria, in which the US has played such a key role, to reveal more truths about the conflict. The two recent pieces of evidence are: 

     1) The first is the release of the report into the investigation by the US Central Command   based in Qatar on 29 November 2016.


     2)  At the beginning of 2017 Wikileaks released the audio of a meeting that Kerry had with members of the Syrian Opposition on 22 September 2016 at the Dutch UN Mission. This was less than a week after the Deir ez-Zor bombing.

Unfortunately, he doesn't provide a link to this fascinating audio recording, and I was sure that I had posted it on my website, but apparently I didn't. Here is the full Wikileaks recording that was first released on December 30, 2016:



If you haven't listened to it already on other posts, I urge you to do so. Some key sections are the following:

1) 3:48 - 4:01 Kerry admits that opposition and extremists are aligned.
Kerry: "Nusra and Daesh both make it hard because you have this extreme element and unfortunately some of the opposition has already chosen to work with them"

2) 22:29 - 23:51 Opposition Rep defends Nusra.
The rebel representative is angry that Sunnis (Al Nusra/ISIS) will be bombed in the ceasefire while Hezbollah and the Iranian/Iraqi militias are not. Kerry has to explain that Nusra/Daesh have attacked the U.S. and are our enemies while Hezbollah has not and has not even been active against Israel.

3) 26:09 - 26:55
“And we know that this was growing, we were watching, we saw that DAESH (ISIS) was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened,” Kerry said during the meeting.

“(We) thought, however,” he continued to say, “We could probably manage that Assad might then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him.”

Also Mint Press News give a good summary of the significance of the recording.

Indignity of not-work?

Click here to access article by economist David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

Mainstream economists and economic commentators continue to invoke the so-called “dignity of work” to criticize the idea of a universal basic income.

It’s an argument I’ve dealt with before (e.g., here and here). As I see it, there’s nothing necessarily dignified about most people being forced to have the freedom to sell their ability to work to a tiny group of employers. The idea may be intrinsic to capitalism—but that doesn’t mean it contributes to the dignity of people who work for a living, especially when they have no control over how they work or what they produce when they work.

Quite to the contrary. Working for employers is subjecting oneself to the indignity of a wage-slave by working for bosses (masters) who have essentially complete control over you while at work; and increasingly nowadays for middle managers with the introduction of cellphone technology to their jobs, this kind of relationship often extends beyond normal work hours.

Teaching Homeland Security

Click here to access a 53 minute interview with Professor Nicole Nguyen broadcast over KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station in Berkeley, California.

According to Nicole Nguyen, national security-related agencies and companies are drawing young people into a mindset of militarism and war via their involvement in homeland security programs, which have been established in dozens of public schools in the U.S. Nguyen did ethnographic work at one such high school; she reveals what the students are taught and what values and beliefs they are encouraged to adopt.

I found this interview quite disturbing. Nguyen describes what many poorer school districts are faced with: inadequate funding for education and increasing pressure to focus on jobs to keep their students in school until they graduate. To make up for the lack of funding, many school districts are seduced by grants that are available from the Dept. of Homeland Security to fund curricula that promotes strong militaristic values, distorted ideas about terrorism, stereotypes about the Middle East, racist hyper-masculine conditioning, and the necessity of imperialist wars. Teachers at these schools are also assigned surveillance responsibilities to identify students who might be inclined toward terrorism.

Are We Losing Both Truth and Reality?

Click here if wish to access these word by Rowan Wolf directly from Uncommon Thought Journal. 

There are facts, there are truths, and there are facts and truths that may make us feel certain things--things that call on us to demand that these truths be addressed. However, many do not like uncomfortable truths, and grifters are aware of that. So they tell lies and they identify scapegoats, and direct the rage of the people so that they feel powerful--so powerful that they don't want truths, even when they know they are hearing lies. And these people slip into the land of unreality, the cult of personality, and may be lost. The real challenge is to not lose the nation in the same sink hole.

MSNBC Unbelievably Equates FAKE NEWS With Climate Science!

from the Jimmy Dore show via YouTube. 

Instead of posting rational, evidence-based posts and commentaries supported by links from credible sources, I sometimes want to issue curse-laden rants like this. But Dore does it much better than I can.

The Real Threat Is ‘Telling The Truth’: Abby Martin Responds To Accusations Of Influencing Election 2016

Click here to access article by Kit O'Connell and the 7:30m interview on RT with Abby Martin (embedded below) posted on Mint Press News.

On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [ODNI] published a declassified version of “Background to ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections’: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution,” a report which purports to document Russia’s alleged interference in the election.

Despite the report’s technical-sounding title, a sizable portion of the document is concerned not with cyber attacks, but with unfavorable coverage of the U.S. government and American politics broadcast on RT, the Russian state-owned news network that has been a target of repeated U.S. government threats. The report specifically highlights Martin’s show, “Breaking the Set,” which ran on RT....

Referring to the ODNI report she remarked (around 5:15m in the RT interview): 

What this report really is saying, Anya, is that telling the truth, reporting on issues that affect Americans and their communities, is the threat.

Their argument, which Martin clarifies, is without any kind of legitimacy, but telling the truth is a major threat to the Empire's actions and the ruling capitalist class in the US. That is precisely why they don't want anyone anywhere in the media telling the truth. That is why they are going after alternative media. Keep telling the truth, Abby, because telling the truth has become a revolutionary act necessary (although not sufficient) to overthrow the rule of capitalism.

 

Protests in Mexico Push Country to Brink of Revolution and Nobody’s Talking About It

Click here to access article by Nick Bernabe from Anti-Media. 

To be more specific, US corporate media are not covering it honestly.

Much like the U.S., the Mexican government is susceptible to corporate influence. It just so happens that the most influential corporate entities in Mexico are drug cartels — and it’s hard for the government to reign in entities that fund and infiltrate it. Similar to the phenomenon of “regulatory capture,” the Mexican government is at least partially funded and co-opted by drug cartels. This festering problem is an underlying factor in the current civil unrest in Mexico.

Could Turkey swing over to the Russian camp?

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from VoltaireNet (France).

Meyssan explains the critical importance of Turkey to remain affiliated with the US Empire and a participating member of the Empire's army known as NATO, but this has been threatened by the recent apparent attempt by the US to engineer a coup against Erdogan, the president of Turkey. Meyssan reports on major efforts led by the Assistant Secretary of State, Ziocon Victoria Nuland, to keep Turkey in NATO.

Seen from Washington, a possible exit by Turkey from NATO, or at least from the Integrated Military Command of the Atlantic Alliance, has the imperialist faction of Power in a cold sweat. In terms of numbers, the Turkish army is in fact the second NATO power after the United States. ....

This is the source of the neo-conservative "forcing" [major effort] aimed at bringing Turkey back into the "course of History" (meaning that of the "New American Century"). [my suggested translation]

It will be interesting to see if these efforts by the Ziocons continue after Trump's administration is in place. Meyssan thinks they will continue because of the their major influence in the Deep State that really controls Empire policies.

ISIS, Al-Qaeda And The U.S. Airforce Wage War On Syria's Public Utilities

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama. 

There is a campaign underway to destroy Syria's public utilities. Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the U.S. airforce are involved. Their action is coordinated.

That is an outrageous statement? No such coordination would ever happen?

Bernhard reveals some of the history behind the Empire's terrorist army called ISIS to crush Assad's government in Syria.

It must be remembered that the US Empire has a history of supporting terrorist paramilitaries and armies to crush their opponents: the Contras in Nicaragua, paramilitaries in Colombia and El Salvador, anti-Castro Cubans in their attempted invasion of Cuba ("Bay of Pigs"), etc.

3 Realities You Aren’t Being Told About Afghanistan

Click here to access article by Ulson Gunnar from New Eastern Outlook.

Based on a recent report by General John Nicholson, US commander of US armed forces in Afghanistan, Gunnar found mostly disinformation. But the disinformation actually helped him to deduce three truths or realities about our presence in that country. 

         1. "Stronger Afghan Military" Still Requires Years More of US Hand-Holding

         2. US Taxpayers Will Pay Twice for Afghanistan’s Ineffectual Military

         3. The US is not Fighting Terrorism in Afghanistan

Gunnar ends his analysis with this conclusion:

[Corporate media] Coverage of America's ongoing presence in Afghanistan has dwindled within the US and European media specifically because the alleged narrative underpinning the occupation has diverged so drastically from reality. Over the next year, for those who carefully follow the conflict, the US will continue manufacturing excuses to remain in the country while it focuses on both negotiating with the Taliban and attempting to diminish them politically and militarily.

And to pay for this never-ending occupation of Afghanistan (as well as other imperialist adventures), we ordinary people in the US will experience more cutbacks to social, medical services, educational services, and infrastructure spending.

Is Trump the Back Door Man for Henry A. Kissinger & Co?

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

With Kissinger now in a unique relationship with President-elect Trump as shadow foreign policy adviser, with Kissinger allies Tillerson as Secretary of State and Mattis as Secretary of Defense, it is beginning to appear that the heavy hand of Kissinger and his version of British Balance of Power political manipulations is about to target China, as well as Iran, and to try to use Putin and Russia to destroy the genuine possibility of a counterweight to Western One World delusions, by fostering mistrust and bad blood between China and Russia and Iran.

Engdahl expands on his thesis that he argued in a November post entitled "The Dangerous Deception Called The Trump Presidency" by focusing on Kissinger's role to serve the powerful Rockefeller clan's interest in building what George Bush Sr. referred to as a "new world order" which is essentially the dominance of the US-led Empire. With his excellent understanding of history Engdahl reminds us of the extensive use of the "balance of power" strategy so often employed by the British ruling class to build the British Empire and to neutralize all opponents, and he argues the Kissinger and the current Rockefeller faction are influenced by exactly the same strategy to divide Russia and China.

My main problem with this argument is the continuing news coverage provided by corporate media that continues to engage in virulent attacks on Trump. It's as if corporate news producers get together everyday and see how they can gather together every scrap of information with which to defame Trump and delegitimize his presidency. I've never seen anything like it. Perhaps Engdahl, an American who resides in Germany, is not exposed to so much negative coverage of Trump and it does not figure in his calculations. None of his recent articles arguing this view seem to pose an alternate faction that I believe is led by those in control of the CIA and other "intelligence" agencies.

Engdahl's position is not that Trump was elected by some chicanery, but that the Rockefeller faction saw in him an excellent vehicle that they could use to appeal to wide sections of the American populace and promote their new world order policies. Thus they chose to back Trump. Referring to Trump's style of political campaign, Engdahl wrote his November's article an excellent parody of the performer Trump:

‘Ladies and gentlemen, It’s Showtime!’ Today we give you Donald Trump. He will tell you just what many of you want to hear. Trump the showman will tell you he will make America great again; Trump will say he will ship at least 3 million illegals back across the Rio Grande; Trump will introduce a bill to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization; Trump will bring jobs back to America from China and other low wage countries; Trump will sit down with Putin and work out some kind of a deal to calm things down; Trump will scrap the Iran nuclear deal of Obama…

Often during this election campaign, which was more a Hollywood “D” grade movie than any honest debate of policies and ideas candidate Trump made statements that resonated with the “silent majority” of not only so-called blue collar workers, but also the disenfranchised middle class whose earnings have been declining in real terms since the 1970’s. Trump, like an earlier actor-President named Ronald Reagan, has a talent to make himself sound sincere.

There are three key events that come to mind that I think support Engdahl's thesis.

1) Zbigniew Brzezinski's startling essay entitled "Toward a Global Realignment" (because this can no longer be accessed at The American Interest website--access it here) which subtly argued that some sort of accommodation should be reached with at least one of the two nations. Brzezinski has always exhibited a fanatic anti-Russian attitude.

While no state is likely in the near future to match America’s economic-financial superiority, new weapons systems could suddenly endow some countries with the means to commit suicide in a joint tit-for-tat embrace with the United States, or even to prevail. Without going into speculative detail, the sudden acquisition by some state of the capacity to render America militarily inferior would spell the end of America’s global role. The result would most probably be global chaos. And that is why it behooves the United States to fashion a policy in which at least one of the two potentially threatening states becomes a partner in the quest for regional and then wider global stability, and thus in containing the least predictable but potentially the most likely rival to overreach. Currently, the more likely to overreach is Russia, but in the longer run it could be China.

2) The FBI's re-opening of their investigation about Clinton's alleged misuse of emails only eleven days before the election, and at that time the FBI was denying that Russian influence had any effect on the election. I think that this event was crucial in Trump's victory. Likely the Rockefeller faction influenced Director Comey of the FBI to do this.

3) Kissinger's trip to Russia to meet Putin and other officials in February 2016, and various statements made by Kissinger regarding Trump as reported in this article by Engdahl.

However, I am still concerned about the significance of corporate media's continuing vendetta against Trump and what this represents. This is a phenomenon that Engdahl ignores.

Like Brexit and Trump, Azaria verdict exposes a moment of transition in Israel

Click here to access article by Jonathan Cook from his blog. 

Settlerism is an ideology, one that believes Jews are a “chosen people” whose Biblical rights to the Promised Land trump those of non-Jews such as Palestinans. Polls show 70 per cent of Israeli Jews think they are chosen by God.

The settlers have taken over the army, both demographically and ideologically. They now dominate its officer corps and they direct policy on the ground.

WATCH: Salmon Confidential [or capitalists versus the environment]

Click here to access this very revealing 1:09.04 film entitled "Salmon Confidential" posted on Wrong Kind of Green. (Note: editing done at 8:15 PM Seattle time.)

(On a personal note, I was particularly interested in this film because of one experience I had in 2005 while riding my bike with a cycling club across northern British Columbia from Prince Rupert to Prince George. At one place where we stopped to rest I noticed some people who were taking samples in a nearby stream and recording data. While talking to them, I learned, based on their data, that almost all of the salmon where pink salmon and very little consisted of Chinook, socket, and coho salmon. I was shocked. I never learned why there were such an abundance of pink salmon.)

The film reports on the struggle of scientists to warn the Canadian government about the disastrous impacts of corporate salmon farms on wild salmon. This struggle illustrates so much about the attack on truth when truth affects the profits of the ruling capitalist class far beyond merely fish wildlife. 

The scientific method of obtaining truth was a gift from many persecuted individuals in search of truth during what became known as the Age of Enlightenment. Science as a disciplined method of obtaining truth used evidence and reason. Ruling classes hate truth whenever it clashes with their interests, and science indeed challenged the authority of the Catholic church which was a major ideological support for the rule of feudal authorities consisting of monarchs, aristocracies, as well as the Catholic church.

The early capitalist classes used their discoveries about the world of nature to increase their profits in enterprises. They then challenged the feudal authorities and eventually took control from them to establish new political forms of states and top-down bureaucratic governments. These new capitalist controlled governments gave capitalists exclusive control over productive enterprises in the form of "ownership" rights which included such rights as exclusive control over management, ownership of all inventions and patentable ideas created by workers on the premises of their enterprises, control of all profits, and exclusive rights to sell such properties and benefit from the sales. This inevitably evolved into what we have today: transnational corporations who command more resources and political power than most states of the world, and have taken control of nearly all governments including Canada and the US.

Nowadays we are again witnessing the clash of scientific and other truths reported by scientists, journalists, and other keen observers who are being suppressed (and again being persecuted, but in modern ways such as taking away their employment opportunities) by ruling capitalist authorities whose operations are increasingly being threatened by the truth. Thus we see almost daily reports of government authorities trying to avoid the truth from reports by independent scientists that indicate that the relatively cheap fossil fuels that capitalist use in their profitable enterprises are creating many disastrous effects on the Earth's ecosystem. We see daily reports in major media that lie and cover up reports by independent journalists and other honest observers about how major capitalist governments are promoting wars to capture resources and markets from other countries to benefit their corporations.

This film, which is about the disease-spreading factory fish farms that capitalists find so profitable, provides a perfect illustration of how governments and other capitalist authorities, in general, go to such great lengths to suppress truthful information. (If you don't have time to watch the entire film, I recommend watching the segment from 27:12m to about 35:00m.)

The CIA’s Cult of Death: a Review of Douglas Valentine’s The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World

Click here to access the book review by Kim Petersen from Dissident Voice.

The CIA is known as a surveillance and information gathering apparatus of the USA that engages in various international intrigues. That view of the CIA is superficial. The CIA as Organized Crime presents the CIA as much more and in decidedly more sinister shades. Among these shades, the CIA is a war criminal, torturer, assassin, arms smuggler, drug smuggling kingpin, media network, business empire, and more. The CIA is steeped in capitalism, girded in racism, masterminds and carries out “regime change,” has hands on the control of information and its communication, is creepily immersed in law enforcement and justice, and has a deeply corruptive influence on foreign governments, the DEA, NSA, military, and Justice Department, as well as on US members of Congress.

Trump Picks Fan of Illegal Surveillance as Intelligence Czar

Click here to access article from TeleSur.

Although Trump has expressed opposition to CIA and other intelligence agency reports about Russian hacking of US elections, it doesn't seem likely that the Deep State that governs our nation will have any difficulty with Trump's nomination of former Sen. Coats as head of all the spy agencies. Coats' career is so typical of most "revolving door" government officials: between serving the government in official posts, he served as a lobbyist for major corporations. 

As director of national intelligence, Coats – who served as an Indiana senator for a total of 17 years, with stints as U.S. Ambassador to Germany and corporate lobbyist for Google and General Electric in between terms – would head the umbrella agency in charge of all 16 U.S. intelligence organizations, including the CIA and the National Security Agency.

While a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Coats was an outspoken supporter of the NSA’s illegal domestic spying programs revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, writing in an op-ed that the programs were “legal, constitutional and used only under strict oversight,” claims which were all proven false by multiple federal judges. After the programs were declared illegal by several federal courts, he voted against legislation to rein in domestic surveillance operations.

In any case from my observations of the CIA since 1960, the CIA and NSA are prime agencies of the Deep State and nothing that Coats could possibly do would be permitted in any way to interfere with their operations. Even when the former director James Clapper lied to a Senate committee, which theoretically has oversight responsibilities for the spy agencies, no discipline was imposed on Clapper. 

You might also be interested in how the Deep State's newspaper, The Washington Post (legally owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos), report on Coats' nomination in an article entitled "Trump is expected to nominate ex-senator Dan Coats for director of national intelligence".

The Russians Did Not “Hack” the US Election – a Few Facts from a Former CIA Spy

Click here to access article by Robert David Steele from Defence and intelligence Norway.

Although I regard Steele as politically unsophisticated, as a former spy officer with the CIA and connections with other spy officers he does provide some of the best facts that relate directly from those with technical spy skills. I think that the following section of his article is particularly valuable:

Here are the facts as I understand them, augmented by public statements from Julian Assange, Craig Murray, William Binney, James Bamford, Ray McGovern, Philip Giraldi, and John McAfee – and others who do not wish to be named.

Purge the CIA

Click here to access article by Justin Raimondo from AntiWar.com.

I am posting this article to give an illustration of a reformist view (or liberal view) of a contemporary problem as opposed to a radical view. I have long held the latter position and have encountered problems in clarifying this view for my fellow Americans. Most regard our system of capitalism as a given much like fish which regard water as simply reality. Obviously most Americans have been thoroughly indoctrinated by all the ideological institutions of our capitalist ruling class, and no longer see the system as a construct but simply accept it as reality.

Raimondo expresses his outrage regarding the CIA as an agency of the government which has committed the sins of lying to Congress and is currently trying to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's election. That's it. He doesn't even include all sixteen of the so-called intelligence agencies. So his fix is to purge it, and he hopes Trump will do this.

In contrast to this extremely narrow view of an undesirable agency, a radical view holds that the CIA along with all the unaccountable secret agencies are used by the capitalist ruling class's Deep State to control the government and all the institutions of our nation much like a puppeteer controls his/her puppets. They do this to hide their fascist operations within the US and its imperialist activities throughout the world while preserving the ideological narrative that we live in a democracy. 

The solution is not to abolish the agency or revamp it, which is merely one symptom of control by a ruling class of major capitalists, but to use a radical solution by removing the source of the problem--the rule by a tiny capitalist ruling class. Thus a radical solution of revolution is required--whether we like it or not--to rid ourselves of capitalism, a class based system based on private ownership of the economy, and to construct a new egalitarian social system in which there is bottom-up public control of the economy and the entire society. I don't like it, but I see no alternative.

Pushing for a Lucrative New Cold War

Click here to access article by Gareth Porter from ConsortiumNews. 

The New Cold War promises untold riches for the Military-Industrial Complex, causing hawks inside the Obama administration to push for more hostilities with Russia, as in a Syrian case study dissected by Gareth Porter....

The case study was:

Airstrikes by the United States and its allies against two Syrian army positions Sept. 17 killed at least 62 Syrian troops and wounded dozens more. The attack was quickly treated as a non-story by the U.S. news media; U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) claimed the strikes were carried out in the mistaken belief that Islamic State forces were being targeted, and the story disappeared.

Referring to the military-industrial faction in the capitalist ruling class, Porter's conclusion was that "those people had the power and the audacity to frustrate the will of the President of the United States."

Well, of course they had the power and thus there was no audacity involved in their decision. Porter, like most Americans, refuses to believe that anything other than the official government is in charge of what the government actually does.

I think what the case study indicates is that the ruling class directors are frustrated and disorganized due to the failure of their strategies--the support of their terrorist army (ISIS) and other proxy armies (Syrian Kurds)--to bring down the Syrian government because of Russia's support of the Syrian government. That is why their corporate media continue to issue so many outrageously unbelievable lies. Trump's election (and the failure of their candidate Hillary Clinton) and their media's continuing overt opposition to his administration is another indication of their disorganized state--something which we have not seen since they were thwarted in their attempts to bring down the Cuban government in 1961.

Making Sense of Donald Trump. Creating a Divide between Russia and China

Click here to access article by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich from Global Research. 

Unfortunately, last month I missed this article which makes a rather convincing argument that Trump represents a faction that wants to pursue a slightly different strategy against opponents of the Empire's new world order. Yes, it looks like the old divide and conquer strategy. Thus, the author joins F. William Engdahl who believes the same.

While Trump has made his position vis-à-vis China, Iran, and “radical Islam” abundantly clear, the media has led us on a different path where Russia is concerned.   As such, one could be forgiven for thinking that Trump will reset the button with Russia.  In fact, in the scheme of things, Trump is attempting to wean Russia away from China, Iran, and Syria  in order to continue and accomplish US goals:  Total domination, prevent Russia from re-emerging, contain China, contain Iran, Israel expansion. 

When You Thought Trade Deals Could Not Get Any Worse -- Enter Wall Street.

Click here to access article by Paul Keenlyside from the Sierra Club.

Because only corporations, not governments, can launch ISDS [my link] cases, governments have no equivalent funding sources [compared to wealthy hedge funds which are backing corporate law suits against governments].

Big Pharma prices, profits soar

Click here to access article by Betsey Piette from Workers World.

Affecting all population sectors in the U.S., the costs of prescription medicines are skyrocketing, fueled by the pharmaceutical industry’s greed and monopoly control of the market.

The capitalist ruling class will only allow passage of legislation that helps working people if it will benefit their corporation's profits. Although Social Security was forced on them by activists during the dark days of the Great Depression, our ruling masters soon learned how to "borrow" money from this fund to support their many wars and tax cuts for their rich members. As this article reports, the programs of Medicare, Medicaid, along with the Affordable Care Act have been used to enrich the owners of pharmaceutical corporations.

“Anti-Trump” New Left Continues Crypto-Identity Politics

Click here to access article by Bruce Lerro from Planning Beyond Capitalism.

I was alerted to this website by Pete Dolack who wrote a critique of an article entitled "Economic issues are not separate from 'identity' issues" posted on the Planning Beyond Capitalism website because (in his opinion) it failed to promote both identity politics as well as class politics. Because I, too, have been critical of identity politics which has thoroughly dominated the American left since the Vietnam War, I have some criticisms of Dolack's critique.

First of all, the author was arguing that identity politics within capitalism can never be a successful strategy to overturn the system. I totally agree. And, he never said in the article that he was against the issues promoted by identity politics--it's just that they are not revolutionary. I totally agree. 

In criticizing identity politics I am not proposing that race and gender issues should not be discussed or that they don’t matter.

Capitalism is the issue for our times; and if we don't overturn its existence, we humans along with many other species will stop existing. It is quite literally a matter of life or death for humans.

Political agents of the capitalist ruling class certainly recognized this flaw in identity politics. They encouraged it simply because it was not revolutionary, and it offered an excellent way of diverting left political energies away from class politics that so threatened their rule during the 1930s. (They even fund websites that pretend to be "activists" such as Democracy Now! and The Nation, but actually function as political gatekeepers for the ruling class.)

It is part of a long-standing liberal ideology that spans over a century to promise that under capitalism all ethnicities and genders will be able to compete for a piece of the capitalist pie. Gradually we are told that with education and an expanding economy capitalism will welcome all. After the 1960’s liberals gave up on supporting their color blind ideology, and have been sliding to the right ever since. The New Left, never having taken their own working class very seriously, happily took over race and gender inequalities that should have been the domain of liberals. For 45 years leftists, instead of developing and expanding a socialist program, simply took over the New Deal program that the old liberals abandoned. 

This is precisely why they promoted the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for president. And mostly middle class left activists were suckered into promoting exclusively identity politics because it was more "respectable", and that is because the middle class in general are always concerned about being respectable in the eyes of the capitalist class.

The extent to which identity politics still governs the liberal and social democratic left, the answer is because Obama, after all, is an African-American president. From the point of view of identity politics, what more can we ask for? He is the first African-American president. For identity politics advocates, the fact that Obama is a Harvard lawyer is no reason to be cynical of his true class interests. Rather, we should be impressed with his credentials.

But as soon as a rich white male is elected, these crypto New Leftists at last gladly see a familiar target. People pour into the streets.

As activists, either we are serious about the overthrow of capitalism because it is the root of most of the evils we experience today, or we think the system is basically fine (it can be tinkered with and fixed), and that we should concentrate on other issues. But the latter should not pretend otherwise as they often do.

How The CIA vs. Donald Trump War Is Just Getting Started

Click here if you wish to access this 6:45m video and rough transcript directly from We Are Change. 

Luke Rudkowski, the founder of this website, exposes the role of the CIA, one of weapons used by the capitalist ruling class's Deep State, along with 15 other secret unaccountable subversive agencies, to keep the US and their Empire from straying from their agendas of power and profits.



Like many other political observers on the left, I have been trying to understand what happened with the surprising election of Trump in spite of corporate media's campaign against him. Knowing that the CIA agendas have thoroughly been embedded in corporate media (beginning with Operation Mockingbird), this was a major puzzle to me along with many other left observers. 

Previously I hypothesized that Trump's election was a symptom of a split in the ruling class over strategies to pursue with regard to foreign policy, specifically in relations to Russia and China. The Trump faction represented Wall Street interests which either simply wanted to do more business with Russia or wanted to split Russia from China or both.This post has caused me to modify my hypothesis.

It looks to me like Trump's election was somewhat of a fluke in a very controlled, well-managed election system that actually represented a true vote count (there was no hacking by anybody, least of all the Russians). This result represented a revolt by wide segments of the population against ruling class authoritative sources in corporate media and a widespread opposition to the deterioration of the American economy and solid job opportunities that have occurred since the 1970s. With Trump's election many Wall Street people jumped on his bandwagon to promote their own corporate businesses, but his election greatly disturbed Deep State operatives of the capitalist ruling class that have been in charge of Empire policies since WWII.

In contrast to Rudkowski last comment (at 5:45m), I have seen a similar phenomenon with the election of John Kennedy in 1960. His policies generally wanted less aggressive actions to overthrow independent or unfriendly governments and to avoid confrontations with the Soviet Union that the CIA had been engaging in. Although this split was mostly concealed from public view, we subsequently learned that to oppose the CIA, a major weapon of the Deep State, was ultimately risking assassination. 

However, I don't think that Trump will be assassinated. He is too much of a businessman who likes to make deals with powerful actors. He will make deals with the Deep State to satisfy their interests in exchange for making money for himself and his Wall Street friends. He has already got on board the Empire's "pivot to China" program.

The Nasty Truth About Yemen

Click here to access article by Gordon Duff from New Eastern Outlook.

Yemen is another of the Empire's war crimes that hasn't been adequately covered in alternative media simply because the Empire is engaged in so many crimes worldwide. By looking at a lot of the evidence which I've been posting over the past seven years, it is easily to conclude that the ruling class's Deep State is really an organized crime syndicate. This article furnishes more evidence to support this conclusion. However, most people don't know this because the directors of the US-led transnational capitalist class's Empire constantly issue fake news reports via their corporate media to hide their crimes.

Were one to analyze “fake news” or “controlled news” or even “false historical narrative,” one would find a single overriding issue and that is a need to damn those who identify a single financial cabal as behind all war and social strife in the world. Thus, any who look at terrorism and extremism and, after peeling away the veneer, find other forces at work, tend to find themselves targeted.

Although Duff doesn't identify those forces adequately, I will. They are all the forces that are driven by the dynamics of concentrated wealth and power that capitalism creates.

The Entire World is “Fake News”

Click here to access article by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook.

Vltchek offers a comprehensive view of fake news that consists of the whole spectrum of Empire indoctrination from corporate media news reports to indoctrination in higher education. 

My only criticism is that his headline exaggerates by including the "entire world". This is primarily true of the world controlled by the US Empire, and to a lessor extent by countries whose ruling classes are insecure. But there are other countries that do permit and even promote a free exchange of ideas. Many US dissidents, particularly those who expose corporate and government lies or who attack capitalism, must now find outlets abroad or go underground to express their views: Julian Assange and Wikileaks, various commentators from Empire countries that are featured on RT, Abby Martin who frequently is featured on teleSUR, and Seymour Hersh who was dropped by the New Yorker and now writes for the London Review of Books.

Bullshit

by British illustrator and animator Steve Cutts from his website.

Democracy for the people, not for the money-bags

Click here to access article by Sally Campbell from Socialist Review (Britain). 

Campbell uses the upcoming centenary of the Russian Revolution to review the real significance of that event which shaped profoundly most subsequent events of the 20th century and of many events into this century. She focuses on the ideological significance of Lenin's thoughts about real democracy which is in sharp contrast what most of us have been taught through capitalist ideological institutions--schools, corporate media, and corporate entertainment. 

The Russian Revolution exposed common people to ideas that exposed the exploitative nature of class rule and affirmed ideas about a classless, truly democratic rule of, by, and for the people over every institution of society. Of course, in this new ideology no significant private ownership/control of the economy was permitted. The people would decide all important issues. Such ideas were a profound shock to Western capitalists, and there developed among these ruling classes a visceral hatred for these ideas which fundamentally challenged their rule, their wealth, and their privileges. 

They immediately tried to crush the revolution: 13 capitalist nations invaded Russia immediately following their revolution and many of these nations also funded the White armies opposing the Bolsheviks. Since then Western countries have launched wide ranging campaigns in every ideological sector to censor, distort, fabricate, and counter such ideas in order to prevent these ideas from taking hold in their own countries and influencing working people to make their own revolution. During the 1930s Western capitalists started funding the Nazi Party (see this, this, this, and this) when they determined that they could use it as a vehicle to expand eastward and destroy the Soviet Union. Also, the fascist parties across Europe were very useful in countering the influence of socialist type parties in existing capitalist countries.

Meanwhile under such severe pressure from the West and widespread disease and famine following the revolution, Soviet rule deteriorated into an authoritarian, top-down, bureaucratic class rule which eventually proved unable to counter the growth of the US-led Empire.

Immediately following WWII with all rivals in a weakened state the US ruling capitalist class saw a great opportunity to impose their rule on the world, and immediately embarked on imperial adventures starting with the Korean War to counter the socialist forces in that country which had been struggling for nearly 20 years against Japanese colonial-capitalist rule. Then the fascist section of the ruling class joined with the entire ruling class and attempted and largely succeeded in reversing some of the labor rights legislation of the FDR administration and purge progressive people on the left (McCarthy period) from Hollywood, education, and media who had been active in left wing movements of the 1930s; in foreign affairs they used mostly the CIA (Operation Gladio) and propaganda media to suppress very popular left-wing movements most especially in Europe and to a lessor, but significant extent in other areas of the world under US control or influence. At the same time the Cold War began in earnest.

Since then, the US Empire, using the CIA, toppled one government after another which were too independent; funded armies to overthrow other governments the Empire didn't like; directly engaged in the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War; in smaller countries they used military operations against nations like Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti; and now in the 21st century we are witnessing never-ending wars.

Lenin's embryonic ideas about real democracy are still alive today in the imagination of all revolutionary-minded people, and ruling capitalist classes are still trying to crush such ideas. You can see this in the current attempt to suppress alternative media that frequently present reports that counter their many lies. This battle will be fought until either a tiny fascist-capitalist class rules the world or the people rule. In the meantime while these battles are being fought, capitalist addiction to relatively cheap fossil fuels and their obsessive drive for more profits are destroying the habitat that can support the lives of humans and many other species on our planet Earth.

Hopelessly devoted to fossil fuels [a "best post"]

Click here to access article by Amy Leather from Socialist Review (Britain). 

So why won’t our rulers act? We need to look beyond the individual politicians. There are, of course, the climate change deniers, who must be challenged and stopped, but much of the ruling class does accept that climate change is a reality. The problem is they are guardians of a system with fossil fuels at its heart. Tackling the climate crisis would mean tackling the vested interests of the fossil fuel corporations — some of the most profitable companies in the world. To understand why capitalism and fossil fuels are so intertwined we need to go back to the time of the industrial revolution in Britain. 

Bitter banter about pollution turns into anger, frustration

Click here to access article by Bai Tiantian from Global Times (China).

There are definite drawbacks to serving as a workshop for the capitalist world, and this is one of the most obvious. Of course, this was Deng Xiaoping's "win-win" strategy which began in 1978 (profits for Western corporations by using China's cheap labor in exchange for technology) to accelerate the building of China's economy. And it worked fabulously well. But there are downsides and extreme pollution is one of them. Others? Consumerist values and potential capitalist influence in China's ruling class.

Public opinion in China was choked with depression, fear and anger, as large swaths of the country remained shrouded in dangerously high levels of smog and the Beijing government prolonged its yellow alert till Saturday.

Wednesday was the fifth day since the environmental department issued an orange alert for smog in Beijing. Highways have been shut down, flights canceled, and construction work and some vehicles are restricted in order to ease pollution.

However, economic losses are meager compared with torrential waves of complaints by disgruntled city dwellers.

You might also be interested in reading this editorial entitled "Massive social reform needed to cure smog" from the same source.

Germany’s Only Independent Newspaper Says Germany's Gov’t. Is Controlled by US Gov’t

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

Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN), or German Economic News — an online daily news service for Germans, which has vigorously fought against the U.S. CIA’s longstanding (and now intensifying control over Germany’s ‘news’ media, and which has also helped to promote a book by an editor for the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung who publicly exposed and denounced his previous subordination to the CIA, and who is now being blackballed by Germany’s ’news’media for reporting such things — is finally going behind a pay-wall to sustain its independence, and alleges that the reason for doing this is that financial pressures from the Establishment’s ’news’ media require that this be done, or else DWN will be forced to shut down service altogether.

 Germany, as an outpost of the U.S. Empire, has its ‘news’media seeking to crush ‘fake news’, just as is the case inside the Empire’s center — the U.S.

And Zuesse offers a translated statement by the newspaper that explains why their news website must now charge their patrons for their online news coverage.

Zuesse also provides you with a link to the video and transcript of the brave confession of Udo Ulfkotte, the former editor of the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung (the NY Times of Germany), about his and other German journalists being forced, as a condition of employment, to promote US propaganda. (I fear for his life.) If you haven't seen the video, I urge you to do so. Now the website of Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten is facing similar economic pressures to conform to the diktats of the Empire's controllers.

US Concerns Over “Election Interference” May Backfire

Click here to access article by Joseph Thomas from New Eastern Outlook.

While the US has little evidence regarding Russia’s role in leaking what were genuine e-mails revealing very real impropriety among American political circles, nations like China, Malaysia and Thailand have verified evidence that opposition fronts are funded, backed and even directed by US organisations like NED. What has been perhaps preventing these nations from dismantling these foreign-backed networks, has been the illusion of America’s pro-democracy stance. However, with the US now cracking down on whistle-blowers, opposition media and shifting tides amid American politics all based on allegations of “Russian” involvement, what is preventing other states from cracking down on verified US interference in their own internal politics?

Thomas only barely scratches the surface of US interference in other countries' political processes by focusing only on recent interference--and this omits a lot. If he were to elaborate on US interference since the end of WWII, it would require hours of reading. Ever since the fascist element of the US ruling capitalist class came out of the woodwork after WWII (previously they hid in the woodwork of "isolationism") to promote their own empire after the Nazis, who they helped fund (see this, this, this, and this) failed, they interfered in the political affairs of nations wherever they could; and when such interference using unaccountable secret services and NGO fronts that didn't work, they brought in the jackals of armed forces to secure the governments they wanted.

A well-kept open secret: Washington is behind India’s brutal experiment of abolishing most cash

Click here to access article by Norbert Haering from Real-World Economic Review Blog.

Could it be that our ruling capitalist class operatives are using India as an experiment to see how a cashless electronic system would work as a test for its application here in the US and their satellite countries of the Empire? And why would they want to install such a system? Read the article to see what economist Haering thinks.

Also you might be interested in two other articles which provide some details on how this system is working in India: one entitled "India Cash Ban Could Get Worse: 'We Don’t Even Have Enough Money to Buy Food'", and a lengthy second article posted on Naked Capitalism entitled "The Global War on Cash – India’s Demonetization Debacle".

India’s World: Amazing Debate on Syria Exposes Criminal Western, Israeli and Gulf State Intervention

Click here if you wish to access a 28:21m forum, which was broadcast from a program on Lok Sabha TV station funded by the government of India and posted by independent British journalist Vanessa Beeley, directly from her website The Wall Will Fall. (It didn't seem like a "debate" to me.)

Although my old ears could not understand all of the comments by the two well-informed government officials from India, I believe their views lend more support to other independent sources on the conflict in Syria.

Niraj Srivastava -Former Ambassador,  Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty – Former Ambassador, Waiel Awwad – South Asia Bureau Chief, SANA

Amazing debate on the dirty war being waged against Syria by the US, UK, EU, Turkey, Gulf States, Israel, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jordan

 

Turkey’s Officials Say American TOWs are Hurting Them Big Time

Click here to access article by Martin Berger from New Eastern Outlook. 

Berger writes that there are ...

...more than enough reasons for Ankara’s resentment of the Obama administration, since it is directly responsible for every single Turkish soldiers murdered by radical militants.

From about 2012 till sometime during 2016 Turkey has been actively supporting ISIS terrorists; but now that the Empire is continuing to supply even more sophisticated weapons to ISIS that are being used against Turkey's armed forces, they are complaining. This, of course, seems so ironic. But I think this is another indication of Turkey's defection from the Empire's goal of dismembering Syria, and another indication of Turkey's growing cooperation with Russia by joining them in the fight against ISIS.

It remains a mystery to me why the Syrian Kurds allow themselves to be used by the US Empire, but it is no mystery to me why US agents have used them. 

The War Against Alternative Information

Click here to access article by independent journalist Rick Sterling from ConsortiumNews.

This article looks like a revision of an article I posted on January 1st entitled "The Information War on Syria and Beyond".

The enactment of HR5181, “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation,” suggests that the ruling powers seek to escalate suppression of news and analyses that run counter to the official narrative. Backed by a new infusion of $160 million, the plan is to further squelch skeptical voices with operation for “countering” and “refuting” what the U.S. government deems to be propaganda and disinformation.

As part of the $160 million package, funds can be used to hire or reward “civil society groups, media content providers, nongovernmental organizations, federally funded research and development centers, private companies, or academic institutions.”

For a European perspective on the Empire's transnational capitalist ruling class's campaign to control information, read an article posted on the British True Publica's website entitled "Obama Quietly Signs Propaganda Act to Counter ‘Fake News’ – EU to follow suit".

Washington Post latest blunder proves fake news is fine... if it involves Russia

from RT via Youtube.

'Fake news' is making a comeback to the headlines, and hashtags - after the Washington Post retracts its big story on Russian hackers penetrating the US power grid. Apparently, they didn't. The paper has now added an editorial correction, but for some it was too little, too late. Many are already accusing the outlet of spreading fake news supposedly used to influence various aspects of the political process.

You might also be interested in this piece from The Duran entitled "Two false stories about Russia in 3 days: the Moscow school and the Vermont grid".

Though complaining of Russian disinformation and propaganda, the US media spread completely false stories about Russia being about to close the Anglo-American school in Moscow and having hacked into the Vermont electricity grid in just three days, though the first story originated with a US not a Russian source, and the second story would not have survived basic fact checking with the electricity utility involved.

And likewise the ruling class's other newspaper of record, the NY Times. It seems that they, too, feed us misinformation whenever their support for the ruling capitalist class is needed. To find out the latest illustration of this, read an article from The Daily Sheeple entitled "Liar, Liar: NYT Forced to Issue Embarrassing Correction, Lied About Not Supporting the Electoral College in a Bid to Banish It".

Syria’s War Was Only Ever the Beginning

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

The author reminds us of the long term strategy on the US-led Empire to rule over the entire world by eliminating the threats posed by the independent, powerful states of Russia and China, and other smaller independent threats posed by Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. This has been the trajectory of the Empire for the past 25 years, and Cartalucci argues convincingly that this will continue in the future regardless of which puppet lives in the White House. However, I think in this piece he fails to adequately explain the Trump phenomenon. Hopefully he will in the future. 

He concludes with a statement which argues that independent, alternative media and activists can play a constructive role in defeating the hegemonic plans of the Empire's ruling capitalist class.

The illusion that a presidential election could derail this singular, decades-long agenda is a dangerous one. In reality, the only obstacle between US special interests and achieving global hegemony are competing centers of power. These include nation-states like Russia and China, or grassroots movements like the alternative media, alternative and disruptive economic models, and political movements built on the power and influence such movements achieve. Such alternatives can undermine the unwarranted power and influence currently enjoyed by the US and the corporate-financier monopolies that dominate its political landscape.

Multinationals launch 50 lawsuits worth $31b against Asian nations

Click here to access article by Thuy Ong from ABC News (Australia). 

A new report has found that corporations have launched 50 lawsuits, worth at least $US31 billion, using secret international arbitration tribunals against 11 countries in the Asian region.

The Coup against Trump and His Military - Wall Street Defense

Click here to access article by retired Professor James Petras from his blog.

Petras is another perceptive writer who offers his views on the apparent ruling class split between what I will refer to as the Obama faction and the Trump faction. He also expresses his views in a PDF document that he posted the following day on Friday entitled "The Anti-Trump Institutional Coup and the Visible Operatives". I will tease out his position based on these two articles.

Petras sees the Obama faction as a more established one that has been guiding his policies, and whose backers have a visceral opposition to Russia, China, and Iran as has been evident all along during his administration. The Trump faction, on the other hand, want to expand markets to serve the commercial interests of major capitalists. Also with the sole exception of corporate media who support the Obama faction, he sees the split over these issues as cutting across every powerful interest group in the capitalist ruling class such as Wall Street, the military establishment, what I refer to as government puppets in Congress who are funded by both factions and serve both factions, and even several of his Cabinet appointees who support "bellicose policies" presumably toward Russia, China, and Iran.

Petras makes the following claim about the Trump faction:

Trump seeks to implement his foreign policy of ‘market deals’, renegotiation of trade agreements with China, oil and aerospace trade-offs with Iran, and the termination of sanctions with Russia. President Trump will declare ‘let the oil deals flow’!

I have not seen much evidence that the Trump camp wants to make deals with China and Iran--quite to the contrary. Thus, my suspicion is that Trump will be used to make deals with Russia in an effort to split them off from China as I explained on the 15th of December in an article entitled "My ('conspiracy') theory about the emergence of the Trump faction of the ruling capitalist class". In fact, the whole contentious contest between these two factions may be used as a ruse to hide this new strategy.

What is certain is that Trump's domestic policies will favor more austerity policies and likely further cuts to, privatization and/or abolition of, social supports such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act.

The Information War on Syria and Beyond

Click here to access article by Rick Sterling from Dissident Voice. 

Sterling provides an excellent summary of recent efforts to control the information Americans receive about the conflict in Syria, and with the recent passage of Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act it looks like our masters in the ruling class are tightening this control. Apparently they have been disturbed by too many independent journalists who have been reporting on the realities of this conflict which is in sharp contrast to what their corporate media report.

U.S. propaganda and disinformation on Syria has been overall effective in misleading much of the population. Most Americans are unaware how many billion tax payer dollars have been spent on yet another “regime change” attempt. Many liberal and progressive news outlets have failed to challenge the propaganda and disinformation on Syria. It has been left to RT and a host of smaller media outlets to challenge the government and mainstream media.

The passage of HR5181 “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation”, suggests that the ruling powers seek to escalate suppression of news and analysis which runs counter to their narrative.  Despite their current dominance in the media and information arena, that is not enough. They seek to further squelch opposing voices. The bill calls for “countering” and “refuting” what they deem to be propaganda and disinformation. A slush fund of $20M is provided to hire or reward “civil society groups, NGOs, journalists and private companies “ who participate in the campaign.

Progressives need to prepare for the escalation of the information war.  

$600 Million in CIA Funds at Work? WaPo Runs Another Fake Story on Russia Hacking US Power Grid

Click here to access article by Claire Bernish from The Free Thought Project. 

The fake news issued by corporate media keeps getting weirder and weirder,

Anti-Russia and disinformation hysteria has reached new heights, and — after the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S., among other retributions for an ostensibly hacked election — the Washington Post continued its foray into Fake News with an article suggesting Kremlin actors hacked the electrical grid in Vermont.

Perhaps because the outlet got away with citing unnamed officials twice before during this reinvigorated Red Scare, the Post again blared its Russia Did It alarm with an article titled, “Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say.”

...especially from the Washington Post which has such an obvious bias with its huge deal with the CIA.

The same year Bezos purchased the Post, Amazon landed a $600 million deal with the CIA to develop a coordinated computing cloud for all 17 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.

Perhaps superficially innocuous on its own, that sizable deal appears somewhat darker in consideration of this year’s quasi-official continuance of the U.S. government’s most notorious propaganda program, Operation Mockingbird — during which intelligence agents posed as the media to imbue pro-American propaganda and censor certain information.