Surviving Capitalism (Not)

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Entire CRISIS INDUSTRY Arose After Legalization of Psych-Ops in 2012 NDAA -- (a "best post")

Click here if you wish to access the video directly from YouTube which features Debbie Lusignan on her YouTube channel called Sane Progressive carefully explaining the crisis industry that has rapidly arisen after the Smith–Mundt Act (2012).

The Act was tacked onto the infamous National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013. This implications of this Act allowed propaganda and psychological operations (PSYOPS) to be legal within the USA. The designers of this bill carefully avoided explicitly mentioning that what was legal for US government agencies to use PSYOPS as well as propaganda in foreign countries, was now legal within the USA with the passage of this Act. Here is the pertinent language of the 2012 amendment to the Smith–Mundt Act of 1948:

Board of Governors are authorized to use funds appropriated or otherwise made available for public diplomacy information programs to provide for the preparation, dissemination, and use of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United States, its people, and its policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures, the Internet, and other information media, including social media, and through information centers, instructors, and other direct or indirect means of communication.

Thus, all the propaganda issued abroad by such organizations as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Marti, etc., were now legal in addition to the PSYOPS engaged in by the CIA all over the world. They just adjusted the Smith-Mundt Act to release the restrictions on the original bill of 1948 that prohibited such operations within the USA. This paved the way for the burgeoning "crisis industry". Lusignan carefully explains the growth and the details of many companies that consist of this industry.

Because of personal issues that are taking much of my time, I didn't have time to listen to all of the video. I listened basically to the first 30 minutes. But this material is outstanding. It contains her basic argument that the passage of the NDAA bill of 2013 permitted propaganda and PSYOPS within the USA, the details of the various companies that engage in fake political operations, and an excellent summary (from 28:00m to 30:00m) of the material she has presented so far. (You may need to wait a few more seconds for the following video to upload on your device.)

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

US Senate report details funding of patient advocacy groups by opioid manufacturers

Click here to access article by Brian Dixon from World Socialist Web Site.

Although Dixon's report focuses mainly on one minority report issued by a member of the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, he also cites other research from other sources that support the main thesis of this report as reported by the Executive summary of the report:

The fact that these same manufacturers provided millions of dollars to the groups described below suggests, at the very least, a direct link between corporate donations and the advancement of opioids friendly messaging. By aligning medical culture with industry goals in this way, many of the groups described in this report may have played a significant role in creating the necessary conditions for the U.S. opioids epidemic.

The article lends support to the generalization that not only big corporations associated with the "legitimate" drug corporations, but all major corporations, including especially major financial and industrial, collude by using their riches to induce and corrupt other smaller sectors of the economy to support their profits (and ultimately power). This is so typical of a fascist type of capitalist governing system in which riches are used without any significant government regulations--because they control the government--as a method to extract ever more profits and concentrated power.

State Department Troll Farm Receives Huge Cash Infusion

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

The author digs up the latest efforts to strengthen the ongoing efforts by the US ruling capitalist class to enclose your minds and that of people residing in the nations governed by the US-led Empire into thought concentration camps under their control. They have learned much from the experience of corporate efforts to successfully sell products to American consumers, and are now applying these lessons to capture our political thoughts as well.

Although financial and industrial corporations rule the Empire--and this constitutes fascism--the US Empire fascists prefer the more cost-effective methods of mind manipulation to that of brute force which characterized so much of the efforts of classical fascist governments of German and Italian capitalist ruling classes in the 1930s and early 1940s.

US Collapse – the Spectacle of Our Time

Click here to access article by Finian Cunningham from Sputnik. (While I am distracted with personal tasks, I am so appreciative that activists like Christopher (northwest Oregon) who draw my attention to outstanding articles like this to post on my website.)

Yes, this website is sponsored by the Russian government, but there is no evidence to even suggest that the views expressed are sponsored by either Russian capitalists or nationalists. In contrast to US media corporations which pitch pure propaganda in an increasingly failing effort to promote the hegemonic interests of the declining US-led Empire, Russia government sponsored websites invite independent journalists from all over the world to express their views. And I'm sure that Cunningham would not be posting articles on their website if he was pressured to promote any particular interest except that of the truth as he sees it.

In this article the Irish journalist Cunningham places so much responsibility on ordinary Americans like us to prevent a nuclear war conflagration and end the rule of the hegemonic US-led Empire peacefully so that humans can have a future to create better social systems. Of course, he is right. Are we up to (capable of meeting) this challenge?

World history has reached a foreboding cross-roads due to the collapsing of the American Empire. Can we navigate a safe path forward avoiding catastrophic war that often accompanies the demise of empires?

A lot, it seems, depends on ordinary American people becoming politically organized to challenge their dysfunctional system run by and for the elites. If the American people cannot hold their elites to account and break their corrupt rule, overhauling it with something more equitable and democratic, then the world is in peril of being plunged into total war. We can only but wish our American brothers and sisters solidarity and success.

Monday, February 26, 2018

Sunday, February 25, 2018

CIA, Media & The Mind-Controlled Opposition

Click here if you wish to access this rather lengthy (nearly 1hr and 17minutes), but important video directly from YouTube that I have embedded below my commentary. (At 7:45 AM on 2/27/2018 I edited the last paragraph to clarify my views regarding Seymour Hersh.)

In this edition of Probable Cause Newsbud Founder and Editor Sibel Edmonds is joined by Douglas Valentine, author of several non-fiction books, one novel, and one volume of poetry. He has lectured and appeared on TV and radio talk shows, testified as an expert witness, served as a documentary film consultant and worked as a private investigator. His most recent book is The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World. Edmonds and Valentine discuss the influence and operations of the CIA abroad and domestically, while controlling the Media.

After introductory remarks the host of the show and founder of Newsbud, formerly Boiling Frogs Post, and well-known whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds interviews Douglas Valentine (see this and this), author of many books, the most recent of which is entitled The CIA as Organized Crime. She starts out by asking Valentine about his impressions of the Neflix production of Wormwood (on my recommended films list). He tends to go on and on making cynical statements about Seymour Hersh which overwhelms the significance of the Wormwood series that mostly exposes the bio-weapons research that scientist Frank Olson was engaged in, and his subsequent murder in 1953 at the hands of the CIA when he posed a threat to expose what they were doing.

Following this Edmonds asks about the CIA to which Valentine engages in a lengthy answer with various statements that suggest that they are a nebulous bureaucracy with agents embedded everywhere: in corporate media, government, military, educational institutions like Harvard, in left-wing organizations, etc.

When she asks him about the relationship of the CIA to the Deep State, his answer is even more nebulous: "they are millions of people working together." He doesn't seem to make any distinction between the CIA and the Deep State. Much later in the interview he makes several references to a "ruling class" in relation to the creation of heroes in American culture (in order to promote the consumption of products), but this is totally absent when he answers her question about the relationship of the CIA to the Deep State. It's clear to me that he doesn't really know much about the contemporary ruling class and their interests in promoting the Empire's capitalist interests and hegemony. He's so obsessed with the CIA that he can't see the bigger picture.

With my long time experience with Edmonds' websites, I don't think she understands either about the economic and political nature of the Deep State as the executive political network of the ruling capitalist class.

However, I don't wish to downplay the excellent contributions by Edmonds and Valentine who have frequently exposed the machinations of the secret intelligence agencies or the fake journalists that serve them. Except for Hersh about whom I am withholding judgement, as the Brits would say, they are "spot-on"! (def.)

Friday, February 23, 2018

Independent Journalist Corner: A Conversation with Andre Vltchek

Click here to access an interview with Vltchek conducted by Danny Haiphong that is posted on Black Agenda Report.

I continue to find so much compatibility with what Vltchek says and writes, particularly the following quotes in this piece:

Mass media became synonymous with imperialist propaganda. It is all very well-orchestrated; choreographed. And people in the West are so thoroughly brainwashed that they stopped asking questions regarding the most essential issues.

And most especially this:

The majority of people in the West are not able to commit themselves. They are too selfish, too egotistic. And they are full of nihilism: sweating and shitting nihilism.

They reject all ideologies and they do not want to govern. They despise those who are holding power. However, without ideology and without aiming at governing, no true revolution can take place. I don’t think the Western left is serious: there is no revolutionary force there, no willingness to sacrifice anything for the struggle. It is all weak, spineless and boring: like shouting at the high definition television set, or insulting opponents in the pub.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

How Biblical is Zionism?

Click here to access article by Laurent Guyénot from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

The author, who has a "PhD in Medieval Studies at Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2009", provides a well-documented, in-depth study of how a fundamentalist interpretation of the Hebrew Bible has been a prime influence on the imperialist inclinations of Zionist leaders throughout the history of the Zionist movement.

Only by taking account of the biblical roots of Zionism can one understand why Zionism has never been a nationalist movement like others. It could not be, as Gilad Atzmon remarked, from the moment it defined itself as a Jewish movement, aimed at creating a “Jewish state”.[6] Jewish exceptionalism is a biblical concept that has no equivalent in any other ethnic or religious culture.

I beg to differ (def.) a little bit with the last statement because many American Christians, who have frequently embraced Zionism, have also a fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian Bible.

Bringing us up to date on the post-WWII history of Israel, Guyénot writes:

...when the British started to limit Jewish immigration in Palestine in the 1930s, the Zionists turned to the rising new Imperial power: the United States. Today, the stranglehold of Zionists on US imperial policy is such that a few Jewish neocons can pull the US into a series of wars against Israel’s enemies with a single false flag attack.

The capacity of Israel to hijack the Empire’s foreign and military policy requires that a substantial Jewish elite remain in the US. Even Israel’s survival is entirely dependent on the influence of the Zionist power complex in the United States (euphemistically called the “pro-Israel lobby”).

Did you notice that in the first paragraph in the above quote, the author makes an oblique reference to the real significance of 9/11?

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

The Coming Wars to End All Wars

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from his web-log (blog).

Americans, he argues, are being led step by step into a final series of war "to end all wars". All important political signs confirm he is right: the constant din of anti-Russian, anti-Iranian, anti-Chinese propaganda are designed to prepare gullible Americans into accepting this option. So far there are few signs that Americans are opposing this steady drift into what Empire propagandists portray as a kind of biblical Armageddon.

We are moving toward a global war that will become nuclear if an international ant-war movement doesn’t quickly arise to stop it. Most people bemoan the thought of such a war to end all wars, but refuse to analyze the factors leading to it. It happens step-by-step, and many steps have already been taken with more coming soon. It’s so obvious that most can’t see it, or don’t want to.

A major source for the Empire's promotion of this final series of wars is the extreme indebtedness of the USA to the holders of US sovereign debts (the total is nearly $21 trillion), and most of these creditors are members of the ruling capitalist class throughout the nations of the US-led Empire. (A careful reading of this report confirms this.) They, for the most part, see successful wars as the only option to climb out of the huge debt hole that the Empire's ruling capitalists have dug to finance their imperial project.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

The US-UK Deep State Empire Strikes Back: ‘It’s Russia! Russia! Russia!’

Click here to access article by James George Jatras from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Credit goes to Christopher in northwest Oregon for alerting me to this article.)

Although the author declares that the Deep State, which is also known as the capitalist ruling class by those who are awake, has with this Russiagate stories accomplished the targeting of Russia as the next enemy of the US in the minds of most Americans who are fast asleep. Of course, China is another target often mentioned among those officials who serve the ruling class, but for now the focus is on Russia as the devil incarnate because China is making many American capitalists rich.

Because the ruling capitalist class, aka "the Deep State", remains behind the curtain of reality as represented to us by their media corporations, their role is always hidden from view. The Deep State actors hide behind the secret walls of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, Brookings Institute, and host of other highly secretive "think tanks". Jatras' treatment of the subject only adds to the confusion by substituting the agents of this major propaganda project in place of the Deep State (the leading political members of the ruling capitalist class).

Furthermore, he seems to suggest that the whole Russiagate project was designed to re-direct the public's attention from the ruling class project of insuring that Hillary Clinton was elected and to cover up their activities on behalf of HC. To support this argument, he writes:

The growing sense of panic was palpable. Oh my – this is a curtain that just cannot be allowed to be pulled back!

What to do, what to do . . .

It's clear to me that Russia has been in the cross-hairs of the US ruling class after Putin started scuttling their plans to destabilize Syria in 2011. The capitalist ruling class have also watched with growing alarm the rise of an independent Russia which colludes with a rising China, the combination of which seeks to impose a framework of multilateral relations on the world which interferes with the US-led Empire's New World Order project.

With the public's rejection of Hillary Clinton, the chosen leader to promote this project of the ruling class, the latter were furious. But the reaction was not a "growing sense of panic", it was a realization that they needed to increase their propaganda efforts to impose on ordinary Americans an awareness of the growing threat of Russia which interferes in American elections, in reality, of course, to their imperial project. Initially the ruling class went after Trump; but since he has largely adopted their agenda, they have directed their efforts more at demonizing Russia.

Monday, February 19, 2018

There Is No Time Left

Click here to access article by Robert Hunziker from CounterPunch.

The author refers to scientist James G. Anderson who was one of the leading scientists that warned us about the deteriorating ozone layer in our atmosphere which could have had disastrous effects on humans if corrective measures had not been undertaken in time.

In his acceptance speech, James G. Anderson, Harvard professor of atmospheric chemistry, now warns that it is foolhardy to assume we can recover from the global warming leviathan simply by cutting back emissions.

Accordingly, the only way humanity can dig itself out of the climate change/global-warming hole is by way of a WWII type effort with total transformation of industry off carbon and removal of carbon from the atmosphere within five years. The situation is so dire that it requires a worldwide Marshall Plan effort, plus kneeling in prayer.

The War on Dissent: the Specter of Divisiveness (with Video)

Click here to access article by CJ Hopkins from The Greanville Post.

This article is loaded with cynicism as Hopkins exclaims about how many Americans are so easily manipulated into believing into the latest outrageous fake propaganda using the "Russiagate" theme. I have no idea how many of my fellow Americans fall for this latest lie because my attention has been focused on personal tasks; and he doesn't furnish any evidence to support this supposed gullibility. However, judging by past lies promulgated by the ruling class through their media corporations, the majority of Americans probably believe this propaganda also. Remember that a major part of American indoctrination, the part of classroom experience that the ruling capitalist class always refers to as "education", is the major dictum that one must always respect and obey authorities who always have the interests of ordinary Americans at heart.

To launch the phony "War on Terror" this conditioning of obedience was buttressed by the false-flag of the 9/11 tragedy that was engineered by US intelligence agencies in collusion with those of Israel and Saudi Arabia in order to justify all subsequent use of our armed forces in the Middle East and elsewhere. Referring to the 9/11 event, Hopkins writes:

Several million of us figured that one out … or at least figured out that the US government, the “intelligence community,” and the corporate media were using Americans’ emotional response to the September 11 terrorist attacks to con us into supporting the invasion and destabilization of the Middle East for reasons that had nothing to do with terrorism.

Then he continues on to castigate Americans for believing all the subsequent lies that are repeated endless by media corporations. He ends by writing "If you enjoyed ... all the other features of The War on Terror … you’re going to love The War on Dissent."

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Saturday, February 17, 2018

BBC Journalism 101: They’re Just ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ in Need of an Explanation [a best post]

The Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth) alerted me to the following 28:33 YouTube video that features a rebuttal by Roland Angle, a highly qualified civil engineer of 50 years, to a recent BBC program entitled “The people who think 9/11 may have been an ‘inside job.’”. There are many such sites in which various qualified people or eye witnesses offer evidence that conflicts with the official government's story which is parroted by all corporate media, but never permitted to express their views on corporate media.

The many architects and engineers that are active in AE911Truth are risking their own careers by taking issue with the official explanations of the tragedy that happened on September 11, 2001. Thus, they are very conservative in their challenges to the official story which I am convinced was a major false-flag event that made possible the launching of the War on Terror which permitted US armed forces to actively intervene in so many countries of the world since then.

Two weeks ago, the BBC published a vapid iteration of its unrivaled brand of anti-journalism on all things 9/11, which it unironically titled: “The people who think 9/11 may have been an ‘inside job.’”

Unlike the hate-mongering Gizmodo article of two weeks before that, the BBC piece adopted a softer tone, trotting out the familiar trope of suggesting that people believe in “conspiracy theories” because of their supposed “need for an explanation that’s proportional to the event itself.”

(The following video may take a few more seconds to upload on your device.)

Also, I recommend reading the commentary posted on the YouTube post.

The All-Important Doorman

Click here to access article by Jeff Thomas from International Man. (Credit for this post goes to Christopher of northwest Oregon.)

The only problem with this post is that its treatment of the "deep state" is so superficial, and its author posts it on a site (International Man) that is dedicated to capitalist speculation. Having perused the website, it is clear that it is managed by a transnational capitalist whose grasp of history is, of necessity, very ahistorical and superficial. Likewise, the author only suggests that the political system has been infected with corruption by big banks, the military industrial complex, Big Pharma, etc.... Thus, both the author and the website administrator cast a condescending glance at those ordinary people who naively believe that "somehow, those who are elected remain loyal to the voters, not to those who paid for their election".

Meanwhile, they with their riches, which were apparently obtained through stock market speculation, neglect to mention that the system of capitalism has given the super-winners of the system not only fantastic riches but also super powers to ensure that ordinary people remain ignorant of their comprehensive corruption of society.

The super-rich, that is, the owners of the banks, the industrial complex, Big Pharma, etc. constitute a ruling class that controls not only the political system, but every institution of society. This control of every institution insures that their values and interests are supported and that no one is allowed any significant platform to dissent from capitalist ideology. The author suggests that except for these super-rich corrupters of the system, the system would be fine. This post is an excellent illustration of the American version of libertarianism.

The metaphor of the doorman is superficially apt, but unoriginal, and, of necessity, only attempts to explain political reality, and not the broader picture of capitalist rule. This allows the author and the website administrator to smugly continue on to enrich themselves with stock market speculation and to sneer at dumbed-down workers.

Friday, February 16, 2018

The Wars No One Notices

Click here to access article by Stephanie Savell from The Unz Review.

The author describes her journey from an uninformed, uncaring person about the many wars we are engaged in throughout the world to where she is now: an awakened and caring researcher on the costs of these wars.

Do Americans really not care? That, at least, seems to have been the judgment of the many journalists who received our press release about the report.

In truth, this has become something like a fact of life in America today, one that’s only been made more extreme by the media’s full-time fascination with President Donald Trump — from his tweets to his insults to his ever-wilder statements. He — or rather the media obsession with his every twitch — poses just the latest challenge to getting attention of any sort for the true costs to us (and everyone else) of our country’s wars.

In addition to their chronic use of fake news and propaganda, the ruling capitalist class, in my opinion, has mainly accomplished through their successful 9/11 monumental false-flag event.

Operation Pacific Eagle: Duterte Falls in Line with US Plans for the Philippines

Click here to access article by Elliott Gabriel from Mint Press News.

I have watched with amazement at the antics of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte during the past 1 1/2 years. I first witnessed his outrageous anti-American statements which called a member of Obama's administration "a gay son-of-a-bitch" and Obama "a son of a whore". Then there were his visits to China and Russia followed by his statements that he was aligning his country with China and Russia. Following this there appeared almost on cue the appearance of the Islamic army in the Philippines which was followed by Duterte asking the US for help in fighting them! Either Duterte is a very good actor or he is unstable to the extreme, possibly both.

In this second article of a series of three by Gabriel he draws on comments by exiled Filipino revolutionary Jose Maria Sison and Professors William I. Robinson and Roland Simbulan to ascertain what Duterte is really like. The author tends to see Duterte's personality as very much like the Empire's Donald Trump. According to Sison, Duterte's former college professor, Duterte has been under the control of the US Empire all along. And Gabriel reminds us of the history of the Philippines as the first US imperialist launching of what has now become a worldwide Empire.

For more information regarding US-Philippine relations, I recommend his first article entitled "Operation Pacific Eagle in the Philippines: Washington’s New Colonial War" and his last article yet to be posted.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Tet Offensives, Hungry China and Dumbed Down Americans

Click here to access article by Linh Dinh from OpEdNews.

After describing the cartoonish nature--due to the influence of the ruling class's ideological institutions--of the views of ordinary Americans regarding history and countries, the author, who has recently returned to his native Vietnam, launches into the real history of China, southeast Asia, and Western countries. He concludes with a most important question that has been on my mind:

Drugged, decadent, easily manipulated, narcissistic and ignorant of history, how will Americans deal with the existential storm awaiting them?

Russian Historiography of the Korean War

Click here to access article by George Burchett, son of renowned independent journalist Wilfred Burchett. (Much of what I learned about the true story of the Vietnam War during that war was furnished by his father, Wilfred Burchett, an Australian independent journalist.)

George, who is an artist living in Hanoi, Vietnam, writes of the massive efforts in the continuing campaign of denial of bacteriological warfare engaged in by the US forces in the Korean War by subsequent propaganda agents of the class that rules the US-led Empire, particularly evidence sourced from supposedly recovered documents from old Soviet files in the 1990s.

I strongly urge those who are interested in the US use of bio-weapons in the Korean War read a recent book by Dave Chaddock entitled This Must Be the Place (2013) in which he extensively covers the subject from both sides of the controversy and comes to the definite conclusion that the US did indeed use bacteriological weapons in Korea and adjacent areas of China. Chaddock also confirms what George Burchett writes about Unit 731 of the Japanese army headed by General Shiro Ishii in WWII.

These “former officers” belonged to Unit 731. While many of the worst Japanese war criminals were tried and sentenced to death by a U.S. Military Court in Tokyo, the leader of Unit 731, General Shiro Ishii, and his top aides, were granted immunity and asked to work on the U.S. BW research and development program.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

‘Lost Connections’ review: the material basis of depression

Click here to access article by Martin Swayne from In Defence of Marxism (British Trotskyist website).

This is a book review of Lost Connections authored by Johann Hari, a British journalist. His book was obviously inspired by his own experience growing up with depression and being treated by the medical and pharmacological establishments who viewed depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain. This view supported the belief that the favored treatment was to ingest chemicals to restore balance. Hari's journey ended up challenging this belief. This parallels my own journey to unlearn so much of what I was taught growing in a capitalist society to where I am now with this blog challenging such an organization of society as the root cause of so many of the evils we experience everyday of our lives.

The reviewer writes:

It has been proved that depression is, to a significant degree, not a problem of the brain, but of life in general. In that sense, depression is not a mystical and irrational illness. It is a very rational and understandable response to the adverse conditions of capitalist society.

.... To his credit the author names disconnection from meaningful work as cause number one.

Hari finds the second cause to be "disconnection" from society. This flies in the face of capitalist ideology as interpreted by Margaret Thatcher who said "there is no such thing as society". Once again the extreme individualism of capitalist societies create many conditions that end up causing disconnection or isolation from society which often leads to depression.

Monday, February 12, 2018

Under socialism

by cartoonist Stephanie McMillan

The war against our minds sponsored by the ruling class of the US Empire

by Ron Horn, administrator of this website.

Over the past decade I've witnessed with increasing alarm the use of carefully crafted capitalist propaganda the intent of which is to fill our minds with rubbish about the motivations of the US Empire to garner our support for their interests of profit and power. With the ruling class's history of increasingly fake news that really took off with the assassinations of prominent political figures, JF Kennedy, his brother Robert, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the official narrative about 9/11 which represented a coverup of their major false-flag crime, we are now seeing a daily dose of this sort of material as well as efforts to prevent access to alternative sources of information.

What is startling clear to those of us who pay attention is that the ruling class are smearing, and preventing access to, alternative sources of information regarding the activities of their government. For example, compare two different posts on YouTube: one uploaded by a Russian news and analysis network, RT, and a second post regarding an organization sponsored by governments associated with the US Empire and developed by Netflix, a major US media corporation. Did you notice that the RT post on YouTube added the statement, "RT is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government", but the second Netflix post omitted any reference to the funding of the White Helmets organization? 1984 has arrived--a little late--but it has arrived in full bloom. What is so sad is that most Americans are completely unaware of this.

Rebel Without a Clue: Autonomy and Authority in the American Public School

Click here to access article by Susan Cain and Mark Mason from Dissident Post. (This is a guest post by Caren Black, an engaged activist, whose career spans three decades as a teacher and administrator in private and public schools as well as business, Caren Black has taught eight grade levels and served as assistant principal and principal for middle schools in the public school system.)

Muda by Design

The Japanese term, "muda", which means waste, breakdown, failure, planned obsolescence, all familiar components of capitalism’s sales structure, extend to the much misunderstood American public school system. Here is an excerpt from my book Get Over It! Education Reform Is Dead. Now What? that describes my view regarding this concept:

A concept introduced by Toyota Production System creator, Taiichi Ohno, and defined as “any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value” muda is, quite simply, waste….

In education, of course, waste takes human form: students we cannot or do not serve, people who get excluded from societal roles because they are too slow, too kinesthetic, too bright, too poor, too abused or too non-white to pass easily along our lock-stepped graded conveyor belt. As in any assembly line, we still reject those who don’t come out in standardized form. When our system was designed, dropouts could still make their way in the world quite successfully. Today, that is no longer true. The human cost of the rejection from our educational assembly line is high. Where do we think kids go when the system rejects them? How does our rejecting kids pollute our communities?

“I want that kid out of my class!” Out of the school, off the planet, far away. “He’s disruptive! He’s defiant! He’s behind! He doesn’t do any work! I can’t teach with him in here! The class is fine when he’s gone!” It’s all true and it’s definitely a problem. He is a problem. For him, life is a problem. He needs an attitude adjustment. He’s got some learning difficulties. His mother was (pick a couple):

drinking

snorting

not eating

without medical care

being beaten

uneducated when she was carrying him fifteen years ago.

He’s either hyper or asleep (meaning he does ecstasy weekly at raves). He’s in a crew or being jumped into a gang. Maybe he’s already in a gang. He reads English at a third grade level and doesn’t know his multiplication tables. We want him out of the classroom. (Yes, but to where?) He can’t sit quietly at a desk for 45 minutes and take notes on what we tell him were the causes of the Civil War without bothering other students or interrupting us.

We’re covering curriculum. Of course he’s disruptive! Of course he’s defiant! But do we really want him on the streets with nothing to do all day except hang around outside our houses? Are we really ready to consign him to jail at 14? That’s where he’s headed. Does it seem so farfetched to create alternative educational systems designs that might better address the needs of non-standardized students like him? Still not convinced? Let’s give him a face….

My colleague Wes Beach described its effect on students from a different capitalist class in his book Forging Paths: Beyond Traditional Schooling:

Compulsory education is based on compulsion. Compulsion requires power over students and control of them. Power and control often become the chief concerns.

School officials were…incapable of understanding, or unwilling to acknowledge that they understood, the fact that there are many perfectly legitimate and real reasons why some kids hate school.

Many students find no challenging material to study; they are capable of working at a much higher level than the curriculum allows. Their interests are not addressed; the academic curriculum in traditional high schools has little to offer someone who wants to be, or already is, a photographer, dancer, auto mechanic, or makeup artist. They do not like the social environment; they want to talk about topics beyond the latest clothing fad or the next party, football game, or sexual encounter. They find their teachers disinterested and sometimes incompetent. They find the environment oppressive and limiting, determining not only what they study but also when they can go to the bathroom or chew gum. They hate being controlled at every turn. They don’t like being on leashes held by administrators, counselors, and teachers. They resent it when their talents and goals are not respected. While this kind of rigid structure may work well for some students, this determination should still be made by the student with his or her parents.

Complaining about the public school system is a popular pastime while “reforming” it is a pundit’s playground, but few writers have actually taught in one or served in administration and fewer still have tried to effect change from within the system -- as both educator Wes Beach and I have, in addition to establishing independent schools of our own and working with two different groups of students, from two different classes of society, who did not “fit in”. This article captured the attention of us both, renewing our online discussions after many years’ lapse.

Susan Cain and Mark Mason, authors of this article, demonstrate their homework prowess by accurately assessing the creation of public education as a tool for instilling “a common political creed…in all citizens” (Spring, p.8) and its use as a bulwark for capitalism by creating the illusion of “equal opportunities” through schooling.

While my first book was a guide for teachers working toward education reform, my second was an exposé on why reform couldn’t work. Had I written a third, it would have focused on why the power structure would not allow reform anyway because, contrary to popular misunderstanding, our school system is most definitely not broken: It is doing exactly what it’s intended to do.

“Rebel Without a Clue” gets an “A” for research, writing and analysis.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

How F-Book, Goo ogle, & You Tuube Collude To Crush Dissent

This post features Lee Camp exclaiming about social media and internet corporations attempting to reduce people's access to alternative media. Clearly there is an information war going on by the ruling capitalist class for your political consciousness.

Russia: How the Bureaucracy Seized Power ‒ part four: the bureaucratic counter-revolution

Click here to access article by George Collins and posted on In Defence of Marxism (a British Trotskyist organization). Note: this recent post is really an excerpt from Collins book published in 1987 with the above title. Although I believe that it is an accurate portrayal of Stalin's rule, the Trotsky bias becomes evident in the final paragraphs.

The lengthy articles goes into the details of the takeover of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union by Stalin after the death of Vladimir Lenin in early 1924. Stalin's actions were not based in a theoretical analysis that Lenin or Trotsky expressed, but became motivated by the allure of power. The details are reported in the article which consisted of various twists to the extreme right, and turns to the extreme left, then settling on building socialism in one country, all of which he also used to eliminate any competitors to power in the Soviet government. Thus many of Stalin's critics accuse him of sheer opportunism in quest of dictatorial power. However, his popularity has gained in recent decades in Russia among people who view him as saving them--because he began a campaign (although ruthless) of forced industrialization in the 1930s--from slavery to the German Third Reich during WWII.

In the final part of George Collins' history of the rise of Stalinism, he explains the bureaucracy's final victory over Trotsky's Left Opposition; their shameful co-operation with fascism and imperialism; and the brutal, counter-revolutionary role they played in suppressing the working class in Russia and internationally.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

The Libertarian Ideology of Bitcoin

Click here to access a 55 minute interview conduct by Sasha Lilley of KPFA (Berkeley, CA) with David Golumbia, author of The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism.

Can an anonymous alternative currency — not tethered to the oppressive arm of the state — make us free? That’s the premise behind Bitcoin, invented less than 10 years ago, which has soared stratospherically and then, recently, fallen sharply. David Golumbia reflects on the rightwing libertarian ideas behind Bitcoin.

U.S. ‘Plan B’ for the Middle East and the occupation of a third of Syria’s territory – Analysis

Click here to access article by Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli, SWEDHR chairman and chief-editor of The Indicter, and posted on The Indicter.

The television network RT asked me for a comment around the recent visit to Raqqa done by the USAID program chief together with the CENTCOM Commander. [1]

Before to answer the items on the humanitarian situation in Raqqa associated with the reconstruction issue –80 percent of Raqqa dwellings remain “inhabitable”, according to the UN–, I will develop on the current U.S. geopolitics in the area, against the backdrop of the U.S. emerging ‘Plan B’ on Syria ....

So far, the implementation of this new design has signified the virtual occupation of nearly a third of Syria’s territory. A hallmark of the situation consisting in the illegal character of the occupation.

NBC Hires CIA Boss For News Role - Not Kidding

Click here to access a 25:05m video of The Jimmy Dore Show.

I'll have to admit that the content of this show quite shocked me. Jimmy Dore essentially argues that Orwell's 1984 has now been established in the USA. It's also clear that unwitting Americans are still not conscious of this new reality. The accelerating downward trend toward an Orwellian nation is now in full operation with the 24/7 surveillance of social and other media by US intelligence agencies, the efforts by social media corporations to prevent the access of people to alternative or independent websites, the appointment of military generals to key foreign policy positions in the government, and now the appointment of CIA officials to prominent positions in media corporations. Dore does not explicitly show how all these trends are driven by an increasingly threatened ruling capitalist class, but all of his content clearly supports this view.

Friday, February 9, 2018

Rich boys' health clinic

by Brian McFadden

Some recommended posts for 2/9/2018

"What You Aren't Being Told About NPR" by Lee Camp of RT's Redacted Tonight program. Because I've seen the former liberal (this label means that they favored popular interests within a capitalist society) National Public Radio morph over the past 40 years into a right-wing propaganda radio network called "NPR" that is sponsored by right-wing people like the Koch brothers, I delight in posting this Lee Camp's satire of the radio network.

"Corruption is Legal in America". This YouTube video was uploaded by apparently well-meaning people at Represent.Us, a group that advocates citizens' use of referendums to by-pass legislatures and Congress to prevent big capitalists from funding candidates and their support for the interests of the rich. However, seeing that they have received favorable media exposure from The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, NBC, etc., I rather doubt their sincerity. It is likely an example of how the capitalist ruling class prefers to co-opt any studies and reforms groups in order to lead them into dead-end political activity--much like the Bernie Sanders campaign of last year in the Democratic Party. Anyway, the Princeton study is a very worthy one, and one that I referred to last year here on my website. This 5:50m YouTube video summarizes the study very well.

"Why is U.S. not globally condemned for its military occupation of Syria?" by Eric Zuesse from The Greanville Post. Although the author denies that Trump is the contemporary version of Hitler, Trump is a corporate fascist because he loves the military establishment and the generals, and he doesn't hesitate to use, or threaten to use, actual military violence to get his way. That is the authentic face of advanced capitalism once it decides to take off the mask of their fake version of democracy. In this post I don't think that Zuesse makes a solid argument to support the title of the post. I think he is only referring to the many nations under the US-led Empire, but not the whole world. Here in the USA very little has been broadcast or publicized in corporate media about the incident; and what little there was, was mostly lies.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Monday, February 5, 2018

Why Steemit Is The Platform Of The People And The Answer To Censorship

Click here to access article by Elizabeth Vos from Disobedient Media.

More people are joining Steemit, an alternative social media platform. (I have no opinion on this issue.)

Along with myself and Dawson, anti-establishment journalists including Caitlin Johnstone, Redacted Tonight’s Lee Camp, HA Goodman, and many others have joined the platform and begun to publish or re-publish their work there. The move has made waves within Steemit, with one prominent user devoting an entire article to the shift.

Mainstream Media Outlets Keep Hiring CIA/Intel Veterans, And It’s Gross

Click here to access article by Caitlin Johnstone from The Greanville Post. (Note: Additional material added at 5:15 PM Seattle time.)

Brennan, who played a key role in the construction of the establishment Russia narrative that has been used to manufacture public consent for world-threatening new cold war escalations, is just the latest addition in an ongoing trend of trusted mainstream media outlets being packed to the gills with establishment stalwarts from the US intelligence community.

"It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms." -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author

We must credit Wolfgang Streeck, an economic sociologist, who first brought our attention to the concept of post-factual politics. Of course, he did not bring our attention to the constant lies fed to us by the ruling class's media corporations--that has been obvious to people who are awake and pay attention.

Just this morning I was jarred awake by an obvious propaganda segment in NPR's Morning Edition "news" program. Because of my location I can only receive a Tacoma NPR station (it seems to be ubiquitous by using repeater frequencies to cover all of northwestern Washington state), and I use it on my alarm radio to wake me up in the morning. However, this morning the station not only wakened me, but jarred me awake with complete disgust as it, once again, hammered away on the Russiagate theme. I turned the radio off after the segment and got dressed. Listen to the following segment to see if you agree with my reaction:

Christopher, an engaged activist, did some internet sleuthing and found some very interesting background material on Molly McKew who was featured in the above NPR broadcast. Thank you, Christopher!

Saturday, February 3, 2018

World is Burning – While Western Left is Quarreling

Click here to access article by Andre Vltchek from New Eastern Outlook. (Note: On 2/4/2018 at 11:58 AM Seattle time I edited the commentary to give it greater clarity.)

Vltchek takes his anger out on the limited left in the US after his articles are no longer published by a left publisher that he refuses to name. I am convinced after several hours of sleuthing on the web that this publisher is the left-liberal CounterPunch magazine. (See this listing of Vltchek's CounterPunch articles for evidence. Notice they stop at 12/2017.)

I must confess that I suspected this from the beginning because I remember the website's campaign against questioning the official version of the 9/11 false flag incident that justified all the wars that followed and justify our meddling in the affairs of every nation on earth and the promotion of such myths as we are an "exceptional nation". In other nations, the Empire's ruling capitalist class don't have to justify what their nation does in the world, and they no longer need to follow any international rules of conduct.

This campaign to smear any questioner of the 9/11 event was led by the now deceased chief editor and publisher of CounterPunch, Alexander Cockburn (see this and this). Those that cross this red line incite the wrath of the ruling class, and that often comes with negatives consequences. For those who stay safely on the "comfortable" side of this red line avoid their wrath and sometimes even enjoy comfortable salaries and perks. (See this, this, and this.) Now CounterPunch has decided to play it even safer by excluding those writers, like Vltchek, who write on Russia related websites. Thus, it appears that "Russiagate" has had an impact on the cowardly left political spectrum of the USA!

Under the guidance of the Deep State, the 9/11 event has become a red-line event that has separated American leftists into two camps: 1) those that regard anything that the ruling capitalist class does is open to question and criticism, and 2) those opportunists who for varying reasons don't want to fundamentally threaten the legitimacy of capitalist rule by questioning the official story of 9/11.

Friday, February 2, 2018

How F-Book, Goo ogle, & You Tuube Collude To Crush Dissent

Lee Camp goes ballistic on corporate social and other media that is engaged in a war of information against us. The video was uploaded onto YouTube.

"Finding the real information takes effort. The truth will not be spoon-fed to us." Camp urges us to find and explore alternative media to avoid censorship of real news and information.

The CIA, Wormwood, and Gall: The Facts, the Accusations & the Cover-up

Click here to access article by Peter Lee from Newsbud.

This post provides an introduction to a full length that I watched several weeks ago, and immediately placed in on my Memorable Political Films list. It was a stunner because even corporations like Netflix usually don't go near such topics. But as I had a Netflix membership, I viewed it and was very impressed.

Frank Olson died after being thrown out of a 13th story window in New York City. The government, as usual, made up a series of stories over the years to explain this bizarre event. Frank Olson's son couldn't believe these stories, and started an investigation which led him to the conclusion that his father had been murdered because he opposed the bio-weapons the scientists were researching and developing at Fort Detrick (Maryland) under the control of the CIA.

These bio-weapons were actually used in the Korean War. Many American soldiers captured by the North Koreans and Chinese armed forces, particularly airmen, knew from experience that this was happening and delayed their return to the US after the war. One, who I later encountered at a talk in Hawaii, actually remained in China. The series of six mini-films are a must-view.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Faking it

Click here to access article by William Bowles from his website.

Bowles make innumerable attempts to find evidence from various corporate media sources that claim Russian/Putin meddling in elections and their attempts to introduce fake news into the media of the US-led Empire. He reports the details of his experience.

Christopher's article recommendations for 2/1/2018

Blackouts and Flashpoints in 2018 by James Petras from his website (PDF).

Betting the Earth on a Game of Wrap-Cut-Smash by Stan Cox posted of The Greanville Post.

Former British Ambassador Weighs in on Assange, Russia Hacking and Israel

Click here to an interview with Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, that is conducted by Randy Credico and Dennis Bernstein. The interview is posted on Mint Press News.

Craig Murray is a very well informed and conscientious person and author who reveals much of what he has learned on various issues from his experience with the British government. For example:

It is fair to say that the establishment stick together. In fact, I believe that the government and the judiciary are closer here than they are in the United States to some extent. There is quite a closed circle of the ruling class. They attend all the same schools and they are closely linked in various ways. So once you take on [any part of] the establishment, you are taking on the entire establishment.

At the risk of distracting from the substance of this excellent interview, Dennis Bernstein use an expression that always pushes my hostility buttons. He used the cowardly term "the powers that be". Unless one is completely uninformed, the use of this expression shows cowardice. It is self-censorship. It is playing along with the capitalist ruling classes avoidance of any terms that might be used to shed reality about their class's overwhelming power over the billions of people trying to secure some kind of existence in spite of the overwhelming threats to their lives posed by this tiny class. Bernstein is not uninformed! It's like he is saying, "I know who really runs this country, but I won't say it because it might damage my career".

The crisis of legitimacy in international investment agreements and investor-state dispute settlement

Click here to access article by Jane Kelsey, Professor of Law at the University of Auckland, from Stop Investor-State Dispute Settlement.

The ISDS (investor-state dispute settlement) section is installed in all neoliberal trade agreements, and are the main weapon used against nations wanting to protect their populations from the predatory actions of corporations of the US-led Empire. The legitimacy of this weapon is being increasingly examined and questioned. Kelsy summarizes her report in these paragraphs:

The legitimation crisis facing IIAs [international investment agreements] is entering a new phase. Capital exporting states have regrouped to defend an investment regime that serves their corporate interests. Large developing countries are promoting alternatives that offer a new balance between their offensive and defensive interests. Governments in rich and poor countries continue to face potentially crippling investment disputes that are often designed to intimidate their regulatory decisions. Boutique law firms and third-party funders are intent on defending a lucrative source of income.

As the turbulence in the global economy and backlash against neoliberalism continues, opposition to the international investment regime and ISDS from the left seems destined to grow. A system in which rules that privilege capital are enforced through a biased extra-territorial dispute process cannot be fixed. The South African remedy that brings the disputes back into the domestic jurisdiction may be the best of the current alternatives. For many on the left, however, that would presage a return to the more traditional contest over the authority of the legislative and judicial branches of the state in relation to capital.

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Two Minutes to Doomsday

Click here to access article by Robert Hunziker from CounterPunch. (Thanks, once again, goes to a concerned citizen, Christopher from northwest Oregon, for alerting me to this report.)

Not since 1953, when the U.S. and the Soviets exploded thermonuclear bombs, has the world been such a powder keg!

Only recently, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds. It now registers two minutes to midnight. Verily, it’s lights out when the clock strikes 12:00 midnight. Ka-boom, it’s over!

Monday, January 29, 2018

Denying the Obvious: Leftists and Crimestop

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

I do not know the motivations or intentions of many prominent leftist intellectuals and publications, but I do know that many choose to avoid placing certain key historical events at the center of their analyses. In fact, they either avoid them like the plague, dismiss them as inconsequential, or use the CIA’s term of choice and call them “conspiracy theories” and their proponents “conspiracy nuts.” The result is a powerful propaganda victory for the power elites they say they oppose.

Orwell called it “Crimestop: [it] means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short means protective stupidity.”

I'd like to attempt an answer to Curtin's excellent article, specifically to his lack of understanding of "the motivations or intentions of many prominent leftist intellectuals and publications"...who are fall prey to the intellectual disability of "Crimestop". It's capitalist culture, stupid!

Culture is like water that fish swim in. Fish, like most people, are not perceptive enough to realize that there are other waters to swim in, waters that are not polluted with extreme individualism like the one we live in. Capitalist culture has ensured that we as humans do not recognize ourselves as being social animals. No, we are mostly self-seeking animals who exist only for ourselves and our material interests. Margaret Thatcher was lying twice when she argued that there was no such thing as society, only families. Have you observed extended families fighting over the distribution of wealth from a rich relative? I have. In reality under capitalism all individuals are competing against all the other individuals for material rewards. Thus, capitalist culture has almost completely eliminated the social from our identity and replaced our sense of selves, through their comprehensive indoctrination system, as merely self-seeking animals.

The ruling capitalist class has done this with their 24/7 indoctrination campaign to lure us into thinking that we don't need each other, even worse, that we should distrust each other, and seek only material rewards in form of money, homes, careers, and the most important of all, the ability to establish a family. Thus, one must not resist the diktats of the ruling capitalist class or else we shall have none of these rewards.

Left intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and left media people like Amy Goodwin have succumbed to these enticements and conditioning. They serve to limit the analysis of news and events by refusing to question the ruling class interpretation of those events. And they are rewarded for their refusal. Chomsky gets invited to many campuses to speak and Goodwin enjoys a very comfortable salary.

People like socialist John Bellamy Foster who is a full professor at the University of Oregon and heir to serious socialists like Paul Sweezy, Leo Huberman, and Paul Baran at the Monthly Review, is known academically as a "Marxian" specialist. This is a label that our ruling class attaches to academic people who are experts on the studies of Karl Marx's writings. Such academics are labeled "Marxian" because they must not stray too far from the merely academic study of Marxism, such as into activist politics--those that do are labeled as "Marxists" and are banished into poverty. Foster has been rewarded with a wife (Carrie Naumoff) and a three-child family, a comfortable salary, and respectable academic standing, and this will continue if he keeps his nose clean and out of activist practice. So what if he writes in obscure journals that nobody reads about capitalism that is in deadly conflict with the health of the biosphere? Of course, he will never be interviewed by any respectable mainstream media corporation for his views on capitalism or the ongoing destabilization of the climate. He is rendered quite harmless to the system of capitalism. He has become thoroughly domesticated.

Capitalist culture denies that there is any such thing as society because capitalists want full license to plunder societies across the world for their riches and to gain more power. That is what neoliberalism, an advanced form of capitalism, is all about. The point is that true revolutionaries--and that is what is so desperately needed right now--do not have families, they have dedicated their lives to the overthrow of capitalism because they know that the system is in the process of killing us all.