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

Saturday, January 26, 2019

The Yellow Vests, the Crisis of the Welfare State and Socialism [a must-read and understand]

Click here to access article by Michèle Brand posted on CounterPunch.

This analysis of the welfare state ("social democracy") is brilliant, and a must-read and understood by you if there is any chance of survival of humans. The welfare state has been used as a weapon against workers in the advanced West to preserve the capitalist ruling classes and their system of capitalism that has delivered so much wealth and power to this tiny class. It has been used as a pacifier for workers of Western capitalist countries to prevent them from becoming too discontented with capitalist rule, but at the enormous expense and sacrifice to Third World workers. The only alternative which can save humanity from the twin threats to their survival--their habitat destroyed and a global nuclear war catastrophe--is a socialist system created by ordinary workers throughout the world.

The author concludes the analysis with this profound insight:

Socialism is what we should fight for. In abandoning the aspiration toward the welfare state model, we’re certainly not abandoning the struggle for workers’ rights, social services, and all the other advantages associated with the welfare state. We’re fighting for these with a clearer vision of the goal: socialism.

The yellow jacket movement’s weakness is the vagueness of its demands, calling for the return of the welfare state. But its force is its dynamism, its determination, its size, and its deep-set, justified feeling of anger at economic injustice and inequality. To win, we should stop looking backward, and start looking forward, toward the construction of socialism.

Friday, January 25, 2019

Putin Warns US: Hands Off Venezuela

Click here to access a broadcast by Rick Sanchez from RT.

US Regime Change in Venezuela: The Documented Evidence

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from his blog Land Destroyer Report.

I recommend this article as a best analysis of the recent astonishing move by US authorities to recognize an opposition leader as President of Venezuela. His analysis focuses on two main themes:

A Venezuela governed by a stable political order able to produce wealth from its massive oil reserves - and dedicated to a multipolar alternative to Washington's current international order is intolerable for Wall Street and Washington and explains the vast amount of time, energy, money, and resources the US has invested in destabilizing and overthrowing first President Hugo Chavez - with a coup attempt in 2002 - and now President Maduro.

While the nature of the US government's extensive meddling in Venezuela remains intentionally covert - admissions surrounding Sumate's activities illustrate how even entire referendums are organized through the use of US money and guided by US directives.

Cartalucci summarizes his analysis with this statement:

Venezuela sits on an ocean of proven oil reserves. It has been openly slated for regime change by the US and has been for years with documented evidence proving the current opposition vying for power is funded by Washington, for Washington's, not Venezuela's benefit.

Sanctions and economic warfare have been aimed at Venezuela just as the US has done with the numerous other nations it has overthrown, invaded, and otherwise destroyed - or those that it is trying to overthrow and destroy.

There is no missing puzzle piece that makes Venezuela an exception to what is another textbook case of US-backed regime change.

US-Led Efforts to Overthrow Maduro Spurred by Business Interests, Not Democracy

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from his blog What's Left.

Gowans places the astonishingly arrogant recognition of another figure as President of Venezuela in the context of the US past history of interventions throughout Latin America: in order to restore a government that is favorable to US commercial interests. But I think it is much more than that.

As I have argued in the recent past, the directors of the transnational capitalists aligned with the US-led Empire are seeing a reverse in their domination of the nations on our planet, and they feel very threatened. The the threats they are coming from several directions: domestic opposition, international opposition led by Russia and China, and the threat that global warming poses for their system that has brought so much wealth and power to them. Like a wounded beast, they are becoming more irrational about slashing out at their imagined and real enemies. In short, they are now very dangerous with their control of vast armies, weapons, and most especially, nuclear weapons.

Never before has it been necessary for ordinary people of the lands that the evil Empire controls to oppose their actions in order to save all of humanity from even more desperate actions that could lead to a nuclear war catastrophe in the short run and to the ultimate destruction of our biosphere on which all human life (and many other species) depends.

Thursday, January 24, 2019

Democracy Or Extinction

Click here to access article by an editor of Media Lens (Britain).

The article opens with some very important questions:

What will it take for governments to take real action on climate? When will they declare an emergency and do what needs to be done? How much concerted, peaceful public action will be required to disrupt the current economic and political system that is driving humanity to the brink of extinction?

And it ends with this paragraph:

We have now had three decades of increasingly alarming reports from climate scientists since the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up in 1988. Last October, the IPCC warned that we only had 12 years left to turn things around, taking radical action now. But alarm bells from scientists have not, and will not, stop governments in their tracks. Only peaceful and massive concerted action from citizens around the world stands a chance of doing that at this desperately late stage.

Notice that the author places much emphasis on "peaceful" efforts to stop this chain of events to will result in human extinction. Why is it that we must be peaceful in the face of our own extinction? I am not prone to violence, but I will engage in it if my life is seriously threatened. Show me a species that doesn't fight for survival! I don't mean that we should engage in reckless violence, but I do think that we must not exclude any means for survival, especially if it is organized: because we are facing a powerful, well-armed enemy of the people.

Take a look at my revolutionary proposal as one illustration of how we might save ourselves.

However, I do like his overall arguments and facts, and especially this one:

To any reader unsettled by the scare word 'socialism', simply replace it with 'democracy': a genuinely inclusive system where the general population has proper input and control, and does not simply have its wishes overridden by a tiny elite that enriches itself at our, and the planet's, expense.

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Articles recommended for Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Talk Nation Radio: Dana Frank on What the U.S. Is Doing to Honduras. Dave Swanson interviews author Dana Frank of The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup.

And you wonder why so many Hondurans and their neighbors are fleeing north to survive.

The Russian Pension Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost... by "The Saker" (Andrei Raevsky) from his blog.

The author provides us with many very interesting details of the current political scene in Russia as he tries to figure out the growing split in popularity between Putin's followers and those of Medvedev that he describes as a "fifth column" supported by Western capitalists.

This descendant of White Russians (those who fought against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution) sets us straight about frequent US propaganda that testifies to the unpopularity of Pres. Vladimir Putin. He explains the current Russian political scene as one where the former members of the nomenklatura (Soviet bureaucracy) rose to form a political class after the dissolution of the Soviet government in the years around 1990. These former members connived to buy up shares of the former Soviet companies "for pennies on the dollar" to become rich, and they were aided by Western capitalists. They are still around today, and their leader is Dmitry Medvedev who has alternated with Putin in running the Russian government.

The author concludes:

The political landscape in Russia is becoming more complicated, which is both good and bad. It is bad because Putin’s personal political credit suffers, however modestly for now, from his continuous inability to purge the Kremlin from the 5th columnists, but it is also good because if things get bad enough Putin will have no choice but to (finally!) get rid of at least the most notorious 5th columnists. But fundamentally the Russian people need to decide. Do they really want to live in a western-style capitalist society (with all the russophobic politics and the adoption of the terminally degenerate “culture” such a choice implies), or do they want a “social society” (to use Putin’s own words) – meaning a society in which social and economic justice and the good of the country are placed above corporate and personal profits.

You could say that this is a battle of greed vs ethics.

The future of Russia, and much of the world, will depend on the outcome of this battle.

Report: U.S. Oil and Gas Expansion Threatens to Unleash Climate Pollution Equivalent to nearly 1,000 Coal Plants by David Turnbull from Oil Change International.

The Fetishization of the Corporate Media

Click here to access article by C. J. Hopkins from his blog Consent Factory, Inc.

There are so many insightful gems in this piece that I only want to urge you to read it. So, I will try to keep my commentary short.

Hopkins uses his masterful gift of satire to ridicule our rather desperate masters (or overlords) in the ruling capitalist class while he provides serious reasons why we shouldn't listen to these purveyors of "horseshit". Yet, media corporations remain a fetish for most ordinary Americans who daily tune in to find out what is going on in the world.

His attack of media corporations is only one step away from urging us to establish our own media in one big, powerful, bottom-up based authority structure to take down their media corporations; and along with them, to take down their domestic and foreign policies and actions that are literally and figuratively killing us and so many people across the world!

To demonstrate the latter truth, I will only quote his and critically important, final paragraph--and urge you to read the article.

If Russiagate serves no other useful purpose, it is at least exposing the corporate media as the propaganda factories that they are. Given the amount of obviously fabricated horseshit they have disseminated during the last two years, you’d have to be a total moron or a diehard neoliberal cultist not to recognize the function they perform within the global capitalist ruling establishment (which is essentially no different than the function the establishment media perform in any other society, namely, to disseminate, maintain, and reify the official narrative of its ruling classes).

Monday, January 21, 2019

Shocking Admission By FBI Veteran Shows Why The FBI Shouldn’t Exist

Click here to access article by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

When King decided to join the Civil Rights Movement to the Vietnam Anti-war Movement, roughly a year before he was assassinated by our masters, he became the enemy of the Deep State who saw this as a major threat to their rule. They were right.

I confess that I really didn't pay much attention to the article. You see, I already know so much about this criminal event perpetrated by our masters that I didn't want to waste time. Yes, the FBI handled the assassination, but on the orders of the Deep State.

Our masters decided that they could rather easily assassinate this leader as they did with the John F. Kennedy because the machinery of assassinations had already been setup against Castro, and the CIA was well experienced in knocking off numerous other leaders in the past such as Patrice Lumumba of the Republic of the Congo and President Allende of Chile. No doubt having accomplished the assassination of JF Kennedy and had it covered up without significant resistance from the American people, it gave them confidence to use it against other targets of people who they perceived interfered with their policies or threatened their rule such as Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. Observe in the following video the haughty contempt with which the CIA Director Dick Helms, who reported only to the fascist Deep State, answered questions before the last committee of Congress in 1976 to investigate CIA activities:

It should be remembered that the leader of this committee, Sen. Frank Church, was never elected again to the Senate after his committee's work was finished. He died a few years later.

Does Our Civilization has at Least Some Chance to Survive?

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

This wanderer over distant lands gives us his assessment of the chances of survival of humans. In spite of all the troubles and setbacks he's witnessed, he is still in the fight for survival. This willingness to fight for our survival is something so essentially human about Vltchek. He admits that he is scared, but he looks extinction squarely in the face and refuses to stop fighting.

Lately, I have been asked this question on several occasions. “Can our humanity really survive?” “Am I an optimist or a pessimist?”

My replies vary, as I don’t think there can ever be one single answer to this most urgent, the most important query.

Sometimes my answer gets influenced by location: where I am at that moment, or where I have been recently? In a Taliban-controlled village in Afghanistan, on a rooftop of a whorehouse in Okinawa while filming deadly US air force bases, or perhaps in an elegant café after visiting an opera performance with my mom, in Stuttgart or in Paris.

Whether I have been injured on a battlefield or in a slum, or have been applauded (most of the time, hypocritically) at some event where I was invited to speak? Have I been doing something ‘forbidden’, insane and dangerous, or merely processing my visual or written materials in Japan or in Bangkok?

Depending on the circumstances, I can sound negative or cautiously optimistic.

But the truth, the honest truth is: I am scared.

Saturday, January 19, 2019

Friday, January 18, 2019

The Vice President’s Men

Click here to access article by Seymour Hersh from London Review of Books. (Edited at 6:23 PM CT to correct and clarify my commentary.)

Note that Hersh can no longer be published in the USA because his writings contain too much truth for the ruling class to tolerate. It appears that he is too popular and credible within the USA to being allowed to publish his writings by a US based publishing outfit. You see, the truth about our wars and government must be prevented at all costs which includes the legitimate charge of censorship, and above all, to maintain the fiction of some kind of official constitutional government and quasi-democracy.

Hersh can't help writing about specific topics that undermine this fiction: it because he is obsessed with a drive to report the truth wherever he finds evidence to support some version of the truth. As is clear in Hersh's recent book Reporter, he relies heavily on government informants. In this rather lengthy article Hersh reports on how George (Herbert Walker) Bush set up a secret government within the official government to evade the onerous laws to curb the actions of the CIA which had been passed in 1976 in the aftermath of the (Sen.) Church Committee’s hearings.

It is not a general exposé of the crimes committed by our masters in the Deep State that control our government and their secret services. Relying mostly on his government informants, Hersh specifically targets what occurred in the Reagan administration with Vice-President George H.W. Bush thoroughly in charge. In this piece, he often refers to an "officer" who reportedly worked for Vice-Admiral Arthur Moreau who, in turn, was setup by Bush to work effectively as a CIA director (working around the official CIA Director Bill Casey) in the White House.

Typically our masters order their media corporations to fire such truth-tellers and/or smear them so that no one pays attention to them, but Hersh has too much credibility. This is another illustration of how the ruling class are increasingly resorting to fascist methods of control because the usual methods of capitalist control of employees no longer works to curb the writings of the independent and determined Hersh; and because they have long been engaged in "high crimes and misdemeanors", they don't want anyone writing about it. Therefore, he is dangerous and must be effectively blocked from any publications that Americans might read.

Normally our masters stay far removed from the glare of publicity, but in the case of George H.W. Bush, who had a Deep State heritage beginning with banker and Nazi supporter Prescott Bush, posed quite a challenge for them to keep Bush in a low profile. They set up a popular front man, former GE salesman and B-grade actor Ronald Reagan, who our capitalist masters had their media corporations focus on and glamorize in order to distract attention from who was really running the government.

The article requires one to have an extensive knowledge of what occurred, at least officially, in the Reagan years. I expect that this article will often be referred to and used for documentation in other broader essays about our secret government.

(You might also be interested in Bernhard's take (Moon of Alabama) on the article in his post "Seymour Hersh: George H.W. Bush Team Leaked To Media To Reveal CIA's Iran-Contra Affair".)

Thursday, January 17, 2019

The War on Populism

Click here to access article by C.J. Hopkins from The Unz Review.

I absolutely love this political satirist. He not only lampoons the ruling class of capitalists, but in addition, occasionally provides us with real insights on what they are currently doing.

In this hilarious, slashing attack on our masters, he uncovers their latest campaign: their "war on populism". I think he is absolutely right. While reading this, I suddenly realized that "terrorist" incidents have diminished to nothing, and in its place has been an unrelenting war on populism in general together with their more obvious war on Trump. Following this insight, it suddenly occurred to me that we are really being punished for voting the wrong way in the 2016 elections! Our capitalist masters can't get over our disobedience! Thus, this unrelenting hysterical war on the Russian devils and Putin is really a war on us for being so disobedient as to vote for Trump instead of their candidate Hillary.

The War on Terror (or, rather, “the series of persistent targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America,” as Obama rebranded it) was going to continue, probably forever. The Brexit referendum had just taken place, but no one had really digested that yet … and then Trump won the nomination.

Like that scene in Orwell’s 1984 where the Party switches official enemies right in the middle of the Hate Week rally, the War on Terror was officially canceled and replaced by the War on Populism.

Instead of terrorist incidents to put us in a state of panic, we are bombarded with stories from corporate media that explains how our "democracy" has been tampered with by those evil Russian ~~commies~~ (excuse me) Putin/Hitler devils who are intent on corrupting our minds and threatening the foundations of our American Way of Life!

Unfortunately he ends this hilarious article with the prediction that the current campaign of whipping us for being bad will end when they get rid of Trump, and things will return to normal with the "War on Terror".

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

The World Will End in Fire

Click here to access article by David Swanson from his blog Let's Try Democracy.

Swanson and many other long-time climate and environmental observers like Dar Jamail are reluctantly facing the end of humans (and many other species), entering a stage of grieving, and desperately trying to find some meaning in this event. The end of our species is far and away beyond merely facing one's own demise. Thus, we can forgive them (and ourselves) if they exhibit some waffling and romantic attitudes about this beyond-epochal event. In this post Swanson borrows heavily from a new book by Jamail entitled The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption.

Swanson concludes with recommendations on how we should face our extinction:

... we have to rededicate ourselves to redoubling our efforts, again and again, with ever greater effort as we continue. The alternative of giving up is guaranteed not to be more enjoyable than working well together on a crisis that could bring out the best in us. The alternative of pretending everything is normal, scorning radical activism, and contenting ourselves with voting in yet another “most important election of our lifetime” every two years is guaranteed to create a crisis of faith and a crisis of guilt. Let’s not go there. Or rather, let’s not stay there.

Meanwhile, most ordinary people are too busy surviving and misinformed to worry about such things.

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Entering a Major Regional Re-set – The Syria Outcome Will Haunt Those Who Started This War

Click here to access article by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Commentary updated at 6:00 PM CT.)

This former MI6 (CIA is the American version) geopolitical analyst has a solid background in planning, organizing, and executing often illegal plans to serve the British ruling class. Thus, he knows much about what he writes in relation to ruling classes and the type of people they employ to serve their interests of power and profits. In other words, his career has well equipped him to understand the intricacies of power plays of those who enjoy overwhelming power--ruling classes in capitalist countries and heads of governments elsewhere.

In this article he applies his knowledge to explain how the complex situation in the current Middle East, where the US-led Empire with their NATO army and their allies (Saudi Arabia and Israel) versus their enemies (Russia, Iran, and to a more limited extent China), is playing out. Turkey's pivotal actions are apparently swinging to the Empire's enemy camp.

I often find such geopolitical analyses rather mind-boggling. I challenge you to read another such analysis by an author who apparently knows about the history of the regions--Dr. Can Erimtan. More-so than Crooke's analysis, he cites distant histories of authorities using religion as a means to manipulate their people to fight to secure more power and wealth for themselves. You will notice that it is not much different today in that area of the world.

Organized religion has its own hierarchy of officials who control their religious organization. Frequently the only "asset" that poor people have is religion, an ideology that tries to explain the fundamental questions about their lives: their extreme vulnerability which can be ameliorated by faith in this religion, and an unquestioning obedience to the authorities of this religion. Often such religions offer some sort of after-life as rewards for good behavior. Notice that secular authorities always collaborate with religious authorities to exploit, manipulate, and oppress ordinary people.

Throughout history we have seen secular and religious authorities motivating and manipulating people by appealing to their religion to serve hegemonic interests. They do this by justifying their aggressive policies because their gods (or god) and religion support these actions. Often these authorities advance their actions using such propaganda. For example, during the feudal era, the Christian religion was used by monarchs and their aristocracy (their princes) to justify their rule to their peasant subjects--they ruled by "divine right". Islam is still used to buttress the rule of the king of Saudi Arabia today. And Judaism claims that Jews are the "chosen people"--of course, chosen by their god. The advancement of science has weakened the use of organized religion to manipulate people in most of the world today, but it still plays a major role in the Middle East where many of these religions were born.

Today we also see the rather astonishing use of a sophisticated ideology among the Syrian Kurds: socialist Murray Bookchin’s "libertarian municipalism" (described in the article by Erimtan) that is used to advance the interests of the Syrian Kurdish rulers. And, Kurdish leaders seem to be cynically willing to ally themselves with anybody who they perceive has the power to advance their interests.

What all such wars and geopolitical contests have in common, other than the ultimate suffering of ordinary people, is that they are based on a hierarchical system of rule that serve a few versus the masses of ordinary people. What I have tried to argue over the past decade in my blog is hierarchical rule will inevitably lead to the disappearance of humans either through a nuclear war catastrophe or global warming and environmental devastation.

Only the survival of our human species can be assured if we adopt a bottom-up authority system (subarchy?), and this can only brought about if ordinary people become engaged in their own survival. Attempts must be made to construct such systems until a system is created that will erase class conflict and wars, and can adopt policies that can stop the degradation of our biosphere. Time is fast running out. If I were a hypothetical betting man, I would bet on the extinction of humans within 50 years.

Monday, January 14, 2019

State versus Film-makers: Criticising Iran's Regime Through Cinema (2002)

Click here if you wish to directly access the following 15 minute video from YouTube. The transcript of the video can be accessed here. (Edited the second to the last paragraph for greater clarity at 5:21 PM CT.)

I don't understand the various dates related to this uploaded post on YouTube, but I do understand why Western capitalist ideologues want to post such anti-Iranian views on the internet. In contrast to much of the anti-Iran propaganda this video describes true events, but the issues of censorship lack any kind of context.

Thus, no effort is made to understand that Iran has suffered so many interventions from the US-led Empire in their affairs starting in 1953 with the Anglo-American coup that replaced the elected the Prime Minister of Iran Mosaddegh with the former Shah of Iran who was something like the queen/king of England. You see, Mosaddegh wanted to get rid of the British colonial control of Iran's oil resources bv the British oil company. The directors of the Empire knew that they could use the Shah to serve their interests. In 1979 the Iranians with the backing of religious authorities finally rid themselves of this colonial puppet Shah and since then the US-led Empire (some prefer "Anglo-American Empire") has put Iran on their shit-list. Recently and currently the Empire has both forbidden them to develop nuclear weapons and have imposed severe economic sanctions on Iran.

If Iran had not been interfered with, the religious authorities who exercise so much influence in today's Iran likely would not have had such power if the secular-oriented Mosaddegh and subsequent governments had not been targeted by the US Empire, and the Iranian film industry would not now experience such censorship.

Notice that starting about 11:05m the narrator and film director Farmanara accurately state that Hollywood films, or films in the West, can be just as restrictive with the financial control of which films are made and how they are made.

The War Against America’s Only Anti-War Candidate

Click here to access article by Gordon Duff from New Eastern Outlook.

This ex-Marine author extols the anti-war virtues of Representative and Major Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii who is running for President of the USA, and lampoons nearly all the US politicos as fake pro-war warriors in Washington DC.

I mention this because the truth, a truth hidden, a truth censored, has borne fruit, a nation of fakes, of hypocrites, of “twitter warriors” and trolls, of empty lies, of smears, a nation that lies and bullies and one that allows its heroes to be defamed, insulted and smeared on behalf of the interests of international gangsters.

And, I think he is right simply because the "warriors" in Washington serve the Deep State's military-industrial-media corporations as engines of world domination. Thus, they dislike her and will see that she goes nowhere in her pursuit of the presidency. She will be totally ignored by corporate media so that the American people will never learn of her political perspectives, and she will never receive any funding by the rich to help her in her political campaigns. These are the major reasons why Congress overwhelmingly consists of fake warriors. Other reasons include the control of the entire electoral process by the rich ruling class of capitalists.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

Two recommended articles (that I read) for Saturday, January 12, 2019

Philanthropic Capitalist Foundations and Corporate Environmentalism by Nicolas Casaux from Le Partage (in French) and translated into English with a very good machine translator and posted on Wrong Kind of Green. Despite this type of translation one can easily get the point of this article that NGOs in many cases funnel funds from large corporations to fund sources that are less inimical to their profitable interests. A prime example that always comes to my mind is "Democracy Now".

Russian-Kurdish negotiations in Moscow: Turkey has defined its options and Washington is trying to gain time by Elijah Magnier from his blog. Nobody is perfect, but this independent journalist is among the best covering events in that very troubled part of the world.

Banksters HATE The Free Market

Click here to access article by James Corbett from his blog. (I updated the following commentary to further clarify my views at 5:52 PM CT.)

This libertarian exemplifies so many American libertarians (Ron Paul is a well known example) who are critical of governments, and often criticize government policies and actions. Libertarians are found clear across the political spectrum. Clearly Corbett is on the right. His exclusive focus is on formal/legal restrictions on the rights of individuals and ignores all the power that wealth and the ownership of productive property gives to individuals who possess them. Property rights including the ownership of money are sacred to these people as well as to all capitalists. When right-wing libertarians speak of individual freedom, they totally ignore the system of capitalism that inevitably creates gross inequality in all its forms.

These "free marketeer" libertarians are often caught in contradictory political positions: they ignore the capitalist promotion of government subsidies to corporations but they don't like the rather mild restrictions that sometimes interfere with corporations' quest to attain profits regardless of adverse consequences: environmental destruction, food poisoning, drug addiction from opioids, and extreme inequality of living standards and opportunities. It's obvious to any awake person that the rich and their corporations control the government, and they want to keep it that way. But to right-wing libertarians the government is an entirely independent entity.

In this article and the related one for members by the same title, he argues that bankers as well as socialists (financiers) are the scourge of free marketeers, and he poses a question to socialists to reconcile this apparent contradiction: "Why is it that the very banksters that they so rightfully rage against are in fact their biggest allies in the fight against the free market?" This is a logical and empirical fallacy. He doesn't see that bankers are the ultimate capitalists, that they are an inevitable product of the capitalist system. Bankers simply believe that money is the ultimate form of property (which is sacred) and they use it to rent out to capitalists, who engage in profit-making enterprises and who don't have sufficient capital to be bankers. They are putting their capital to work in such corporations, and under the rules of capitalism they feel entitled to the rent of their money. Thus, I pose a question to Corbett: why do corporate executives and their upper-middle class professionals ally themselves with bankers?

Thus, Corbett often shares a bed with economists like Michael Hudson, who betrayed his Trotskyst roots to make money for capitalist enterprises and finally to teach in one of their universities. Granted that Hudson has often exposed the harmful effects on economies caused by financiers and the debts they pile on productive corporate enterprises, but he seldom directly criticizes the system in which bankers were created.

Corbett, like many American libertarians, always refers to "free market" as a system whereby small businesses compete against each other in a market of consumers who want the best products at the cheapest price. Is this a reality in today's world? Were the "free marketeers" ever leaders in capitalist countries? Financiers (think Alexander Hamilton, the Rothchild clan, etc) have always been a major and leading part of the capitalist class, and today they have overwhelming control of most of the world.

Also, I want to deal with his often cited writings of Antony C. Sutton. One must exercise some critical thinking when reading his books or articles. Based on my readings of several of his books and his career, I think he was a rather weird character. He served capitalists for many years; and based on this service, he was awarded a research fellowship at the very exclusive and conservative Hoover Institution. I tend to think that he was a mixed-up character who had been thoroughly indoctrinated with capitalist philosophy, but was also a stickler for truth. When he started uncovering some very inconvenient truths about what happened in history and to the embarrassment of the ruling capitalist class, they cast him out of the Hoover Institution.

One of the facts which Sutton spread that appealed to the ruling class was that capitalists had bankrolled both Lenin and Trotsky, and libertarians continue to make all kinds of wild inferences from this. In these cases bankers allegedly helped with trip expenses to enable the two revolutionaries to return to Russia. Do you think for a moment that Lenin and/or Trotsky were/was subsequently controlled by bankers? Capitalists will always try to control people by funding them. On the other hand, Sutton's research did uncover a lot of information regarding the funding of Nazis by American capitalists; and he revealed a lot of information about the highly secret "Skull and Bones" club at Yale University to the embarrassment of the ruling class.

Friday, January 11, 2019

Inside the Mind of Edward Mandell House, Administrator

Click here to access James Corbett's audio interview with Richard Grove about some of the sordid history of the deep state using a novel by Col. House, who was one of the members of the deep state.

Originally aired January 20, 2015: Richard Grove of TragedyandHope.com and PeaceRevolution.org joins us on this month’s edition of Film, Literature and the New World Order to discuss Philip Dru: Administrator by Edward Mandell House. We examine the man behind the work and how the novel presages House’s time as the power behind the throne of the Wilson presidency.

This post is for historians, whether professional or amateur, out there who have read a lot of historical material related to what is now referred to as the deep state ("shadow government" is another term)--those key people, mostly very rich financiers, since 1900 who have shaped so much of the history of the 20th century up to the present. Obviously the deep state has always been hidden from public view, so one must be well-read on the history of the 20th century to come to any understanding of it. I, myself, have read a lot of books about FD Roosevelt (who was exceptionally influenced by Col. House in addition to Wilson), Tragedy and Hope by Quigley, much of the history of the 20th century, and this discussion made a lot of sense to me as well as piqued (def.) my interest in other books.

The post might motivate others to read some of the books that are referred to in the discussion, and thus attain some understanding of what the deep state is, deep state fantasies about power, and their manipulation of people throughout the 20th century which continues to this day. (The show notes provide many links to books and other materials.) I particularly recommend listening from 30:50m to 32:08m for people who are relatively new to the subject.

Thursday, January 10, 2019

Is the US Planning to Wage War on Russia and China? - Michel Chossudovsky

Click here to access the interview with Chossudovsky, editor and founder of Global Research, conducted by Bonnie Faulkner from her Guns and Butter website.

If you don't have time to listen to all of this very interesting interview, I advise that you listen to the last half of it starting at 29:05m. I specify this point because he reports that China is a leader in telecommunications, and specifically, in 5G technology. This comment lends much suspicion about the authenticity of the article I posted on January 8 which announced a protest drive against this technology.

Shortly thereafter, he addresses the subject contained in the title of this post with some very interesting and disturbing little-known information. I highly recommend this segment.

Facebook Censorship of Alternative Media “Just the Beginning,” Says Top Neocon Insider

Click here to access article by Max Blumenthal and Jeb Sprague from the Gray Zone.

In comments published here for the first time, a neoconservative Washington insider has apparently claimed a degree of credit for the recent purge — and promised more takedowns in the near future.

“Russia, China, and other foreign states take advantage of our open political system,” remarked Jamie Fly, a senior fellow and director of the Asia program at the influential think tank the German Marshall Fund, which is funded by the U.S. government and NATO. “They can invent stories that get repeated and spread through different sites. So we are just starting to push back. Just this last week Facebook began starting to take down sites. So this is just the beginning.”

Forgotten France rises up

Click here to access article by Serge Halimi from Le Monde Diplomatique.

Macron has come unstuck. As did previous wunderkinder just as young, smiling and modern: Laurent Fabius, Tony Blair, Matteo Renzi. The liberal bourgeoisie are hugely disappointed. His French presidential election win in 2017 — whether it was a miracle or a divine surprise — had given them hope that France had become a haven of tranquillity in a troubled West. When Macron was crowned (to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy), The Economist, that standard-bearer for the views of the international ruling class, put him on its front cover, grinning as he walked on water.

But the sea has swallowed up Macron, too sure of his own instincts and too contemptuous of other people’s economic plight.

Another good post from some unknown source in which you may be interested to learn about the ongoing French protests that US corporate media refuses to cover: French riots? Here’s the reality MSM will not show you… and there’s good reason.

Solidarity with LA teachers!

Click here to access article by David Feldman from Liberation.

Some 33,000 educators and members of the United Teachers of Los Angeles union, consisting of teachers, counselors, nurses, librarians and other school workers are set to take to the picket line to defend public education in Los Angeles against the privatization plans of LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner.

Beutner, a multimillionaire and former investment banker, got rich by breaking up and selling off corporations while laying off workers and wants to do the same to LAUSD.

This and another article entitled "Portland State University threatens to fire Peter Boghossian for authoring 'Grievance Studies' hoax" that has been recently reported on alternative websites furnishes more evidence that the our masters in the capitalist ruling class are clamping down on public education and teachers that present other than acceptable (to them) views to their students. This has always been the case in more subtle forms, but these recent efforts suggest that this drive to control dissent is going into overdrive (def.).

If We Can No Longer Tell the Truth, We’ve Failed

Click here to access article by Charles Hugh Smith posted on Washington's Blog.

The last thing addicts want to hear is the truth: the only thing more terrifying than the truth is the possibility that they will lose access to whatever they’re addicted to: smack, Oxy, coke, alcohol, sex, porn, power, etc.

The author is no revolutionary, but in this article he does provide a major insight to a weakness of our masters. This piece directly supports one of my basic arguments that the power addicts of our capitalist ruling classes are most vulnerable when they engage in fake news and extremely biased reports as they are doing now. Hence, the need for a major alternative media organization to undermine their stories about what happens in the world. Such a bold plan and operation would "scare the daylights out of" (def.) them to the point that they would engage in all kinds of reckless acts which could very well add fuel to a revolutionary movement.

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Opportunities and Challenges Posed by the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) Protests and the Sunrise Movement

Click here to access article by Kamran Nayeri from Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism.

It's clear to me that leftists have learned very little from history since the end of the Vietnam War. Now, judging by this essay, they want to use major issues to build an organization capable of establishing a "socialist" revolution (whatever that means). Oh, yes, I admit they have learned a few political buzz words like "bottom-up" when referring to organizations. However, they still address the dangers of looking to ruling class parties to address their problems, and they still, like Nayeri, advocate supporting independent movements that rally around contemporary issues. (Yawn) Forgive me, if I lack attentiveness.

You see, in 1970 I largely agreed with Camejo's essay of 1970, that was republished at this website, which advocated using the Anti-Vietnam War Movement to build a revolutionary movement. Fortunately, unlike Nayeri, I have learned a lot since that time. That strategy didn't work then, and I have no reason to believe that it will work now in spite of what is going on in Europe with the Yellow Vest Movement. To his credit, he does warn about co-opted, reform movements such as the Sunrise Movement and other such movements.

The Sunrise Movement poses a different set of opportunities and challenges for the climate justice movement and its small ecosocialist component. While its stated purpose is to combat the climate crisis, it has not absorbed a key political lesson apparent in the spontaneous Yellow Vests protests: that the existing political parties are not to be trusted. Thus, the Sunrise Movement supports the agenda of the Democratic Party Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio Cortez ....

Nayeri, similar to Camejo, wants to use the ecological crisis to build a movement to construct some kind of "socialist" government.

One such a proposal is what I have outlined (Nayeri, 2015) A central goal of such a proposal is in its educational value: only an enlightened working people’s movement can stop and reverse the climate crisis. Such a proposal is key to educate our class about our lifestyle habits we came to own through the capitalist mass consumption culture.

However, I am convinced that the author of this article doesn't seem to understand the basic requirement of a revolution--enlightened working people--that will put working people into power and eliminate any class structured organization of society, particularly that which is in control of the capitalist class. Thus, Nayeri thinks getting behind an emissions tax will enlighten working people and put us on the road to socialism. Worse, he totally ignores the other major threat to humans: a global nuclear war catastrophe.

The only hope I see is the construction of a large alternative media organization that can provide real news coverage to the American public. Nobody likes to be lied to, and corporate media are disseminators of fake news reports and they censor honest coverage of vital issues. Polls show that increasing numbers of Americans are realizing that fact. In addition, such an alternative media organization would provide opportunities to experiment with bottom-up authority structures so vitally necessary in establishing a real and effective socialist society. (Here is my unfinished attempt as an example.)

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

INTERNATIONAL APPEAL: Stop 5G on Earth and in Space (updated)

Click here to access article from International Appeal. (Thanks go to an activist who alerted me to this warning.)

Updated at 1:17 PM CT on January 10: I suspect this article reflects a Western psy-op against China after listening to Michel Chossudovsky's remarks to Bonnie Faulkner at 29.08 (about half-way across the audio spectrum) who said that China was a leader in telecommunications and they were a leader in 5G technology.

Updated at 5 PM CT on January 10: I've read more using DuckDuckGo search engine which suggests that this technology has been pioneered by Israel.

They announce this:

Telecommunications companies worldwide, with the support of governments, are poised within the next two years to roll out the fifth-generation wireless network (5G). This is set to deliver what is acknowledged to be unprecedented societal change on a global scale.

As if we didn't have enough to worry about already:

Despite widespread denial, the evidence that radio frequency (RF) radiation is harmful to life is already overwhelming. The accumulated clinical evidence of sick and injured human beings, experimental evidence of damage to DNA, cells and organ systems in a wide variety of plants and animals, and epidemiological evidence that the major diseases of modern civilization—cancer, heart disease and diabetes—are in large part caused by electromagnetic pollution, forms a literature base of well over 10,000 peer-reviewed studies.

If the telecommunications industry’s plans for 5G come to fruition, no person, no animal, no bird, no insect and no plant on Earth will be able to avoid exposure, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to levels of RF radiation that are tens to hundreds of times greater than what exists today, without any possibility of escape anywhere on the planet. These 5G plans threaten to provoke serious, irreversible effects on humans and permanent damage to all of the Earth’s ecosystems.

Such statements have already been endorsed by highly educated specialists: Girish Kumar, PhD; Annie J Sasco, MD; Martin L Pall, PhD, etc. and supported by a number of references.

How Does Cinema War Propaganda Really Work?

Click here to access article by Matthew Alford and Tom Secker from Insurge Intelligence. (Updated with some much needed editing.)

The authors attempt an explanation of how our military branches of government together with film distributors shape what films are heavily promoted and Americans allowed to see. This results in films that are seriously critical of government actions and policies but result in very limited distribution and, in turn, incur financial losses to their promoters. However, I believe the authors' attempts at explanation fall well short of reality, and this is likely because of their own indoctrination received in schools controlled by the ruling capitalist class.

You see, during and especially after WWII, American fascist capitalists came out of the woodwork of "isolationism" of the 1930s and allied themselves with the devastated remains of the British Empire to establish a new US-led Empire. The Zionist Jews soon joined them after they took control of Palestine in 1948. Immediately after the war when the old-fashioned fascist powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) were successfully concluded, they moved aggressively in all institutions to bring the American people along with them in support of their imperial ambitions. They infiltrated labor unions, higher educational institutions, and Hollywood (prove it, you might say. I simply don't have the staff and time to do this, and my old age also has diminished my energy) as their main initial targets in this campaign. After that they infiltrated media corporations and every other institution that could conceivably have independent influences that were anathema to their imperial ambitions.

They also moved successfully to hide all of these actions from view by ordinary Americans. The fascist American, British, and Zionist capitalists stayed hidden in a deep state where no one was allowed to identify them and examine what they were doing. The most visible heads were those connections with the CIA: Allen Dulles, James Angleton, and George H. W. Bush. Meanwhile, abroad they brought areas they militarily controlled after WWII under ideological control mainly through such actions as Operation Gladio, and the same control of media and other institutions as they did within the USA.

I have provided some general references below. I have "tons" of other saved online documents, but I don't want to overwhelm you. (Notice that some have been taken down, or for some other reason eliminated. I have noticed this recently and it has been increasing. The Tides Foundation which funnels money from various sources to fund propaganda outlets is no longer providing access to data about funding particular websites. I used them in approximately 2011 to find out that they were funding Amy Goodwin of Democracy Now around $200,000. Thus, she avoids topics like 9/11 and limits other coverage.)

I think we must be conscious that the fascists of today's capitalist world have learned a lot of lessons from the earlier fascists of the 1930s and 40s. As is mentioned in the article, they strenuously avoid the appearance of old-fashioned propagandists. Thus, they permit some very limited criticisms and left-wing views to be exposed to the public, but this is extremely limited and mostly quite innocuous to their interests. They have all kinds of means to limit such criticisms and leftist views by their control of media, film industry, and co-opting people with their control over careers and with lots of money.

~~CIA Admits Using News To Manipulate the USA (1975) - YouTube~~
70 Years of Disinformation: How the CIA Funded Opinion Magazines in Europe - American Herald Tribune
The CIA and the Media: Bernstein
The book “Bought Journalists” 5 People You Won’t Believe Worked For the CIA - YouTube
~~The CIA and the Media: 50 Historical Facts the World Needs to Know~~
Mainstream Media: Presstitutes for the Rich and Powerful
Operation Mockingbird - Wikipedia ‘German politicians are US puppets’ | Oriental Review
Is The West A Capitalist Society? -- they pretend to be independent reporters
Rachel Maddow Plays Glenn Beck
Shaky Foundations: Toxic Sources, Tainted Money
Oil Sands Truth: Shut down the Tar Sands
US military studied how to influence Twitter users in Darpa-funded research
~~Tides fund Democracy Now~~
Why has Time magazine endorsed the #MeToo “revolution”?
Government has order the media not to cover 9/11
Article: The Cointelpro Role of Left Gatekeeping Foundations | OpEdNews

Monday, January 7, 2019

Some interesting new information about 9/11

Click here to access article posted by the editor of True Publica on their British-based website.

Don't let the bland title of this article deter you from reading it--it's powerful! More and more people are questioning the official government story about history's top false-flag event: 9/11. Likewise the directorate of the ruling capitalist class (otherwise known as the Deep State), which controls our government and much of the Anglo-American Empire, are fighting back with the old canard about such questioning of official reports: questioning equals "conspiracy theory". This article from a major alternative British website furnishes details about the breakdown of belief in the government's 9/11 mythology while citing other major examples of government lies.

Sunday, January 6, 2019

9/11: Finally the Truth Comes Out?

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts posted on Foreign Policy Journal (not to be confused with Foreign Policy, one of the propaganda websites of the Deep State that governs America).

Although the United States is allegedly a democracy with a rule of law, it has taken 17 years for public pressure to bring about the first grand jury investigation of 9/11. Based on the work of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth led by Richard Gage, first responder and pilots organizations, books by David Ray Griffen and others, and eyewitness testimony, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry has presented enough hard facts to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York to force his compliance with the provisions of federal law that require the convening of a federal grand jury to investigate for the first time the attacks of September 11, 2001.

This puts the US Justice (sic) Department in an extraordinary position. Every informed person is aware that elements of the US government were involved either in the perpetration of the 9/11 attacks or in a coverup of the attacks.

Revolution back in Europe! Why and how?

Click here to access article by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos from Defend Democracy Press.

The author gives a thoughtful view of the Yellow Vest's (for the latest update, see this) potential to evolve into something of significance, and also the necessity of action today in order to save our human species. After citing numerous uprisings since WWII, he writes:

These are all movements which, each one in its own way and despite the differences between them, have profoundly changed the way we perceive the world, and were all characterized by the same direct form of people’s action, with millions of simple people directly participating, and by the fact that they all questioned the foundations of economic and social organization and the power system in the countries in which they broke. All these movements, without exception, were,in one way or another, accompanied by demands for democratisation of society, self-management and direct participation of people in power.

Does Socialism Affect Freedom?

Click here to access this 25 minute podcast by David Harvey, a noted "socialist" theorist and spokesman posted on Democracy at Work.

Harvey, in my opinion, engages in a long, complicated discussion of the merits of freedom under some kind of socialism versus that of capitalism. Of course, our capitalist masters insure that we all receive indoctrination in the merits of freedom under capitalism and the lack of freedom under socialism.

To me it is very simple. The system of capitalism in which everything must be produced or created in order to be bought and sold for profit provides abundant benefits (all kinds of freedom and an elevated standard of living including access to education and health care) for those who have large amounts of money already.

People of the latter description became numerous in the 17th and 18th centuries and took control of leading nations and established capitalism in those countries which they expanded it to nearly all countries. Because they enjoyed radically different opportunities, standards of living, and enormous influence, they became known as a social-economic class of capitalists or bourgeoisie. In other words, their system which gave this class of people power over societies in addition to all kinds of opportunities for an abundant lifestyle, also put the majority of people essentially in bondage to these powerful people. But, why should a system exist to benefit for only one small group of people at the disadvantage of the vast majority???

True to his British heritage of favoring only mild reforms to capitalism, Harvey insists that only the basic necessities of a society should be socialized. He repeats this a number of times. Harvey along with many other fake socialists do not want an end to capitalism, but only reforms to the system in order to rid it of its worst consequences, but not a system that promotes the welfare and freedoms for all people. (That is precisely why he and other milder "socialists" like Richard Wolff are tolerated as professors teaching classes at American universities.) The system he and others like him favor has a name: social democracy. Like so many concepts nowadays, this is a prettied-up euphemism for a reformed capitalism.

Saturday, January 5, 2019

Why One Should Distrust the News [news from media corporations]

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Zuesse starts out to report on the reporting inaccuracies of major media corporations which is well known to anyone on the left, but then reveals what I have witnessed in the past several years: that the CIA has been posting pseudo-researched articles on Wikipedia, one of the foundation sites of alternative media.

As I understand Wikipedia's policies, anyone can do an entry if its factual material is backed by links to documentation. Zuesse confirms my suspicions that Wikipedia will accept entries if it uses documentation that are faulty--and there is now an abundance of deceptive information spread by corporate media. Knowing what I know about the CIA related to their infiltration of media corporations, I have long wondered when they would get around to posting fake or heavily biased entries on Wikipedia's website. Zuesse cites some dramatic examples of this. To be sure, the overwhelming number of entries are still based on solid research, but one must be alert to this growing trend.

Friday, January 4, 2019

Imperialism Abhors a Void: Guest: Sarah Abed

Click here to access an audio 31:12m audio interview featuring an interview with now Canadian Sarah Abed conducted by Cindy Sheehan from Sheehan's website.

This week, to end the year, Cindy chats with Syrian-born, political analyst and author, Sarah Abed about Trump's recent announcement of US troop withdrawal from Syria. As noted in the interview, the US was an uninvited participant anyway that has sided with the terrorists against the sovereign government of Syria. The Democrat-liberal reaction to Trump's announcement was also very interesting.

Bernie’s Surprising Response To Mail Bomb Threat

I post this for your entertainment. One must strive to keep a sense of humor about things, especially while waiting to join the revolution. Whoever is impersonating Sen. Bernie Sanders is unbelievably perfect. By the way, Jimmy Dore does live performances; and to find out about this, you should access his website.

Society Is Made Of Narrative

Click here to access article by Caitlin Johnstone from Free21.

... it’s psychopathic oligarchs who are keeping us asleep in the Matrix. And instead of code, it’s narrative.

Society is made of narrative like the Matrix is made of code. Identity, language, etiquette, social roles, opinions, ideology, religion, ethnicity, philosophy, agendas, rules, laws, money, economics, jobs, hierarchies, politics, government, they’re all purely mental constructs which exist nowhere outside of the mental noises in our heads.