Wall Street and City of London Press Panic Button on Catalonia

Click here to access article by "Don Quijones" from Wolf Street.

The author, who is a British ex-patriot and mostly lives in Spain, gives an excellent report about the financial factors behind the resistance of Western financial centers against the independence movement in Catalonia from Spain. As such the author provides an excellent illustration of the power and influence that major financial centers of Wall Street and the City of London, whose capitalists make up a core part of the ruling classes of the US-led Empire, have on political events in many countries. This is a further illustration of how contemporary capitalists control all major policy decisions both political and economic wherever they hold populations in debt. If this weapon fails to control populations, then the "jackals" are sent in, as John Perkins so well explained in his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. How did this weapon of debt used by the Empire's ruling class come about?

It developed over many years of capitalist rule whereby the capitalist classes accumulated more and more wealth extracted from exploited worker populations and stole cheap resources from countries they dominated. Think British Empire, the many years of exploitation of workers, the kidnapping of millions of African slaves, think US control over much of Latin America through occasional invasions to remind leaders of US power as well described by Major General Smedley Butler in his book War Is a Racket (1935), WWI, the emergence of US power after WWII, etc. This wealth was accumulated over many years in the Anglo-American empires which developed into today's US-led Empire. Now for anyone or any nation to purchase anything, they usually have to borrow money from a bank. And, now the Empire's capitalist financiers hold nearly everyone and "sovereign" nations in debt, and exercise considerable control over them with these debt obligations always backed by the threat of violence from their police and military. 

The is the inevitable evolution of capitalism into the advanced form we see today all over the Empire.

Internet censorship and government war plans

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

The growing attempts to implement censorship measures to internet services by the ruling capitalist class indicates that the latter has no qualms about introducing overt fascist methods of censorship as its imperialist operations abroad and its austerity and police state measures here at home are increasingly exposed and discussed over these services.

On the eve of the UN assembly, the Times published an unambiguous brief for censorship of the Internet in the form of an op-ed column by the ambassador to the UN under Barack Obama, Samantha Power.

Under the headline “Why Foreign Propaganda Is More Dangerous Now,” and on the pretext of combating Russian disinformation and subversion, Power calls for the use of “professional gatekeepers” to police public discourse on the Internet.

Power, a leading proponent of “human rights” imperialism, looks back nostalgically at the Cold War as a golden age of news dissemination, when “most Americans received their news and information via mediated platforms.”

If they succeed in shutting out accurate information about their war crimes and secret nefarious operations, then all is lost for the people to prevent either a nuclear war conflagration or the calamities of climate destabilization.

The Super Patriotic Draft Dodger’s Rag: “Fire the Son-of-a-Bitch”

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from The Greanville Post.

Curtin shines much needed light on the hypocrisy of American liberals and asks some very penetrating questions:

Who will take a knee for a radical redistribution of economic and political power?  Who will link arms for the end to capitalist exploitation and the amassing of obscene wealth by a few at the expense of the many?  Who will refuse to support war and war-making?  Who will tell it like it is and say that the demon of racism can only be eliminated if the others are?  Liberals won’t.  Conservatives won’t. Who will?  Who will pay a price?

Racism has been a very convenient weapon used by the capitalist ruling class (comprised of both liberals and conservatives) to divide Americans and divert their attention away from the many social and economic disasters of their system. Trump has now given White racists and police forces permission to use that weapon more aggressively.

Also he touched on what I  have long observed about football games (especially NFL games) as useful spectacle to promote social cohesiveness:

In a society of the spectacle, NFL football is the most spectacular and entertaining mass hypnotic induction into the love of war and violence that we have.  Goodell says that “the NFL and our players are at our best when we help create a sense of unity in our country and our culture.”

I think Goodell is right but for a very wrong reason. The sense of unity is devoted to the spectacle of violence, aggression, and dominance which are what US foreign policies are all about. The latter two characteristics also are useful attributes for capitalists domestically while in pursuit of profits and power at the expense of workers.

There is another excellent article posted on the same website that might interest you: "Good Blacks, Bad Blacks: From Washington and DuBois to Morgan Freeman and Colin Kaepernick" by Paul Street.

White America, for the most part, makes a critical distinction between “good” and “bad” Black Americans – and a related distinction between “good” and “bad” Black behavior.  It goes way back. 

How the BBC Spreads Lies: How to read propaganda [a Best Post]

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse posted at A Bird's Eye View of the Vineyard (The Saker). 

Although this outstanding article give some clues about reading propaganda, its major contribution is discerning the Mid-East strategies of the US ruling class that is supported by an abundance of major links.  It's clear from a careful reading of this article that the US Empire uses and manages the many conflicts among Sunni nations, Shia nations, Kurdish aspirations, and other national interests as a means to not only balkanize countries surrounding Israel, but more importantly to curtail Russian and Iranian influence in the area while maintaining their own dominance.

Again I must register my strong opposition to Zuesse's use of the feudal term "aristocracy" and related terms instead of the accurate term "ruling class" or "capitalist ruling class". It becomes even more absurd when he writes sentences which mix up both capitalist and contemporary feudal ruling classes like the following:

Whereas the Sauds’ and Israel’s main focus is on conquering Iran, the U.S. aristocracy’s main focus is on conquering Russia; but the entire Saud-Israel-U.S. alliance of aristocracies is simultaneously anti-Shia and anti-Russian. While the three aristocracies have different priorities, they are all in this together.

Words matter because they can reveal the critically important realities of human existence or they can obscure them. While Zuesse's articles contributes a lot to the former, he still insists on hiding capitalism and capitalist ruling classes behind the term "aristocracy". Or maybe he is so brainwashed that he thinks social systems don't matter. I am absolutely convinced that the comprehensive system of capitalism and capitalist ruling classes are the prime issues confronting humans today. The rule of primarily advanced capitalist classes threaten the very existence of humans with the prospect of extinction from both the immediate risk of nuclear wars and the longer term threat of climate destabilization. Thus I view such obfuscation as an intellectual crime against humanity.

I can only infer from the glaring absence of any specific biographical matter on Eric Zuesse, beyond the vague description of "investigative historian", that this is a deliberate practice on his part to hide his affiliations with academia in order to protect himself from employment repercussions. In other words, he considers his own material well being above the well being of humans in general. This reflects the personality development of individualism which is so strongly promoted under the social-economic system of capitalism. I fear that this current human characteristic will likely lead to the extinction of humans. 

And then he rather hypocritically, in my opinion, continues on to criticize the BBC for failing to mention important information about the Jordanian background of a UN officer, the UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein who claimed...

Russia is committing “grave human rights violations” in Crimea, according to a report by the United Nations.

The UN human rights agency says it has documented arbitrary arrests, torture and at least one extra-judicial execution in the region.

 There is an urgent need for accountability. 

Avoiding Nuclear War: Why Kim Jong-Un’s Strategy Makes Sense

Click here to access article by Federico Pieraccini from Strategic Culture Foundation. (My thanks go to Christopher P. in northwest Oregon for alerting me to this excellent article.)

There's method to Kim Jong-Un’s reported madness (in US corporate media). This is the thesis argued by the author that attempts to give a rational perspective from North Korea's point of view, and I think he is quite convincing. 

...the strategy of the Pyongyang is working: on the one hand, they are developing a nuclear weapon to deter external enemies; on the other, they are obligating the PRC to adopt a particularly hostile attitude towards South Korea’s deployment of THAAD. In this sense, the numerous economic actions of Beijing towards Seoul can be explained as a response to the deployment of the THAAD batteries. China is the main economic partner of South Korea, and this trade and tourism limitation is quite damaging to South Korea’s economy.

My only criticism is this statement referring to the THAD missiles the US has installed in South Korea: "As repeatedly explained, it is useless against North Korean rockets...." I am quite well-read (def.), but I often skip over technical details of weapons. Thus I was offended by this statement and the fact that he didn't bother with furnishing a link to support it. Here is such a link from a South Korean source.

[Weekly series of the Russian Revolution of 1917] September 25 – October 1: Lenin urges Bolshevik leaders to prepare for the seizure of power

Click here to access this week's account of the historical Russian Revolution from the World Socialist Web Site. (Note: I am posting a series of articles on the Russian Revolution; but they are from my selection of the best sources which, in my well-read judgement, are the most accurate.)

I will be posting a weekly summary of activities during the Russian Revolution of 1917 as well as articles by historians of that great event. You may be interested to read my introduction to the latter series if you have not already done so.  

Now that the Bolsheviks have obtained majorities in the Moscow and Petrograd soviets, Lenin launches a campaign to orient the party for a planned insurrection. Meanwhile, Kerensky and his supporters try to assemble a new pro-war “coalition” government.

The CIA: 70 Years of Organized Crime

Click here to access this interview with Douglas Valentine conducted by Lars Schall and posted on CounterPunch. (Edited at 7:35 PM Seattle time for clarity.)

Although it begs belief (def.) that Valentine was able to completely fool the then CIA Director William Colby about his mission to study the CIA, nearly everything he's written in his book The CIA as Organized Crime is corroborated by many other independent sources. But his entrée (def. 1b) provided by Colby allowed Valentine to interview many other CIA officers.  This access enabled him to become probably the foremost expert outside of the Deep State on this nefarious organization due to the compartmentalization that usually occurs among their officers. And the knowledgeable Lars Schall makes this a top-notch interview.

LS: How important is mainstream media for the public perception of the CIA?

DV: It’s the most critical feature. Guy Debord said that secrecy dominates the world, foremost as secret of domination. The media prevents you from knowing how you’re being dominated, by keeping the CIA’s secrets. The media and the CIA are same thing.

Eva Bartlett in North Korea – Going Behind the Media Iron Curtain

Click here to access article featuring an interview with Bartlett and video shots she took on her visit at the end of August to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and posted on 21st Century. (Note: the audio quality of her voice deteriorates at various times in the interview. Also the interview cuts of before the end at 31:51m of the full 32:45m interview; if you want to hear the end you can do so here.)

This extraordinary Canadian journalist shows how independent journalists can give a very different impression of life in other countries, especially those designated derogatorily by such names as the "Axis of Evil", than corporate media gives us within our iron-curtain of Empire propaganda.

On the other hand, if you like the simplistic "good-guy, bad guy" cartoonish propaganda fed to adolescent people (adults with an adolescent personality) by the Empire's corporations, you will love this piece produced by Hollywood's Zionists featuring an African-American celebrity and talking-head. People like you never regard Hollywood both as a propaganda agency of the fascist Deep State (as mostly explained by Caitlin Johnstone) and an equal opportunity briber.

Trump scolds Kim Jong-un

Kim Jong-un with his little rocket responded by saying "you are a mentally deranged and senile old man".

I don't mean to belittle this spat because it is very dangerous. But it's better to laugh about such things than merely complain or worry. Better yet is to become active and informed in order to remove from power a class of people who mostly depend on violence to bully others into giving them cheap labor, resources, and generally to have their way in the world.

[Weekly series of the Russian Revolution of 1917] September 18 – 24: Bolsheviks obtain majorities in Moscow and Petrograd soviets

Click here to access article from the World Socialist Web Site.

I am posting a series of weekly/daily series of articles describing the events of the Russian Revolution from the WSWS website.

I will be posting a weekly summary of activities during the Russian Revolution of 1917 as well as articles by historians of that great event. You may be interested to read my introduction to the latter series if you have not already done so. 

Following the Kornilov affair, support for the Bolsheviks surges, and they win control of the Moscow and Petrograd soviets, followed one by one by provincial soviets. The crisis of the newly formed Kerensky dictatorship deepens. All the while, the war rages on, and mass hunger and deprivation fuel working-class rebellions around the world.

The Kurdish Question: Why Federalization In Syria And The Creation of A Kurdistan Is A Very Bad Idea

Click here to access article by Brandon Turbeville from Activist Post. 

It is obvious that the US has long abandoned Plan A to get rid of President Assad of Syria and install a more compliant puppet as head of state. Now it's Plan B executed by the US's terrorist strategists in the CIA and Israel's Mossad. This is convincingly argued in this lengthy article in which Turbeville adds numerous quotes from other independent journalists and observers to bolster his argument. 

Shortly after the Russian entrance to the Syrian theatre, American media became full of stories praising the heroism of the Kurdish fighters battling against ISIS in areas such as Ayn al-Arab (Kobane) and others. From stories promoting the fighting prowess of the Kurdish brigades to cleverly created propaganda campaigns regarding female Kurdish fighters, the Western press, including the alternative media, was full of stories telling Americans that the Kurds were the real victims and the real heroes of the crisis. This propaganda campaign came about the same time that the Syrian military began making serious gains against Western-backed terrorists with the help of Russia. Thus, as America’s terrorists began losing the war, America produced another “freedom fighter” poster child – the YPG. 

The stories he refers to in alternative media promoting the latest version of "freedom fighter" heroes are such items by anarchist David Graeber, who has long championed the Syrian Kurds (see the latest), and one by Pete Dolack, who has otherwise contributed much to our understanding of financial issues. However Turbeville insists, and I agree with him, that this view serves Empire propaganda and fits very well with the Plan B of the US and its partner-in-crime Israel to balkanize Israel's Arab neighbors. I don't think it is a mere coincidence that Iraqi Kurds are holding a referendum on Monday while this is going on in neighboring Syria. Perhaps the Kurdish leader, Masoud Barzani, is a Mossad agent after all, as alleged numerous times by various observers. At least there is considerable evidence that the Kurds have long enjoyed the support and collaboration by the Israelis in their quest for independence. The US is against the referendum officially, but I think it is only a cover to protect them from the ire of the Iraqi government.

Single Payer, the Democratic Party and the Nonprofit Industrial Complex

Click here to access article by Russell Mokhiber from The Greanville Post.

I am posting this piece only as an illustration of an incorrigible reformist liberal who still thinks that...

...the people at the grassroots...have lit the prairie fire that will not be extinguished by Democrats, or Green Democrats, or public interest Democrats, or the Democratic public option, or Democratic incrementalism, or Democratic affiliated sheepdogs.

It will not be extinguished until single payer becomes law. That means overcoming the pharmaceutical industry, the healthcare industry, the Democratic Party, Green Democrats, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and the nonprofit industrial complex.

Onward to single payer.

He makes this statement following his excellent exposé of the frustrating lessons he's learned while working in various liberal groups to pass legislation that purportedly serves the interests of ordinary people. This piece shows the political immaturity of American liberal activists which, I believe, constitute the majority of American activists. (The same applies to another post from the same website entitled "A Cure For Mad Trump Disease" in which the author claims that the solution is electing the right people to Congress!)

There is no way that a single payer medical plan will ever be permitted to pass into law in the US as long as the capitalist class is in control. Private insurance plans are a bonanza for the capitalist ruling class. Likewise with all the other progressive measures that interfere with the ruling capitalist class's pursuit of wealth/power and their attempt to control the world. While in pursuit of the latter goal, they have wracked up a huge government debt of $20 trillion dollars, which is owed to mostly Empire capitalist creditors who bet on the Empire by purchasing US Treasury securities. Their investments can only be realized if they succeed. 

Obviously at this point our masters have only one option: to continue with "business as usual". And, likewise, we have only one option if we are going to save ourselves from a nuclear war conflagration or a more gradual extinction due to climate destabilization. Guess what that is?  

The forbidden questions about the Korea crisis

Click here to access article by Moss Roberts from Asia Times. 

Why does Washington insist on continuing the war games? Is it about strategy, military budgets, promoting weapon sales, face? Is the purpose to maximize tensions and so push South Korea away from China and toward Japan?

The author asks many serious questions about why sensible solutions are not followed by the US, South Korea, and Japan. The answer is the US-led Empire's compulsive policy of rollback which began after WWII against the influence of the anti-capitalist nations, Soviet Union and China, and is now continuing a similar policy under contemporary conditions in which these nations with mixed economies and North Korea (with a bureaucratically run socialist system) are beginning to seriously challenge the Empire's imperial dominance. US propaganda organs sell this imperialist policy to its citizens as "American exceptionalism" or as America's "unique leadership" in world affairs.

Russia’s Interesting New Oil Geopolitics

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

Engdahl lends his geopolitical perspective on the current situation in the Middle East.

Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Qatar. They are weaving deeper peaceful economic ties, walking away in the case of Qatar and Turkey from their ill-conceived US-inspired war against Syria’s Bashar al Assad, developing long-term energy cooperation and defense ties. At the heart is Russia’s emerging new oil geopolitics.

The response to this all from the sinking Titanic that used to be known as the United States of America, of its military lobby and their Wall Street bankers who actually run Washington policy via their web of think-tanks, is infantile: war, destabilizations, color revolutions, sanctions as a form of economic war, demonization, lies. That’s all rather stupid and ultimately boring. [Notice his description of the shadow government, what I refer to as the Deep State.]

Realism in Astana: The Prequel to a Decade of Peace in the Middle East [Updated on 9/23/2017]

Click here to access article by Ollie Richardson from Oriental Review. 

America and its European vassals now find themselves neck-deep in the consequences of their own idiotic decisions. The new reality involves a bloc involving both Iran and Turkey deciding not only the outcome of the Syrian war, but also the next 10 years in the Middle East.

This offers the best political analysis I have seen of the current conditions in the Syrian conflict and the future of the nearby region. 

"Astana" refers to the recent talks between Russia, Turkey, and Iran at Astana, Kazakstan. Notice that the US and its coalition partners were excluded as participants (although observers from US, UN, etc were allowed) in the 4th (May 2017), 5th (August), and 6th (September) talks held there in which "de-escalation zones" (he refers to them as "deconfliction zones") were decided. 

Updated information on 9/23/2017: The above information may not be entirely accurate. A much more plausible description of the meeting participants was written by Alexander Orlov who writes:

From September 14 to September 15, Astana held its sixth round of talks on Syria, in which the delegations of the guarantor countries Russia, Turkey and Iran, the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic and the Syrian opposition, as well as the UN Secretary General Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, took part. The United States and Jordan were present as observers.

I'm waiting with great anticipation to see how the US-backed Kurds and the area under their control in northern Syria is resolved. 

How the UN Covers for US Aggression

Click here to access article by J.P. Sottile from ConsortiumNews. (Edited for clarity around 8 PM Seattle time.)

It is obvious that the "UN covers for US aggression" and Sottile provides all the historical details that illustrate this truth. However the "how" is not well explained. Permit me to fill in the "how".

The term "United Nations" was first used by President Franklin Roosevelt in early 1941 as a propaganda gimmick during a meeting with Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August of 1941 in Newfoundland, Canada. This term was officially referred to in the Atlantic Charter as a part of a more elaborate propaganda campaign waged by the leaders of the embryonic Anglo-American capitalist empire (later to become the US-led Empire) to wrap themselves in high-minded principles. (Churchill had considerable difficulty with the third principle of the Charter because of India's strong desire for independence: "all people had a right to self-determination", and he never took it seriously, nor did US officials as subsequently illustrated in Vietnam.) Such a propaganda campaign was needed in order to rally isolationist Americans to the Anglo-American cause and to enlist the support of many neutral nations in their contest with their overtly fascist competitors, the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) for world dominance. As you can see, these two warring capitalist camps were little more than what we commonly recognize as neighborhood gangs fighting over the control of turf.

At this time only Britain and Russia were engaged in this war (WWII), but FDR was a diehard anglophile and anti-fascist capitalist, and saw the necessity of the US coming to the aid of desperate Britain. He did everything he could to support the British in spite of widespread isolationist sentiment and opposition in the US that was mostly engineered by the fascist wing of the capitalist ruling class. Both Britain and later the US were forced to ally themselves temporarily with the Soviet Union, their arch-enemy, in order to defeat their rival, the German Reich, for world dominance . 

Many fascist capitalists in the evolving deep state at the time became aware that this war offered a splendid opportunity for US world dominance after the war was over. This informal project of the Deep State became known as the American Century, a term that was first coined by fascist-inclined Henry Luce, president of Time, Inc., a major multimedia corporation consisting of numerous mainstream publications, radio projects and newsreels. The publication of this article (by the same name) rallied the fascist wing of the US capitalist ruling class, which had previously hid under the label of "isolationism", to support the war against the Axis powers. Well, with this support and the provocations of US government trade embargoes against Japan, whose fascist ruling class were building their own empire in Asia, inevitably led the US in a few short months to a war with Japan and the rest of the Axis powers.  

After the Allied victory in WWII, the US, which was by far the dominant power in the world as forecast by the fascist promoters of the "American Century", and its subordinate partner Britain established what was originally known as the United Nations Organization. Of course with such origins the organization was largely dominated by the US. The first indication of the latter was the UN resolutions in 1950 condemning North Korea's invasion of South Korea--although this happened after many provocations by the US-backed South Korean forces (read The Origins of the Korean War, v1 by Bruce Cumings). This was the pretext for President Harry Truman, without a declaration of war, to order troops to Korea to enforce these resolutions (in reality to contain and roll-back a communist government). In order to provide the US's intervention with more legitimacy as a UN force, the US managed to get token forces from other nations to join them.

As another indication of the US domination of the UN, despite many UN resolutions condemning Israel for their settlements on Palestinian territory, there has never been an attempt to enforce them with any military actions.

We Will Not Be Silenced: First They Ignore You, Then Comes Censorship

Click here to access article by Teodrose Fikre from The Ghion Journal. 

...let me state this truth. The system of global oppression—where a few lord over billions—is not afraid of those who speak with fiery rhetoric and those who agitate people into angry discontent. Far from fearing demagogues, the status quo actually elevates them for the playbook of divide and conquer depends on those who peddle separable grievances in order to shatter the people into islands of resentment. From Obama to Trump and the endless sea of politicians and mainstream media pundits are nothing more than two faced snakes who present injustice through one sided perspectives for this very reason. What the elites and the powerful fear are those who speak for universal justice and who try to rally people to the flag of humanity and our commonality of hopes.

.... It is for this precise reason that the outrage machine has been cranked up full blast; the closer we get to seeing how we are all getting duped as a people, the more the elites try to dupe us through hoodwink [read Hoodwinking US]. The same elites are reverting to something even more sinister as corporations and those in power at the Federal level are nefariously silencing those who stand for unity and togetherness.

You seem to argue that there is no alternative other than getting back on Facebook.

It is easy for others to say “leave Facebook” and to log off as a way of protest; but Facebook is the largest media platform in the world. They have effectively monopolized the industry of information sharing; being silenced on Facebook is effectively lynching our first amendment right of a free press, fifth amendment right protection of liberty, and our human right to speak—especially when the Ghion Journal espouses unity and love. 

No, it is not "easy", but there is no alternative unless you want to be a part of the "system of global oppression". You either seek truth or you are banned in this era of "deception and subterfuge" that so effectively serves the ruling capitalist classes. Is this not the fundamental choice?

Condemned to Repeat It: History as Rerun

Click here to access article by Jason Hirthler from The Greanville Post. 

In this rather lengthy article the author looks at a variety of events from current news to early 20th century US history to illustrate his theme that the ruling capitalist class will insure that we see such events through their lens of class interests. Likewise, they will brand as "communism" any threats to their private ownership (and control) of the economy.

...the real threat to capitalism is communism, not fascism. As prolific and fearless author Michael Parenti writes, “fascism is nothing more than a final solution to the class struggle, the totalistic submergence and exploitation of democratic forces for the benefit and profit of higher financial circles.” 

The antidote to their views of events is to study the real history of class warfare instead of their fake history. I have lists of excellent resources to gain such an understanding (see here and here).

What Does the Sale of Venezuelan Oil in Currencies Other Than the US Dollar Mean?

Click here to access article originally from Mision Verdad in Spanish, translated into English and posted on TeleSur. (Thanks to Caren in northwest Oregon for alerting me to this article.)

The petrodollar is more important for US global domination than either arms exports or Hollywood culture, because it allows the US to be the biggest exporter of the dollar bills the rest of the world needs to be able to buy oil.

Most American have little or no understanding of this opening sentence. The US-led Empire's attempts at global domination means the threat of economic and military violence on countries who fail to support the Empire's interests of profit and power. Since the Vietnam War nearly bankrupted the US Treasury, the latter began in earnest to issue US Treasury securities backed by oil from Saudi Arabia and associates (which can only be purchased with US dollars) to capitalists and governments worldwide to support their increasing deficits. That is why our ruling class loves these head-chopping, medieval monarchs.  

US Treasury securities has long been regarded as one of the safest investments because they are backed by the economic and military power of the US. This means that those countries which do not support US policies, like Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Russia, etc. are threatened with, and often suffer from, both forms of power. With US government debt reaching $20 trillion dollars, many countries and capitalists are beginning to wonder about the safety of these investments, and many countries as reported in this article are starting to use alternative currencies to buy what they need. And, that is why the US is currently engaged surreptitiously and overtly in so many countries to insure US dominance. This, of course, costs money. As you can see, the deeper in debt the ruling class's government becomes, the more they use economic and military weapons against other countries. To me, this looks like a death spiral.


Meanwhile most Americans are either fast asleep or their attention is totally focused on entertainment to be bothered with such events.

Deplorable Ignorance and Indifference of Most Americans

Click here to access article by Stephen Lendman from his website.

I must, sadly, admit that I share the Lendman's reaction to a recent Gallup pole reported in this article.

Americans are the most over-entertained, uninformed people on the planet – mostly know-nothings about domestic and geopolitical issues mattering most.

A new Gallup poll provides more evidence – 58% of respondents supporting war if peaceful methods with North Korea fail. 

CIA vetoes Chelsea Manning’s Harvard fellowship

Click here to access article by Eric London of the World Socialist Web Site.

London provides us with another dramatic illustration of how one of the Deep State's secret operational organizations, the CIA, impacts decisions in the institution of higher education. This is generally true of all institutions simply because the capitalist system is not merely an economic system, but a comprehensive social-economic system that was created (centuries ago) by a relatively tiny class of capitalists and exists for their many benefits of profit and power. In this piece he reveals that Harvard withdrew a fellowship (def.) from Chelsea Manning only days after the CIA gave strong evidence of their opposition.

(As an aside, I must take this opportunity to point out a flaw in this article which is prevalent in nearly all of the articles published by this website. I write "nearly all" because several days ago I found one exception to this rule which very much surprised me. I am referring to their usual practice of omitting any links to evidence to support their arguments from other websites. It is a common fear among bloggers that if you provide such links, readers will be diverted to other websites and might never return to the original one. Such practice conforms to the strong tendency among Trotskyists to believe that they are the font of all political wisdom, or the vanguard that we should uncritically follow. I, of course, am critical of this perspective and practice in spite of the fact that I have a general respect for the accuracy of their views expressed on their website which I have followed since it began in the middle 1990s.)

I Have Zero Sympathy for Jemele Hill

Click here to access article by Teodrose Fikre founder of the Ghion Journal. 

If you are not already familiar with Teodrose Fikre, I would like to introduce a blogger who I believe offers a very unique perspective on the current oppressive state of affairs in the hope that he can contribute to our understanding of reality and better enable us to change it into something which can benefit us all. I was recently exposed to this author by watching him on RT's Redacted Tonight show where he was interviewed by Lee Camp.

In this article (that includes videos) he begins with illustrations of co-opted African-American media celebrities in order to introduce his views of racial and related issues which range from the mundane (like immediate issues that we all face while trying to survive in capitalist America) to the profound (racism).

Let me say from the outset that I do not know Jemele Hill outside of seeing her on TV. She could be a great human being and she deserves my respect for succeeding in a business that has always been dominated by male figures. As a sport analyst, she does a great job of presenting her audience with facts and figures in ways that Grantland Rice [would be] proud....

The reason I say this is two fold. The primary reason is the fact that Jemele chose to present the ills of the world through a partisan prism and in the process, either willfully or ignorantly, is actively perpetuating this system of “us versus them” mentality that is the root of our problem as a society. She is doing the same thing that the rest of the jackals in the Corporate State Media are doing; by appending all the excesses of this repressive ideology of capitalism and institutionalized nepotism on Trump, she gives cover to the invisible hands of malice that is bleeding all of us. 

NATO’s Anarchist Brigades

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from Voltaire Network. 

Presented in the West as the realization of a friendly utopia, the brand new « Rojava » is in reality a colonial state, designed and cemented in blood by Washington. This time, the plan is to expel the populations of the North of Syria and replace them with people who were not born there. In order to implement this ethnic cleansing, the Pentagon and the CIA have mobilised combatants from the circles of the European extreme-left. Thierry Meyssan reveals this insane project which has been ongoing for the last eighteen months.

In this article Meyssan, a French intellectual and political analyst, has presented much new information about the strange appearance of the US backed Kurdish rebels fighting in northern Syria. Although he uses undocumented information to support many of his arguments, the logic of his arguments fit very well with other independent sources that have carefully examined this phenomenon. 

I, too, for the last four or five years have been following these Syrian Kurds after rather romantic coverage of them appeared on the web (see this, this, and this), and was initially much impressed by these latter reports because Syrian Kurdish spokespeople always asserted that these Kurds want to continue to be a part of Syria but under a looser federation arrangement. Now I'm not so sure particularly after I learned that they were backed by the US and the US has established numerous military bases in the territory under Kurdish control (see this, this, and this).  

If what Meyssan reports is true (and I think it is), then this is another illustration of the sophistication of US's secret services to deceptively use people to serve their many nefarious agendas, and in particular, their Ziocon agenda to balkanize Syria.

US sent weapons to Syria through Ramstein military base - report

Click here to access article by Rebecca Staudenmaier from Deutsche Welle.

More news is leaking out regarding weapons supplied by the US Empire to their terrorist proxy forces in Syria--this time sourced from German newspapers.

Washington's air base in southwest Germany was used for a time to store and send weapons to Syrian rebels, according to a German news daily. If the report proves true, the US could have violated German law.

The US military has been using its massive air base in western Germany to arm rebel groups in Syria without Berlin's permission, according to a report from German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung published on Wednesday.

The Other 9/11: Unremembered and Unatoned

Click here to access article by Steve Brown from CounterPunch. (Modified at 4:30 PM Seattle time.)

Ruling classes always write their own self-serving histories, and our present capitalist ruling class is no different. Lest we forget about our ruling class's overthrow of an elected president of Chile, which you won't be exposed to in schools and corporate media, I thoroughly recommend this article:

On Monday, we saw the usual yearly outpouring of articles and editorials from mainstream media commemorating the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001, which killed 2,996 people and wounded 6,000 more. [my link]

Not that such memorials aren’t appropriate. They are simply insufficient. They fail to commemorate another 9/11 tragedy, one that took place 28 years earlier, in 1973 — not in America, but in Chile — and which caused the death – not of thousands, but of tens of thousands — while torturing and exiling 200,000 more.

I refer to the brutal coup d’état that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende....

Israeli Website Claims ISIS Commander Revealed As Mossad Agent

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

Smoking gun (def.) evidence found linking Daesh (ISIS) to Israel's Mossad.

There has long been speculation regarding ties between the Israeli government and the terror group Daesh, otherwise known as the Islamic State. Such speculation has been fueled by Israel’s reference to Daesh as a “useful tool” and its acknowledgment that it views a Syria under complete Daesh control as preferable to the continuation of the current Syrian government. It is supported as well by the extensive aid and even medical treatments that Daesh militants have received from Israel. However, allegations have recently emerged that could suggest that the connection is even deeper than previously believed.

Reagan Documents Shed Light on U.S. ‘Meddling’

Click here to access article by Robert Parry from ConsortiumNews. 

Parry has done some sleuthing by examining recently declassified documents to discover much of the history behind the setting up of NGOs as subversive organizations to be used by covert agencies to promote the interests of the Empire in other countries. He starts with The Asia Foundation, but soon discovers other NGOs organized in a similar fashion.

“Secret” documents, recently declassified by the Reagan presidential library, reveal senior White House officials reengaging a former CIA “proprietary,” The Asia Foundation, in “political action,” an intelligence term of art for influencing the actions of foreign governments.

The documents from 1982 came at a turning-point moment when the Reagan administration was revamping how the U.S. government endeavored to manipulate the internal affairs of governments around the world in the wake of scandals in the 1960s and 1970s involving the Central Intelligence Agency’s global covert operations.

Instead of continuing to rely heavily on the CIA, President Reagan and his national security team began offloading many of those “political action” responsibilities to “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) that operated in a more overt fashion and received funding from other U.S. government agencies.

Gold Oil Dollars Russia and China

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

I frequently post articles by Engdahl because I think he has a firm, but limited, grip on economic reality. I write "firm, but limited, grip" because he is a gold bug--the term I prefer is "gold fetishist". Apparently the terms apply to China and Russia. It is a fact that many, if not most people, have this fetish about gold, but it is likely the most polluting of mining industries. 

Gold has limited uses outside of gold fillings and replacement teeth (even these are being replaced by ceramics) and computers. It's not even used as money because it is so inconvenient--try buying groceries or gas with it. But countries still like to pollute the environment by digging it up and processing it with the worst polluting chemicals like mercury, and then store it forever in vaults (usually deep underground) to claim that their money is backed by the magic of gold.

Engdahl also doesn't see that the Empire's advanced capitalist system has anything to do with the irrational and suicidal policies that it is currently pursuing. 

The only factor keeping the dollar from total collapse is the US military and Washington’s deployment of deceptive NGOs around the world to facilitate plundering of the world economy.

However to his credit, he explains how this is affecting the policies of Russia, China, and other countries to develop their own economies.

[Russian Revolution series, part 4 of ?] September 12: New York Times hails Kornilov

An excerpt from a longer detailed article from World Socialist Web Site entitled "September 11-17: After the Kornilov Affair".

The New York Times backs Kornilov

The New York Times hails the would-be butcher of the Russian Revolution, General Lavr Kornilov, in its September 12 lead editorial, exposing once again the fraud that America is interested in “making the world safe for democracy.”

“He is,” the New York Times writes, “merely the representative of those forces which, long blamably quiescent, have at last coalesced to stop the rapid deliquescence of Russia, to keep it a nation, to stop its dissolution, to save it, in a word.”

The leading publication of American liberalism condemns Russia as “reel[ing] in drunken frenzy over the precipice of socialism into the abyss of anarchy.” It instead celebrates the most reactionary elements in Russian society, including “the whole force of Cossacks … under the leadership of General Kaledines [sic],” as well as “the peasant proprietors enroll[ed] in the Knights of St. George.”

The Times condemns Kerensky for failing to openly embrace Kornilov—though it remains silent over its previous calls that Kerensky himself assume dictatorial powers. Kerensky “had his choice to make, and when the test came, he preferred to throw his lot in with socialism,” the Times writes.

America’s Long War: US Tightens the Noose on China

Click here to access article by Sean Stinson from The Greanville Post. 

With the generals now in charge of the White House and Vice President Pence waiting in the wings, one wonders what plans lay in store for Trump. The obvious danger is that if he is removed, the resulting backlash from his support base could trigger an internal collapse and perhaps even civil war. The recent events in Charlottesville are nothing compared to the kind of hell which could spill over onto the streets in response to such a betrayal. Meanwhile the doubling down of troop deployment in Afghanistan, the unlawful search and seizure of Russian diplomatic property, wild threats against Venezuela and war games on the Korean Peninsula are signs that global stability is also under threat, perhaps more so than at any time in the last 70 years.

This is the best geopolitical analysis that I have seen recently regarding the Empire's policy of containment directed at China. While our economic and diplomatic attacks on Russia are overt, the policies of the Empire against China are very much under the radar of most of alternative media.

Grand strategy proposals among Empire capitalists offer another illustration of how capitalism functions. Capitalism is always a contest between capitalists for more profits and power, and since the beginning capitalists learned that colluding with others usually along national lines, much like neighborhood street gangs, could be of mutual benefit to gang members. This kind of development largely accounts for WWI and II. 

Since WWII, facilitated by the technological advances of our age, the US-led Empire's gang became transnational.  It now consists largely of capitalists whose countries US controlled since the end of WWII. This includes capitalists from the former British Empire, the rest of Europeans countries, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. (I exclude the Gulf states because our close cooperation with these medieval rulers are informed by a collusion of special geopolitical interests.) The Empire's rivals are primarily Russia and China. Under the threat posed by Deep State actors, Trump seems to be lashing out in all directions to appease them and save his administration instead of concentrating only on the containment of China as Bannon advised.

However, the containment policy is still on and political developments in southeast Asia, according to Stinson, will now play a crucial role for the Empire in containing China, specifically with regard to the latter's Belt and Road plans.

The Unspoken Truth behind the Colin Kaepernick Story

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from The Greanville Post. 

Curtin reminds us that America's favorite sport, football, serves not only to entertain us but to induce positive inclinations toward violence and dominance. It is no coincidence that the military often shows up at such events so that we look on favorably at their activities that promote the interests of the Empire's capitalist class while causing so much suffering throughout the world.

...the unspoken truth in the Kaepernick story is that football is the war sport par excellence, extremely violent, and deeply tied to the spectacle of cruelty that dominates American society today and that has caused so much suffering for black people and other people of color for centuries.

Why I Don’t Speak of 9/11 Anymore

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from The Greanville Post.

I have concluded – and this is impossible to prove definitively at this time because of the nature of such propagandistic techniques – that the use of all these words/numbers is part of a highly sophisticated linguistic mind-control campaign waged to create a narrative that has lodged in the minds of hundreds of millions of people and is very hard to dislodge.

Although this violates my usual policy of posting current articles (within a month), it seems of appropriate on this anniversary of the seminal event, which many believe was contrived by our masters in the capitalist ruling class, to reproduce this year old article in which Curtin (and others) points to unusual linguistic patterns that suggest a well planned brainwashing of the American people to terrify them into accepting their nonsensical narrative as to what happened on September 11, 2001 and to prepare them to accept much more interventionist policies by US military forces throughout the world. 

If Curtin's (and others) theory is correct--and I believe it is--our capitalist masters have pulled off the most brilliantly successful false-flag deception ever recorded in history. But more and more knowledgeable people are coming forward to challenge their story of what happened, and it remains to be seen if they have generated a hurricane-force backlash that will ultimately destroy them.

My take on today's activist politics from a class perspective

by Ron Horn for this website. (Edited for greater clarity on 9/21/2017.)

Often you will see in left-wing blogs highly educated people like Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges offering criticism of  anti-fascist violent clashes with rather openly fascist demonstrators. I believe their criticisms are muddled because they, like many other highly educated people of the upper-middle class, are mostly ambivalent about any significant clashes with ruling class authorities. They fear losing the privileges and wealth they have gained from many years of their active participation in ruling class institutions. In reading a recent article by Hedges, I was impressed with his progress in understanding political-economic issues, however his long years of indoctrination in capitalist views and values handicaps him from offering positive advice to young activists who want to fight fascism. He can only offer such harmless activities against the system as projects like Cooperation Jackson. With this essay I will attempt to suggest other activities that are far more promising. First, we must have an understanding of basic economic and political concepts related to capitalism such as liberalism and fascism.

Capitalism is a comprehensive social-economic system that integrates every institution in service to capitalism's core beliefs: the private ownership of the economy with the concomitant power to rule over society. Many of today's capitalist societies have been shaped by their history to present a facade of democratic rights and freedoms (see my commentary here) to such an extent that they regard their rule as "democratic" and sell many of their policies to ordinary people as promoting democracy and humanitarian concerns. In other words, they must use deception to promote their self-serving rule and to portray their rule as legitimate.

Liberalism is another concept that has been shaped by history. Of course the etymology of liberalism is freedom from restrictions. The early capitalist class was bound by charters issued by the monarchs which severely limited their enterprises. Thus when they came to power they declared their rule as "liberalism" which has become the classic use of the term meaning capitalist ideology or capitalism. Nowadays the meaning has evolved into freedom from arbitrary rule, freedom from restrictions on civil rights, tolerance for different opinions and lifestyles, and a belief in the possibility that capitalism can be reformed or adapted to meet society's needs. As you can see, its meaning is highly ambiguous and depends mainly on the context in which it is used. For this reason, I don't like using the word by itself without some clarifying remark.

Fascism is a confusing word for most people. The classic definition is used to describe Mussolini's rule in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s which featured the rule of the state which directly served the interests of corporations under a dictatorship in which the rule of law was only superficially respected, and maintained by a police state to suppress any significant opposition. (Be clear that capitalist classes and their governments always favor corporations which they created as engines to generate so much of their wealth and power.) With this definition it is easy to see that there is no definite boundary between fascist rule and capitalist rule because the latter always contains elements of the former. Pure fascist rule is capitalist rule shorn of the facade of what is known throughout the world (excluding the US) as bourgeois democracy--a mostly fake form of democracy. However nowadays the term "fascism" is often used casually and pejoratively to mean extreme authoritarian rule such as in a police state, but without any reference to a capitalist ruling class. Such a meaning is flawed. I believe that the classic definition is the most useful, and I always use the term in that sense.

As you can see, these terms are very confusing and deliberately so because the capitalist ruling class rules largely by deception and they want concepts confusing and ambiguous to undermine any real understanding of their rule. This is because the system of capitalism serves the interests of a relatively tiny capitalist class who "own" the economy under the rules and laws of the system, and this, of course, dramatically conflicts with their propaganda about their rule as representing "democracy". 

The vast majority of people are workers who under capitalism are reduced to merely rented workers (some people regard them as simply wage slaves) who have no control over their work or the value they create. The history of capitalism has revealed its tendency to promote the concentration of wealth (and power) in fewer and fewer hands. Since the Anglo-American ruling classes representing the bourgeois democratic nations were victorious over the fascist capitalists (Axis powers) in WWII, the evolving US-led Empire has favored the use of deception to maintain their rule and the operations of their corporations within their own countries. However when deception through their propaganda and organs of indoctrination fail, these capitalist ruling classes always turn to their enforcement agencies (police and military) to suppress any significant resistance to their rule. When this occurs as a usual practice, that type of rule is correctly identified as fascism.

Although the ruling classes of the Empire have constructed the framework of a police state, mostly they depend heavily on deception through their control of information by their giant media corporations supplemented by propaganda laced entertainment furnished by Hollywood corporations and their educational system. Such deceptive propaganda is also supported by the operations of 17 of highly secret (from us) "intelligence" (often subversive) agencies, and NGOs with nice sounding names (examples: National Endowment for Democracy, Center for American Progress, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Open Society Foundation) that advocate, and sometimes carry-out, policies that promote capitalist enterprises or governments which support their interests of profit and power. 

The rich capitalist class even support progressive organizations and individuals to act as "gatekeepers" (def.) for their interests. In this ruse such organizations and individuals pose as advocates of progressive actions, but in the end they carefully guide activists away from any effective activities. With these definitions clarified and the capitalist ruling class methods used to quash dissent in mind, I want to proceed to describe today's other political realities. 

There are signs everywhere that our ruling class of capitalists are increasingly relying on the classic methods of fascism to suppress resistance to their rule. However they are also using and improving upon every other method that every ruling class has used to suppress resistance like divide and rule, bribery, disinformation and propaganda, and outright assassinations; and they have added new ones such as co-optation and PSYOPs. In more recent decades Empire agents have also been perfecting the use of well-funded subversive organizations hiding behind NGO organizations (with bland sounding names) that function in targeted nations by hiring local dissidents to foment conflicts and strife. Added to these soft methods are more aggressive methods they developed to a high degree since its first application in Afghanistan and Nicaragua in the early 1980s: the use of gut-wrenching fear in the form of terrorism to induce compliance among targeted populations.

This new method was first applied domestically on September 11, 2001. As you can see it worked with astounding success by permitting the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Since then our ruling masters have applied this method successfully again here and elsewhere in the world (Ukraine and Libya) to overthrow governments which stood in the way of the Empire's global interests, and less successfully in Egypt, Syria (largely because of the interference of Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah forces), Georgia, Chechnya, and western China. (If you have doubts, listen to this podcast interview with Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI employee and whistleblower, wherein she gives a summary of such operations (in addition to the Paris shooting incident in 2013) which she refers to as "Gladio B". See also this.)

As you can see, the Empire's ruling class has a number of weapons in their arsenal to manage and control dissent and to shape consent to their policies which always promotes more wealth and power in the world for them. If activists are to become effective in this country to not only oppose the application of these methods but to end them by creating a new social system, they must become aware of this sophisticated arsenal; and this awareness must inform their strategies and tactics. Otherwise many people will be hurt without any positive effect, and nobody wants that.

Personally I think the best path to this education is through a positive project like the one I have advanced in the series "A Revolutionary Model". Instead of merely reacting to fascist activities like speakers and demonstrations that are likely organized in collaboration with the ruling class's subversive agents to foment conflicts, activists would engage in activities to advance the truth about the real world. Activists would also be educating themselves, the wider public, and at the same time, learn how to really deal effectively with the many efforts by ruling class agents to sabotage their activities. The exposure of the US-led Empire's criminal activities domestically and throughout the world is where they are most vulnerable; and by revealing these acts, we can destroy their credibility. This could lead to even greater conflicts, not with mostly created fascist provocateurs, but with the many real fascist forces within the US.

The point I wish to make is that activists should not let themselves be manipulated by simply reacting to fascist machinations, but to work actively to end the rule of capitalists and to establish a truly egalitarian society that functions of, by, and for the people. People would inevitably get hurt, but their injuries and even deaths would not be in vain. Such a future is well worth fighting for.

International Law? The Americans Don’t Give A Damn

Click here to access article by the Canadian international criminal lawyer Christopher Black from New Eastern Outlook. 

One feature of fascist capitalism is the ignoring of the rule of law. Black explains how the US is now ignoring international rules of law in their recent activities related to the seizure of Russian consulates.

The United States of America has sunk to a new low in diplomacy and civilized relations between nation states with its demand that Russia close its consular missions in San Francisco, Washington and New York, quickly followed by its order that the consular staff leave the premises while the FBI conducted a search of the premises and staffers personal apartments. To order the closure of a mission, or to order the withdrawal of a member of diplomatic staff, is within its right but a search of consular property is not. It is a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961. 

The Narrative of Fear and Insecurity

Click here to access article by David Malone from his website Golem XIV.

The contents of this article prompts two clarifying comments from me. First, FDR expressed his warning about "fear" on the eve (1933) of his presidency when the ruling class of the rich, known as capitalists, were extremely fearful of the reaction of their workers to the developing Great Depression which started in 1929. They were fearful that the workers might follow the Soviet example and overthrow their rule. In spite of considerable opposition largely from fascist-oriented American capitalists, FDR prevailed and saved the system from either going to fascist capitalism, as had happened in Germany, Italy, Japan, or having their liberal capitalist system destroyed by workers.

Second, I'd like to clarify that people such as Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Blair/Brown, and Margaret Thatcher are not the creators of ruling class strategies, but the gofers (def. 1) of the ruling class directorship otherwise known as the "Deep State" that functions in secret behind a curtain of illusion that dresses up their government as representing "democracy". Rich and powerful capitalists of the Deep State that hide in secret "think tanks" like the Council on Foreign Relations are the real creators of policies such as the proliferation of debt.

With these clarifications in mind, I think that Malone does an excellent job of explaining how the debt strategy has worked in recent decades as a very effective method of social control for our ruling masters. (This debt strategy has also worked to control entire countries as John Perkins has so graphically explained.)

People [our capitalist masters] knew [discovered] that in the good times Debt kept poor people quiet. Like any drug it could take away the fears and worries of being poor. For as long as their high lasted they would feel better, happier and politically calmer.  Debt drugged the poor into happy passivity. Why should they listen to those who argued for the old, hard, political struggles, when the politics of debt was so seductive and easy? People [our capitalist masters] encouraged you to have debt. They fell over themselves to give you as much as you wanted. More in fact. Much more.  More than you needed. More than you could every really pay back. But who cared? This was true for the poor but also for the entire system of banks and traders and funds that made the system work. [my editing]

The political lesson learned, was that when the bad times came, far from being useless or harmful, debt worked new wonders.  In the bad times debt created fear.

[Russian Revolution series, part 3 of ?] One Hundred Years Ago: the Kornilov-Kerensky Putsch

Click here to access article by Michael Jabara Carley from Strategic Culture Foundation.
(9/13/2017 note: I am posting a series of articles on the Russian Revolution, but not necessarily all by Carley. Although Carley wrote a first article entitled "One Hundred Years Ago: the Triumph of the February Revolution 1917", I am not including this in the series. Sorry for the confusion.)

This is a third article in a series which I will post about the Russian Revolution of 1917. Please read my introduction to the series if you have not already done so. 

In August 1917, Russia was at war with the German-led Central Powers and at war with itself. A great revolution had been launched in February/March 1917 by workers and soldiers in the Russian capital of Petrograd. That revolution had spread quickly across the country. Soviets (or popular councils) of workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ deputies were established from Petrograd to Vladivostok. A Provisional Government was established under the watchful eyes of Soviet authorities. Red Petrograd became the heart of the Russian revolutionary movement. Paradoxically, neither the leadership of the Provisional Government nor even of the Petrograd Soviet was interested in harnessing and developing the energies of the revolutionary masses. 

Chilling Survey Reveals Majority of Americans Willing To Preemptively Nuke Other Nations

Click here to access article by Darius Shahtahmasebi from Anti-Media. 

What it [the research] ultimately shows is that Americans want to fight (and instigate) wars but no longer want to expend their own people commissioning such conflicts. Polls have also demonstrated that the majority of Americans approve of the use of drone warfare against suspected terrorists, another example of Americans approving of killing people without realistically endangering personnel.

Contrary to this conclusion arrived at by the author of this article, I believe that the research results show the power of the US ruling class to instill hatred of their enemies in the minds of ordinary Americans. I know from my own experience that the ongoing portrayal of the Japanese as beasts by US media enabled the American populace to accept the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The same applies to Iran. (I was awakened to this discovery when a sibling expressed such hatred toward Iran and praised the virtues of Saudi Arabia.) 

Also one must factor in the ruling class's induced passivity and acceptance of authority into one's interpretation of the results. What the 1974 classic Milgram study demonstrated is that in a society taught to induce blind obedience to authority figures, people can be rather easily encouraged by authorities to apply apparently very painful electric shocks to others in conditions where they will suffer no adverse consequences themselves and will please authorities in their presence. Thus ruling classes can create conditions to induce ordinary people to commit horrific acts by teaching them to hate their enemies using all kinds of fake information and officially sanctioning such acts.

Americans, like the Germans and Japanese, are intrinsically no different than anyone else when allowances are made for their idiosyncratic experiences and their history of being untouched by the experience of war on their continent since the Civil War of 1860. What they do share with millions across the globe is living in nations that are ruled by self-serving ruling classes that are overwhelmingly capitalist. The system itself, fueled by the quest for profit and power, encourages war for access to cheap resources and labor. The solution, which this research and others like it supports, is not to denigrate Americans but to end the rule of tiny classes of people, and in today's world that means the end of capitalist rule and the creation of social systems that can support harmony among people and with nature.

We Told You So: Google Is NSA

Click here to access article by Phil Butler from New Eastern Outlook.

The age of Big Brother has now arrived (a little late) with Google's efforts to filter out information that might conflict with information and opinions supplied by media corporations. 

Google wants to be Big Brother’s eyeballs on you. All us Internet gurus knew this since before the NSA was found out spying on everybody. But now the Mountain View [city in California where Google's headquarters is located] boys are more determined than ever to filter your information, and to obliterate any semblance of truth reaching people.

If I had led into an article with that paragraph even five years ago, I’d have been instantly labeled a “conspiracy theorist” or worse.

The Secret History of FEMA

Click here to access article by Garrett M. Graff from Wired. 

The author reveals the extensive history of an organization that has many iterations of evolution, but its priority beginning in the 1970s, which was largely kept secret, was to protect the nation's officials (and likely members of the capitalist ruling class involved in the Deep State).

Created in April 1979, FEMA brought together more than 100 programs from across the government; publicly, the agency would be known for coordinating the government’s response to natural disasters like floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes. But few in the public understood that much of FEMA’s resources went instead to its primary mission—coordinating the nation’s post-apocalypse efforts—and that the majority of its funding and a third of its workforce was actually hidden in the nation’s classified black budget. The agency’s real focus and its real budget was known to only 20 members of Congress.

Indeed, FEMA was hobbled from the start, limited by weak central leadership, full of political patrons, and pulled in multiple directions by its disparate priorities—some public, some secret.

FEMA truck stuck 

in Houston, TX on August 30, 2017.

This checkered history resulted in what today is a largely ineffective agency to deal with the increasing occurrence of environmental disasters. Since the 1970s the agency when it began to expand its operations to disaster recovery, what FEMA has demonstrated to me is that providing recovery services for the people after a disaster is a low priority for our masters in the ruling class.

This confusions [sic] and lack of focus all came home to roost in August 2005 as Hurricane Katrina churned through the Gulf of Mexico toward New Orleans. The federal government’s response to the hurricane—combined with mistakes at the local and state government level—was an epic disaster in its own right. It triggered the strongest indictment of governmental incompetence of the 21st century. FEMA Director Michael Brown, a one-time horse breeder who lacked any emergency management experience, became a national punchline.

In the end, the only arm of the federal government with the resources, logistics, and manpower necessary to help on a massive scale—the US military—had to step in.

Photos from a Week in the DPRK

Click here to access article by Eva Bartlett from her website In Gaza.

Bartlett is one of world's outstanding humanitarian journalists. Last month she, a Canadian, visited the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and captured with photos the social life of the country. Unfortunately our understanding of other countries is too often limited by our media corporations which serve the interests of power and profit of the tiny, very rich, capitalist class who rule over the US and much of the world. With these photos and commentary Bartlett portrays another view of the DPRK that our masters don't want us to see. She also provides us with other resources to learn about the true history of a country that the American military almost disappeared from the earth.

From August 24-31, I visited the DPRK (North Korea) as part of a very small delegation interested in hearing from North Koreans themselves about their lives, the US sanctions and incessant war manouevres, their history and more. A sample of photos and videos, with more to follow soon.

Please bear in mind that this country is among the most vilified on earth–along with Syria and formerly (now-destroyed) Libya, to name a few. Western media does not speak of North Korea’s people, nor of the amazing infrastructure, free housing and medical care, impressive agriculture and green energy, and the many things the people of the DPRK have done so well which I’ll elaborate on over the coming days.

Will special counsel Mueller examine the DNC server, source of the great Russiagate caper?

Click here to access article by George Parry from The Inquirer, the online version of the Philadelphia Inquirer. (Thanks to Christopher in northwest Oregon for alerting me to this revealing article.) (Clarifying remarks added at 3:10 PM Seattle time.)

Parry explains the origins of the "Russiagate" caper which was revealed by "...an exacting forensic examination of the available evidence by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), an organization of former CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, and military intelligence officers, technical experts, and analysts." According to Wikipedia the group consists of mostly retired people from the spy agencies. Thus they have a great deal of independence from the ruling class, and their views can be taken much more seriously than agency officials. 

It's obvious that there are sections of the ruling class that are not going along with this elaborate myth being propagated by media corporations under the control of the dominant section of the ruling capitalist class. (I sometimes enjoy seeing members of the ruling class fighting amongst themselves--as long as we don't take their many lies seriously.)

Thus was laid the cornerstone of the Trump-Russia-collusion conspiracy theory.

Since then, the mainstream media have created a climate of hysteria in which this unsubstantiated theory has been conjured into accepted truth. This has resulted in investigations by Congress and a special counsel into President Trump, his family, and his campaign staff for supposed collusion with the Russians.

But in their frenzied coverage, the media have downplayed the very odd behavior of the DNC, the putative target of the alleged hack.

Many questions remain that will likely never be investigated and answered in this ongoing campaign of disinformation derogatorily referred to as "Russiagate".

[Russian Revolution series, part 2 of ?] One Hundred Years Ago: the Russian Revolution and the July Crisis, 1917

Click here to access article by Michael Jabara Carley from Strategic Culture Foundation.
(9/13/2017 note: I am posting a series of articles on the Russian Revolution, but not necessarily all by Carley. Although Carley wrote a first article entitled "One Hundred Years Ago: the Triumph of the February Revolution 1917", I am not including this in the series. Sorry for the confusion.)

This is a second article in a series which I will post about the Russian Revolution of 1917. Please read my introduction to the series if you have not already done so.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 did not occur all at once, but over a period of eight months and four political crises. The abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the collapse of the tsarist government were provoked by a spontaneous eruption of popular anger in the capital city of Petrograd. The collapse was both anticipated and not. French and British diplomats had warned that the tsarist government was on its last legs, but revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin, in exile in Switzerland, were caught off guard, and hurried to return home.

Revolutionaries of all stripes, including Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), rushed to organise Soviets (literally "councils"), tumultuous democratic assemblies of soldiers, workers and peasants, but they were reluctant to take all governmental power into their own hands.

Journalist fired for exposing how CIA ran weapons to terrorists ...

Click here to access a 6:24m interview with Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, a Bulgarian journalist, by an RT host. This post is a followup to the explosive story that I posted Tuesday from Zero Hedge regarding this incident. 

Bulgarian investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva says she was fired after reporting about how the Central Intelligence Agency ran weapons to Al-Nusra terrorists through Azerbaijan. Gaytandzhieva was let go for refusing to reveal her sources, she tells RT’s Anya Parampil.

This is more smoking gun evidence to the collusion of our government (CIA) with the governments of Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and many European countries to provide weapons and other military support to the various terrorist armies in Syria. There has also been other sources that have reported on these Bulgarian weapons: from Syria itself where weapons manufactured in Bulgaria were captured from ISIS and their affiliates, from Wikileaks intercepted emails, etc. See this and this.