How US Flooded the World with Psyops

Click here to access article by Robert Parry from ConsortiumNews. (Editing for clarity at 5 PM Seattle time.)

Newly declassified documents from the Reagan presidential library help explain how the U.S. government developed its sophisticated psychological operations capabilities that – over the past three decades – have created an alternative reality both for people in targeted countries and for American citizens, a structure that expanded U.S. influence abroad and quieted dissent at home.

This article represents an excellent piece of investigative journalism from a journalist who has already achieved renown as a genuine independent journalist. He is an example of someone who must be a part of a citizen-funded independent alternative media organization that I suggested in a piece entitled "Some observations and solutions about the contemporary class war being waged (on us) by our capitalist ruling class". 

After studying government documents he received under FOIA, Parry reports on many systemic attempts in the 1980s to influence world opinion, both within the US and abroad, to support the many crimes committed by the capitalist directors of the US-led Empire. Propaganda and psyop programs were set up, some privately funded with close collaboration by hidden figures behind the facade of government, to insure that their crimes were hidden under a media barrage of fake "humanitarian" and "democratic" themes. It is clear from the current onslaught of anti-Putin and anti-Russian stories that are inflicted upon us daily that these programs have only gotten bigger. From my observations, corporate media, including the government chartered NPR and PBS, are almost exclusively publishing fake stories and censoring out real reports of any topic that is politically sensitive.

D. Rockefeller’s Gruesome Legacy

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook. (Editing for clarity at 5 PM Seattle time.)

Engdahl unwraps one of the capitalism's most secretive and powerful actors and finds the stench of a self-seeking misanthrope who devoted his entire life to satisfying his own excessive needs for power and wealth at the expense of untold number of lives across the globe. Instead of eulogizing such infantile behavior as corporate media has done, Engdahl tells the real, gruesome story of his life. 

Capitalism is a kind of religion that extols the merits of self-seeking behavior. To practice self-seeking they see the necessity to dominate and control others. Its adherents claim that the practice of self-seeking is beneficial to all. Of course, this is only a ruse to hide their ambitions to control everything in the world for their sole benefit. A capitalist has the personality development of a two year old child who is devoted entirely to its own satisfaction. 

Although capitalism as a system benefits only a few, capitalist ideologues indoctrinate all citizens in the goodness of this lifestyle from birth; and this influence continues throughout their lives in schools, corporate media, and entertainment. The end result is a full-spectrum ideological dominance over citizens to such an extent that people can no long imagine any other social-economic system in spite of the fact of the system's many deleterious effects (wars, poverty, environmental destruction, etc) on people all over our planet.

As our Empire's transnational ruling class is becoming desperate to maintain their objective of securing the entire world as their oyster, they are increasingly resorting to desperate measures that include full-spectrum surveillance of citizens and systematic propaganda and psyop programs to manage their consent to continue with the capitalists' obsession to obtain for themselves every last thing of value on the planet.

Democratic Party floats proposal for a palace coup

Click here to access article by Andre Damon from World Socialist Web Site.

Far from appealing to the broad popular opposition to Trump that began to erupt in the days after his inauguration, the Democratic Party is fixated on avoiding at all costs the emergence of a movement of the working masses. That is why it appeals to the military/intelligence apparatus and the corporate aristocracy in its struggle with the faction of the ruling class represented by Trump.

The war between the two is a war of liars between two deeply reactionary factions of the same capitalist elite. The Trump camp seeks to pursue a different approach in the drive of US imperialism for global hegemony—putting off for now war plans against Russia in order to focus US aggression first on China.

Both factions would drag the people of the United States and the world into a third world war, with the prospect of nuclear annihilation. And there is no difference between the two on the need to escalate the war against the working class.

I don't think that Friedman's open letter in the NY Times has all that much to do with the Democratic Party as it has more to do with the struggle of the two factions as argued in the above quote. As an illustration, the vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act was rejected by a combination of both political parties even though its repeal has long been advocated by Republicans. Both factions of the ruling class simply did not think it was in their best interest to provoke more anti-government opposition, and instructed their puppets in Congress to vote accordingly.

The perfect consumer of capitalism's products

by British illustrator and animator Steve Cutts from his website.

Abby Martin & Lee Camp [of Redacted Tonight] Reveal The Truth Behind The Headlines

Listen/view via YouTube especially to Abbie Martin on Camp's Redacted Tonight's RT show discuss issues. Martin is featured during the first 16:20m of the 26:10m show.

In this episode of Redacted Tonight VIP, host Lee Camp interviews the one and only Abby Martin. Abby is a brilliant, cutting-edge investigative journalist and host of the Empire Files. She’s constantly speaking truth to power and calling out the US war machine and the failings of the corporate mainstream media. Lee and Abby discuss all of this, as well as the apartheid state that is Israel-Palestine. This is an interview not to be missed. In the second half of VIP, Lee discusses how the systems that rely on our ignorance are now trying to come up with ways to keep us dumb. He talks about the fast food industry. They’re trying to trick us into eating their food, even though most of us already know it’s poison. They’re trying to rebrand as healthy, even though they are everything but. 

Keeping the Myth and the Islamic State Alive

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

The US Empire and its partners in war crimes (the medieval Gulf kingdoms, Turkey, and Israel) have employed a grand myth of Islamic terrorist armies acting independently to sow discord in the Middle East, particularly in Syria, as a propaganda cover to promote their sponsorship of these terrorist armies in order to overthrow the Syrian government. The success of Russia's injection of forces to support the Syrian government, at the latter's invitation, has threatened this myth and Empire propagandists, who control nearly all corporate media, have had to work overtime to invent new lies to prop up this myth. Cartalucci sums up this dilemma in the following paragraph and expands on the use of phony terrorist armies in the rest of the article. (I took the liberty to edit this paragraph to add greater clarity to it.)

...many of these groups face defeat within Syria, prompting their foreign sponsors into two courses of action: 1) posing as the forces responsible for their defeat as the US and Turkey are attempting to do amid their respective, illegal incursions into Syrian territory, and 2) creating a narrative to serve as cover for the evacuation and harboring of these militant groups elsewhere for future use.

Someone, who is an unidentified "military-diplomatic source", has likely exposed the second narrative of this propaganda: the semi-encirclement of Mosul by Empire's coalition of forces in this piece entitled "US, Saudis to grant 9,000 ISIS fighters free passage from Iraqi Mosul to Syria – source".

This grand myth is like all the other myths (War on Drugs, Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, 9/11, the assassinations of the John & Bobby Kennedy, ML King, etc.) promulgated by the Empire's corporate media. With the huge wealth that the transnational capitalist class has accumulated, they are now able to create whatever myths that support their criminal actions and have their media and entertainment corporations (even educational institutions) repeat endless narratives to support the myths until they become "reality" for most Americans. That is precisely why Karl Rove made that infamous statement shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. 

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

Today the American people (and many others) are like Truman Burbank in the "Truman Show". At the beginning the character doesn't realize that his existence and notion of reality is thoroughly controlled by the show's directors. But towards the end Truman is starting to realize that his view of reality does not make sense, and eventually he escapes this artificial reality of the "show". I keep asking myself: can this happen to all the present day Trumans of the world?  

North Korea: The really serious options on the table

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

Escobar sees important changes both within, and between relations, in the following countries: China, Japan, the two Koreas, and the US that might bring about some major political change in the year or two ahead.

Russophobia – Symptom of US Implosion

Click here to access article by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

Unable to accept the reality that the governing structure of the US has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people, that the people rebelled by electing an outsider in the form of business mogul-turned-politician Donald Trump, that the collapse of American traditional politics is due to the atrophy of its bankrupt capitalist economy over several decades – the ruling class have fabricated their own excuse for demise by blaming it all on Russia.

The American ruling class cannot accept, or come to terms, with the fact of systemic failure in their own political system.

A Tale of Two Cities: Aleppo and Mosul

Click here to access article by James O’Neill, an Australian-based Barrister at Law from New Eastern Outlook.

After comparing the Empire's corporate media coverage of the two battle-scarred cities, he asks the obvious questions and reaches obvious conclusions.

Why does the western media not ask the obvious questions, such as how is it possible for these disparate terrorist groups to go on fighting for years, with limitless access to modern armaments? Or why are wounded terrorist fighters treated in Israeli and Turkish military hospitals and allowed to return to the fighting?

They avoid these questions for the reasons given above. It would expose the real reasons for US and their allies’ military intervention in the Middle East and their support for terrorist groups as an instrument of foreign policy. Promoting sectarian warfare is an essential component of that policy.

Those policies are unlikely to ever change as long as the media continues its role as essentially a propaganda outlet for unbalanced depictions of what is actually happening in the Syrian and Iraqi war zones. Aleppo and Mosul are but two illustrations of a wider process.

In another article posted in New Eastern Outlook, Tony Cartalucci provides more fuel to the increasing alternative media fire that exposes these phony terrorist army themes that the Empire's media are full of.

The United States of Cognitive Dissonance

Click here to access article by CJ Hopkins from CounterPunch.

Hopkins argues (maybe tongue-in-cheek) that Americans (and many in the world) are infected with a deadly mind disease called "cognitive dissonance". And he describes how this process works: (I have taken the liberty of changing the pronoun and corresponding verb.)

Imagine [yourself] strapped in a chair like Alex was in Clockwork Orange, barraged with images of frightening terrorists until [your] mind accepts them as “the enemy,” at which point “the enemy” is immediately switched, and now it’s Hitler that is coming to get [you], which, after a time, [you come] to accept (and [forget] the former terrorist “enemy”), at which point “the enemy” is switched once again, and now it’s Putin and the Russians who are after [you]. And so on … until [your] mind just snaps and surrenders to whatever official “reality” is being fed into it any given day. At which point [they] have rendered the subject [yourself] a totally compliant, scramble-headed, functionally psychotic member of society, whose attention span is about twenty seconds, and whose brain [they] can fill full of fancy pharmaceuticals to keep it from completely melting down in response to the stress of the cognitive dissonance that it has to deal with on a daily basis.

Are our fellow Americans really like this? Well, I know of some who fit this description, but others more skilled (and therefore employed and paid well) are simply following the orders of their capitalist masters and agents in order to feed their families and pay their next month's mortgage payment. Most of them don't believe such nonsense, but they feel that their only choice is to go along to get along. These people are well educated and indoctrinated to follow orders and thus are employed at living salaries to serve the capitalist ruling class in the latter's corporations. Possibly many other Americans who are employed as wage workers (if they are lucky) at less than living wages, and less skilled and less educated, are like this. I simply don't know. I do know that the key to the ruling class's success is dependent on the salaried workers willingness to serve the interests of their capitalist masters and agents.

Hopkins also observes that such conditioning seems to be tapering off, and he argues that this is because Trump's attackers can not come up with any proof to support some of their crazy notions about Trump. However, I think it is tapering off because Trump is slowly being turned (or intimidated) to support a dominate faction in Wall Street that is promoting an anti-Russian agenda.

We’re All Minorities Now

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

The authors ask:

How did a society that fought a brutal and bloody revolution to throw off the yoke of one percent rule end up where we find ourselves today?

My answer is that the people were lied to and fooled into supporting the new capitalist plunderers of America against the British monarchy.

The causes they list are simply effects that have developed ever since that capitalist American revolution.

...we believe the major causes are as follows: a highly consolidated corporate media that failed to tackle these issues with regularity and force; a timid Internal Revenue Service that was afraid to take on the billionaire class for setting up faux citizen front groups that drowned out the voice and views of real citizens; and, of course, an abjectly corrupt system of billionaire financing of political campaigns. 

Trump's military tower

by editorial cartoonist Joe Heller.

Republican insider: Trump is creating Deep State 2.0, but it might crash the economy

Click here to access article by Nafeez Ahmed from Insurge Intelligence. (Edited for clarity at 3:45 PM Seattle time.)

The "Republican insider" is Mike Lofgren who had a 28 year career in various staff positions in Congress. This article consists of interview with Lofgren by Nafeez Ahmed. I found it to be one of the most insightful interviews that I've ever read. I gained two major insights.

First of all, I now see why major political figures always deny that what happens politically is in any sense a result of a conspiracy. Since the publication of Logren's book in January 2016 people on websites have increasingly used the word "deep state" with little understanding of the concept. Although I have not read Lofgren's book, from his comments in this article I conclude that he doesn't understand the extent of it either. Nobody does. (Although some people have a much better understanding than others.) That is precisely why the "deep state" functions in secret so that nobody knows their existence and the details of how they actually function. Still, Lofgren insists, like many others, that they are not engaging in a conspiracy. 

“It’s a series of coalitions of people and it’s not a conspiracy. The names of the people we know. We know Lloyd Blankfein is the CEO of Goldman Sachs, who now has dozens of his alumni throughout the government, including in the president’s economic team. I would say that Trump’s cabinet has so many billionaires it makes George W. Bush’s cabinet look like a Bolshevik workers council. It’s just unbelievable. So to conclude it’s just the military is wrong. It’s a series of interlocking interest groups who coalesce the same way people with power, money and influence always gravitate to one another. Adam Smith said 225 years ago or more that there’s never a meeting among businessmen, a private meeting that takes place, but that sooner or later they get involved in some conspiracy against the public interest.”

I think the main reason why Lofgren and others insist that their operations are not a conspiracy is because the "deep state" controls the entire government and insures that participants in it make and interpret laws that favor the interests of the ruling capitalist class. Therefore they, unlike typical criminals, don't do anything that is strictly illegal. But they do function in secret and plan the policies that will be carried out by their puppets in government. It's just that they don't experience the mindset of criminals of doing things illegally. This interpretation often creates some confusion in the minds of people who deny a conspiracy. Notice the contradiction contained in the above statement by Lofgren by comparing the first sentence with the last.

Secondly, I can see more fully why the ruling class through their corporate media are portraying Trump's many actions so negatively. They are very concerned that his bumbling actions, vulgar behavior, and reckless lies are going to make people question more about the nature of their government and ultimately expose the deep anti-democratic and anti-working class character of their government.

“Trump is kind of like Herman Goering telling the German police ‘your bullet is my bullet’. All this signalling that’s been going on has resulted in these customs and immigration people behaving in an extremely high handed and brutish fashion towards ordinary immigrants, not just people with Arab names, a white Frenchman, a white Australian woman, for the most trivial things. And I could see that really getting out of control with this kind of Gresham’s law of human behavior. The bad apples will sort of set the example. They’ll get promoted, they’ll get the plum assignment and everyone else will be swept along.”

Insight: Trump is escalating the repression of ordinary people. But this will make more people opposed to him – and to the Deep State structures he wields against them. This creates a heightening opportunity for people to wake up and step up.

Also, aside from his remarks about Goldman Sachs executives being a major part of Trump's administration, I don't get a lot from this interview that Lofgren really understands the composition of the deep state. For example:

You see aspects where some of the more obviously Deep State-type institutions like law enforcement, these customs and immigration inspectors, Border Patrol and its union endorsed Trump. And now I see gradually occurring what happens in authoritarian states…

Yes, Trump is trying to reconstruct the numerous "intelligence" agencies to serve his agenda, but that is only one component of the deep state and leaves out the numerous think tanks that formulate policies that serve the interests of the capitalist class. The police state structure that he refers to are only agencies to carry out policies of the deep state. Thus, I believe that "Deep State 2.0" is only a figment of Lofgren's imagination.
 
It appears to me that Lofgren suddenly woke up one day to see that official policies did not make sense and thus he posited that some sort of "deep state" had to be operating behind the scenes in control of government regardless of which political party was theoretically in control.  He was right, but his knowledge of the deep state is rather shallow.

I've noticed in the past several weeks that some very knowledgeable people are predicting a disastrous crash of the economy under Trump. Lofgren adds to this chorus of doom.

We’re #1!

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

...the United States has the most unequal distribution of wealth of any rich nation. 

And it’s not even close!

Thomas calculates the ratio of mean to median wealth for each country (the last column in the table above) to devise a measure of wealth inequality.

 As you can see, the U.S. inequality ratio is more than 50% higher than #2 Denmark and fully three times as high as the median country on the list, France.

The Meaning of Life (Part I)

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

This scientist provides details of the influence of early 20th century capitalists on the search for biological determinants that underlay human behavior. Their concern was most of all their fear of "unruly and resentful mobs" especially following the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Many people date the DNA revolution to the discovery of its structure by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. But really it began thirty years before, conceived by the mind of John D Rockefeller, Sr. Thus it is fitting that DNA is named after him. DNA stands for DeoxyriboNucleic Acid and ribo stands for Rockefeller Institute of Biochemistry (now Rockefeller University) where the chemical composition of DNA was first discovered in the 1920s. The Rockefeller Foundation had become interested in DNA because its trustees feared a Bolshevik-style revolution. Intense public resentment had already compelled the break-up of their Standard oil Company in 1911; so the Foundation sought ways, said trustee Harry Pratt Judson in 1913, to “reinforce the police power of the state”. They intended to find the ultimate key to human behaviour which would allow the resentful and envious mobs to be effectively managed.

The Foundation had two strategies for management that were distinct but complementary: to control human behaviour at the level of social structures: family, work and emotions, which the Foundation referred to by names such as “psychobiology”; and to control human behaviour at the level of molecules.

Later the influence was to prevent the questioning of harmful products that their corporations produced such as tobacco. 

Latham records the astounding influence of the Rockefellers and other rich capitalists have had on science research and other science related activities. 

The True Legacy Of David Rockefeller

Click here to access article from Mint Press News.

No one person encapsulates the enduring legacy of the “robber barons” of the Industrial Age quite like David Rockefeller. Rockefeller, who died today at the age of 101, was the last surviving grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the oil tycoon who became America’s first billionaire and the patriarch of what would become one of the most powerful and wealthiest families in American history. David Rockefeller, an undeniable product of American nobility, lived his entire life in the echelons of U.S. society, becoming symbolic of the elite who often direct public policy to a much greater extent than many realize, albeit often from the shadows.

Rockefeller made it clear that he preferred to operate out of public view despite his great influence in American – and international – politics.

The true legacy of this grandson of America's first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, is that he was probably the key person of America's deep state, the mysterious people who run the puppet show called the US Government from behind the curtain of illusion. Of course, he always wanted to stay behind the dramatic scenes that he helped shape in order to preserve the illusion that the puppet show was the real show. 

Much of the power and wealth of today's ruling class is derived from what people in the 19th century accurately referred to as "robber barons" whose descendants now form a major part of what is popularly known as the One Percent ruling class and also the deep state. David Rockefeller is a prime example. He is a descendant of people who include the con artist and rapist William Rockefeller Sr. whose son John D. Rockefeller began the fantastic accumulation of wealth on the sweat-labor of workers in the mines and oil refineries that he "owned". But John D. wasn't the only one.

It was during the latter half of the 19th century that we also saw the rise of the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, Astors, etc.; and also the brutal attacks on working people such as the Ludlow Massacre, the Lattimer Massacre, the Columbine Mine massacre, and the Homestead Strike (you probably didn't learn much about these incidents in your education). The 19th century industrial and financial titans' rise to power created the ruling class as we know it today (see also this). The latter are the beneficiaries of these 19th century capitalists who created the foundation for the construction of the wealthy and extremely powerful 1% of the One Percent who now rule the US and much of the world from the deep state that lies behind the curtain of "democratic" illusion brought to you daily by their media corporations.

The Globalization of Capitalism: The Rise of Capitalism's Fourth Epoch [third in a series of five]

Click here to access article by Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D. from ThoughtCo. 

Capitalism, as an economic system, first debuted in the 14th century and existed in three different historical epochs before it evolved into the global capitalism that it is today. In this article we take a look at the process of globalizing the system, which changed it from a Keynesian, "New Deal" capitalism to the neoliberal and global model that exists today.

The foundation of today’s global capitalism was laid, in the aftermath of World War II, at the Bretton Woods Conference, which took place at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944.

Global Capitalism: Five Things that Make Capitalism "Global" [fourth in a series of five]

Click here to access article by Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D. from ThoughtCo. 

Global capitalism is the fourth and current epoch of capitalism. What distinguishes it from earlier epochs of mercantile capitalism, classical capitalism, and national-corporate capitalism is that the system, which was previously administered by and within nations, now transcends nations, and thus is transnational, or global, in scope. In its global form, all aspects of the system, including production, accumulation, class relations, and governance, have been disembedded from the nation and reorganized in a globally integrated way that increases the freedom and flexibility with which corporations and financial institutions operate.

What's So Bad About Global Capitalism? Ten Sociological Critiques of the System [fifth in a series of five]

Click here to access article by Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D. from ThoughtCo. 

I don't think that Cole wishes to imply that the other stages of capitalism were beneficial to working people. Because capitalist laws made everything created on the owners' property as belonging to the owner, and by reducing everything to a commodity that could be purchased, soon capitalist "owned" everything of productive value and workers were reduced to wage-slaves to be hired or fired at the discretion of the "owners".

I think she is arguing that each stage of capitalism tightened the hold that capitalists had over their nation-states and workers residing in these states, and now with the advent of trans-national capitalism things are even worse. 

The five key elements that make capitalism “global” are summarized below. A more detailed analysis can be found here.

1. the fully globalized nature of the production and distribution of goods;
2. the flexible nature of a global pool of labor that corporations can choose from;
3. globalized circuits of accumulation and investment among wealthy corporations and individuals;
4. the existence of a global class of elite who set the agenda for production, trade, finance, and development; and,
5. a globalized form of governance, known as the transnational state, run by these elite via institutions like the WTO, World Bank, and IMF, among others.

Now, let’s take a critical look at the implications of these particular arrangements of capitalist relations of production.

What is Capitalism, Exactly? [one of a series of five articles]

Click here to access article by Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D. from ThoughtCo. 

Cole has provided us with a series of articles related to capitalism that shed so much light on its various aspects. Although this website runs one article into another, I will post them separately in what I believe is a logical order and selecting five articles that I believe are the most important. I am posting two of the five articles today. Thus I believe we should begin with the important characteristics of capitalism as described by Cole in this article. 

Capitalism is a term that we are all familiar with. We have a capitalist economy in the U.S., and most of us could probably answer that a capitalist system is premised on competition between private businesses that seek to make profit and grow. But, there’s actually quite a bit more to this economic system, and it’s worth understanding the nuances, considering the fundamental and important role it plays in our lives.

So, let’s dig in to it a bit, from a sociological perspective.

Private property and ownership of resources are key aspects of a capitalist economy. 

The Three Historic Phases of Capitalism and How They Differ [the second in a series of five]

Click here to access article by Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D. from ThoughtCo. (Edited for clarity at 8:30 AM March 20 Seattle time.)

In addition to the Italian entrepreneurs who engaged in trade in the eastern Mediteranean, early capitalists were probably influenced by monarchical charters that were given to a monarch's friends, adventurers, and explorers as a way of motivating them to extend their imperial reach to other lands to secure resources and territories. Such charters gave these people rights to profit off their investments in these lands, and many became very rich by engaging in such enterprises. This gave birth to a class of people who wanted to extend such arrangements to all commerce and production, but free of monarchical control. 

While this social development was occurring, the Age of Enlightenment gave increasing emphasis on reason and evidence-based truth that saw workers creating all kinds of mechanical inventions and later power sources like steam which in turn were soon introduced into productive enterprises. However this new capitalist class laid claim to these inventions because workers created them on the owners' property or were simply purchased from the inventors. (Under the new system of capitalism everything was reduced to a commodity that could be bought or sold.) This embryonic class of capitalists soon displaced feudal authorities and went on to establish nation-states with authority to foster private ownership of most productive enterprises.

Cole begins her history with this statement.

Most people today are familiar with the term "capitalism" and what it means. But did you know that it has existed for over 700 years? Capitalism today is a much different economic system than it was when it debuted in Europe in the 14th century. In fact, the system of capitalism has gone through three distinct epochs, beginning with mercantile, moving on to classical (or competitive), and then evolving into Keynesianism or state capitalism in the 20th century before it would morph once more into the global capitalism we know today.

Michael Parenti: Fascism, The False Revolution, (both parts of his talk)

Click here to access a recording of the first part of Michael Parenti's talk in Berkeley, California in 1995 re-posted recently by Maria Gilardin on TUC (Time of Useful Consciousness) website as a podcast (available via MP3 or ITunes). You are encouraged to explore many other recorded insightful talks on this website. (I thank Dave Ratcliffe of ratical.org for alerting me to this podcast.)

Michael Parenti and Maria Gilardin are both my contemporaries who have added immensely to my understanding of WWII and post-WWII issues. In this podcast Parenti explains so many mysteries that are hidden in mainstream discourse about fascism and its history. As you can readily understand, his talk in 1995 is very relevant to what is going on in today's world.

Fascism, as Mussolini said “..should be more properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” And history, as told by Michael Parenti, shows that in all fascist societies, be it Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, and into the present, corporate power increased. And that gain in power such as tax cuts, deregulation, subsidies for extraction of oil and minerals involves a loss of power, rights, environmental and workplace protection and wages for those who work for a living.

Click on this link to listen to the second part of his talk in Berkeley in which his goes into more detail of how many US corporations supported both the Italian fascists and German Nazis, the real history of the lead-up to WWII, and the same essential issues that we are facing today under advanced capitalism.

You can also listen to his talk at this link.  

How The CIA And A Tech Startup Are Arming Police, Intelligence Agencies

Click here to access article by Eric Draitser from Mint Press News. (I am posting the article from this website because I couldn't get the full article from Draitser's website. Apparently it lies behind some sort of a paywall.)

The frightening implication is that this technology could eventually be used to stifle protest and halt communication among protesters. It is not hard to imagine police officers in major U.S. cities using the tech to harass and arrest protesters within specific geographical areas, cutting the legs out from under protests before they even begin.

Considering that police forces across the country are already fully militarized and employ military-style tactics, it would seem that BlueLine Grid is offering yet another potent weapon in the police state’s ongoing war against free speech and assembly. But it goes much further than that, as this technology is now quite literally the property of the CIA thanks to the undisclosed, but assuredly large, investment made in BlueLine Grid by the agency. And the connections to the police state and military-industrial-security complex run far deeper.

USA life expectancy vs. health expenditure 1970-2014 compared to other OECD nations

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

Ruccio uses data from solid sources to show how the US has the most expensive health care system but delivers the worst results in various measures of health. Worst finding of all is that because of the US emphasis of privatized health care, the rich top 5% live nearly 15 years longer than the bottom 1% of income earners. 

Eurasian Union can find the way to get rid of the Dollar

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from Katehon (Russia).

I don't like to post articles like this that don't really identify the source of comments made by a reputed author. However in this case I believe the comments are very likely those of Engdahl.

The most optimistic development on the world stage that I have seen in decades is what's coming out of Eurasia especially out of China and the Eurasian Economic Union, led by Russia and other countries, that is to build a grid.

... to build a network crisscrossing all of the land space of Eurasia of high-speed rail infrastructure, of deep water ports that make it virtually impossible for The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or for United States Navy to control choke points like the Malacca Straits for the oil deliveries to China and elsewhere. And with them, to create what I think is going emerge as a new alternative to the dollar as world reserve currency.

By the way, keep in mind that dollar as world reserve is one of the fundamental pillars of American hegemony worldwide since World War Two. The other being the US military as the largest military power on Earth.

An ignoramus fox guarding the henhouse of the environment

by political cartoonist Trevor Irvin. 

The Rise of the American Bondholding Class

Click here to access article by Sandy Brian Hager from ROAR. 

Hager argues that "The concentration of the US public debt in the hands of the 1 percent has contributed to inequality and presents a fundamental threat to democracy." This is an interesting correlation, but I don't think it measures any kind of a decline in "democracy". I think that he has an extremely narrow concept of "democracy" (and he doesn't bother to define the term), and I find other problems with his mostly reassuring analysis. For example, he writes:

Foreign investors, especially China, fear that the Federal Government will “print money” to inflate away its growing debt burden. But the existence of a powerful group of domestic owners invested in the creditworthiness of the Federal Government should help to alleviate these fears. The wealthy households and large corporations that dominate domestic ownership of the public debt hold considerable sway within the political system and provide a powerful check against policies that might compromise the risk-free status of US Treasury securities.

A formidable “bond” of interests therefore unites foreign and domestic owners of the public debt.

I've read in numerous articles that China is now significantly reducing its holdings in US dollars because of this "fear". And I've read elsewhere which suggests that the Federal Reserve buys up whatever shortfall exists in the market whenever the US Treasury issues securities for sale. Because of the international reserve status of the petrodollar, inflation worries that would normally affect the US are absorbed by most of the world.

Of much more interest to me is the section where he describes some findings by the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck in his new book Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. 

In essence, what the transition from the tax state to a debt state means is that the Federal Government chooses to borrow from the bondholding class rather than taxing it. And in deciding to furnish wealthy households and large corporations with risk-free assets instead of levying taxes on their incomes, the debt state reinforces the existing pattern of inequality. This raises further questions about the long-term stability of current arrangements. The debt state is likely to persist into the foreseeable future, and the reason has to do in large part with the role played by foreign ownership of the public debt.

Thus I encourage you to read a review of his Streeck's new book posted in Truthout in December.

Memory, Fire and Hope: Five Lessons from Standing Rock

Click here to access article by Alnoor Ladha from Common Dreams. 

Although the other lessons are important, because of my website's theme I want to particularly focus your attention on the 5th lesson:

Although the various social movements around the world are portrayed as separate incidents that are particular to their local context, there is a growing awareness among movements themselves that we are uniting against the same antagonist: the deadly logic of late-stage capitalism.

Whether one is fighting for land rights in India or tax justice in Kenya or to stop a pipeline in the US, the ‘enemy’ is the same: a cannibalistic global economy that requires perpetual extraction, violence, oppression, in the service of GDP growth, which in turn, benefits a tiny elite at the expense of the world’s majority.

Most important today is to resist being discouraged

Click here to access article by Alina Perera Robbio from Granma (Cuba). 

...urgent work ... was discussed by the Network of Intellectuals, Artists, and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity during its 15th Encounter held here March 6-7, with more than 60 thinkers from Venezuela and other countries in attendance.

The gathering, entitled "Emancipatory communication or colonized homelands," took place in Marshall of Ayacucho Hall in the Casa Amarilla, and made clear that thinking from a humanist point of view exists in this world, but must be coordinated and become more agile in defending the peoples' truths.

Just minutes prior to the meeting's second day, Cuban Minister of Culture Abel Prieto Jiménez dedicated a few minutes to a dialogue with this reporter, and spoke of the times in which we live, insisting on the importance of the fight for critical, revolutionary thinking, saying, "The battle of consciousness and ideas must be won."

I couldn't agree more with the statement by Prieto Jiménez. I have argued this in an article that I posted last month entitled "Some observations and solutions about the contemporary class war being waged by our capitalist ruling class".

We, the people, have been feeling the effects of a class war that has been going on since the beginning of civilization. The current war is a one sided war waged only by the ruling capitalist class, and it's on us--only most remain unaware of their ongoing attacks on us. Their weapons serve to control our minds through their control of the indoctrination and misinformation agencies of education, corporate media, and entertainment. We simply must, if we have any hope of survival, organize our own institutions which serves our interests and a civilization that is in harmony with nature. I think the place to start is with an independent media network organized and funded by, and serves, working people.

Einstein on capitalism

Click here to access article by Albert Einstein in 1949 posted on libcom.org.

It's not rocket science or a theory of general relativity that might be hard for an ordinary citizen to understand. Nearly 70 years ago Einstein readily understood how the system of capitalism is dysfunctional for all people except capitalists. Although Einstein was a scientist working in the field of physical science, he readily saw the simplicity of this social-economic system--and you can too.

Stand for the Truth: A Government Researcher Speaks Out

Click here if wish to access a 31:32m video produced by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth directly from their YouTube channel (under "Uploads").

 In August of 2016, a former employee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began looking into the reports his agency had released years earlier on the collapse of the World Trade Center. What he found shook him to the core.

In this poignant half-hour interview, Peter Michael Ketcham tells his story of discovering that the organization where he had worked for 14 years had deliberately suppressed the truth about the most pivotal event of the 21st century.

Through his willingness to look openly at what he failed to see in front of him for 15 years, Mr. Ketcham inspires us to believe that we can all muster the courage to confront the truth — and, in so doing, finally heal the wounds of 9/11.
 

Frankly, I don't believe the story that Peter Michael Ketcham, a former employee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), gave as an explanation why it took so long for him to question the official report. I have worked for two state agencies for a total of about seven years, and I know that word spreads very fast not to question certain agency beliefs. There must have been considerable pressure on not only NIST researchers, but people in a wide variety of government agencies not to question. 

Now it no longer matters to our capitalist ruling class masters that highly qualified people are slowly coming forward to explain that the official report was rubbish because this official version of reality has been firmly implanted into the brains of the vast majority of Americans. That is what Karl Rove meant when he said, "We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality". 

They do this with their control of careers, their control of media, and, if necessary, with lethal intimidation. They have done this, and continue to do so, with all our conceptions of reality that might affect the capitalist ruling class's opportunities for profit and power. (Please read and article by Karel van Wolferen for a much better explanation of this phenomenon.)

When ‘Disinformation’ Is Truth

Click here to access article by Robert Parry from ConsortiumNews.

After reading Chapter 2 of Nicholas Schou's book Spooked, I have come to admire Parry's work as an exceptionally honest, award winning journalist who courageously tried to report on some of the biggest US war crimes and criminal activities for the nation's leading media corporations. Well, he didn't last long in corporate media and started this website in 1995 in order to have the independence to express his views. (see Wikipedia's entry about Parry)

He develops a thesis that with a impetuous, "thin-skinned" Donald Trump as president, corporate media, Democrats, liberals, and neocons are excessively playing the Russia blame game that could very well lead to a nuclear war with Russia. And he ends the essay with the depressing fact that there are no honest journalists left in corporate media to even suggest such a possibility.

...as the Democrats and liberals join with the neocons in launching this New McCarthyism over Russia – and with people like Rachel Maddow leading the charge – what is arguably the most depressing fact is that there appears to be no Edward R. Murrow, a mainstream journalist with a conscience, anywhere on the horizon.

The Crumbling American Superpower

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

I'm sorry to provide so many bad news articles today, but it can't be avoided unless you want to live in fairy tale land of corporate entertainment. In this piece Engdahl provides solid data to indicate that America's infrastructure is in very bad shape; and because American industry has escaped to other countries in search of cheap labor and to escape taxes, we don't have the money to fix it.

A Wall Street-driven agenda of globalization of US manufacturing and out-sourcing of production has left America a hollowed-out, crumbling Superpower. Since the 1980’s the United States has significantly under-invested in both new infrastructure and in renewing old. As US multinational corporations moved their factories overseas to cheap labor production in Mexico, then in Asia, especially China, and elsewhere, they found tax loopholes that allowed them to walk away from supporting the country that as recently as the 1960’s was the world industrial economic leading nation. Today US corporations hold $2.4 trillion in overseas profits that they keep abroad to avoid US taxes.

Changing the story to hide the problem

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

Mainstream economists have finally recognized the fact that workers’ share of national income has been failing. But they continue to formulate stories that deflect attention from the real problem, the relative immiseration of workers that has them falling further and further behind.

More Mideast Madness as Trump Prepares to March

Click here to access article by Eric Margolis from his blog. 

This is one of the most accurate general reports of the confusing wars engaged in by Empire forces that I have seen for several weeks.

We are now moving rapidly into stage II of Levantine Madness as the US boosts its intervention in the war-torn Mideast.

Five thousand US troops are back in Iraq to bolster the shattered nation’s puppet regime that is propped up by American bayonets. New Iraqi military formations have been formed, totally equipped with modern US M1 Abrams tanks, Humvees, and fleets of trucks. More US forces are on the way.

These US-financed Iraqi units are euphemistically called ‘anti-terrorism forces’ and are supervised by US officers.

For a more detailed report of the chess-like game being played by the Syrian Army, Turkish forces, Russian forces, US forces, and the Syrian Kurds, I recommend this piece entitled "Turkey Risks Isolation as it Approaches Manjib" by Salman Rafi Sheikh. You will learn that all of these players have separate interests. How all these "players" manage this complicated game is a mystery to me.

And if you can stand any more confusing analysis of this chess game, I recommend Martin Berger's take on the situation. He differs a bit from Sheikh in that he sees that the US is essentially trying to cut Russia out of the game. My head hurts!

Get your loved ones off Facebook

Click here to access article by Salim Virani from his blog. (Thanks to the people at the Titanic Lifeboat Academy for alerting me to this article. I have included in this post their excellent selection of a cartoon that graphically captures the essence of the article's theme.)

With the increasing revelations of corporate-CIA-police state collusion, this is a timely re-post of an article that urges people to resist the intrusions on their privacy that is ongoing, and evolving into a system of full-spectrum dominance by the ruling class over ordinary people . Facebook, like many other corporations, has been revealed to be an integral part of the ruling class's data collecting apparatus. Virani in this article has compiled from a number of sources the details of their collusion with other sections, which include both commercial and the police state complex of the ruling class to exploit this data for their benefit--not yours.

PPPs lead to dangerous debts for developing countries

Click here to access article by María José Romero and Mathieu Vervynckt from Transnational Institute (TNI). 

Although TNI is registered as a non-profit organization in the Netherlands, it was founded by the liberal think tank Institute for Policy Studies based in Washington DC. Because of its liberal origins TNI encourages the belief that capitalism can be modified to serve the public interest, and runs articles like this on their website that reflects this orientation.

For many years, public-private partnerships have been promoted by governments and financial institutions as a way to pay for development projects such as roads, schools and hospitals.

The World Bank is at the forefront of this push and advises governments on how to structure their PPPs. But it also ignores civil society campaigners’ concerns about the dangerous hidden debts that PPP projects can lead to.

The authors ignore the fact that the international financial organizations of the World Bank and the IMF were designed, shortly before the end of WWII, to serve the hegemonic interests of profit and power of US capitalists and other transnational capitalists (mostly the British) affiliated with the US-led Empire. Thus while explaining why such arrangements like PPPs are often exploitative of entire countries, they naively believe that once they inform the public such institutions and practices can be made to serve the public interest. In spite of this naiveté they do run useful articles like this that explain how policies promoted by the Empire's international financial institutions actually serve the interests of capitalists rather than the public.

How Come the CIA is World’s Hackfest Central Now

Click here to access article by Jean Perier from New Eastern Outlook.

Once Wikileaks released thousands of documents uncovering the extensive scope of the US CIA’s hacking, including a wide range of programs and backdoors that allow the wiretapping of smartphones, personal computers and even smart TVs, the whole world has once again had the chance to learn that it’s not the mysterious “Russian hackers” that pose the greatest threat to the international security, but rather the CIA itself. The tale of  “Russian hackers”, extensively used by the CIA and closely affiliated agencies in their propaganda war was used to whitewash American intelligence agencies who have established total surveillance over their own politicians and those governing foreign states.

Therefore, it is not surprising that today the CIA was subjected to extensive criticism both on the international stage and within the United States.

US ambassador to Israel: ‘Great advantage’ to Netanyahu

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

David Friedman is known for his support for the most extreme elements in Israel’s settler movement.

Rate of Ocean Warming Has Nearly Doubled Over Two Decades, Study Says

Click here to access article by Bob Berwyn from Inside Climate News. 

The rate of ocean warming has nearly doubled since 1992 compared with the previous three decades. And the warming has reached deeper waters, scientists reported Friday.

The findings are important because the world's oceans provide one of the best records of the excess energy trapped on Earth by increased greenhouse gases, largely from the burning of fossil fuels. As the seas heat up from climate change, the water expands and rises, causing coastal flooding and, in Antarctica, ice shelves to disintegrate. [my emphasis]

The WikiLeaks revelations and the crimes of US imperialism

Click here to access article by Andre Damon from World Socialist Web Site.

The WikiLeaks documents expose the United States as the world’s greatest “rogue state” and “cyber criminal.” The monstrous US espionage network, paid for with hundreds of billions in tax dollars, uses diplomatic posts to hide its activities from its “allies,” spies on world leaders, organizes kidnappings and assassinations and aims to influence or overturn elections all over the world.

Western Russophobia in Psychotic Phase

Click here to access article by Finian Cunningham from Sputnik (Russia). Here is the best bio on Cunningham that I could find:

Finian Cunningham, originally from Belfast, Ireland, was born in 1963. He is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream news media, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.  [from Information Clearing House]

The reason I went to such lengths to find a good bio on Cunningham is because this article is posted in an online Russian website. With US media corporations daily pumping out a deluge of unfounded anti-Russian propaganda plus the fact that many Americans believe this propaganda, I find it necessary to prove the unbiased nature of Cunningham's views. 

And, I wonder why he had to resort to his article being posted first on a Russian website because I notice that it has since been posted on several Western websites. If this was simply his choice, it certainly is not a good idea.

During the past several years I have noticed the crazy reports coming out of corporate media regarding mostly Russia, but also China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), and it seems to be only getting worse. Maybe the Greek writer Euripides was right when he declared some 2,400 years ago, "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

Western irrational fear of Russia – Russophobia – is no longer a random prejudice. It has become endemic pathological thinking among Western states.

Divorced from reality this mindset has become psychotic. 

Israeli Army Vet’s Exposé - “I Was the Terrorist”

Click here if you wish to access this interview by Abby Martin with a former Israeli soldier directly from TeleSur's channel on YouTube. 

In a rare, candid conversation, Abby Martin interviews a former Israeli Army combat soldier who served as an occupier in Palestine’s Hebron City.

Eran Efrati spent years as a sergeant and combat soldier in the Israeli military, but has since become an outspoken critic of the occupation of Palestine and Israeli apartheid.

Efrati gives explosive testimony on the reality of his service and explains how war crimes are institutionalized, as well as how systematic the oppression against Palestinians really is in a war of conquest that will no-doubt be accelerated under the Trump Administration.

 You might also be interested in a review by Philip Weiss of a film entitled "The Settlers". He writes:

The documentary’s thrust is that Israel as a polity/society has gone very wrong in this program of religious colonial supremacy. There are intimations that nothing can save Israeli society from this fervor, that only great bloodshed will end an injustice of historical proportion.

We Need to Talk About Women: The Problem With Western Liberal ‘Feminists’ [a must read]

Click here to access article by Ghada Chehade from Ghada's SoapBox.

I am so thrilled to post this excellent article! I've never seen such a devastating attack on America's liberal version of feminism and identity politics. This article contains a treasure chest of political insights. Here is only one:

While the personal may be political, it will never be more political than actual politics and political consciousness. In reality, identity politics is the opposite of politics, in that, traditionally, politics or public engagement dealt with common issues, whereas identity politics further fragments consensus and is extremely divisive. Identity politics–women competing with men or racial groups pitted against one another–reflects the divide and conquer desires and strategy of the elite, since the masses are always weaker when they are divided. It forces a false polemic that stands in the way of consensus building, collective identity, and unity. As the old activist saying goes, “the people united will never be defeated.” Identity politics flies in the face of this and does the exact opposite; it divides people at a historical juncture when unity is most urgently needed.

Western liberal feminism has succumbed to the divisive and diversionary agenda of identity politics.

Hammer time

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

Millions of workers have been displaced by robots. Or, if they have managed to keep their jobs, they’re being deskilled and transformed into appendages of automated machines. We also know that millions more workers and their jobs are threatened by much-anticipated future waves of robotics and other forms of automation.

But mainstream economists don’t want us to touch those robots. Just ask Larry Summers [a prime member of the capitalist ruling class].

I must be remember that robots, automation, artificial intelligence, and all the marvels of technology and science have been created by people who are also workers. But because this upper-middle class of people are indispensable to capitalists, they are generously rewarded and allowed to socialize with their masters which has made them feel very important and has alienated them from their fellow workers. See my commentary here for a lengthier explanation.

Arkansas bill would ban Howard Zinn’s writings from classrooms

Click here to access a 6:36m interview (with transcript) conducted by Free Speech Radio's Shannon Young with Deborah Menkart, Executive Director of Teaching for Change and Co-Director of the Zinn Education Project.

However it is clear that Zinn's history book is only a book that is available in some (likely a tiny minority) of schools. Most public schools rely on textbooks that are manufactured by book publishers as I learned from reading this article subtitled "A former schoolbook editor parses the politics of educational publishing". From memory I knew that the Texas Board of Education dominated textbook publishing for most schools across the US, but it appears from an article published more recently in The New York Review of Books that this is still the case, but perhaps less so than 40 to 50 years ago. Once again, we see the powerful influence of the rich--this time on the content of public school textbooks.

Some extremely rich Texans have gotten into the board of education election game, putting their money at the disposal of conservative populists. No one has had more impact than James Leininger, the San Antonio physician who has had an intense interest in promoting school vouchers. He backed a group called Texans for Governmental Integrity, which was particularly active in state school board elections. Its most famous campaign was in 1994, when it mailed flyers to voters’ homes in one district, showing a black man kissing a white man and claiming that the Democratic incumbent had voted for textbooks that promoted homosexuality. Another organization Leininger has supported, the Heidi Group, sent out a prayer calendar in 1998, which unnervingly urged the right-to-life faithful to devote one day to praying that a San Antonio doctor who performed abortions “will come to see Jesus face to face.”

Wall Street Lobby and Campaign Cash Tops $2 Billion for 2016 Elections

Click here to access article by Carter Dougherty from Americans for Financial Reform.

During the 2015-16 election cycle, Wall Street banks and financial interests spent more than $2 billion to influence decision-making in Washington, according to a report released today by Americans for Financial Reform. That total, derived from an exclusive data set, works out to more than $2.7 million a day, and over $3.7 million per member of Congress.

Since 2008, the financial services industry has spent more money on contributions and lobbying than it did before the crisis, and the total in this cycle is the highest yet. The numbers reflect the industry’s relentless efforts to roll back financial regulations put in place after the crisis, lobby Congress to weaken the rules, and to forestall deeper changes to the financial system.

It's clear that people in the financial industry are heavily invested in keeping the facade of "democratic" government in place. You will notice that the major banks are not at the top of the lists for either campaign contributions or lobbying, but that is simply because they are solidly represented in the secretive Deep State (see my description here ) which in reality influences all major policy decisions pursued by the democratic facade of the three official branches of  government (Executive, Legislative, and the Judiciary). In his new administration Trump has directly appointed many bankers to his official cabinet.

Once you understand how capitalists rule, you will understand that at stressful times they are tempted to eliminate the huge costs of maintaining the fiction of democratic rule and opt to directly rule by fiat. The latter form of rule that derives from capitalism is known as fascism. But you won't find definitions that link fascism directly to the rule of capitalists. This is another illustration of how even the meaning of words is influenced by their rule--in this case they go to extreme lengths to hide the relationships between the rule of the capital class and fascism.

3 Tactics Mainstream Media Uses to Attack Hugo Chavez's Legacy

Click here to access article by Ramiro S. Fúnez from TeleSur.

Although most who follow my daily postings already know how ruling class propaganda functions to deceive ordinary people, this article gives a basic lesson in how to spot propaganda for those of us who are less aware due to being overwhelmed with the daily struggles just to survive. 

In this lesson please regard the propaganda target of Hugo Chavez as only an illustration of these techniques, and start applying them to all such propaganda. You can easily do this by simply watching news and public affairs programs on your local corporate TV stations.

Lie Alert: Obamacare Imploding; Trumpcare the Best for Patients

Click here to access article by Rowan Wolf from Uncommon Thought Journal. 

The problem in trying to implement a full coverage system in the U.S. is trying to make sure that everyone gets their piece of profit along the way – the pharmaceuticals, the insurance companies, the care providers and their administrators, the equipment providers, etc. These things don’t only screw up healthcare policy, they screw up healthcare costs – higher and higher each year.

Medicare administration is consistently under 10%, and the “paperwork” would be radically reduced if it was one system. This is far better than the costs of insurance companies.

As argued correctly by Wolf, the only plan that our ruling class of capitalists can come up with are plans that bring profits to themselves. In other words, the only way their governments are going to spend money on working people is if they can profit by it. That phenomenon illustrates the very essence of capitalist class rule. The Affordable Care Act is a boon for insurance companies, however other capitalists don't want their taxes to fund anything that doesn't benefit them. That is why there is a split among our masters over this issue.

Even Medicare under their rule is weakened as much as possible. I have learned from my experience that they will deny payments for medical services whenever they can find an excuse for doing so. Thus, it follows that the only way for working people to get adequate health insurance coverage is by revolutionary actions that ends the self-serving rule of capitalists and creates a system that serves all of the people.

How tax cuts for the wealthy keep America healthy

by Jen Sorensen from her website.

Ron Paul Drops Wiretap Truth Bombs

Click here to access a 9:49 video featuring James Corbett, who expands on some recent comments by Ron Paul and posted on his website.

If my memory serves me correctly, I believe that Corbett has labeled himself as an anarchist which is someone who "advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions". Thus he loves new companies like Uber, Bitcoin, and Airbnb, which he refers to fondly as a new "peer to peer economy". 

He like many others, especially young people, are easily influenced by the older American conservative views espoused by Ron Paul, Paul Craig Roberts, and Pat Buchanan who have been superseded in the ruling capitalist class by the more imperialist and Zionist neoconservatives (aka "neocons" or "ziocons"). Paul and Roberts especially like to run critical articles about the current ruling class that is dominated by neoconservatives. The latter combined with liberals have vigorously promoted policies of neoliberalism and imperialist adventures which they like to criticize.

However these old fashioned conservatives also are strong advocates of laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights while opposing any tax funded measures to alleviate the worst effects of laissez-faire capitalism for working class victims. Moreover they oppose legislation that promotes regulatory agencies that (pretend to) reign in the excesses of capitalists in pursuit of profits. However because they enjoy their new popularity, you won't see them criticizing any similar measures passed by Trump (examples: the new Trump proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act or the appointment of a dedicated opponent of the EPA to head the EPA). Should they return to power in the US ruling capitalist class, you will then see their true views expressed in all their dark anti-working class colors. (see this regarding Paul)

Defending immigrant rights and building the resistance

Click here if you wish to access this 33:01 talk by Heather Benno at a recent PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation) forum in Washington, DC. directly from Liberation's website.

In this talk you will get the perspective of a lawyer who has worked extensively with immigration issues in relation to the government's policies which vary according to the ruling class's political interests. You will also learn that it doesn't matter very much which capitalist party is in power, and more details about the Trump administration and it's policies.

Across the country, people are asking the question, where do we go from here? We look to what the future of the resistance movement will be against racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti-LGBTQ bigotry, and all that Trump and his administration represents. This event featured a presentation by immigration lawyer Heather Benno.

Over the last month, the world has watched as millions of poor and working people began to mobilize across the United States to protest Trump’s agenda. The question is now how can we grow the resistance into a powerful movement for revolutionary change?

The United States and the Russian Devil: 1917-2017

Click here to access article by William Blum from CounterPunch.

The headline promises far too much because Blum only reviews two periods in this centenary, however the two instances reflect the dramatic extent that American empire builders will go to interfere in the affairs of their current arch-enemy, Russia. By providing a brief summary of many other countries where the US capitalist ruling class has interfered in their domestic affairs, Blum reminds us that Russia is not the only one. But then I guess that is why the US is an "exceptional" nation: our ruling masters reserve the right to interfere in any country where their opportunities for profit and power lie or interfered with.

Facebook Zero and the “People’s Receiver”

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

Cartalucci examines whether Facebook Zero could be the current version of the Nazi's "People’s Receiver" which gave the capitalist sponsored Nazi party control over the minds of the German people.

In this era of fake everything made possible by a very sophisticated technology that is controlled by a transnational class of capitalists ensconced in the US-led Empire, it is more imperative than ever before for citizens to create their own organization for delivering news. Not only is a major citizens activated alternative news organization a must to end this era of fake everything, but it could very well serve as a catalyst for a revolutionary organization. Such a revolutionary movement is absolutely necessary to prevent the end of humans due to capitalists' obsession with profits and power that is destroying our planet's biosphere and threatening almost daily a nuclear holocaust.

I have argued this previously in this post, and I shall reproduce the relevant paragraphs (with some editing) here:

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 [media revolutionaries] 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 [activist] 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.

Trump and Saving Capitalism

Click here to access article by Richard D. Wolff from CounterPunch. 

Wolff cites commonalities and differences with the 1930s Nazi party. Both assume(d) the basic existence of the capitalist system, both are/were supported by major capitalists, and both attempt(ed) to deal with its many dysfunctions. This is another illustration of the affinity of capitalists for fascism whenever they feel that their system, the goose that lays their golden eggs of profit and power, is threatened.

One factor that he left out was the dramatic rise of the Soviet Union in which the government owned and controlled the economy except for small family enterprises. Thus many capitalists across Europe and North America financially backed the Nazi party and their takeover of Germany as a useful weapon that could destroy the Soviet Union. Hitler had even promised in his book Mein Kampf to use the Slavic countries as Germany's lebensraum (living space) to support the German economy. His racist beliefs also included Slavs which he saw as inferior human beings.

Because of this split affection for German fascism among capitalists, Western countries openly tolerated the dismantling of Spain's elected republican government by German and Italian militaries, easily succumbed to the German invasion of the Low Countries and France. Here in the US there were many fascist supporters and organizations, many of whom hid under the label of "isolationists". There were true isolationists, but these supporters of fascism were not. They just wanted Germany to destroy the Soviet Union which prohibited the practice of the private ownership and control of the economy (capitalism). 

It was only when the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the late summer of 1941 met fierce resistance by the Soviets and appeared to be stalling that the Allied countries slowly began to seriously get behind an effort to defeat Germany and the other Axis powers. Even then, largely because of Churchill's influence, the Allies held off till June of 1944 to launch an invasion of western Europe.

Saudi Arabia’s Southeast Asia Terror Tour

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

Saudi Arabia’s king, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, has recently undertaken a sweeping tour of Southeast Asia in what the media and analysts are claiming is a bid to firm up economic and political ties with Muslim-majority nations in the region.

However, both the media and analysts are sidestepping or entirely omitting the role Saudi Arabia has played in fueling global terrorism, extraterritorial geopolitical meddling, and even divisive and terroristic activities the notorious state sponsor of terrorism has been implicated in across the planet including within Southeast Asia itself.

Cartalucci cites many examples of the Empire's increasing political use of Saudi Arabia's extreme, fundamentalist sect of Sunni Islam, Wahhabism, in Asia as a weapon to contain China. 

Saudi Arabia has long been useful to the US. First as a source of petroleum during WWII, and then in 1974 to prop up the dollar as an international reserve currency after Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard in 1971 because of the huge expenditures in the Vietnam War. Kissinger negotiated a deal with the Kingdom in 1974 in which Saudi Arabia promised to sell oil only in US dollars and agreed to buy US Treasury securities and other US investments with their profits in exchange for US protection.

Suspects In Murder Of Environmental Activist Trained At Controversial U.S. Facility

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

The Murder of environmental activists has reached unprecedented levels throughout Latin America – and nowhere is this more pronounced than in the Central American nation of Honduras. Since Honduras’ government was overthrown in 2009 in a coup backed by the Clinton-led State Department, the industry-friendly government that came to power is cracking down local activism by any means necessary.

Over 120 Honduran activists have been killed since 2010, making the small nation the world’s deadliest place to protect the environment. Berta Cáceres, one of the slain activists, was the winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. However, her international prestige and recognition did not prevent her from being gunned down in her own home last year.

Once again we receive news about deadly terrorist attacks on activists in "our backyard" of Honduras, this time on a noted environmentalist, and links to the notorious terrorist training school at the School of the Americas in Georgia. Terrorism is a weapon used by agents of the Empire against the people not only in Syria, but wherever the Empire's corporate and political interests can be advanced. This includes within the US.

Though the U.S. military insists that SOA/WHINSEC is dedicated to preserving human rights, the training manuals used at the facility tell a different story. In 1996, bowing to public pressure, the Pentagon reluctantly released training manuals that had been used at SOA. The manuals expressly advocated torture, extortion, blackmail, and the targeting of civilian populations.

The numerous crimes committed by SOA and WHINSEC graduates throughout Latin America are also well-documented. In Colombia alone, U.S. assistance was considered a factor in a total of 5,763 extrajudicial killings that took place in the nation from 2000 to 2010.

Indian ministers and CEOs flock to the US to report to the digital colonizers

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

On April 9, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT will devote its 207 [2017] MIT India Conference to the topic of “Digital India”. Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Information Technology and Law and Justice, will be one of the prominent speakers from India. He should be able to report to the “future world leaders”, how you can push ahead with a huge databank of biometric information named Aadhaar, which is being used as the cornerstone for digital payments and made mandatory for government payments and services  – even if data security and privacy are a disaster, even if the necessary infrastructure is absent in large parts of the country and even if a constitutional court deems it illegal.

The Illusion of Freedom: The Police State Is Alive & Well

Click here to access article by John W. Whitehead from Newsbud. 

...the American people haven’t stopped acting like gullible sheep. In fact, many Americans have been so carried away by their blind rank-and-file partisan devotion to their respective political gods that they have lost sight of the one thing that has remained constant in recent years: our freedoms are steadily declining.

Here’s the problem as I see it: “we the people” have become so trusting, so gullible, so easily distracted, so out-of-touch and so sure that our government will always do the right thing by us that we have ignored the warning signs all around us.

While I like the efforts of people like Whitehead to shake people up to the increasingly oppressive rule of capitalists, such critics never point to the core of our oppression: a system that supports the rule of a tiny class over the rest of us. 

You see, Whitehead, has enjoyed a very good education that most Americans have not had the privilege of having. He has served the ruling class of capitalists very well and enjoyed having access to many of their media and amply rewarded for his service. He has been rewarded because he has never criticized the system itself, served to put a thin veneer of human rights over the ugly, oppressive self-serving class rule, and often sermonized to ordinary Americans, as in this essay, about their failings much like a preacher admonishing his parishioners about their sinful behavior (their gullibility). He is most useful to our masters by cleverly disassociating fascism from capitalism as illustrated in this essay. In reality fascism always lies just below the veneer of respectability that professionals like Whitehead construct for the system.

Still, I am encouraged that members of this upper-middle class of professionals are feeling the pinch of a ruling class that is starting to cut their opportunities and rewards because it no longer needs most of them in their obsessive drive for more profits and power. Once sufficient numbers of this class become disenamored ("our freedoms [read 'rewards'] are steadily declining") of serving capitalists, the system will be in real trouble. 

Perhaps I'm being too cynical.