Trump's Base Turns On Him Over Afghanistan

Click here if you wish to access the 10:43m podcast via YouTube that originated from the Jimmy Dore show.  

I especially liked the exchange between Dore and one of his guests (Ron?) toward the end of the show.

Ron: Let's look at the system that allowed this snake oil salesman [Trump] to happen in the first place.

Jimmy: No wants to do that, Ron. That's a good idea. I know no one wants to change the system. No one wants to get rid of their money. No one wants to get rid of their corporate cash. Nobody wants to change the system, believe me.

Unfortunately, they didn't name the system, but the system has a name--capitalism. 

Capitalist speech versus people speech

by political cartoonist Matt Wuerker.

This cartoon very well illustrates the truth that a tiny class of capitalists, who rule the US, have overwhelmingly more opportunities to influence decisions than the vast majority of Americans. In addition, it shows the hypocrisy of the propaganda that we are all subject to: "the people have spoken". What is missing from the satire is the power of wealth also enables capitalists to hide a very "inconvenient truth": Their wealth enables them to control both political parties and select their candidates. It's not a perfect system as they discovered in the recent election, but it is sufficient to fool most Americans into believing that they live in a "democracy".

Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression

Click here to access article by Jeremy Malcolm, Cindy Cohn, and Danny O'Brien from Electronic Frontier Foundation.  

Although these people don't acknowledge the reality of the current class war that is occurring, they, as experts on all technical matters of internet, recognize that there are attacks happening against the norms of free expression of opinions over the internet. There is much to be learned about the internet in this piece to enable us to better fight against censorship that is currently being waged by agents of the capitalist class.

Permit me to digress because I've just had an epiphany and, before I forget, I want to share it with you! Don't ask me how I arrived at it, because I don't remember. It has something to do with the free expression of ideas.

The thought just occurred to me that education in a capitalist controlled society, such as we are in, has so effectively blocked any class-based analysis of issues in those it educates. (If this is difficult for you to grasp, think of it in terms of inoculation against a disease--the disease in this case is critical thinking.) And the more education one receives, the more this blocking process occurs. These insights have been validated by many experiences in my rather long life of 81 years. 

Capitalists need highly trained people to enable them to exploit workers, to design devices (robots, subsystems, weapons, etc) which eliminates the need for workers, to better exploit workers, have better access to resources and markets, to develop weapons that can threaten other countries to comply with our masters' demands, to staff their many institutions to protect and promote their system of capitalism, etc, etc. The more education one receives in a capitalist controlled society the more potentially dangerous one becomes for our capitalist masters. To offset any threats to their rule and their system, which lays so many golden eggs (among which are wealth and power) for them to enjoy at our expense, they especially load their system of higher education with pro-capitalist ideas about the sanctity of private economic property, the mythology/religion of the "invisible hand", the justness of their economic and political system, and the necessity for workers to obey their leaders and work hard for their bosses. 

Of course, such ideas are pure indoctrination and people are discouraged from ever questioning questioning these fundamental beliefs of capitalism. They are like the 10 Commandments of Judaism and Christianity. Capitalism is a faith-based belief system which often resembles a religion.  As mentioned above, my experience has validated a corollary of this indoctrination component of education: the more education one has, the more indoctrinated such a person is likely to be in these fundamental tenets of capitalism. (This holds true even when the factor of rewards/benefits are factored in--although less so.) This explains why I nearly always have found it more difficult to convince educated people of the class nature of our society than I have people who have received much less education.

The truth will not be Googled

Click here to access article by Claire Connelly from Renegade Inc. (Edited for clarity at 5:45 PM Seattle time.)

Even people who I regard as believers in the reform of capitalism (otherwise known as "liberals") are disturbed by the increasing efforts of internet related corporations to censor out material that our masters in the capitalist class find objectionable. 

While web-hosting services have been criticised for cancelling the registration of neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer, progressive left-leaning sites are losing Google ranking and traffic because of a deliberate move to censor “fake” news by the internet search giant.

I haven't yet seen any significant evidence that my website has been adversely affected by corporate internet censors (other than the usual August slowdown when people go on vacations), but many as reported in this article have been affected. However, I have a rather difficult time sympathizing with people whose websites have been adversely affected. I think it is very naive of them to expect otherwise. They seem to have actually believed in all the propaganda about liberties in a capitalist class ruled society. Actually I am surprised that this has not happened sooner. So, I say, "people, grow up! Get a grip on reality! (This does not mean that we should simply accept their efforts to control the internet--on the contrary, we must throw everything into the battle to preserve it for our use.)

You live in a society that is ruled of, by, and for the interests of a class of owners of the economy, otherwise known as capitalists. The latter see evidence all around them that the internet is used by people to reject their self-serving propaganda, and logically they want to shut it down. Is that so hard to understand?

Yes, I am aware of all the amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, to the Constitution. However our early "founding fathers" were forced to tack on these liberties to their constitution in order for the states to ratify it. They didn't really mean it. So, get over it. Surely you stopped believing in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. Likewise you should stop believing in all the fairy tale indoctrination about freedom existing in the US. These freedoms largely only exist for this class; and when "push comes to shove" as they are now for the increasingly threatened ruling class, they won't exist at all for ordinary people. 

The implication of all this is clear: we ordinary people must act to secure your own liberties by overthrowing the rule of the capitalist class and insuring that no ruling class ever takes control. But we can't stop there. We will also have to design a new society that insures equality, that the fruits of one's labor is shared by all, and, most importantly, the policies that govern this new society are influenced by all. 

There has never been a more favorable time to do this since the beginning of civilization. Think about it. We have constructed so many labor saving devices that free us from work; and with our control of them, we could all work about a 15 hour week which would free us to educate ourselves, to govern, spend more time with our families, create things, enjoy life, preserve the environment, etc, etc. Unfortunately under the rules of capitalism, these devices are all "owned" by capitalists whose only interest is to accumulate more profit and power at your expense by producing many frivolous and even terribly harmful things (never-ending wars) that we can and must do without if we are to survive as a species.

They Want You to ‘Punch a Nazi’: Enacting Violence Keeps You Distracted From the Real Issue

Click here to access article by Matt Agorist from The Free Thought Project. 

There is absolutely no chance of an outspoken, swastika toting white supremacist, hell bent on a 2nd Holocaust, taking over the country and locking you up. This is why battling white supremacists is futile. There is, however, a very real system of oppression on the rise in this country that does oppress minorities, kidnaps them, cages them, and also kills them on a large scale. It was here far before Trump too.

And later he writes:

America’s real white supremacists don’t identify themselves with flags—they use the seals of government agencies and company logos to officialize their corporatism into policy. They hide behind marble walls, built by slaves, and move armies around the planet like chess pieces on a board. America’s real white supremacists want you paying attention to the serfs fighting over statues so they can continue to rape the planet, extract the fruits of your labor, and spread empire all in their hellish mission to maintain their ‘order.’ 

You may also be interested in Jay Syrmopoulos's similar interpretation of the remarks made recently by Noam Chomsky entitled "Noam Chomsky: ‘Antifa is Wrong in Principle — a Major Gift to the Militant Right’".

As Russia-Gate Story Stalls, Cue Trump Neo-Nazi Scandal

Click here to access article by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Minor editing to add greater clarity to my commentary.)

...the concerted, massive media campaign to nail Trump as some kind of new Fuhrer seems way over the top. The media frenzy smacks of Deep State opponents scouring for a handy new pretext for ousting him from office.

The enthusiasm for whipping up the new anti-Trump campaign seems due in large part because the erstwhile Russia-gate story has patently failed to gain any traction. For nearly seven months since Trump’s inauguration, the relentless claims pushed by Democrats, the media and anonymous intelligence sources that his election last November was enabled by Russian interference have shown little impact in terms of discrediting Trump and ultimately forcing him out of the White House. The Russia-gate theme has failed in its soft coup objective.

The Irish journalist argues that Deep State operatives are now exploiting the increasing revelations that Trump has racist inclinations as demonstrated by corporate media coverage given to the recent incident in Charlottesville, Virginia. Having largely failed with the Russia-gate strategy, the racist card looks more promising. Of course, this overlooks the fact that nearly all Americans (I include myself) in the US have harmful racist feelings ranging from people in the White nationalist groups to the Deep State to African-Americans (who are, in many cases, affected psychologically negatively) simply because one cannot avoid the racist indoctrination that is laced throughout US culture. The Deep State exploited the African-American superficial features of Obama to promote him as president in order to camouflage their own racism and to bolster their propaganda that the US was no longer a racist nation.  

Racism is a ubiquitous fact of life in the US because the capitalist ruling class has always seen it as a useful weapon to weaken labor movements by playing off various groups of workers against each other. Other groups affected at various times in our history were the Chinese, Asians as a whole, brown Latin Americans, southern and eastern Europeans, and even the Irish. The Deep State may now be seeing it (stirring up racial conflicts) as a useful strategy to dump Trump. As I argued yesterday, the evidence suggests that the entire Charlottesville incident was carefully planned by not only White nationalists but local police agencies as well.

“Start Throwing Rocks”: Washington Post Op-Ed Calls For More Violence In The Streets

Click here to access article by Daniel Lang from SHTF Plan. (My thanks goes to Christopher in northwest Oregon who alerted me to this article.)

Although I don't like the wording in the third paragraph, otherwise I totally agree with him. I think the media agents of the ruling class play ordinary Americans like a circus calliope. I have been "entertaining" the idea that this might be the opening salvo of the ruling class's war against dissenters. From what I've learned so far is that the Charlottesville incident looks engineered with the cops' role part of the engineering. The ruling class might have decided to take out their frustrations over Syria on what constitutes the left domestically, especially with a right-wing racist in office who is not of their choosing. Time will tell. Keep in mind that ruling class agents have developed an expertise and a lot of experience with regard to creating social chaos.

It's articles like the one entitled "Chaos in Charlottesville: No One Gave Peace a Chance, Including the Police" that reinforces my theory.

Life under capitalism: Early deaths a ‘silver lining’ for corporations

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

Dolack illustrates how the "disorder" of the inevitable development of the system of capitalism, which results in ever greater concentration of wealth in the hand of a diminishing number of rich, can actually be measured by using certain statistics like longevity. However what is very bad news to us is good news to the tiny ruling class of capitalists as reported to them in an article in one of their news publications (Bloomberg) entitled "Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions". This is another example of the contradictions of capitalism that our masters like to hide from us, but are completely candid about in their news sources.

So what does this have to do with an article published by Bloomberg? The headline on this particular article says it all: “Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions,” complete with a subhead declaring “lower pension costs” a “silver lining.” As not only a proud member of the corporate media, but one specializing in delivering news to financiers and industrialists, extolling a benefit to corporate bottom lines and ignoring the, ahem, human cost of said benefit is only to be expected. The article is not at all atypical of the business press, even if this one is a little more obvious than usual.

Thus, you can be dead certain (pun intended) that such news shapes their policy decisions to diminish resources for health care for ordinary people as very well illustrated in their attempts to weaken the already inadequate (for us), pro-insurance company Affordable Care Act that the last Congress passed with Obama's support.

Cornel West & Rev. Traci Blackmon: Clergy in Charlottesville Were Trapped by Torch-Wielding Nazis [Parts 1 and 2]

Click here to access 44:26m video and transcript of the interviews posted on Democracy Now!. (Note: The interviews and Goodman's report (in Part 1) of the Charlottesville incident is interrupted from 9:09m to 15:46m when Amy Goodman reported the regular news.) (Updated at 5:42 PM Seattle time with links to documentation added.)

...violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend as thousands of neo-Nazis, KKK members and other white nationalists began descending on the city to participate in the "Unite the Right" rally. Thousands of counterprotesters met in Charlottesville, including clergy, students, Black Lives Matter activists, and protesters with the antifascist movement known as "antifa." We are joined by two clergy members and a local Black Lives Matter activist who helped organize the demonstration. Rev. Traci Blackmon is executive minister of Justice and Witness Ministries of the United Church of Christ. During a live interview with MSNBC at the march on Saturday, she was forced to flee as counterprotesters were attacked around her. Cornel West was also on site and describes the scene. We also speak with Jalane Schmidt, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia.

Then this coverage continues in Part 2:

Cornel West:

...our concern has to be...to empower those of us who are willing to fight. We need prophetic fightback, progressive fightback. It’s got to be multiracial, but it’s also got to be critical to capitalism and the empire, along with patriarchy and white supremacy. White supremacy certainly is at the center, but it can’t just be a matter of talking about race isolated from these other very ugly realities.

Of course, as usual (see this, this, and this), because this dramatic comment made Amy Goodwin uncomfortable because she knew that such remarks would make her rich funders (for example, this) unhappy which might threaten her several hundred thousand dollar salary she enjoys (see this, this, and this), she did not pick up on it by having West expand on it. She simply ignored it by quickly asking another question of Traci Blackmon.

(Democracy Now! is providing other followup coverage of the incident that you may want to follow.)

Oakland's NFL Star Marshawn Lynch Sits During US Anthem

Click here to access article from TeleSur. 

A former star running back for the Seattle Seahawks joins quarterback Kaepernick in refusing to stand for the national anthem. Last night his friend and former teammate Michael Bennett also refused to stand as a protest against racist injustice in the exhibition game against the San Diego Chargers. In contrast to Lynch he explained his reasons in an interview after the game.

Seahawk defensive lineman Michael Bennett sat during the national anthem prior to the team’s preseason opener against the Chargers in Carson, Calif., Sunday night, a stance he said he will continue throughout the 2017 season in an effort to “continuously push” a message against injustice in society.

Delcy Rodriguez to Lead Constituent Assembly in Venezuela

from TeleSur. 

The rise of such people to leadership as Delcy Rodriguez in the Constituent Assembly, whose task is to propose a new constitution for ratification by the Venezuelan people, holds much promise for the salvation of the Venezuelan people. At 1:50m she confronts President Macri of Argentina at a Mercosur meeting for supporting a known opposition terrorist in Venezuela.

Sloppy reporting "to scare people to death"

by Ron Horn for this website.

This morning while perusing articles, I came across the article posted in Defend Democracy Press entitled "Is America Trying to Start a World War? This Is How It Would Happen" in which I became alarmed at this statement:

North Korea has been on the receiving end of a U.S.-led sanctions regime for years, as well, and the American military is now flying bombers over its airspace, provoking the country to respond in kind.

Immediately I checked the link the author provided. It took me to a report from Reuters in which I found the following statement in the first paragraph: 

The United States flew two supersonic B-1B bombers over the Korean peninsula in a show of force on Sunday and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said China, Japan and South Korea needed to do more after Pyongyang's latest missile tests. 

This was repeated further down under a picture of a B-1 bomber. The ambiguous reference to the "Korean peninsula" is what really really disturbed me. Eventually I found a more precise location where the two bombers flew in the Independent:

A pair of US supersonic bombers have flown over the Korean Peninsula, less than 48-hours after North Korea’s successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Flanked by South Korean fighter jets The B-1 bombers carried out a low-pass over the Osan Air Base, near South Korea's capital Seoul. [my link]

However the author did not furnish any link to a source of this information. 

Unfortunately this Anti-Media report was also posted in Global Research as well as the Defend Democracy Press, and I don't know how many others. I wondered why Reuters was so vague about their path over the "Korean peninsula". Then I recalled a statement made by Brian Williams on MSNBC who said that "our job tonight actually is to scare people to death on this subject". Well, it looks like Reuters is also doing their job. It makes me wonder if all the corporate media executives were given this instruction and by whom.

But I also am critical of the reporting by Darius Shahtahmasebi on the staff of Anti-Media. This website is already suffering from being blacklisted by Media Bias/Fact Check, so I would think that they would be especially careful about their reporting.

It's later than you think

by cartoonist Niels Bo Bojesen.

The planet has just a 5% chance of reaching Paris climate goal.

Why Siding with Washington on Korea May Be Dangerous

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

Cunningham recognizes that China and Russia in going along with UN sanctions likely seek to start negotiations that can produce a peaceful settlement to this long developing crisis. 

What appears to be in the calculus by China and Russia is that by giving a sop to the American desire to get tough on North Korea, they are anticipating that the US will agree to calls for multi-party talks and a freeze on military activities on the Korean Peninsula.

Both the Chinese and Russian ambassadors to the UN coupled the latest resolution for sanctions against North Korea with the reboot of the six-party negotiations involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the US. Those talks were abandoned in 2009 when the US and North Korea broke off in recriminations.

His main objection about the agreement of China and Russia to go along with the Empire's demand for UN sanctions against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) can be summed up with this paragraph:

It is misplaced for China and Russia to pander to the US over sanctions and to expect something by way of concessions in return. The arrogant Americans don’t know the meaning of concessions, they only perceive weakness and will move to capitalize on weakness.

Google is the Engine of Censorship

Click here to access article from 21st Century Wire. 

Late last year, search engine giant Google announced its plans to protect users from the horrors of ‘fake news’ by changing the way it presents search results. According to corporate officials, they hope to shelter  readers by limiting access to what the company deems as “low-quality” information – while promoting what it calls ‘established’ mainstream sources. Critics believe that the company, which now has a virtual monopoly on internet traffic, is now playing god over the info-sphere. 

Actually, from my experience Google is the best of a very bad selection of data search engines. If you know of a better one, please let me know. Someone needs to design a search engine that only includes reliable sources of information. But that takes funding and the rich of the Empire have nearly all of the funds.

Facing Defeat in Syria, ISIS Inexplicably Expands Globally

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

For ISIS – fueled by resources found only within the boundaries of its meager and shrinking territorial holdings in Syria and Iraq – to be simultaneously fighting the national armies of Syria and Iraq, backed by Iran, Russia, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and allegedly a US-led coalition including dozens of countries, all while expanding its reach worldwide, including full-scale military operations in Southeast Asia, begs belief.

Having long followed news reports in independent media and from reliable journalists regarding the sudden appearance of the well-equipped and technologically advanced ISIS army in Syria, I immediately drew some inferences about their sudden dramatic appear in the Philippines. Cartalucci provides in summary form the evidence and logic which supports the reality that ISIS is the US-led Empire's and allies' well-funded project to spread its brand of terrorism all over the world in order to justify the Empire's global military operations. 

If you are like me, you don't need to read the article. However, most Americans timidly never venture outside of corporate media, and thus they accept the ruling class's constructed "reality" as truth. Remember what that right-wing advisor Karl Rove said in a brief moment of candor?

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

He wasn't only referring to their actions as reported by independent media, but to their construction via media corporations of the "reality" of their actions.

Eve of Destruction…Or Revolution?

Click here to access a commentary of a book by Ron Jacobs from CounterPunch. 

“In order to replace capitalism with an ecological society we need a revolution.” That modest sentence is how Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams, the authors of Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation, begin the last chapter of their new book. Although the chapter is the end of the book, it is also an opening to a new direction, a new movement. It is also the essence of the entire text. Capitalism is the reason our biosphere is collapsing and the only way humanity and the rest of earth’s species can survive is by ending capitalism.

Magdoff and Williams make some very good arguments, which Jacobs summarizes, that capitalism is ultimately going to destroy the habitat that supports human life. I particularly like their material about human nature and its gross distortion under capitalist culture. 

However, saving the biosphere to protect human habitation is only one of the reasons why we should should put an end to capitalism. Capitalism is also the root cause of widespread poverty and wars. Wars nowadays between major powers that are equipped with nuclear weapons are likely to extinguish humans much earlier than the destabilization of the biosphere. I have striven for the past nearly eight years to argue and document all three reasons with this website. (I have also written a proposal on the best way to end capitalism: A Revolutionary Model.)

I notice that more and more people are beginning to realize that revolution to end capitalist rule must be considered. (See here, and here.) I googled "revolution" on Google (selected "past week" under "tools") and found many recent entries referring to Bernie Sanders (see this). This suggests to me that ruling class agents are once again attempting to herd confused young Americans back into the fold of the Democratic Party or at least into a political dead-end.

Yesterday I noticed numerous articles (for example, see this) in liberal media about the recent convention held in Chicago by the Democratic Socialists of America who seem to be enjoying a revival with the injection of many former Bernie Sanders followers. Although occasionally they play lip service to the abolition of capitalism, their past actions indicate that they are far more interested in working politically within the capitalist system to promote social democracy or a generous state welfare system.

What few people who want to substantially change conditions today fail to realize is that 1) the capitalist ruling class will never allow substantial change to be voted on and selected; and 2) that the descendance into fascism that today's capitalist rule exhibits is not the fascism of the past, but a new form using corporate media to thoroughly confuse and distract people in order to promote their policies and preserve their rule. 

Thus any effective revolutionary movement must counter the fake news and analysis with authentic news and analysis that enables ordinary people to understand what is going on in the world and awaken an awareness of how they can bring about real changes. This, too, I have firmly embedded in my revolutionary proposal. In addition the proposal uses prefigurative political elements to empower ordinary people and prevent any kind of ruling classes in the future.

Latin American School of Medicine: A beacon of fraternity, solidarity and collectivity

Click here to access article by Nuria Barbosa León from Granma (Cuba). (Note: I'd like to thank Caren from northwestern Oregon for alerting me to this article.)

Cuban medicine is famous all over the world except here in the US where media corporations don't want you to know about it. Their research has led to new medicines, their Latin America School of Medicine has trained more than 28,500 doctors from 103 countries, and Cuban doctors have served in numerous countries which are lacking in health facilities. I know from my trip to Venezuela in December 2005 that the Venezuelan people very much appreciate the work they have done in their country.

The article mostly reports on the author's interviews with recent graduates of the school to hear from them about their experience at the school.

"It's Barack Obama Marries Dick Cheney" All In One Think Tank

Click here to access article by Tyler Durden from Zero Hedge. 

Durden covers several new events that suggest a movement is on (no doubt by agents of the Deep State) to curtail reports you are getting from various alternative websites. This includes a new "think tank" that's been organized to do just that--it's called the "Alliance for Securing Democracy". (Don't you just love the way they in their unique Orwellian style so frequently dress up their nefarious projects with the warm-fuzzy word "democracy"?)

...who specifically is behind the Alliance for Securing Democracy? For that we should turn to Col. Pat Lang's blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, which artfully summarizes its origins. Pat Lang is a retired former high ranking Pentagon intelligence officer who oversaw all military intelligence for the Middle East, and was a presidential intelligence briefer under past presidents. ....

Who Has Your Back?

Click here to access report issued by Rainey Reitman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 

Note on 10/24/2017: I very much regret posting this article. See my recent post entitled "Pew Survey Examines 'Future of Truth and Misinformation Online'" for an explanation.

While many technology companies continue to step up their privacy game by adopting best practices to protect sensitive customer information when the government demands user data, telecommunications companies are failing to prioritize user privacy when the government comes knocking. Even tech giants such as Apple, Facebook, and Google can do more to fully stand behind their users.

EFF's seventh annual “Who Has Your Back” report digs into the ways many technology companies are getting the message about user privacy in this era of unprecedented digital surveillance.

We evaluated the public policies at 26 companies and awarded stars in five categories, with nine companies earning a perfect five-star score this year: Adobe, Credo, Dropbox, Lyft, Pinterest, Sonic, Uber, Wickr, and Wordpress. Each has a track record of defending user privacy against government overreach and improved on their practices to meet the more stringent standards in this year's Who Has Your Back.

AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, and Verizon scored the lowest, each earning just one star. While they have adopted a number of industry best practices, like publishing transparency reports and requiring a warrant for content, they still need to commit to informing users before disclosing their data to the government and creating a public policy of requesting judicial review of all National Security Letters.

You can check details on each company and other information below the chart provided by the report.