Gene Drives: A Scientific Case for a Complete and Perpetual Ban

Click here to access article by Jonathan Latham from Independent Science News. 

This is the second of a two-part series (I posted the first one here) on the use of genetically altered products that have flooded the market and their lack of adequate safety testing before entering the market. I had wrongly expected a political explanation for this phenomenon. However Latham is a biological scientist and he examines the issue purely from a scientific perspective. In this article he lays out a clear scientific argument that corporations should not be allowed to place genetically modified products on the market simply because they cannot be adequately tested.

In this article he examines two contrasting extremes of products that are tested and studied by government regulatory agencies. At one extreme tests regarding passenger airplanes can be, and are, tested thoroughly before they are permitted to be marketed, but at the other extreme lies GMO products whose potential deleterious effects are very complex and cannot be adequately tested, but sail through the regulatory process with little difficulty. In a prior article of his, he offers a better explanation that points to the interests of corporations.   

Some of my concerns with GMOs are “just” practical ones. I have read numerous GMO risk assessment applications. These are the documents that governments rely on to ‘prove’ their safety. Though these documents are quite long and quite complex, their length is misleading in that they primarily ask (and answer) trivial questions. Furthermore, the experiments described within them are often very inadequate and sloppily executed. Scientific controls are often missing, procedures and reagents are badly described, and the results are often ambiguous or uninterpretable. I do not believe that this ambiguity and apparent incompetence is accidental. It is common, for example, for multinational corporations, whose labs have the latest equipment, to use outdated methodologies. When the results show what the applicants want, nothing is said. But when the results are inconvenient, and raise red flags, they blame the limitations of the antiquated method. This bulletproof logic, in which applicants claim safety no matter what the data shows, or how badly the experiment was performed, is routine in formal GMO risk assessment.

To any honest observer, reading these applications is bound to raise profound and disturbing questions: about the trustworthiness of the applicants and equally of the regulators. They are impossible to reconcile with a functional regulatory system capable of protecting the public.

Of course, people hired to supervise government regulatory agencies, like every other institutional unit of our society, are selected based on their motivation to serve the profit and power interests of the ruling capitalist class. (That is precisely why Trump appointed Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency.) Such regulatory agents ignore the impossibility of adequately testing such products, so they have such products go through some slipshod process anyway for the sake of appearances to sooth the safely concerns of the public.

Trump’s Address to the US Congress: Making America Safe for Wall Street and War Profiteers

Click here to access article by Stephen Lendman from Global Research.

Although I didn't listen to Trump's speech to Congress, I listened to the three corporate news reports (ABC, NBC, & CBS) of his speech. I was amazed at the dramatic change in coverage. Before this, anything related to Trump was reported in a negative context. Last night, they all reported virtually the same coverage: that Trump's "tone" was very different, he was very "presidential", and ordinary people from Michigan loved his address. 

It appears that Trump has been impressed by the powerful CIA faction that dominates the US ruling class; and because he respects only power, he has decided to serve their interests. So it should not be surprising that they liked his speech. He likely underwent a short course in how to role play "appearing president".

He wants America more militarized than ever, intending greater funding for police – to protect the nation’s privileged class from beneficial social change.

Changes he’ll propose in America’s tax code are unrelated to letting “our companies…compete and thrive anywhere and with anyone.”

Now I hope the CIA will stop leaking embarrassing phone calls that he or his appointees made and stop smearing him in their scripted corporate broadcasts. I was beginning to feel sorry for him. (sarcasm) I sort of liked the old Trump who said things off the top of his head even if racist and sexist, especially when he castigated his enemies in corporate media. At least he was more like the real Trump. Now we have a fake Trump appearing "presidential".

As water scarcity deepens across Latin America, political instability grows

Click here to access article by John Vidal from The Guardian. 

Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru are experiencing a drought, but the author seems to suggest the President Morales shares some of the blame for the shortage of drinking water.

Bolivia was shaken to its roots in the spring of 2000, when tens of thousands in the city of Cochabamba protested against the privatisation of the city’s water services. One person died and scores were injured in weeks of protest, the company was ejected and the political crisis – known as the first water war of the 21st century – was a catalyst that led to the election of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president.

Morales is still president, but as the longest and deepest drought in Bolivia’s recent history continues to bite in cities across the country, he has cause to fear that water could be his government’s political undoing, too.

Regime Change and Continuity of Agenda: Trump Adviser Now Chairs NED

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

While the American people are so caught up in the daily media buzz about the new Trump administration, this author sees through the smoke and mirrors of corporate media reports and notices that nothing much is really changing regarding foreign policies. "The more things change (under capitalist class rule), the more they stay the same."

While supporters of recently elected US President Donald Trump believe steadfastly that among other things, his administration will role back what has been essentially a century of American expansionism worldwide through overt wars and more “covert” methods toward achieving “regime change,” by all metrics it appears such methods will only expand.

Not only do observers note continued subversive activities coordinated through local US embassies around the world since Trump’s presidency began, including across Southeast Asia as part of America’s continued attempts to isolate and contain China, but also movement within US agencies charged with organising and financing this subversion, such as the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

So far I've seen little evidence that the Rockefeller segment of the US ruling class is imposing its will to have better relations with Russia in order to draw them away from China as I argued previously. However, it is still too soon to determine that this theory is invalid. Dan Glazebrook argues that Kissinger's rapprochement policies (Rockefeller faction) with Russia are still in effect in a recent article entitled "Michael Flynn may be gone but his Russia policy lives on" posted in the Middle East Eye. 

Frequently asked questions about the Investor-State Dispute Settlement

Click here to access article from ISDS Platform.

The Investor-State Dispute Settlement clause is included in all the new trade treaties. This website, in contrast to corporate media, explains how these neoliberal trade treaties actually give more rights to investors than to entire countries. Here is one question and revealing answer provided by the people at the ISDS Platform:

Why is ISDS so problematic?

In effect, ISDS creates a parallel business-friendly judicial system exclusively for transnational corporations. The power rests upon for-profit arbitrators who come from the corporate sector and face unverifiable conflicts of interest. They have no sovereign legitimacy and are not accountable to the public. The decisions they make can be inconsistent between one another and cannot be appealed. Plus, the arbitrators effectively serve as judge and party, because the same appointed arbitrators who plead the case for the parties make the decision. Imagine a football match where the referee plays for one of the teams! With ISDS, this becomes a possible scenario. So much for justice.

If you peruse other current articles on this website you will learn that most of the arbitration hearings are held in secret. It's obvious why corporate media refuses to cover these new trade treaties in any depth. Corporate media's function is to serve the interests of a tiny class of people known by various names: capitalists, investors, corporations, etc. Their mission is to serve their US-led Empire and to maintain your ignorance about the neoliberal trade treaties and all other matters that might impinge upon opportunities to enhance the wealth and power for this tiny class of people.

The CIA is the main peddler of fake news

Click here to access article from Washington's Blog.

This anonymous blogger provides tons of links from both old and new sources to document his argument that the CIA is the main source of fake news that is provided through media corporations.

The government is still paying off reporters to spread disinformation. And the corporate media are acting like virtual “escort services” for the moneyed elites, selling access – for a price – to powerful government officials, instead of actually investigating and reporting on what those officials are doing.

One of the ways that the U.S. government spreads propaganda is by making sure that it gets its version out first.

Who is the biggest climate change villain?

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

Here is an exclusive the Guardian has held back from its readers for 26 years. It is finally published on its pages today.

In 1991 the Shell oil company produced a half-hour film, Climate of Concern, for showing in schools and universities, that set out the dangers of climate change, apparently with unnerving accuracy. The Guardian calls the film “prescient”.

The paper makes the point that Shell knew from scientists precisely what havoc our addiction to oil would wreak on the planet. Despite its own warnings, Shell carried on extracting oil regardless.

But the Guardian misses the real story, probably because the villain of the piece is less Shell and the major oil companies than it is the Guardian and other liberal media.

The use of the word "liberal" is often confusing to people, and I think that this is deliberate. Keeping ordinary people from understanding the illegitimate system they are plagued with is important to maintain the ruling class and their system of capitalism. Thus confusing words, which are often nice sounding words, are used along with confusing concepts and disinformation to hide the reality of an illegitimate system that produces so much extreme inequality as well as a host of other problems.

Liberalism (in the classic sense) was adopted by early capitalists to describe the ideology of their system. Current usage is a derivative of that old term and is now used to describe well-indoctrinated people in capitalist ideology (classic liberalism) whom owners of media hire to contain and deflect dissent into harmless channels in the interests of the ruling capitalist class. The Guardian is one such "liberal" media company. Such people function essentially as sales people for the capitalist ruling class. The word is also used to describe people who believe the themes, information, and values issued by such corporate media sources. Typically such themes currently emphasize social identity rights (equality of opportunity to be wage slaves regardless of sexual orientation, religion, immigrant status, color, etc), expanding voting and other civil rights, and "human rights" of people in foreign lands.

In this article Cook exposes how the Guardian kept secret a very important article written about 25 years ago that warned about the relationship between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming. Because the capitalist system is so dependent on cheap fuels, the report had to be suppressed.

Post-Soviet Russia: America's "Colony" to #1 Enemy

On YouTube Abby Martin interviews Mark Ames, a journalist.

The increased aggression towards Russia from US politicians and media is made more clear when taking into account the real history of the post-Soviet period. The hidden story of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency explains how deeply the US government, along with Western capitalist institutions, cheered, shaped and exploited the country after the fall of the Soviet Union, paving the way for the political system they all condemn today.

To uncover just how much the US Empire has interfered in Russia’s political evolution, Abby Martin interviews Mark Ames, an American journalist who spent a decade reporting from Yeltsin’ and Putin’s Russia and witnessed the country’s transformation from an American “colony” to it’s “number one threat.”

Speculation Swirls Over Sources Of Trump Leaks, Yet No Mention Of WaPo-CIA Ties

Click here to access article by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News.

The biggest media company that has leaked "intelligence" agency information to besmirch Donald Trump has been the Washington Post.

As former Post reporter John Hanrahan told Alternet in 2013:

“It’s all so basic. Readers of the Washington Post, which reports frequently on the CIA, are entitled to know — and to be reminded on a regular basis in stories and editorials in the newspaper and online — that the Post’s new owner Jeff Bezos stands to benefit substantially from Amazon’s $600 million contract with the CIA. Even with such disclosure, the public should not feel assured they are getting tough-minded reporting on the CIA. One thing is certain: Post reporters and editors are aware that Bezos, as majority owner of Amazon, has a financial stake in maintaining good relations with the CIA — and this sends a clear message to even the hardest-nosed journalist that making the CIA look bad might not be a good career move.”

Artificial Intelligence: ‘Frankenstein’ or Capitalist Money Machine

Click here to access article by James Petras from his blog. (Edited for clarity around 9:50 AM Seattle time on 2/28/2017.)

The best and the worst of the experts reporting on AI [artificial intelligence] assert that it is an autonomous system, devoid of any link to the class structure within which it operates. Their version of technological determinism, above and beyond the needs and demands of capitalists, has fits neatly with the corporate ideology of the trash journalists and pundits.

The fundamental questions that must be raised include: 1) ‘AI’, for whom?; 2) How are the productivity gains of AI to be distributed between capital and labor? 3) How are work time, income and pensions distributed between the owners of technology and the labor force?; and 4) What kinds of socio-economic activity does AI serve?

The short answer to all the above questions is "for the benefit of the ruling capitalist class"! Like everything else under capitalism, workers create many wonders like artificial intelligence (AI) only to have capitalists buy them up, "own" them like commodities such as tooth paste, and benefit from them while most workers grind out a day-to-day existence. Capitalist conspirators--yes, they gather in secret behind closed doors and plan to steal the wonders created by workers--have long discovered four great insights to aid in their tiny class's dominance over the vast majority. 

First, the new ruling class had discovered under the early charters granted by monarchs (the East India Company, for example) that they could greatly enhance their wealth at the expense of workers/peasants in foreign lands by securing exclusive rights over the material production of workers/peasants. They saw that with this new wealth they could secure for themselves other productive operations by simply "purchasing" such rights like commodities. Their new system became known as "capitalism" and they, "capitalists" schemed to get such an arrangement in their own European countries. Soon they put out all kinds of propaganda about the merits of buying rights to the products of workers in facilities they "owned". They labeled such arrangements as "free markets" . Likewise they used nice sounding words like "liberalism" to described the theory of their new economic system.

Second, the embryonic capitalist class conspirators mapped out a plan to get workers to aid them in overthrowing the arbitrary rule of monarchs and aristocrats, the descendants of warriors who used violence as a means to conquer territories and put inhabitants under their control. They decided to make all kinds of grand promises such as "liberty, equality, and fraternity", "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and a "social contract" in which they promised to take care of the workers/peasants. The vast majority of people, consisting of the latter, fell for this con, and have lived ever since in a daily struggle just to survive.

Third, the capitalist conspirators promised workers/peasants that they would no longer be ruled by the arbitrary whims of tyrants, but by the rule of law created in "democratic" institutions such as parliaments. Of course, initially they restricted such participation to themselves, but after some period of time they expanded voting privileges to include the new upper middle class, and later to most workers. You see, they learned how to screen out any dissidents from their parliaments through their control of all the indoctrination centers (which they "owned"), using jobs which they controlled to reward or punish people (illustrated here in a capitalist governed state), and through the discriminating use of bribes called "campaign contributions". 

Fourth, the new ruling class soon discovered that they needed worker bosses and other skilled workers to make their new system of rule work. Thus they decided that they would give these skilled workers and supervisors lots of gold/money and privileges such as eating at the same table as their capitalist rulers. Such workers, described as "upper middle class" by sociologists, were soon seduced into serving their masters by enjoying a much higher standard of living than ordinary workers and enjoying opportunities to socialize with such all-powerful people. (It made them feel so important.) These workers were soon so enamored of their new masters that they began to forget about their role as workers and their natural ties to, and affection for, other workers. (Malcolm X well understood this phenomenon as he expressed it in his observation about "a house Negro and a field Negro".) They, too, fell for this con and devoted their lives to serving their new capitalist masters.

And, it looks like capitalists will live happily ever after...or until they destroy all humans in a nuclear conflagration or destroy the habitat that supports human life while engaged in their mad pursuit for ever more profits and power.

RAND Corporation's plan for dicing up Syria

Click here to access article from Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, translated by Tom Winter, and posted on Fort Russ.

It looks like the directors of the Empire, as found in another ruling class "think tank", have resurrected their old plan of "safe zones" in order to carve up Syria. With Turkey seemly taking another u-turn, unfortunately for Syrians this plan has a good chance of success. Not only will this plan weaken Syria, Israel's old nemesis, but will likely permit the construction of a gas pipeline from Qatar via Turkey to Europe which President Assad objected to before.

There are numerous quotes from a Rand study, but no linked reference to the study. This bothered me, so I did some online sleuthing and found what I am reasonably sure is the Rand document entitled "A Peace Plan for Syria III". Scanning the document I found one of the quotes that was in this article (fifth paragraph).

We therefore recommend that the United States propose to put Raqqa province, once liberated, under an interim international administration, thereby creating a neutral area held by neither the regime nor the opposition, pending the ultimate resolution of the civil war.

Warren Buffett Pens a Dangerously Misleading Letter to Americans

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

Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, authors an annual letter to shareholders that receives wide media coverage for the nuggets of wisdom dispersed to the masses.

The Martens make the following comment about some remarks Buffet makes in his letter:

Much of what Buffett has to say in this letter sounds like unadulterated propaganda to reassure the 99 percent that his amassing of a net worth of $76.3 billion was a result of America’s great economic system which is percolating along just fine. 

But, isn't this, except for the last clause, absolutely true? No other system has been invented that can rival the capitalist system's ability to accrue fabulous wealth to individuals.

Genetics Is Giving Way to a New Science of Life

Click here to access article by Jonathan Latham, PhD from Independent Science News. 

I am not well qualified to comment on the merits of this article, but it makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. I hope that among my many readers there will be one or two, skilled in biological sciences, who will give their informed opinion about Latham's arguments in the comments section. I urge them to do so.

My intuitive understanding of the merits of Latham's arguments is based on my more skilled understanding of societies. They are quintessentially systems. However, ruling classes that arose several millennia ago through violence, the threat of violence, or some other threat to the welfare of their resistors have also played the same game by convincing their subjects that their rule and their ruling system was the legitimate locus of control over the entire society. 

After ruling classes took control, they then went to work on existing religions to insure that supporting myths were included to affirm their legitimate control of societies. In our more modern age ruling classes depend more on indoctrination agents that they use to staff educational institutions, book publishers, book authors, media, etc. to support their ideological version of social arrangements. Many political projects have been driven by the wealth and power benefits practically guaranteed to such ruling classes. It seems reasonable to suspecct the same is true of DNA as the focus of biological science today. The author hints at this explanation at the end of the article, and promises a more substantive explanation in the near future.

How is it that, if organisms are the principal objects of biological study, and the standard explanation of their origin and operation is so scientifically weak that it has to award DNA imaginary superpowers of “expression” and “control” to paper over the cracks, have scientists nevertheless clung to it? [emphasis in the original]

Why is it that, rather than celebrating and investing in Rashevsky, Kauffman, Noble, et al., as pioneers of necessary and potentially fruitful and unifying paradigms, have these researchers been ignored by mainstream biology?

What is the big attraction of genetic determinism?

A compelling and non-intuitive explanation for the monomania of biology does exist. It is set out in a second and forthcoming article: The Meaning of Life. It is an explanation that requires going behind the window dressing of science and examining its active and symbiotic relation to power in modern political systems.

Video: A Closing Prayer for Standing Rock’s Oceti Sakowin

Click here to access article by Jihan Hafiz from The Intercept.

“To me, it looks like 1890, Wounded Knee,” said an elder. “They were all probably standing there [police and military units]  like that before they started slaughtering our people.”

Now dispersed, the water protectors removed from Oceti Sakowin are regrouping in other protest camps near the pipeline. Meanwhile, court documents just filed by Energy Transfer Partners indicate that oil could be flowing in less than two weeks.

See also Unicorn Riot's coverage of the military assault on the Oceti protest encampment.

And the latest I could find on this assault is from the following RT video:

 

McMaster Takes Charge: Trump Relinquishes Control of Foreign Policy

Click here to access article by Mike Whitney from CounterPunch. 

It looks like the neoconservative part of our deep state has scored a major victory by replacing Mike Flynn as National Security Advisor with H.R. McMaster according to Whitney's well argued essay. 

This is not surprising to me that a major and successful player at the capitalist game plays to his own interests even if by playing he cooperates with other power figures which he disagrees with. Winning in American capitalist culture is, to paraphrase noted sports figures, not only everything, it is the only thing that is worth doing. And "winning" in America is achieving wealth and power, the ability to dominate and control others, even torture or crush them if necessary to win. The winning rich and powerful have so thoroughly indoctrinated most of us in this ideology that we eagerly pack stadiums in the 100s of thousands every game day in hopes of seeing "our" team (owned by some rich guy) win, that is, thoroughly dominate, control, and even crush their opponents.

This same ethic of "winning" applies to our ruling class. The are out to dominate, even crush, opponents like Russia and China. Given that winning is the only thing, they will risk a nuclear war in order to "win". Now that Trump has moved from the "national league" to the "international league" he is beginning to learn a few new rules of winning at this level. I have no doubt that he will learn them, and "win" again depending on who puts enough pressure on him. Regardless of the outcome, the rest of us will lose, and lose big with even more deterioration of our nation's infrastructure, loss of more jobs, becoming ever deeper in debt, possibly even more wars, and more extreme weather events due to a destabilizing climate.

Donald Trump is only another human product of this system. He, like most of us, believes in the game, and has clearly demonstrated that he is a "winner". He is not only fabulously rich and powerful, he has a gorgeous trophy wife to prove it. We may not like him, but we must understand that he, like most of us, is only playing to the rules of the capitalist game. If we don't like the kind of people and the results that the game produces, we must collaborate with other like-minded people to change the system so that other rules and morals apply--rules which promote collaboration and cooperation, sustainable production so that everyone benefits, opportunities to participate in major decisions, and to foster some hope of a future for the generations of humans that follow us on our finite planet.

Review: A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA

Click here to access a review by Loren Goldner of Joshua Kurlantzick's new book posted on Insurgent Notes.

Although reading this article is made difficult in places due to long paragraphs, obscure references, and typos, it is a very important history of a major CIA operation that led to its rise as a formidable force to use in other areas where the capitalist ruling class has important interests. After reading this article and books like the Imperial Brain Trust, I'm starting to regard the CIA as a deep state that lies within the deep state of Empire "think tanks". And knowing that the book was authored by "a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations (a major think tank of the deep state) who has published articles in the Economist, Time, the New Republic, Mother Jones and Rolling Stone", adds even more importance to the book.

Capitalist regimes always have a latent fascist component as an integral part of their class rule which surfaces whenever their control over a nation is sufficiently threatened. The disastrous Vietnam War and the strong domestic opposition to it created that threat. Although Nixon was elected in 1968 with a promise to end the war, he like all capitalist politicians lied to the American people. By massively extending the war secretly to nearby Laos and Cambodia, he still thought he could salvage some sort of victory or a least an "honorable" end to the war. Besides that interest, he and his ilk among the ruling class's functionaries resented all the young people who so vigorously opposed the war and wanted to take revenge on them by massively extending the war.

This resentment reminds me of the current ruling class's feeling about all the young people who supported Bernie Sanders' political campaign. Although there are differences, I think today we have a similar situation with so much opposition by young people to the Trump administration. The main difference is that the CIA has also launched a vigorous campaign in corporate media, which they control, to threaten and insure that the Trump administration follows their neoconservative imperial policies. Although CIA efforts appear to converge with the opposition and protests of young people which they seem to encourage, they are appearances only. Should the CIA be successful in aligning Trump's policies with theirs, you won't see anymore attacks on Trump in corporate media.

Trump's new jobs program

by editorial cartoonist Jimmy Margulies. 

Trump and Climate Catastrophe

Click here to access article by John Bellamy Foster from Monthly Review.

The alarm bells are ringing. The climate-change denialism of the Trump administration, coupled with its goal of maximizing fossil-fuel extraction and consumption at all costs, constitutes, in the words of Noam Chomsky, “almost a death knell for the human species.” As noted climatologist Michael E. Mann has declared, “I fear that this may be game over for the climate.”

Extreme Weather and Global Warming: News Abuse and The Enviornment

Click here to access article by Ruben Saucedo, a a mechanical engineering student at the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo, California.  

In the United States, the corporate media dictates public information which heavily impacts the public opinion.  Stories of little importance permeate coverage and relegate relevant issues that the country is currently facing.  In addition, important stories addressed by the corporate media are constantly obfuscated or hidden entirely for a multitude of corporate and political reasons.  The result is an uninformed or misinformed public, unaware of important issues that affect the world and the next generations.  In 2016, the corporate media ignored the critical connection between extreme weather and global warming while the independent media covered it.

In 2016, the independent media covered the correlation between extreme weather and global warming.

Although I don't know what grade I'd give to this paper (simply because I don't know what material he has studied), if I were Saucedo's academic advisor I would direct him to political sociology sources that could explain why corporate media are very selective in what they publish or broadcast. (In another post for today is an illustration of this type of censorship.) I would suggest books like Imperial Brain Trust by Shoup and Minter and other books on my list of recommended readings.

Such books and materials would explain to him what kind of a society that he lives in--something which humanity courses use to attempt to provide. It is no accident that humanity courses have been slashed from university budgets and cut from academic curricula. If students like Saucedo really understood the fragmented class nature of our society, the capitalist class domination of every institution in the US for self-serving purposes, and the critical nature of class rule under capitalism that provides private ownership over socially produced goods, services, ideas, and inventions, and that this capitalist regime (def. 2) gives enormous benefits in terms of wealth and power to this class, he might very well understand why the directors of this class would insure that media under their control would not publish or broadcast any content that might undermine their system.

I would also advise him that some media sources that appear to be "independent" are not so because they receive funding from capitalist class sources. Such information is usually carefully hidden from the public. This applies to Democracy Now which he believes is an independent media source. I would also advise him that the ruling capitalist class often fund people who appear to be independent to use them as gatekeepers of information to guide dissidents away from issues they regard as critical to the legitimacy of their rule and regime. This class will fund such "independent" gatekeepers in order to keep many dissidents away from knowledge about major crimes that they have committed in wars, their involvement with assassinations of major political figures, 9/11 and other terrorist events, etc. For example, "Democracy Now!" have never had anyone on their program who seriously questioned the official story of 9/11.

Of course, no one like me would be hired as a professor in any respectable institution of higher learning. I would have been (and was) filtered out long before even applying for such a faculty position. (Read Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt)

Pablo Escobar’s Son Reveals His Dad “Worked for the CIA Selling Cocaine” — Media Silent

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

Juan Pablo Escobar Henao, son of notorious Medellín cartel drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar, now says his father “worked for the CIA.”

In a new book, “Pablo Escobar In Fraganti,” Escobar, who lives under the pseudonym, Juan Sebastián Marroquín, explains his “father worked for the CIA selling cocaine to finance the fight against Communism in Central America.”

“The drug business is very different than what we dreamed,” he continues. “What the CIA was doing was buying the controls to get the drug into their country and getting a wonderful deal.”

“He did not make the money alone,” Marroquín elaborated in an interview, “but with US agencies that allowed him access to this money. He had direct relations with the CIA.”

Man as a product of capitalism

by British illustrator and animator Steve Cutts from his website.

Goose-stepping Our Way Toward Pink Revolution

Click here to access article by CJ Hopkins from CounterPunch. 

Nowadays I see the term "deep-state" bandied about by writers who apparently have little idea of what it is, but they use it anyway likely because they want to impress readers that they have special knowledge. Often they use it as a synonym for the "intelligence" (spy) services which are spying on everyone including Americans. Hopkins actually defines what he means by the term.

The deep state, of course, is not a conspiracy. It is simply the interdependent network of structures where actual power resides (i.e., the military-industrial complex, multinational corporations, Wall Street, the corporate media, and so on). Its purpose is to maintain the stability of the system regardless of which party controls the government. These are the folks, when a president takes office, who show up and brief him on what is and isn’t “possible” given economic and political “realities.” .... It is a collection of military and intelligence officers, CEOs, corporate lobbyists, lawyers, bankers, politicians, power brokers, aides, advisers, and assorted other permanent members of the government and the corporate and financial classes. Just as presidents come and go, so do the individuals comprising the deep state, albeit on a longer rotation schedule. And, thus, it is not a monolithic entity. Like any other decentralized network, it contains contradictions, conflicts of interest. However, what remains a constant is the deep state’s commitment to preserving the system … which, in our case, that system is global Capitalism.

He continues on by using the term in many different contexts. but then he makes this sarcastic statement which I believe confuses the issue.

...this is a time for all loyal Americans to set aside their critical thinking and support democracy, the corporate media, and the NSA, and CIA, and the rest of the deep state (which doesn’t exist) as they take whatever measures are necessary to defend us from Putin’s diabolical plot to Nazify the United States and reenact the Holocaust for no discernible reason.

So, apparently the surveillance services and corporate media are not a part of the "deep state" as he uses the term. Logically it follows that the latter function independent of his definition of the "deep state". If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

Also, his definition declares that the "deep state, of course, is not a conspiracy". "Conspiracy" is also a confusing term, but most dictionary definitions declare that it means...

An agreement between two or more persons to engage jointly in an unlawful or criminal act ....

However, what if one believes that a certain group of people plan and engage in anti-social acts through deception (lies) and/or intimidation (loss of one's job, even threats to one's life--which is illegal) to further their own interests? Some people have applied the term "conspiracy" as describing the activities of the capitalist deep state, that is, hidden organizations of capitalists that have decisive influence over government decisions. The problem is that under the system of capitalism, capitalists make the laws and select the staff (of the legal sub-system) who favor their interests of profit and power. So, what capitalists do may or may not be entirely legal, but they rather easily get away with their planned activities anyway.

In an otherwise good article, I fault Hopkins for engaging in a bit of hubris by so glibly writing about the deep state. It is a major part of one grand deception engaged in by a socioeconomic class of people who benefit from the system of capitalism which provides them with so much wealth and power. Critical people throughout the history of the deep state have been striving to understand how this mysterious, deceptive system works, and there is no one who has a perfect understanding.

Artificial Intelligence: Frankenstein or Capitalist Money Machine

Click here to access article by James Petras from Dissident Voice.

The fundamental questions that must be raised include: 1) AI [artificial intelligence], for whom?; 2) How are the productivity gains of AI to be distributed between capital and labor? 3) How are work time, income and pensions distributed between the owners of technology and the labor force?; and 4) What kinds of socio-economic activity does AI serve?

Artificial Intelligence and related technological innovations are financed, designed, controlled and ultimately applied by the major corporations and financial institutions in order to reduce the cost of labor and to enhance profits and competitiveness between capitalist rivals.

The bait and switch of public-private partnerships

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

This being the age of public relations, the genteel term “public-private partnership” is used instead of corporate plunder. A “partnership” such deals may be, but it isn’t the public who gets the benefits.

We’ll be hearing more about so-called “public-private partnerships” in coming weeks because the new U.S. president, Donald Trump, is promoting these as the basis for a promised $1 trillion in new infrastructure investments. ....

Public-private partnerships are one of the surest ways of shoveling money into the gaping maws of corporate wallets, used, with varying names, by neoliberal governments around the world, particularly in Europe and North America. The result has been disastrous....

Trump plans tax cuts for the rich to create more jobs

by editorial cartoonist David Horsey.

How India became Bill Gates' guinea pig: A conspiracy as recounted by the main actors

Click here to access article by Norbert Häring (Germany) from his website. 

First, by way of explanation, he uses extensive quotes from a forum organized by the US Treasury Department like the following:

Speaking for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation at the “Financial Inclusion Forum” in Washington, organized by the Treasury Department and USAID on December 1, 2015, Bill Gates said (min 17):

"min 17" refers to roughly 17 minutes into the video recording of this extensive forum which he provides a link to.

I think Häring is being too cautious about being objective by labeling his views about the Gates driven "financial inclusion" system as a "conspiracy theory". As laid out in this detailed, compelling article, it seems obvious that our financial masters of the US-led Empire see in this new system a vast potential for tracking everybody via their transactions in that part of the world they control to serve their security and profit interests at the expense of our security and material needs. By tracking transactions through US banks and financial services companies, the system would also be accessible by US "security services" like the CIA, NSA, etc.

True to form in this age of public relations newspeak, they keep telling us ordinary people (and themselves) that it is for our own good. They use phrases like the following to describe the benefits of this system to us:

• it makes financial services to the poor better
• can furnish financial advice to the poor
• financial empowerment for many people
• expand affordable and safe access to financial services
• to help people to a brighter and more secure future
• getting the poor out of poverty 

Also, see Engdahl's take on the cash topic in my other post today. 

Washington's Dangerous War On Cash: What It's Really About

Click here to access a 57:05m interview with F. William Engdahl on Bonnie Faulner's Guns and Butter program posted on SoundCloud, a program from KPFA in Berkeley, California.

In the interview Engdahl, in addition to Häring in today's post, gives his views on India's withdrawal of some cash-notes from circulation, and then expands to other related topics that includes the following:

India withdraws 86% of the value of all currency in circulation; USAID; Project Catalyst; Global Innovation Exchange; Better Than Cash Alliance; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; UNICEF; UN Development Program; Mitre Corporation; the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FACTA); Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); the larger global agenda of total control; ECB set up to favor Germany; Trade Czar Peter Navarro; US currency war aimed at destroying the Euro; US planned destruction of the Eurozone; glyphosate; fascism of EU bureaucracy in Brussels; assassination of Chairman of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen; US emerging as the biggest tax haven in the world.

Engdahl gives some very important insights about how the leading US financial institutions are behind the drive to use economic weapons in order to maintain dominance over nations and people living in those nations controlled by the US-led Empire. It is important to understand that these financial institutions contain the most influential actors of the Empire's unaccountable and secretive deep state. They are sick people who are thoroughly addicted to profits and power, and unfortunately rule much of the world today. 

The Deep State Goes Shallow

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from his blog. 

Trump’s fatal mistake was saying that he wanted to get along with Russia, that Putin was a good leader, and that he wanted to end the war against Syria and pull the U.S. back from foreign wars.  This was verboten.  And when he said nuclear war was absurd and would only result in nuclear conflagration, he had crossed the Rubicon.  That sealed his fate.  Misogyny, racism, support for Republican conservative positions on a host of issues – all fine.  Opposing foreign wars, especially with Russia – not fine.

Curtin sees liberals and conservatives coming together to denounce Trump for his heresy of wanting to get along with Russia. As such he sees only a unified deep state which may not be the case. Thus I think his "deep state" may be only scratching the surface of the real, very deep and secretive, deep state. But then, who knows at this time what reality really exists, and who and how many are really pulling the strings of the puppets on the "reality" show reported nightly over corporate media.

The bait and switch of public-private partnerships

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

This being the age of public relations, the genteel term “public-private partnership” is used instead of corporate plunder. A “partnership” such deals may be, but it isn’t the public who gets the benefits.

US Meddling in Ecuador Likely to Continue if Left Wins Election

Click here to access article by Eirik Vold from TeleSur.

U.S. meddling in Ecuador's politics is likely to continue, especially if President Rafael Correa's ally and former vice president, Lenin Moreno, wins the upcoming presidential election, an expert on U.S. intervention in the South American country told teleSUR. 

The author's English as demonstrated in this article is rather inadequate, but I think one can rather easily comprehend most of the history he has provided of the interference of the US in Ecuadorian elections, and the obvious US's ruling class interest in interfering with this one given this history, that of US general relations with Ecuador, and all other countries who haven't demonstrated sufficient compliance with US ruling class interests. Also the ruling class has the special interest of causing Julian Assange to be ejected from the Ecuadorian embassy in London if the conservative candidate wins the election.

The latest news regarding the election suggests that there is a suspicious delay going on regarding the results and that many Ecuadorians are upset. See this article from a US expat online media source entitled "Country is in crisis mode as it awaits election results: rumors swirl as crowds gather at election headquarters in Quito, Guayaquil".

Tom Brokaw Unwittingly Reveals Whats Wrong With Corporate Journalists

Jimmy Dore gives his sarcastic take on one of corporate media's most useful idiot talking heads in its ignominious history.

China and Trumpism: The Political Contradictions of Global Capitalism

Click here to access article by William I. Robinson from TeleSur. (My interpretation and commentary was edited for clarity around 6:30 PM Seattle time.)

This sociology professor at UC Santa Barbara offers his explanation of a world crisis that is both economic and political. 

The U.S. and Chinese economies are inextricably interwoven. They are less autonomous national economies than two key constituent parts of an integrated global economy. Trump has accused China of manipulating its currency, threatened to levy a 45 percent tariff on certain Chinese goods, and suggested he would use the “one China” policy as a bargaining tool in trade negotiations. Yet the simple fact is the TCC [transnational capitalist class] in both China and the United States are dependent on their expanding economic ties.

I think that the most valuable insight that Robinson offers is that there is a clash of factions within the transnational capitalist class (TCC) that inextricably links all member of this emerging class across all borders against more nationally oriented capitalists. In addition he explains that there is a difference in the orientation of US capitalists who manage the US economy solely on the basis of profits über alles and world dominance in contrast to China in which the Communist Party guides capitalist decisions by invoking additional criteria that serves a more harmonious relationship with other states. The latter faction, consisting of the BRIC states, is increasingly challenging the US Empire's faction which has constructed the framework of the post WWII international capitalist institutions and insured the dominance of US capitalists.

Trumpism encapsulates the conflicting economic and political pressures on the U.S. state. 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 as much as a conflictive recomposition of political forces and ideological discourse as the crisis deepens and as international tensions reach new depths.

Regardless of how these struggles among capitalist factions work out, and they can only work against the interests of workers, only workers organized across borders can defeat the TCC, avoid further wars, and construct a system that can serve the vast majority of the people and function in harmony with nature.   

State Secrets: Sibel Edmonds Uncovers ‘The Untouchables’

In the nearly two hour video below Edmonds summarizes her journey from an FBI employee who had the highest security clearance, and who in the course of her work discovered many criminal activities of government officials; reported them to her superiors which resulted in becoming a target by the FBI to shut her up, then followed all the rules by reporting her findings to Congress--which failed, then pursuing her case against government corruption in the legal system--which failed, then being ignored by mainstream media and what posed as an independent alternative media, she finally ends up where she is today trying to organize her own independent media. Her video is an attempt to promote the support of her media organization.

Newsbud presents major new revelations by former FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds, known as the most classified and gagged person in US history, takes on the US Congress and the culprit media in one of the most significant and longest ongoing political/criminal cover-ups involving the FBI, a notorious political mob in Chicago, a well-known elected official and her convicted criminal spouse. Further, she renews her public call for joint testimony under oath before the US Congress. Do not miss this in-depth exposé shedding light on just how notoriously corrupt criminals are given immunity and untouchable status, not only by the US government, but also by the Deep-State collaborators- the US media.

Sibel Edmunds is a product of an education/indoctrination system that teaches how our nation's government and society supposedly functions: the three semi-independent branches of government, the constitution that lays down the rules, the electoral system that is supposed to place representatives of the people in power, and that there exists an independent media that serves to check on the government by reporting on their activities. She is now reeling from the shock that none of the above are true, that government is laced with corruption, that the three branches of government are thoroughly under the control of mysterious forces within the secret "intelligence" services, and the media likewise seems to be under their control because they have aided in the coverup of these criminal activities. 

What she doesn't yet realize is that a system that delivers so much wealth and power to a tiny class of people (capitalists) inevitably deteriorates into a self-serving ruling class of people who are addicted to power that the system's wealth provides them. To sustain their rule, they have had to create a massive network of indoctrination and propaganda to hide such illegitimate activities and the very system (capitalism) that makes such activities possible. Because she is so focused on the "trees" of her experience, she doesn't see the "forest" of the capitalist nightmare that we are all living in.

Thus, instead of being a revolutionary intent on overturning the system and creating a new system that serves all the people, she is a moral crusader trying to clean up the existing system that is designed to serve the few at the expense of the vast majority. Because these few are now in charge of a global empire, their activities are having global consequences: never-ending wars, masses of refugees trying to flee the wars of the Empire, rampant poverty, climate destabilization, etc.

In spite of her myopia, I thoroughly support her efforts to create a media organization dedicated to reporting the truth. However due to that fact that she doesn't see the bigger picture, I believe that she is trying to do too much with too little resources. What I believe is necessary to effectively challenge this huge evil monster is a coming together of many such independent journalists and organizations. To safeguard this new organization from subversive activities by this corrupt ruling class, they must be organized according to a bottom-up command structure which is the exact opposite of the hierarchical structure that is used (by necessity) of all ruling classes. Such a bottom-up ("subarchy"?) structure that is firmly rooted at the local level still needs to be created. This is a huge task, but I don't think we have any choice if we humans are going to have any hope of survival.

A valiant verbal warrior demythologizes the CIA

Click here to access the review by Edward Curtin of a recent book entitled The CIA as Organized Crime authored by Douglas Valentine.

I confess that I don't remember reading any of Valentine's books because I felt that I already knew much about what he was writing. But Curtin's outstanding review of his works explains that his books offer unrivaled depth and width to the subject of the CIA's subversion of the US and it's Empire in service to their masters in the ruling capitalist class. I'm convinced that Valentine' books have the key to an understanding of many of today's seemingly incomprehensible events. Here is only one such tidbit from Valentine's recent book that promises an intellectual feast that awaits your reading:

“Journalism in the US is a traditional cover for CIA officers. And when the owners of the media aren’t covering for the CIA, they’re selling commercial time slots to the multi-national corporations that in turn are selling you commodities made in sweatshops in foreign nations that have been subverted by the CIA. You could almost say there is no such thing as factual reporting. . . . The CIA and the media are part of the same criminal conspiracy. You’re never going to learn anything substantive by reading what mainstream reporters dish out about the CIA. You can’t take a journalism course in CIA Criminal Conspiracies 101.”

Political insanity

by "Polyp the cartoonist" from the British website Polyp.org.uk.

How the Trump regime was manufactured by a war inside the Deep State [Not only a must-read article, but a must-study article of political reality]

Click here to access this updated article by Nafeez Ahmed from INSURGE intelligence. (I am very grateful to Dave Ratcliffe of ratical.org for alerting me to this article.)

Wow! I am going through the throes of an intellectual type of orgasm after reading this lengthy, but all important article. Therefore I hope that my "high" is not distorting my perceptions when I think that this might be the most important article I've ever posted. It brings together so many insights from my previous posts and contributes even more to understanding our very troubled world. The only important thing lacking is a revolutionary solution to our dystopic future under capitalism. But that is our assignment.

Whereas I have seen the split between two ruling class factions as centered around strategies to cope with the power realities of Russia, China, and Iran, he sees this split as encompassing far more factors--and he may be right.

Both sides of the US Deep State blame each other for the system’s failures, neither wishing to admit their own complicity in driving the systems responsible for those failures.

One side wants to respond to the systemic crisis by accelerating market share of the old paradigm — extending the life of the fossil fuel system and deregulating predatory capital. While most are climate deniers, some even appear to recognize the dangers of environmental crisis and resource scarcity but wish to shore up the US Deep State against the crisis as a nationalist response: Fortress America.

The other side hold a deep faith that technological progress will save the day and permit business-as-usual and endless extraction-premised growth to continue — they believe that digitally-driven technological innovations will allow Wall Street to have its cake and eat it: we can grow the economy, and enrich a tiny number of financiers in the West exponentially, and the dividends will trickle down to the Rest with a bit of technocratic tinkering, selective regulation and generous philanthropy.

Neither side truly understands that they both remain locked into the old, dying industrial neoliberal paradigm.

Human Rights Industry Protects Imperialism

Click here to access article by Margaret Kimberley from Black Agenda Report. 

Because the Anglo-American ruling capitalist classes after WWII formed a new Empire after they defeated the Axis capitalist gang, we are now plagued with a global regime that relies heavily on deception to sustain their rule and their imperial policies. George Orwell's insightful statement that "telling the truth is a revolutionary act" is more true today that ever. Now we see more than ever before that our masters turn truth upside down and claim that the whistle-blowers and truth-tellers are engaging in fake news while their corporate media daily spews out lies about nearly everything. Likewise reputedly humanitarian organizations have been turned into mouthpieces in support of Empire policies.

In this article Kimberly offers her take on the use of "human rights" organizations to serve the US-led Empire's war crimes.

Beginning in 2011 the United States used a tried and true method of getting support for imperialism. A foreign leader is accused of being a tyrant who terrorizes his nation. The claims silence critics, get buy in from corporate media and cynical politicians and ultimately lead to death at the hands of the so-called saviors. There are 9 million Syrian refugees precisely because of collusion between the west and its gulf monarchy allies. The suffering of the civilian population is the fault of these parties and it is only the determination of the Syrians and help from their allies which prevented it from going the way of Libya.

Now that the jihadists are on the run and their one-time backer Turkey has switched sides, the jig is up. But the imperialists will not go away quietly. That is why Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reappear at a crucial moment. 

Former Senator at Plaintiff’s Table in 9/11 Case Against FBI

Click here to access article from 28Pages.org.

Quite often the truth of the Empire's crimes trickle out eventually, and this appears to be the case with the 9/11 event. Many architects and engineers after a decade got up the nerve to question the government's numerous deceptions about 9/11, and have accomplished much in poking holes in many of the original 9/11 Commission's findings. Now a lawsuit against the government has reached a federal court judge who has obtained many more FBI documents that were previously covered up. Already the court hearing have produce startling revelations regarding a more recent 9/11 Review Commission (aka "Meese Commission"), "not to be confused with the [original] 9/11 Commission".

As Christensen noted in his coverage of this week’s developments, “FBI Director James Comey picked the Meese Commission’s members, who operated in virtual secrecy, holding no public hearings and releasing no records about its work beyond its March 2015 final report.”

And, thanks to the Florida Bulldog suit, we now know the FBI paid the commissioners $80,000 each plus expenses.

Dennis Kucinich Says Intel Community Making 'Unprecedented' Effort to Upend Trump: 'Wake Up!'

Via YouTube former Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich offers, in my opinion, the best insights about the recent firing of Gen. Flynn as National Security Advisor. (Thanks go to Christopher in Oregon for alerting me to this video.)



Kucinich's comment dovetails with (although it doesn't prove it) my posed theory on what's going on: a CIA faction versus a Rockefeller faction that is contesting power among the capitalist ruling class. (See this and this.) 

For another analysis of this ruling class drama, I recommend Bernhard's take in his blog Moon of Alabama. For an even more sympathetic view regarding Trump's side on this matter, you should look into Bloomberg's take (and the Financial Times if you can) on this drama. To me, this suggests that Bloomberg and the Financial Times represent the Rockefeller faction of the ruling class. Whichever side wins in this contest, you can be certain that ordinary Americans will be the losers. That is precisely why we must be getting organized to end the system which powers both profit/power hungry factions--capitalism.

Patrick Martin at the World Socialist Web Site urges us not be involved with, or manipulated by, either faction.

Workers and young people must not line up behind either faction of the ruling elite. Both are preparing for new military bloodbaths to safeguard the profits of American corporations. They are fighting over tactics and the sequence of targets, not over whether to send American youth to kill or be killed in imperialist wars.

The struggle against the Trump administration poses the need for a complete break with the Democrats and Republicans, the twin parties of big business, and the building of a mass independent political movement of working people, based on a socialist and internationalist program.

A Documentary You’ll Likely Never See

Click here to access article by James DiEugenio from ConsortiumNews.

The likely poor distribution of this exposé on the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine by US secret operatives is an excellent illustration of how real information is censored by the capitalist ruling class whenever it might expose their dirty secrets. Instead of permitting you to see this film, their corporate media replace real information with fake news.

Especially for American and Western European audiences, Ukraine on Fire could be revelatory in that it offers a historical explanation for the deep divisions within Ukraine and presents information about the current crisis that challenges the mainstream media’s paradigm, which blames the conflict almost exclusively on Russia.

Key people in the film’s production are director Igor Lopatonok, editor Alex Chavez, and writer Vanessa Dean, whose screenplay contains a large amount of historical as well as current material exploring how Ukraine became such a cauldron of violence and hate. Oliver Stone served as executive producer and conducted some high-profile interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin and ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The author continues on at length to describe much of Ukraine's fascist history and what really happened in Ukraine's recent coup. I gave the US engineered coup considerable coverage on this website. Simply enter "Ukraine" in a search box or select "Ukraine" in the "Labels" section some distance down the right side of my website.

North Korean Paranoia is Well-Founded

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

The article provides another antidote to ameliorate the poisonous propaganda of corporate media.

North Korea is depicted across US and European media as a backward nation run by a despotic, delusional leader encircled by advisers suffering from irrational, militant paranoia. The nation is also depicted as a prominent security threat in Asia-Pacific despite North Korea waging no wars in the region since an armistice in 1953 effectively ended the Korean War.

A despotic, delusional leadership, however, most likely would not possess nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and a large conventional army and yet restrain its use regardless of decades of provocations engineered along its borders by the United States and its allies within the South Korean government. Likewise, a nation governed by the entirely irrational would be incapable of maintaining, even expanding ties with neighboring states like China.

Yet in reality, North Korea has done all of this.

Understanding America’s Many Wars

Click here to access article by Murray Polner from Uncommon Thought Journal. (Edited for much needed clarity at 8:15 PM Seattle time.)

I've spent too much time this morning trying to access information about the author to the detriment of this commentary/essay. Polner is the book editor of History News Network and has written several books and articles featured in many center-liberal publications. The best I could find on his bio is from Book Depository:

Murray Polner has had a rich and varied career as a teacher, college professor, writer and editor. He is the author of When Can I Come Home. His writings have also appeared in the New York Times, Newsday, the Washington Post, Commonweal, The Nation, Village Voice and the Boston Globe. He lives in Great Neck, New York. Murray Polner is an editor and the author of No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran and has written for The New York Times,The Nation, Commonweal, The Washington Monthly, and many other publications.

I want to use this article/book review which Polner writes about so favorably as an illustration of how a mainstream American intellectual writes about political subjects such as US wars thereby serves as a useful propagandist for the US-led Empire. Now that the Japanese government is a useful ally/puppet of the Empire, we Americans must forgive and forget that we were once adversaries.

In his favorable review of a book by James Bradley’s entitled The China Mirage he uses circumlocutions and abstractions to hide the nature of the rivalries the capitalist nations engaged in during WWII, and as a result he obscures and distorts the realities of these wars. He ends up arguing that our war with Japan was a mistake because "we" (at that time) simply didn't understand Japan's economic needs. In other words, the war was all about national interests and "we" didn't understand Japan's national interests and instead mistakenly aligned our policies with China. Balderdash!

It is Bradley’s contention that Americans have misunderstood and misjudged China, wedded as they were to the fantasy that China was yearning to be Christianized, Westernized and Americanized while ignoring that it had and has its own national interests. This was never more obvious than after 1931, when the Japanese –eager to control China as part of its sphere of interest– invaded Manchuria, which the U.S. promptly denounced as an act of aggression. For both nations the great prize was China. After that, Japan and U.S. were on the road to war.

By referring to the competing capitalist national gang rivalries behind the abstractions of nations (China, Japan, US), he, like many ruling class propagandists, hides the real nature of the devastating wars in the 20th century.

Let me present a concise alternative view of history that focuses more specifically on competition among capitalist ruling classes to control access to markets and resources all over the world to satisfy their interests of profits and power.

In spite of the external military operations of other capitalist countries and internal threats posed by poverty, hunger, chaos, and epidemic diseases, the success of the Soviet revolution in 1917 posed an ongoing threat of a system that directly challenged private ownership of the economy that existed in all the other technologically advanced countries. Should the Soviet experiment succeed, all capitalist ruling classes were threatened by the alternative example of public ownership. Thus capitalist ruling classes, having failed to re-install a capitalist regime in the Soviet Union, waited to see if the new Soviet government simply collapsed under the weight of so many initial threats.

During the 1930s when Western nations were severely plagued by the Great Depression, the Soviet Union was making rapid economic strides and enjoying full employment. Obviously this was of great concern to Western capitalist ruling classes and they began a project to support right-wing fascist parties in Europe which ultimately brought the Nazi Party to power in Germany and the fascists in Italy. Because the "democratic" (the US, Britain, France, etc) nations stood by in neutrality, they allowed Germany and Italy to attach the left elected Spanish government during the Spanish Civil War. Only the Soviet Union and volunteers from the non-fascist Western countries came to the aid of the Spanish government, and the Soviet leaders lost interest in doing so because they themselves felt threatened.

During this period American and other European ruling capitalist classes were split in their attitudes and policies toward the fascist countries. On the one hand, they saw the latter as a bulwark against organized labor unions and leftists, but on the other, especially as the latter grew in power, they feared that they might present a threat to the economic interests of capitalists in what became known as the core allied nations (which initially excluded the Soviet Union). Also the more fascist oriented capitalists in the allied nations saw the splendid potential of the German Nazi government to expand eastward (Hitler had described this plan in Mein Kampf as Lebensraum). 

Similarly Japan's ruling capitalist class had their own imperialist concept of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. What most Americans are unaware of is that the US ruling class had their own concept, the Grand Area (this area was extended after WWII and became known as the "free world"). The Allies patiently let Germany expand and grow their empire on the European continent and move east toward the Soviet Union. However Germany unexpectedly invaded Poland, with which Britain had a defense treaty, instead of going from Czechoslovakia on to the Soviet Union. Thus began a phony war after which the Nazi government attacked Britain and continued to move east and invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Because the Netherlands, Belgium, and France had been easily overrun by German forces, the Allied ruling classes expected that Germany would easily defeat the Soviet forces. But whereas the defeat of the Allied countries was mainly due to their ruling classes being split in their orientation to the fascist nations, the Soviet government was united in their opposition to fascism. As a result the German forces encountered great difficulty after only a month into their invasion. 

Although I cannot yet prove it, I am convinced by much circumstantial evidence that leading US ruling class figures at this time saw that Germany was not going to succeed in conquering the USSR and therefore Germany was now a threat to the British Empire and the US. They and their British associates began formulating plans in the late summer of 1941 to prepare for war with the Axis powers. They saw the necessity of securing what they referred to as the Grand Area, which included the Western Hemisphere plus southeast Asia, in order to win the war against the Axis powers. Of course, this put them on a collision course with Japan's ruling class who vitally needed the resources in that area and oil from the US. The US government soon embargoed oil exports to Japan in order to force Japan along together their ally Germany into a war with the Anglo-American combination.

Capitalist ruling classes are very much like street gangs in that they compete over territories which provide them with opportunities of profit and power. Thus the Anglo-American capitalist combination were not going to permit the capitalist ruling classes in Germany and/or Japan to dominate the world and threaten their access to raw materials and markets. The British capitalists persuaded US capitalists to join them in opposition to the German Reich, and this combination went on to win WWII with the result that they have dominated the world ever since. (Israel was added in 1967 after the nation and the international Zionist Jewry became obvious as a useful addition to the existing Empire.) However, the governments of Russia, China, Iran and other countries are now starting to challenge their dominance, and we can expect more major wars to follow--unless we organize an effective opposition against the profit and power addicted ruling class!

Are humans like horses?

by Ron Horn. I thank "Don Quijones" (pseudonym) for this video which he posted on his new blog Rigged Game. He previously posted articles on Raging Bull-Shit, then posted articles on Wolf Street, and now has returned to his own blog.



The narrator alerts us to some very real issues facing humans regarding the ever advancing improvements in technology. In this 15 minute video he compares humans to horses to illustrate how the latter became obsolete with the appearance of autos, trucks, etc. There are now relatively few horses around especially in the technologically advanced nations. Like most metaphors, this one is also limited in its aptness--far more than what its creator intended. I think that it reveals the ideological blindness of the creator (and narrator). 

The creator/narrator of this video along with the vast majority of Americans like fish in the sea don't see the system or the water in which we all swim--capitalism. This system is an artifact created by humans, but it was made by only a certain class of human who saw the potential benefits of profit and power that such a system could give them. They simply and deceptively extrapolated the system of feudalism in which aristocrats and monarchs owned all the land (which their ancestors had conquered) and claimed ownership of most everything that peasants produced in their new system of capitalism. The new class of capitalists now claimed "ownership" over the products and creations of workers who became essentially wage slaves. 

The new system of capitalism was widely known and discussed in most of the West until the last half of the 20th century. In an effort to prevent people from examining the inequities of capitalism, our masters, the ruling capitalist classes, since then have disappeared the word from most of their writings, their history, etc. As a result, most people, like the narrator, simply take for granted that the system is an immutable reality; thus it has almost disappeared as a topic of discussion. 

Now let us return to the metaphor the narrator uses--humans as horses. The metaphor seeks to expose the problems for workers given the advances of technology where most of them are no longer needed. This is accurate and poses a dilemma for humans. However the metaphor fails to provide an understanding of the class-based exploitation that the system of capitalism imposes on the vast majority of humans. Did horses invent cars, trucks, etc? Of course not. But human-workers did invent them along with all of technology. The problem is that the benefits of their activity did not go to the workers, but to a tiny class of capitalists who claim "ownership" over everything the workers produce and create--and this includes technology. The metaphor hides this glaring fact.

Instead of a blessing that could free workers from not only mindless tasks but more complex tasks, under the existing system technology is now threatening their very existence. With a new system that distributed the benefits of technology to everyone, humans could be free of the necessity of spending so much time in activities to meet their material needs of existence. This could free them to engage in the tasks of making decisions about production, about what they want to produce, about issues of relations to each others, about questions in our relations with nature, about refinements to the new system that they created,  etc, etc. 

As you can see, this is in marked contrast to today's world where only a tiny minority decide everything--and for their exclusive benefit. In such a new system humans would need to spend a lot of time in education about the world in which they live. Thus technology could free all humans to develop their fullest potentialities. It's hard to imagine what humans could be become under a system that was designed to serve all of them.

Will Superweeds Choke GMO to a Timely Death in USA?

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

Engdahl cites recent studies, including this one and explained by this article, which report data that suggests that pesticide resistant "superweeds" are increasing on US farm lands. Engdahl writes:

When we human beings become too self-destructive for our own well-bring and that of our Earth, sometimes nature takes control and does what we in our greed and stupidity refuse to do. The refusal of Governments around the world–with notable exceptions such as the GMO-free Russian Federation–to order an immediate global ban on planting of Genetically Manipulated Organisms, GMO, including for corn, for soybeans, for cotton to name just a few, along with an immediate ban on paired weed-killers such as Monsanto’s Roundup, is stupidity pure. The response of nature, however, may sound the death knell for American farmers’ use of GMO seeds more effectively than any labelling or WHO carcinogen warning. Superweeds are literally choking GMO plants to death across the US Midwest farm belt and that should send a very real signal that nature abhors GMOs and their toxic weed-killing chemicals.

I must take issue with his first sentence. I think I can safely assume that people reading this article are human beings. So, are you responsible for developing and promoting Roundup? Of course not! People who developed, promoted, and sold this product were instructed and paid by capitalists to do it, and were likely fired if they refused.

Wake Up Call

by British illustrator and animator Steve Cutts from his website.

Some observations and solutions about the contemporary class war being waged (on us) by our capitalist ruling class

by Ron Horn for this website.

I ended up with this essay this morning by reading and recalling a number of articles of how the capitalist ruling class through various NGOs or non-profit organizations (NGOs are usually used to refer to non-governmental organizations abroad, but within the US they are usually referred to as non-profit organizations) are so often used by them to shepherd Americans into fairly safe activist organizations, marches, demonstrations, protests, etc. Then I began to think how this is only one part of a complex of controlling mechanisms to insure that Americans support the existing rule of American capitalism and all its contemporary features of imperialism. Let me provide some details about this train of thought and where it led me.

I read and/or scanned articles entitled Amnesty International Stokes Syrian War and Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits, and recalled other posts of a similar nature to realize more fully the complex nature of the forces of control used by the ruling class to secure our compliance and to divert our opposition energies toward fairly harmless pursuits that don't interfere with their interests of profits and power.

This complex of forces runs all the way from ideological indoctrination and information that we experience in education, to media, to entertainment, to the control of jobs especially in higher education and in non-profits which are usually funded by the rich, and to infiltration of their well-paid agents in activist organizations. Sometimes these forces that the rich ruling class commands seem overwhelming and invincible, and they very well may be. If so, I think that this is going to lead to a series of catastrophes such as nuclear war or major climate disasters or both that will likely end the existence of humans, or at least major loss of life. However, it seems that my human nature resists hopelessness and looks forever toward solutions.

I keep thinking that if only ordinary people knew about, and understood, the realities of their condition of indoctrinated wage slaves or well-paid and indoctrinated agents of an exploitative ruling class that they might engage in revolutionary activities to change the system that supports this ruling class. They would do this because they would understand that the underlying reason why we experience so much extreme inequality, never-ending wars, and environmental devastation is the existence of the capitalist system. So this suggests some action to start the process of this understanding. My individual solution was to start this website. But social problems, especially of this magnitude, require collective solutions.

The only activity that I can see would generate a collective revolutionary movement would be focused on organizing alternative news, information, and opinion sources that are strictly funded by non-ruling class sources. I see signs such as more and more websites that are devoted to presenting such content and are funded by ordinary people. But many need to rid themselves of advertising because their sponsors inevitably end up influencing content. They also need to combine resources such as journalists, administrators, and funding in ever large media collectives to effectively counter the influence of corporate media.

To attract the right kind of activists they need to build in new alternative organizational structures, and not simply borrow hierarchical structures typical of class-structured organizations and societies. Thus some kind of bottom-up control structures are necessary to assure authentic democratic control which serves the people. Thus much experimentation must be done to produce a workable, practical model that can be adopted by other organizations in a growing revolutionary movement. 

Once such alternative collective media organizations become a significant influence, we can expect attacks from the ruling class in the forms of infiltrators who would try to create dissension in these organizations, attempts to bribe people to serve the ruling class, smears in corporate media in an attempt to discredit the alternative media, and even threats to people engaged in work for the new media. All such attacks could escalate as the new media became more effective, but this would only serve to attract more attention and people to the new media organizations. The new media could serve as a revolutionary catalyst that could grow a viable movement to overthrow the reign of capitalists and their entire support system, and then to replace it with a genuine democratic system that affirms life and harmony with nature.