US to balkanize Syria under Kurdish pretext

Click here to access article by Marwa Osman from RT.

The old formula used by many imperialists, especially the British Empire, is to carve up states that pursue independent policies with the hope of replacing the weakened governments of these new states with lackeys who will better serve the imperialists. This has been a plan for Iraq (which was partially implemented with a semi-independent Kurdish province) and now Syria for quite some time.

Osman writes:

The US’s vision of the future Syrian map was detailed by Kissinger during a presentation at the Ford School Syria with pretty much a distorted history lesson. He stated that Syria was not a historic state “It was created in its present shape in 1920, and it was given that shape to facilitate the control of the country by France, which happened to be after a UN mandate,” he said.

Kissinger then claimed that the current Syria was conceived as a more or less artificial national unity consisting of different tribes and ethnic groups.

This same theory was also presented by the Israeli Oded Yinon plan which is an article published in February 1982 in the Hebrew journal Kivunim ("Directions") entitled A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s. This plan is an early example of characterizing political projects in the Middle East in terms of a logic of sectarian divisions and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states.

Hence, supporting the partitioning of Syria began with the US and Israel’s full support of the so- called “Rojava Project”.

As many geopolitical observers like Pepe Escobar have pointed out, another major reason to divide up Syria was their government's refusal to go along with the Qatar's proposed pipeline that would transport gas from their fields to Europe. Escobar wrote in 2015 referring to the war in Syria:

It all started in 2009, when Qatar proposed to Damascus the construction of a pipeline from its own North Field – contiguous with the South Pars field, which belongs to Iran – traversing Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria all the way to Turkey, to supply the EU.

Damascus, instead, chose in 2010 to privilege a competing project, the $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria, also know as «Islamic pipeline». The deal was formally announced in July 2011, when the Syrian tragedy was already in motion. In 2012, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed with Iran.

Well the Empire builders would not permit this to happen because the Syrian government's plan would benefit their arch-enemy Iran. Then China's government came up with other plans. As an article sourced from Washington's Blog explained explained about the competing interests: 

Indeed, the “Great Game” being played right now by the world powers largely boils down to the United States and Russia fighting for control over Eurasian oil and gas resources:

 Russia and the USA have been in a state of competition in this region, ever since the former Soviet Union split up, and Russia is adamant on keeping the Americans out of its Central Asian backyard. Russia aims to increase European gas dominance on its resources whereas the US wants the European Union (EU) to diversify its energy supply, primarily away from Russian dominance. There are already around three major Russian pipelines that are supplying energy to Europe and Russia has planned two new pipelines.

The rising power China is also getting into this Great Game:

The third “big player” in this New Great Game is China, soon to be the world’s biggest energy consumer, which is already importing gas from Turkmenistan via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to its Xinjiang province — known as the Central Asia-China Pipeline — which may tilt the balance towards Asia. Pepe Escobar calls it the opening of the 21st century Silk Road in 2009 when this pipeline became operational.  China’s need for energy is projected to increase by 150 per cent which explains why it has signed probably the largest number of deals not just with the Central Asian republics but also with the heavily sanctioned Iran and even Afghanistan. China has planned around five west-east gas pipelines, within China, of which one is operational (domestically from Xinjiang to Shanghai) and others are under construction and will be connected to Central Asian gas reserves.

Who Will Bring Them To Justice For Crimes Against Humanity?

by Stephen J. Gray from his website. (I don't subscribe to many of his other views.)                                 

Who will bring them to justice for crimes against humanity?
The people who were, and are, the planners of this warring insanity
The Iraq war was a hellish lie about weapons of mass destruction
The invasion of that country was a planned diabolical production

A civil war now rages in that destroyed and unfortunate country
Hundreds of thousands are dead or maimed, and that puts it, bluntly
Many others are refugees from this created hell on earth
And depleted uranium contaminates innocent children at birth

Libya is another war crime dubbed “responsibility to protect”
Bombed and blitzed by NATO “allies” with great “successful” effect
That country is now in ruins, and terrorists are in control
The “victory” of “honourable” plotters, and men without a soul

Then the war criminals targeted Syria and started a civil war
They finance and arm the terrorists amongst the blood and gore
Then they blame its sovereign government for defending its own land
These hypocrites from hell: all these atrocities they planned

Yemen is another country where civilians are being slaughtered
Saudi Arabia and its coalition allies are the hellish plotters
Arms, planes, tanks and bombs supplied by America, U.K. and others
And the population cries out over the deaths of their mothers and daughters

Afghanistan is another country that never invaded us
It too is now a hell on earth with corpses in the dust
Soldiers are dead or dying that were sent to this awful war
And those who sent them cry out for more and more and more

War is a business for barbarians in expensive business suits
Corporate cannibals feed off death and destruction, are they callous brutes?
Political “warriors” voted for these wars that brought death and destruction
But, they don’t fight on the front lines, and they are missing in the action

It is no excuse for the perpetrators to say: “we were just following orders”
That excuse was thrown out at the “Nuremberg Trials,” and is a known disorder
Present day trials are needed, for those that planned these obscenities
But, who will bring them to justice for crimes against humanity?

My answer is: "if not us, who?".

Life [in Amerika] During (Endless) Wartime

by Tom Tomorrow.

The Elite Consensus on Syria

Click here to access article by Branko Marcetic from Jacobin.

I am really concerned this morning about avoiding another nuclear holocaust from my reading of various articles--and not only this one (see this, this, this, and this among several others).

The last time I was this concerned was in October of 1962. That time we had a sensible president as commander-in-chief. John Kennedy paid with his life for his opposition to war, but this time we have a power-hungry maverick in charge and egged on by a combination of ziocons (aka neocons) and so-called "liberals" in Congress who are lusting for war. Meanwhile ordinary people, who should be out in the streets vigorously protesting, seem be resorting to their lack of attention to foreign affairs by saying that "it's all so complicated".

... unlike the Trump administration’s half-baked attempt to yank health insurance from millions of people, its utter failures in instituting a racist immigration program, or its ongoing efforts to round up and break apart millions of families, Trump’s bombing of Syria likely won’t be met with a wall of “resistance,” certainly not within the halls of power. That’s because for nearly all liberal and conservative pundits and politicians, foreign wars — particularly those launched in the name of “humanitarianism” — are an issue where no leader, even one as disliked as Trump, can ever go wrong.

Professor Stephen Cohen – the last voice of reason in a world gone mad?

Click here to access article posted by "The Saker", a Russian expat living in Florida.

The article features an 8:11m CNN interview with American Stephan Cohen, a long-time expert on Russia. What I noticed is that Cohen is surrounded by CNN staff and a retired Col. Cedric Leighton who try to contain Cohen's remarks to what is acceptable ruling class propaganda. Cohen manages to avoid debate about actual historical facts and instead doggedly continues on to make some very disturbing remarks about peaceful relations between the US and Russia.

Golan Heights, Israel, Oil and Trump

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

During my recent downtime due to internet problems, it looks like I missed a very important article by Engdahl. He sees escalating events related to the Trump administration's increasingly friendly contacts with Netanyahu and oil in the Golan Heights. Of course, he wrote this before the US attack on the Syrian air-force base, but it may fit into the overall pattern. Referring to Netanyahu's visit immediately after his February visit to the White House, Engdahl writes:

Some days after Netanyahu left Washington, in an OpEd in the Rupert Murdoch Wall Street Journal, Mark Dubowitz, Executive Director of the Washington pro-Israel think-tank, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, argued that American recognition of Israel’s control of the Golan “would provide the Israeli government with a diplomatic win while helping the Trump administration signal to Russia and Iran that the US is charting a new course in Syria.” Dubowitz is an adviser to the Trump Administration on Iran and the Middle East. Other neo-conservative editorials echoed the theme. There is big change brewing in Washington and it looks ugly in terms of a possible US-backed war with Israel against Russia ally, Syria, over the Golan Heights. That immediately poses the question what Russia would do if it materializes.

Against the backdrop of the Netanyahu talks on US recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, the ensuing events begin to make strategic sense, mad though they may be.

Google Putting CNN, Washington Post, NYT in Charge of Fact-Checking News

Click here to access article from AntiMedia.

Google announced Friday that it’s adding a special feature to its news service — Fact Check. Searchers will now know who checked the validity of a news story and the conclusion they arrived at.

But fact checking Google's list of fact-checkers which are ruling class media corporations, the writers at AntiMedia reach this very accurate conclusion:

...there’s already a mechanism in place for calling out bullshit. It’s called the independent media.

A factual update on global warming

Click here to access article by economist Merijn Knibbe from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

Knibbe suggests that the climate destabilization skeptics have engaged in "cherry picking" to serve their capitalist masters who are addicted to profits and power. However he argues that even their cherry picking of data confirms what the vast majority (95%) of independent scientists find when looking at more valid long term data.

US debt problems: three reports

by Ron Horn for this website.

Debt appears to be increasing for most sections of our society: small business, consumers, and those paying off student loans. This suggests that the Fed's low interest rate policy as a way of restoring the economy is not working. It seems that most ordinary people are sinking deeper in debt in order to survive. On the other hand, capitalists in commercial and bank corporations appear to have benefited by using the free money they have borrowed from the Fed to buy up their own stock and to add other corporations to their ever expanding corporate empires.

From ZeroHedge we learn that personal and commercial bankruptcies soared last month. I suspect that the latter bankruptcies consisted primarily of small businesses.

The Fed’s monetary policies have purposefully encouraged businesses and consumers to borrow. But debt doesn’t just go away. It accumulates. By now, an increasing number of businesses and consumers are suffocating under this debt overhang in an economy that never developed the “escape velocity” needed – and hyped by Wall Street for years – to outgrow this debt. Rising bankruptcies are a turning point in the “credit cycle.” They’re not exactly a positive mile-marker for the economy.

The irony is thick: In all major sentiment surveys, economic confidence has soared since November: consumers, owners of small businesses, and corporate executives are riding high on their own ebullience. But the economic reality is tough for businesses and consumers struggling under the hangover from eight years of ultra-low interest rates.

And also from ZeroHedge we learn that "US Credit Card Debt Rises Above $1 Trillion For The First Time In A Decade".

...there was one notable milestone: in February, following modest prior revisions, total revolving/credit card debt, has once again risen above the "nice round number" of $1 trillion for the first time since January 2007....

And from World Socialist Web Site we learn that the "Number of Americans defaulting on student loans reaches 4.2 million" and that...

In addition to more borrowers defaulting on their loans, both the number of borrowers and the average amount borrowed continues to increase rapidly. The new analysis shows that the total amount of student debt owed adds up to a staggering $1.3 trillion, triple what it was a decade ago. [my emphasis]

Fake News And Propaganda – Is The Guardian In Bed With The Deep State?

Click here to access article by the editor from TruePublica (Britain).

The author provides much evidence to support an affirmative answer to the rhetorical question. For example, in the following quote he makes reference to a foreign correspondent of the British-based Guardian and his contribution to fake news.

In our opinion, the blatant and shameless hypocrisy of the Guardian and Luke Harding’s fanciful inventiveness and exaggeration seem to know no bounds. Perhaps the Guardian is working in the service of US and British geo-strategic interests and being directed to do so by the ‘Deep State.’ Ian Cobain, an award-winning Guardian journalist and author of Cruel Britannia and The History Thieves confirms the existence of the Deep State and “how a complex bureaucratic machine has grown up around the British state, allowing government to evade accountability and their secrets to be buried.” Cobain also confirms in his book that state secrecy and manipulation is of vital importance in shaping the public image of the nation.

In today’s world of fake news, propaganda and disinformation anything is possible. 

Israeli police block Palestinian ‘March of Return’

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

The US Empire's fortress colony that was established on Palestinian land following WWII has for the first time in history blocked the annual march by Palestinians to commemorated their expulsion and ethnic cleansing from their historic lands.

The police have denied the organisers a permit, saying there is a shortage of officers to oversee the march.

But Palestinian leaders in Israel accuse the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu of being behind the decision, in what they believe is the latest move to silence their commemoration of the events of 69 years ago.

The Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe” – refers to Israel’s creation on the ruins of the Palestinians’ homeland in 1948.

We're winning!

by cartoonist John Darkow. 

Trump’s short-term popularity boost over Syria could turn into a long-term nightmare

Click here to access article by Danielle Ryan from The BRICS Post. 

Although the fallout from Trump's attack on a Syrian military base by various independent sources has been considerable and speculative as to its significance (for some of the best examples, see this, this, this, and this), I thought this piece from an Irish journalist and analyst based in Moscow might be of special interest to my readers.

There have been mutterings among others that the Kremlin is in fact sorely disappointed in Trump ... but in reality, the Kremlin was always wary of Trump’s unpredictability, opting to reserve judgement until his actions reflected his words — and while they may not have expected his actions to divert from his words quite this quickly, they’re probably not crying into their cornflakes over it.

Militarily, Russia will seek to de-escalate the situation rather than rush in guns blazing. Moscow possessed the capacity to shoot down the American missiles but did not. In the aftermath, however, Russia pledged to strengthen Assad’s air defenses and suspended its flight safety memorandum with the US. The message the Kremlin is sending is simple: We didn’t target your missiles this time, but we can if we want to.

But just because the goal is to de-escalate, doesn’t mean the danger subsides. Trump’s strike significantly increases the risk of serious future conflict with Russia. What happens between Moscow and Washington now will depend on Trump’s future moves, which at this point, are anyone’s guess.

NATO’s Currency War against Turkey: Comparative Resistance & Solutions

Click here to access article by Pye Ian from Newsbud. (Note: to discover the supporting links to this report, you must place your cursor over each line.)

Turkey is being attacked by Anglo-American finance as punishment for Ankara’s perceived noncompliance with NATO’s geostrategic goals.  Despite Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), under President and once Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, running a successfully growing emerging markets economy for nearly a decade and a half while enduring multiple scares, Turkey’s economy is now uniformly described as in dire straits by the collective London-New York banking juggernaut and its media tentacles.  Despite the West’s reasoning for why the nation’s currency – the lira – is plummeting, Turkey is enduring this imposed situation due to seasoned, disciplined internal defensive economic measures, plus its insistent relations with China, Russia and Iran.

General Strike Brings Argentina to a Halt

Click here to access article from Left Voice (Argentina).

Argentine workers are not sitting idle in the face of the Argentine ruling class's repressive policies.

The largest labor unions in Argentina called a general strike today, April 6, against President Macri’s economic policies. Workers around the country are protesting against the high inflation rates, austerity measures, layoffs and subcontracting. The transportation workers have completely stopped working, as have airline workers, canceling hundreds of flights in and out of Argentina. Schools are also closed, and this general strike comes after weeks of teacher mobilizations and strikes in Buenos Aires.

The streets of Buenos Aires are completely empty due to the impact of the strike. “It’s like the movie ‘I am Legend’. You feel like you are alone in a big city,” says Buenos Aires resident Gloria Grinberg.

It's class war in Argentina, and the ruling capitalist class is fighting back. Read all about it in this piece entitled "Argentina's Macri Mulls Purchase of New Riot Control Weapons to Crack Down on Protests", from TeleSur.

Planned capitalist economy

by satirical cartoonist Max Gustafson from his website. 

America Illegally Bombs Syria Under False Pretexts. Links for critical thinking. [fake news alert!]

Click here to access observations and insights by various independent authors in relation to the fake news put out by the government and media corporations regarding the recent attack on a Syrian air base. The views are introduced by independent Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett. 

Bartlett writes:

This morning, under the orders of President Trump, the US military fired a reported 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at an airbase in Syria, killing at least 6, according to early reports. The false pretext for this is the tired old refrain that “Assad used chemical weapons”, a ‘red line crossed claim’ made–and disproven–in 2013 in Ghouta, and in allegations prior and since. Any actual instances were the western-backed ‘rebels’. All others were fabrications of the NATO aligned media and faux human rights groups.

I’ll keep my own commentary short other than to emphasize that I do not believe for one second that the Syrian government used toxic gases on Idlib last week. My reasons are logical and many, but I will list just a few here and continue with suggested reading/listening....

Wilkerson: Trump Attack on Syria Driven by Domestic Politics

This 17:43m video interview is with the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson which was conducted by Paul Jay of The Real News Network. (I found the audio quality a bit problematic, but nevertheless very interesting.)

Wilkerson has prime connections at high levels of the US military establishment. In this interview he provides his insider views on the recent US strike against a Syrian airbase.

Former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, tells Paul Jay that the Syrian Government may not be responsible for the chemical attack and that Trump's response was a violation of international law.

Fascism occurs when a desperate capitalist ruling class decides to suspend an even nominal commitment to the rule of (their) law in favor of ruling by decree. Signs of this trend has been appearing under the Obama administration, and now even more-so under Trump's administration. This trend seems to be driven by a frustrated and desperate Ziocon faction (aka "neocons") who see their imperial plans for Syria thwarted by Russian assistance to the Syrian government.  

And here is another article which cites some of the reactions to this latest illegal US military aggression against Syria entitled "After US Cruise Missile Raid in Syria, Russia Suspends Russia – US Security Hotline" from nsnbc international.

Another article that I recommend is a post which includes a 5:13 video is entitled "Russia: Warship Steaming Towards U.S Destroyers In Response To Syrian Strike?" from We Are Change.

As an antidote to this latest war crime, you may very well need to view the following 3:43m video to keep you functioning for the rest of the day. I prescribe the following very timely, but early 1990's performance by the late George Carlin.

 

Will Washington Risk WW3 to Block an Emerging EU-Russia Superstate [?]

Click here to access article by Mike Whitney (located in my own Washington state) posted on The 4th Media website.

This geopolitical assessment of the emerging ties between Europe and Russia (and China) provides a broader background about the fears that the transnational capitalist deep-state, that rules the Empire, have about this potential relationship. It's "lights out" for the Empire if this happens. Our masters may want to risk a nuclear war to prevent it from happening. Are we going to sit idly by and watch it happen? 

The prospect of Russia meeting more of the EU’s growing energy needs, while China’s high-speed railway system delivers more low-cost manufactured goods, suggests that the world’s center of economic gravity is shifting fast increasing the probability that the US will continue on its path of irreversible decline.

And when the US dollar is inevitably jettisoned as the primary means of exchange between trade partners in the emerging Asia-EU free trade zone, then the recycling of wealth into US debt will drop off precipitously sending US markets plunging while the economy slips into a deep slump.

Preventing Putin from “creating a harmonious community of economies from Lisbon to Vladivostok” is no minor hurtle [hurdle?] for the United States [and its Empire]. It’s a matter of life and death. 

Caribbean Reparations Movement Must Put Capitalism on Trial

Click here to access article by Ajamu Nangwaya from TeleSur. 

The author is only referring to slaves used in the British sugar plantations, but the same questions should be asked about US's cotton plantations.

Why is the reparations movement in the Anglophone Caribbean not putting capitalism on trial in its campaign to force British imperialism to provide financial compensation for its industrial and agricultural capitalists’ enslavement of Africans?

To what extent is capitalism such a sacred spirit or god whose name should not be publicly called in order to avoid attracting its vindictive and punishing rebuke?

Are the advocates of reparations truly convinced that British imperialism’s payment of financial compensation for the enslavement of Africans would end the economic marginalization of the labouring classes who are toiling under capitalist regimes throughout the region?

Why are we willing to place racism or white supremacy in the dock but not its creator – capitalism?

Bill O’Reilly and the advertisers’ dilemma

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

This is a short piece about the morality of our masters in the capitalist class. It's something that we ordinary people endure everyday of our lives to the extent that we simply take it for granted that our master's morality is a fact of existence much like water is to fish. But it really isn't so. It is a reality of living under a capitalist system that was established long ago by people who saw the splendid benefits accruing to them if people accepted the capitalist system. Ordinary people resisted for some time, but soon succumbed to this powerful new class.

Back in, I think, the 16th century adventurers discovered the system while exploring for the monarchs of Europe when the latter wanted to extend their control over other lands and to compete with other European monarchs for power.  The monarchs gave as an incentive to attract adventurers exclusive rights to a big share of the wealth that could be had from the conquering of new lands. Thus we had the Dutch East Indies Company and the British East India Company, etc. Soon after this mostly investors from the aristocracy were soon granted charters (or similar rights) by the monarchs to do likewise. 

The practice soon established a new class of people who overthrew the feudal authorities of monarchs and the landed aristocracies. These people became known as capitalists, and they extended the practice of exclusive rights to produce goods and services by the fiction of "ownership". Instead of simply violently conquering lands that the ancestors of the feudal authorities had done, they saw that the benefits of "ownership"--a method of nearly exclusive rights over property supported in law by the new states they created--could soon increase their wealth and power. Gradually they extended this concept to everything. 

For example, in Britain the lands held in common by subsistence farmers were purchased and cleared of their people because the new "owners" saw the benefits of using the land for sheep raising. Ultimately they converted everything into a commodity that could be bought and sold. Even non-Christian people (which they called "heathens") could be bought and sold. Workers who were Christians, even children, were simply rented by the capitalists in a labor "market" for as long they were needed, or sufficiently productive, to increase their profits. All of this capitalist enterprise was blessed by the new Protestant Christian churches that were more "progressive" minded than the Catholic church which was more wedded to the old feudal authorities.

Today, if we really think about the system as Cook does, and not as a fact of existence, it soon becomes obvious that it is a deeply immoral system that encourages people to commit all kinds of harmful acts on others.

Of course, we all understand that corporations only care about profits, and that in this case they are worried only about the possible damage to their image with women consumers from association with O’Reilly. The battle isn’t about the the truth of O’Reilly’s claims or the women’s. The issue, as presented by the Guardian, is solely about whether Murdoch’s commitment to make money from his association with O’Reilly outweighs the advertisers’ commitment not to lose money from an association with O’Reilly. The stronger profit motive will win out. 

However it is clear from all the other dreadful news (for example, see this) we receive daily that the harmful acts discussed in this article are the least that we should be concerned with. Capitalism, especially as practiced by the US Empire, is literally killing people and nature across the world in wars, famine, and environmental destruction.

‘Philanthropist’ Rockefeller and the hoax of ‘enlightened capitalism’

Click here to access article by Ramin Mazaheri from The Greanville Post. (Thanks go to Caren in northwest Oregon for alerting me to this article.)

The author launches a devastating attack on what is known by various names such as "enlightened capitalist", "conscious capitalism", "conscious business", "enlightened consumers", etc. It is primarily a popular view of capitalism that infects upper middle class people who suffer from the guilt of their active and key support of capitalist enterprises. Without these people the rule of capitalism would collapse within a week. Therefore capitalists like David Rockefeller are aware of their critical role in maintaining their system and class rule, and reward them accordingly. As a result they are co-opted into collaborating with capitalists to exploit workers all over the world, supporting wars to secure control of cheap labor and markets, damaging the environment, off-shoring their profits to evade taxes, etc.

Depending on the critical nature of the role that individual upper middle class people play in maintaining their system, capitalists reward them with salaries and perks far greater than ordinary wage-slave workers. They enjoy the advantages of an independent work style, home ownership, securing higher education for their children, owning a smart new car, enjoying extended vacations, and many other features of a respectable lifestyle. However, they are at least partially conscious that they have made many compromises along the way to achieve such advantages such as doing things which they don't agree with. There are times when some of them feel guilty about this and about having so many advantages over ordinary workers with the result that they adopt such views to justify their support for serving the capitalist system. 

He wraps up his essay with this conclusion:

Working within the capitalist system is never going to work out. Ending the capitalist system, however, is guaranteed to provide the opportunities for the fundamental changes which are needed, and needed now. There is no “enlightened capitalism” on a corporate scale.

And to clarify, there is no going back to earlier stages of the system even if we wanted to--and why would we want to? The logical dynamic of capitalism is for ever increasing concentrations of wealth and power for a tiny class of people.

We're missing the point about the robotization of America's workforce

Click here to access article by economist David Ruccio from Democracy at Work for Economic Justice.

Ruccio sees major problems ahead for the system due to an accelerated introduction of robots. 

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin may not be worried. Nor, it seems, are other members of the economic and political elite. But the rest of us are—or we should be.

The robots are here and they’re rapidly replacing workers, thus leading to less employment, downward pressure on wages, and even more inequality.

What the Media Isn’t Telling You About Latest Chemical Attack in Syria [or another case of fake news]

Click here to access article by Don Quijones (pseudonym of British ex-pat living in Spain and Mexico) from his blog Rigged Game.

These facts are largely missing from any serious commentary on the most recent attack in Syria. Despite these reports being accessible and available, the world has instead decided to blatantly ignore them and rush to blame Assad once again. It is also worth noting that one of the sources blaming Syria and/or Russia for this attack is the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), an organization run by a single anti-Assad dissident in Coventry, England.

Fake news from media corporations is getting steadily more fake than ever before. How long can we put up with this?

The Silent Cries of Hiding Children: Fifty Years After MLK’s Riverside Church Speech

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

“Liberals,” conservatives. Democrats or Republicans – it makes no difference.  Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump – all killers who are embodiments of the myth of American innocence as the American people play dumb, hiding their heads in the sand as if the world can’t see their asses in the air. Desperate for false hope and phony innocence, they argue over the merits of their favorite killers to justify their complicity in a tradition of war-making where children’s deaths matter no more than Frank Perdue’s dead chickens.

They're back! White Helmets Report False Sarin Attack

Click here to access a post by Caren Black from her and her partner's website Titanic Lifeboat Academy. (With her permission I am posting this from her website. As you can see, she is using a similar format as my posts by providing a commentary to other posts, but different in that she posts the entire article (or two as in this post of hers). She wrote me regarding this piece:

Hi, Ron,
Since I don't think capitalism can be separated from the propaganda it requires, my post tonight may interest you. In order to get angry enough to get active enough to turn against capitalism, people need to realize the lies that must be built into it. Lies about peoples in other lands who are not capitalist, but more socialist must be constantly and consistently and very vocally proclaimed by a united media front in order to convince our thoroughly indoctrinated populace that Capitalism is The Only Right Way and everyone else is not just wrong, but "evil". No single example of a government caring for its people - building schools and hospitals instead of bombs, building homes instead of surveillance systems, providing health care instead of taxes to fund wars - can be allowed to exist. Syria is just one of the most visible current targets of capitalism.

US Didn’t “Change Priorities” in Syria, It Lost

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

US Secretary of State Tillerson’s reaffirmation of US policy rolled out during the Obama administration is yet another illustration of “continuity of agenda,” and how special interests on Wall Street, not politicians in Washington, steer US policy at home and abroad and explains how two apparently politically diametrically opposed presidents have maintained virtually the exact same policy over the course of six years and counting.

And while the US clearly lost in its bid to outright overthrow the government of Syria, it continues pursuing an agenda that will divide and destroy the Syrian state through every means available.

The toll of pollution: How many lives vs. how much profit?

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

Not only has the Trump administration proposed draconian cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and signaled its intention to rescind air-pollution rules for motor vehicles scheduled to come into force between 2022 and 2025, it has issued an executive order requiring a “review [of] existing regulations that potentially burden the development or use of domestically produced energy resources and appropriately suspend, revise, or rescind those that unduly burden the development of domestic energy resources.”

One of the targets of this order is the Clean Power Plan....

Dolack sees that capitalism, with its current expression in the Empire's capitalist transnational class and their obsessive pursuit of profit/power for their tiny class, is on a course to destroy human life by destroying our habitat. Because the destruction is so slowly insidious, people don't notice it very much unless they suffer from some environmental illness. 

Far too many people (mostly the upper middle class) are going along to get along, and the lower classes of working people are too brainwashed or confused by all the misinformation, and maybe too preoccupied by just surviving in an increasing hostile capitalist environment, that they simply don't have the energy to resist sufficiently. Meanwhile our masters in the tiny capitalist class are totally preoccupied by their obsessive desire to satisfy their addiction to profits and power while the Doomsday Clock under the Trump administration may be accelerating its movement toward midnight.

The Doomsday Clock is an internationally recognized design that conveys how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making. First and foremost among these are nuclear weapons, but the dangers include climate-changing technologies, emerging biotechnologies, and cybertechnology that could inflict irrevocable harm, whether by intention, miscalculation, or by accident, to our way of life and to the planet.

IMF tells governments how to subvert public resistance against elimination of cash

Click here to access article by German economist Norbert Häring from his blog.

I get the definite impression that the IMP and other agents are currently pushing digital money in Europe.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington has published a Working Paper on “de-cashing”. It gives advice to governments who want to abolish cash against the will of their citizenry. Move slowly, start with harmless seeming measures, is part of that advice.

Trump's budget

by Pat Bagley, cartoonist for the Salt Lake City Tribune.

Announcement from website administrator

Due to internet connectivity problems, I will not be able to post articles or commentaries today or tomorrow. I expect to be back online on Thursday April 6th.

Afghanistan – ‘Small’ Western Propaganda Lies, Huge Impact

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

After more than 15 years of brutal Western occupation, Afghanistan appears to be thoroughly ruined. Not only in terms of its infrastructure and standards of living, and not only when it comes to all basic indicators like life expectancy (15th lowest in the world, according to the WHO, 2015) or education: all those things I expected.

But perhaps even more significantly, the country is destroyed morally and intellectually.

The only resistance the West is facing here, comes from extremist groups and movements such as the Taliban and Daesh (ISIS). All intellectual and artistic struggles against the occupation have been destroyed, contained, bought, or frightened into near absolute silence.

While reading this article thoughts entered my mind that what Vltchek was describing occurring in Afghanistan applies to all the world's lands and people who are under US Empire domination--and, that includes the USA! The directorate of the transnational capitalist class at the controls of the Empire have stumbled upon a near perfect way to control much of the planet for their tiny class and those approximately 9% just below them as described in yesterday's post. 

These are the people who the Empire directors have at great expense trained, thoroughly indoctrinated, and rather lavishly rewarded to staff the key sectors of Afghanistan. The Empire directors use these people as enforcers in the military and police agencies; and key positions in the government, the media, and educational institutions. All the efforts of these thoroughly colonized upper middle class loyally support the dominant capitalist Empire not to improve the living conditions of the people of Afghanistan, but to secure their allegiance to the Empire's transnational capitalists and their obsession with profits, power, and control.  

While reading the article, some rather disturbing questions entered my mind. Should such people not be identified as a colonial comprador class who serve the ruling class of the Empire's transnational capitalists? Isn't that what is precisely happening in the US? Are we ordinary people in the US also not colonial subjects?

My commentary regarding yesterday's posts by Michael Hudson

by Ron Horn for this website. (Edited for clarity at 4:55 PM Seattle time.)

My dramatic reaction to these articles, but primarily the last post, was probably more of a personal nature. So I wasn't sure how much to share of my reaction with readers of this website. I will now attempt to share of a part of my personal reaction which might be relevant to a larger audience of people who are trying to make sense of the current times. 

My reaction stemmed from a sudden awareness that Hudson was a contemporary of mine. I had previously thought that, judging by appearances, that he was in his late 50s (age). But yesterday I realized that he was 79 and was nearly my age (approaching 81). This set me off in different directions parts of which I think is appropriate to share with my readers. I looked up his biography in Wikipedia, and found that Hudson's father was college educated and is described as a "Trotskyist" during the 1930s in Wikipedia. Then I thought about other scholars who had educated and sometimes radical parents such as Richard Wolff and Naomi Klein (red diaper granddaughter). 

In my own university education I ran across professors who sometimes expressed radical ideas. My family was from a rather poor, essentially working/farming class background. I looked up to college professors as sort of godlike figures who were engaged in truth-seeking. I have learned otherwise over the years since then. Many of those in institutions of higher learning are compromised politically by having to conform to capitalist ideas which inform every institution of Western society. People who refuse to do so, are screened out as they succeed (or not) to pass over the ideological hurdles they meet somewhere along the way in their schooling or careers. 

I've often wondered why some academic people use the word "Marxian" instead of "Marxist" with reference to themselves and types of literature. I just learned that this is a way for them to separate themselves as academics purely in pursuit of a study of a subject rather than being an advocate of Marxist ideas. Hence such people are accepted on this basis in academic institutions of higher learning. 

The point I wish to emphasize is that in capitalist societies, pro-capitalist ideas reign supreme while other ideas are merely tolerated if not banished. Education particularly in the United States is comprehensively influenced by capitalist ideas and values that are consistent with the current US-led Empire's ruling class's interests. That means both historical facts and contemporary ideas and values are promoted because capitalism is a culture as well as a political-economic system. Thus people who wish to advance their material interests must subscribe to the tenets of this culture, and it helps if they practice capitalist lifestyles by belonging to the appropriate associations, engage in activities such as golf, are good consumers, etc. People who spend a lot of time getting an advanced education in institutions of higher learning are subject to even longer years of capitalist indoctrination.

So, you may ask, what has this to do with Michael Hudson and his views? I think that Hudson is a perfect example of someone who was strongly influenced by his left-wing roots to hold anti-capitalist ideas, but during the course of his education he correctly decided that to pursue radical ideas was not a good career move. Thus he, and many others like him, gradually conformed by compromising his radical heritage into acceptable ideas of social democracy. You will never find Hudson using any words like "deep state" because he assumes that the official institutions really govern what happens in the US and that the election system and political parties are authentic means of expressing "democracy". Although he is critical of financial institutions and the ways they are distorting industrial capitalism, he does not take issue with the fundamental ideas of capitalism. What informs his many writings is that capitalism can be reformed to eliminate the corrupting influence of financial institutions. 

Thus Hudson points to the FDR administration which accepted many restrictions of banks and supported social welfare measures. What he leaves out is that FDR's administration was confronted by many truly militant organizations that threatened the capitalist system from the political left while on the right he was pulled in a fascist direction much like all the Western capitalist countries were. FDR saved the "democratic" facade that had served the ruling class so well for centuries. Hudson asks:

Where are the New Deal pro-labor, pro-regulatory roots of bygone days?

And he ends the essay with this statement which ties to his political roots:

As Trotsky said, fascism is the result of the failure of the left to provide an alternative.

But Hudson's extolling of Bernie Sanders' politics and his identification of Michael Harrington as a "socialist" is a long way from his roots in his father's Trotskyist ideas of a revolutionary working class. I think his father is likely turning over in his grave.

What I do like about his essay is his opposition to identity politics over class politics. It's just that his class politics doesn't change the system at all, it would only soften it. I think Hudson does this to fool himself into believing that he uphold his father's radical views. You can't stop the logical dynamic of capitalist development into ever larger concentrations of profit and power, and even if you could, why work for such program? Capitalism has never served working people. It has only served the capitalist class and the 9% below the 1%, or the upper middle class which academics and other such radical poseurs are located. If one could suddenly eliminate this highly skilled, educated class stratum, capitalist rule would not last a week.

These are the people that true revolutionary activists need to be concerned about. They often take over activist movements and deflect them from truly revolutionary goals. Like I wrote in my commentary to the above linked-post regarding Eric London's article: 

This writer carves out an important strata in our capitalist structured society known as the upper middle class, a class consisting of about 9% of Americans who lie just below the 1% rich ruling class. These people are identified by sociologists as the upper middle class. London shows how this particular class plays such an important role for the ruling 1%. Malcolm X graphically described the role played by the middle class to a largely African-American audience with a metaphor drawn from an historical context of American slavery that is relevant here: the difference between a house Negro and a field Negro, or the difference between most workers and a special subset of workers who identify with the ruling capitalist class.

London zeros in on the critical role played by the upper middle class (business executives, academics, successful attorneys, professionals, trade union executives and trust fund beneficiaries) in supporting the ruling 1%, and specifically how they have used identity politics (aka "multiculturalism") to successfully divert attention and energies away from class-based political activism. Likewise this class have obscured their own role in perpetuating identity politics by pretending to be left oriented activists. His research shows that this upper-middle class loves and serves their capitalist masters so well and that they have been richly rewarded for their efforts--unlike those classes of workers below them. London concludes his analysis with this political lesson:

The working class comprises the vast majority of the world’s 7 billion inhabitants and produces all of the world’s wealth. It possesses immense potential power. But it can advance its own interests only if it is armed with an anticapitalist and socialist program based on the class struggle. In advancing the slogan for a party of the 99 percent, the pseudo-left is perpetrating a fraud aimed at preventing the development of such a struggle and preserving the capitalist system.

Occupation of the American Mind

Click here to access article which introduces and includes a new 47:29m film by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp which depicts the history of the rise of the Jewish state in a land populated by Palestinian Arabs.

After WWII the new capitalist Empire led by the US and what was left of the British Empire combined with Zionist leaders to establish fortress Israel in the middle of Arab territory in order to better secure a base to impose the new Empire's influence over the energy rich region. Since then the ruling capitalist class with close collaboration with Zionist leaders have promoted pro-Israel coverage of events in the region with their media corporations. As a result since the establishment of Israel most Americans have been fed mostly fake news about events in the region.

Climate change pushing floods, cyclones to new extremes, with worse to come

Click here to access article from Climate Code Red (Australia).

Extreme weather events are increasingly evident as our planet heads into the future of man-made climate destabilization. Just this morning I woke to a report from my radio of hundreds of people killed in Colombia due to flooding caused by unusually heavy rains at this time of year.

With Australia experiencing the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie and record-breaking rains and severe flooding in south-east Queensland and along the north coast of New South Wales, here’s a look at how global warming has, and will, push floods and cyclones to new extremes.

Trump is Obama’s Legacy. Will this break up the Democratic Party?

Click here to access article by Michael Hudson from Democracy at Work for Economic Justice. 

Wow! After reading this article and the following post featuring Hudson's views of the Social Security system, so many thoughts have rushed through my brain like a raging torrent after a heavy rain. Because they have overflowed my banks of good judgement, I will wait until tomorrow to critique his views as expressed in both posts. To be sure his views on Social Security in the US is right on, but his overview of political reality leaves much to be desired. I will concentrate my commentary tomorrow on the latter. 

'J is for Junk Economics': Michael Hudson on TRNN

Click here to access a 12 minute interview (with transcript) with Michael Hudson on The Real News Network.

Economist Michael Hudson explains why social security does not need to be 'pre-funded' by its beneficiaries.

White Trash-A Book Review of Our Family (Part 2)

Click here to access article by Ramin Mazaheri from The Greanville Post. (I'm only posting part 2).

Instead of discussing race politics, I argue that this book proves we absolutely must reject the anti-Trumper’s contention that the current schism in the US is a cultural divide and not a class war.

The White Trash Revolution (WTR), a theme of mine which gained a foothold with Brexit, has always been about class and not race. How else could someone named “Ramin Mazaheri” be one of its leading propagandists?

But elevating race in order to deny class is what Americans always do, and that’s why the author decried this systematic class unconsciousness on the book’s very first page:

“It is as though in separating from Great Britain, the United States somehow magically escaped the bonds of class and derived a higher consciousness of enriched possibility….The very act of migration claims to equalize the people involved….”

It does not, so give up your racial, gender and sexual politics. Let’s get to the down-and-dirty of it all – class.

Soft power centralisation: the CIA, Bilderberg and the first steps towards European integration

Click here to access article by Bas Spliet from his blog Scrutinized Minds. (I thank Newsbud for introducing me to this author and article.)

In this article the author focuses on the more covert aspects of European history since WWII. Although I can't vouch for all of the details he has provided, from my own knowledge of this history, I think he offers in one piece a very important, often missing, history that shaped present day Europe.

This project of the US-led Empire was first conceived even prior to the US entering the war and was announced by a well-connected person of the deep state at that time, Henry R. Luce, in an editorial entitled "The American Century".  After the war the US hidden ruling class directorate in what has become known as the "deep state" clearly saw the necessity to eliminate the many borders of Europe that not only interfered with transnational commerce but which also served to isolate capitalists within these small nation-states. They had a globalist vision and wanted to absorb all major capitalists in their project of building an empire, and to act as a bulwark to defend against the influence of the Soviet Union and especially against the popular notions of socialism in the rebuilding of Europe. Also with a more unified Europe, the continent was much more easily managed by this new transnational class of capitalists.

Severely hit by the carnage caused by WWII, the nations of Europe were significantly weakened. Because of the widespread poverty and the decisive role of communist resistance movements during the war, communism became relatively popular in postwar Western Europe. Electoral victories by communist parties were expected throughout Europe, and a Tito-backed communist insurgency in Greece was only beaten back with British intervention in the late 1940s. The US, hoping to expand its sphere of influence in Europe, was not just going to let that happen, however.

Russia seen by the Amnesty International and Channel Four Television Corporation

Click here to access article by "The Saker" from his website.

Based on the article's contents, the headline should be titled "Russia seen by Amnesty International, Channel Four Television, and others guided by YouTube". Yes, advances in digital technology is not only being used to market us so that we can become better consumers, it is also used to corral us into their thought enclosures of safe articles approved by the "Ministry of Truth" of the capitalist ruling class. Social media is doing the same thing. "1984" arrived a little late, but it has now fully arrived. Our masters have acquired the means, which were created by workers but under the rules of capitalism are "owned" by our masters, to achieve full spectrum dominance over our thoughts.

"The Saker" illustrates how YouTube steered him to "safe" articles on Russia.

Trump's EPA

by editorial cartoonist David Horsey.

At least the Trump administration is being a little more honest. It is mainly for Democratic administrations to deceive the public; and after each such administration knowing they have been deceived, they vote in the Republicans. Ain't democracy wonderful? Tweedledee and Tweedledum, you say? Well, at least there are style differences.

  

We’ve Let Capitalism Kill the Planet

Click here to access article by Christian Sorensen from The Greanville Post. (Thanks to Caren in northwest Oregon for alerting me to this article.)

The article delivers in only three paragraphs some very powerful points as to why we must get rid of the deadly infection of capitalism in order to survive.

The Arctic just set a grim new record for low levels of sea ice

Click here to access article by Chris Mooney from The Washington Post.

I see the Post as a mouthpiece of the CIA; and because the latter is engaging in a vendetta against the Trump administration, they are posting articles like this as a reaction to Trump's anti-climate change stance. (obviously a conspiracy theory)

Floating sea ice at the top of the world has set another troubling record for its low spatial extent, shattering a record set just two years ago for this key component of the planet’s climate system.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the sheet of Arctic sea ice, which expands and contracts in an annual cycle, probably reached its maximum size this year on March 7, when it spanned 14.42 million square kilometers, or 5.57 million square miles, atop the Arctic ocean. That’s an enormous area, but it’s also the smallest winter maximum extent ever observed in records dating to 1979.

You might also be interested in another piece of scientific evidence that our climate is becoming destabilized by reading another article from the Post entitled "One of the most troubling ideas about climate change just found new evidence in its favor".

But unlike the climate change articles above, I don't think you will find any articles in corporate media that even suggest that excessive meat production is contributing to climate destabilization as does this excellent article from Grain entitled "The global dangers of industrial meat". 

Why This Isn’t Time For Public Option Or Medicare For Some

Click here to access article by Margaret Flowers from Health Over Profit.

Flowers reports that some liberal politicians favor public option insurance and Medicare for some, and why such insurance plans are really only beneficial to insurance companies. 

Well, we are a capitalist country, and capitalist rule promotes the profit of corporations, and regarding this issue, private insurance corporations. (Duh!) And the US-led Empire must prioritize military expenditures (also to private corporations) to support the Empire's influence in the world in order to secure for their corporations resources, markets, cheap labor (for example, see this), and the security of the US dollar which most nations need to buy to do international business. If the yuan or ruble or some other currency replaces the US dollar, then our ruling capitalist masters are in deep-do-do. Then their economy might experience such enormous problems that they would have difficulty maintaining their rule and their system.

Hence, it follows that we will only have adequate health care (and other such good things as peace, income security, happiness, a biosphere that can support human life, etc) if or when we, the people, replace the system of capitalism with a system that serves all of the people and is controlled by all of the people instead of a tiny class of people.

Health care reform

by political cartoonist Rick McKee.

Identity Politics and Class Struggle

Click here to access article by Robin D. G. Kelley originally published in New Politics, winter of 1997, and now posted in libcom.org.

For some time I have attacked the limitations of identity politics (see this, and this) as a strategy encouraged by the capitalist ruling class to divert political resistance to their rule onto fairly harmless activities. Although in one article I tried to argue that I wasn't opposed to identity politics--indeed, I wrote that we all benefited from it--but it simply wasn't revolutionary. This post by Kelley gives a much more vigorous defense of identity politics that has modified my views on the subject.

Historically the capitalists have frequently used identity politics as a method to divide workers. For example, when I lived in Hawaii for five years in the 1970s, I learned the history of the big plantation owners that were engaged in sugar cane farming and sugar refining and how they learned to effectively pit one nationality of workers against others by playing them off against each other. They imported workers from numerous countries: Japan, China, Portugal, the Philippines, etc., and encouraged them to fight each other for favorable treatment by the owners. That still occurs, but nowadays more frequently capitalists prefer to keep politically active people engaged in identity politics. 

However engagement in identity politics can be very revolutionary if it serves to eliminate competition or adversarial relations between social identities so that the ruling class can no longer use it as a tool to divide us. I remember with some embarrassment in my past political activities that men thoroughly dominated anti-Vietnam War organizations. And for similar reasons, no African-Americans or Latinos participated. The activism was largely an all white, male dominated affair. There is still work to be done on social identity issues and I support such activities, but we also need to work together on class-based politics because that is the only way we will overcome the class-based theft of our creativity and hard work and the destruction of our planet.

While consciously pursuing revolutionary class politics we also need to be aware of the marked tendency of upper-middle class professionals to identify with the ruling capitalist class. Such people are very active on the web to suppress revolutionary thinking. They do this consciously to serve their masters in the ruling class or unconsciously because their political views are compromised due to the fear of losing their comfortable lifestyle. I've specifically targeted the issue in this post, to some extent in this post, and this is illustrated in the following post for today.

The CIA’s 60-Year History of Fake News: How the Deep State Corrupted Many American Writers

Click here to access a 32:38m video and transcript of an interview by Robert Scheer with Joel Whitney the author of a new book entitled Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers.

This is a particularly timely book because it illustrates how the CIA and other organs of the capitalist deep state intentionally practiced fake news operations over three decades following the end of WWII. Not that there wasn't fake news perpetrated by the capitalist ruling class before then, but it wasn't so intentionally and systematically practiced. The book also shows how easily highly educated and literate people of the upper middle class can be so easily induced with money to participate in programs which are intended to spread propaganda or fake news.

What the book doesn't deal with are the systematic attempts to issue fake news since this period. I've read several books by authors that claim that such systematic methods are no longer used because they are unnecessary: media corporations have been so thoroughly cleansed of genuine journalists who are dedicated to reporting reality, and the existing staff so thoroughly indoctrinated in the values and views of the Empire's capitalism that they have no problem with fake news.

US Media’s Global Warming Denialism

Click here to access article by Jonathan Marshall from ConsortiumNews. 

This essay is an archetype of a liberal position on a major issue--climate destabilization. It implies that the problem is all Trump's fault; and if we had voted for Hillary Clinton, everything would be fine. 

Liberal capitalists hidden in the deep state, which really is in control of our fates, much prefer the deceptions of a Democratic Party rather than an open and honest Republican administration that promotes expansive, fossil-fuel dependent capitalist enterprise. Capitalists are very much like drug addicts: they only care about getting their next fix of profits, and to do that they must exercise maximum control over the rest of humanity and the planet. To get their next fix of profits, they must use a cheap source of energy; and fossil fuels (although becoming more expensive to obtain) supply that source rather abundantly. 

However, for decades scientists have been accumulating evidence that the fossil-fueled enterprises of capitalism are killing the biosphere on which human life (and many other creatures) depend.  It is clear to most sophisticated capitalists as well as scientists that renewable energy sources cannot supply the amounts of cheap energy that capitalist enterprises need to supply them with their drugs of profits and power. Like any hardcore addict, most capitalists simply deny reality. Thus the human designed capitalist system is on a collision course with the needs of the planet, and unfortunately the drug addicted capitalists are in control of our future. Guess who will win and who will lose.

There is a growing awareness that liberal capitalists, and their propagandists like Jonathan Marshall, serve the preservation of the system just like conservative capitalists do, but they do it much more deceptively. Many capitalists in the deep state are worried that the Trump administration's clumsy efforts will give away the ruse that the ruling capitalist class care about the future of humanity (or the present condition of humans outside their own class).

It's sad to see that Robert Parry, as a truth-seeker, honest journalist, and editor of this website, is going along with this ruse by posting such an article. He, along with so many upper middle class people who serve, or have served, the ruling class and their capitalist system so effectively, are so well indoctrinated in the tenets of capitalism that they cannot imagine any other way to live.

Consuming ourselves to death

by political cartoonist Stephanie McMillan posted on Cartoon Movement.

Five Ways Cybersecurity Will Suffer If Congress Repeals the FCC Privacy Rules

Click here to access article by Peter Eckersley and Jeremy Gillula from Electronic Frontier Foundation.

...last Thursday, Republicans in the Senate voted to repeal those rules. If the House of Representatives votes the same way and the rules are repealed, it’s pretty obvious that the results for American’s privacy will be disastrous.

But what many people don’t realize is that Americans’ cybersecurity is also at risk. That’s because privacy and security are two sides of the same coin: privacy is about controlling who has access to information about you, and security is how you maintain that control. You usually can’t break one without breaking the other, and that’s especially true in this context. To show how, here are five ways repealing the FCC’s privacy rules will weaken Americans’ cybersecurity.

The authors writing for this foundation are likely internet geeks who are bit challenged in their understanding of political reality. The last time I tried appealing to Congress to urge any action was when the Boland Amendment was being considered for passage in 1982. Our government during the Reagan administration was actively organizing and supporting a terrorist army known as the Contras that were based in nearby Honduras to sow chaos in Nicaragua (does this sound familiar?). About this time I had returned from a trip to Nicaragua where I saw schools and clinics funded by the Sandinista government that were attacked and destroyed by the Contras. I and many activists engaged in a massive campaign to inform Americans of this and succeeded in gaining overwhelming public opposition to our government's support of the Contras, and support for the Boland Amendment which prohibited such support.

Yes, this resolution passed, but ruling class operatives (mostly in the CIA) soon engineered other ways around Congressional authority to fund their terrorist army. They used the Contras to supply a burgeoning drug operation that saw massive amounts of cocaine imported into the US, primarily into the African-American ghettos of the large cities in the US. And they sold weapons to Iran.

This experience proved to be the last straw in my hope that working through the official, supposedly democratic, institutions could change anything. I had already lived through the Vietnam War and saw corporate media engage in massive disinformation campaign to hide the realities of that war. I had already lived through the assassinations of any public figure who tried to argue against our official policies. I became convinced that the only way to bring about significant change was through revolution and the overthrow of the real controllers of our society--the capitalist class. 

Modi, Yunus and the financial inclusion mafia

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

Modi is of course the prime minister of India and Yunus is a micro-lending banker in nearby Bangladesh. Häring connects these two figures with the World Bank, USAID, Citi Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Master Card, Omidyar Network (Paypal), and the United Nation Capital Development Fund which together conspire to use credit as a method to gain control and ownership over everything of worth in the world. The mafia-like scheme represents the latest capitalist class war against the poor and gullible workers of the world.

The war on cash that is currently being waged in India and other developing countries is the culmination of a "financial inclusion”-campaign originating in the US in the 1990s. The purported goal and the US institutions pushing the agenda are the same as in two earlier financial-inclusion-drives, which have been thoroughly discredited: the subprime mortgage banking frenzy in the US and the microcredit-hype around Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank. 

Gas From Israel And The Flynn Wiretapping - Behind The Deep-State Infighting Over The Trump Election

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

What is really behind the deep-state infighting over the U.S. elections and the "wire tapping" of the Trump campaign? Why was the CIA-Neocon axis vehemently lobbying against Trump? What foreign interests and what money is involved in this? Answers to these questions are now emerging.

The author, who is noted for his expert sleuthing, has laid out a convincing real story that lies behind the fake news story issued by corporate media of the firing of the National Security Advisor under the Trump administration. 

VOTE: The 2017 Horace Greeley Award for Best Fake News Journalist

Click here to access article from 21st Century Wire.

This article gives you the opportunity to vote on the best fake news story that was issued by media corporations in recent years.

If you’ve been following this year’s Fake News Final Four at 21WIRE, you will have also heard about the prestigious award for the best individual fake news journalist or media personality, because to call some of these people journalists would be inappropriate.

Here are the Top 10 finalist nominees for the first annual Horace Greeley Award for Outstanding Work in Fake News Journalism…

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.