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 LappĂ©, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, August 5, 2017

Has Seymour Hersh Debunked ‘Russia-gate’?

Click here to access article by Justin Raimondo from AntiWar.com. (Amended several times up to 5:33 PM Seattle time.)

For those of you who may still have doubts about the Deep State's war against Trump, this adds more fuel to the evidence-fire. The ruling class through their media have brainwashed many unsuspecting Americans into believing a classic "conspiracy theory" which they repeated over and over until it has lodged in their minds as a "fact":
The Democrats, the media, and the War Party contend that the Russians hacked into the DNC, and fooled John Podesta into handing the keys to his emails over to them: a full-fledged federal investigation, complete with a special counsel, is now busy trying to find evidence of the Trump campaign’s collusion with this nefarious plot.
Yes, Trump must have had Rich murdered because he knew too much, and "Putin's Russia" interfered with the election causing Hillary to lose! (sarcasm) This type of shit (excuse my language) fills corporate media reports instead of real news!

Trump approves new sanctions against Russia

Click here to access article by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site
While Trump indicated that he agreed with the imposition of sanctions against what he described in his signing statements as the “rogue regimes” in both North Korea and Iran—both of which Washington has openly targeted for regime change—his opposition was based largely on the legislation’s limiting of his power to waive existing sanctions imposed by the Obama administration against Russia.

The inclusion of this restraint was bound up with the unrelenting campaign waged by the Democratic Party and the corporate media, backed by powerful layers within the US military-intelligence apparatus, attacking Trump as the beneficiary of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Underlying this campaign is opposition within the American ruling establishment to any letup in aggression against Russia, which is viewed as a principal obstacle to the US drive to defend its global dominance by militarily asserting its control over the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the entire Eurasian landmass.
Also see the implications of this bill on Europe in an article by Eric Zuesse entitled "America Declares Economic War Against Europe".

On the Beach 2017. “The War was Over… Was it Started by an Accident or Mistake. There was no Victor… “

Click here to access article by John Pilger from Global Research (based in Canada).

This noted anti-war Australian journalist uses two pieces of fiction to illustrate the terrible likely reality of a nuclear war with Russia and China. 

Referring to the brainwashing of the American public for the coming war with Russia and China, he writes:
Those who call themselves liberals or tendentiously “the left” are eager participants in this manipulation, and its brainwashing, which today revert to one name: Trump.

Trump is mad, a fascist, a dupe of Russia. He is also a gift for “liberal brains pickled in the formaldehyde of identity politics”, wrote Luciana Bohne memorably. The obsession with Trump the man — not Trump as a symptom and caricature of an enduring system – beckons great danger for all of us.

While they pursue their fossilised anti-Russia agendas, narcissistic media such as the Washington Post, the BBC and the Guardian suppress the essence of the most important political story of our time as they warmonger on a scale I cannot remember in my lifetime.

Neocons Leverage Trump-Hate for More Wars

Click here to access article by Robert Parry from ConsortiumNews

Although Parry accepts the official version of who was behind the 9/11 project, he does offer a substantial argument that the Neocons (a euphemism for "Ziocons") are a powerful force that is controlling coverage by corporate media which, in turn, is managing the minds and actions of what appears to be a majority of the American public using "Trump-hate" in order to pursue more wars on behalf of US's imperial and Zionist agendas.
A savvy Washington observer once told me that the political reality about the neoconservatives is that they alone couldn’t win you a single precinct in the United States. But both Republicans and Democrats still line up to gain neocon support or at least neocon acceptance.

Part of the reason for this paradox is the degree of dominance that the neoconservatives have established in the national news media – as op-ed writers and TV commentators – and the neocon ties to the Israel Lobby that is famous for showering contributions on favored politicians and on the opponents of those not favored.

Friday, August 4, 2017

The End of the "Wars on the Cheap" for the United States

Click here to access article by "The Saker" from The Unz Review.  (Edited for correction on 8/5/2017 at 3:40 PM)

I think he makes a good point that "wars on the cheap" are no longer available to the Empire's ruling capitalist class. He provides a very good description of "wars on the cheap" strategy, and develops a good argument that this strategy, which the Empire's directors have been using so successfully since Nicaragua and the Contras, is over. [Actually CIA support for the rebel Mujaheddin in Afghanistan (later to become Al Qaeda in Iraq) began a little over two years earlier under the Carter administration) He argues that people have learned how to combat the highly sophisticated weapons supplied by the Empire and its allies so that the economic and political costs of the Empire's use of this strategy is becoming prohibitive. And when other powerful nations assist targeted governments such as Russia is doing in Syria, this strategy is completely ineffective. 

What I believe the author doesn't emphasize enough is that the strategy is fundamentally ineffective because highly motivated "boots on the ground" are missing for nearly all of the foreign adventures contemplated by the Empire's directorate. To be sure, people are learning how to fight back against superior equipped forces. However, to me, this suggests that the 9/11 effect of motivating Americans and others to go on the offensive in foreign countries in expensive prolonged wars is coming to an end. Might this reality spur the ruling class directors to create another incident such as 9/11? Stay tuned (def. #2), or better yet, stay politically active and informed.

Internet Censorship Bill Would Spell Disaster for Speech and Innovation

Click here to access article, "a call to action" by Elliot Harmon posted on Electronic Frontier Foundation.
There’s a new bill in Congress that would threaten your right to free expression online. If that weren’t enough, it could also put small Internet businesses in danger of catastrophic litigation.

Don’t let its name fool you: the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA, S. 1693) wouldn’t help punish sex traffickers. ....

Make no mistake: sex trafficking is a real, horrible problem. This bill is not the way to address it. Lawmakers should think twice before passing a disastrous law and endangering free expression and innovation.
Our masters in the ruling capitalist class know the dangers that the internet provides to their their rule and their global imperial agendas. Thus they are using every device to deceive Americans into supporting legislation that can weaken mostly small alternative websites who expose their self-serving agendas of profit and power. It appears that this legislation is such a Trojan Horse. If we can't defend the internet, then all is lost.

How Mainstream US ‘News’ Media Pump Their Government’s Lies to Deceive the Public

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

Zuesse like many astute observers of reports from media corporations declares that their media "pump their government lies to deceive the public" which he backs up with substantial evidence. Media corporations has been doing this forever simply because their owners are of the same class that controls every institution of our nation--especially the government--since there were large corporations. What is striking about their reports in our current era is the brazenly obvious nature of these lies as exposed over the internet by independent journalists and analysts such as Zuesse. 

What I think Zuesse and others should be advocating is a well-funded independent media organization within the Empire. Of course, such an organization would be attacked by every weapon available to the ruling capitalist class, but this situation would furnish an excellent catalyst to start the process of exposing them, as the liars they are, to the American and Canadian public who, out of mostly habit, only read, listen, and view mainstream sources for their understanding of events in the world. 

As it is now, Zuesse and other independent journalists and analysts must frequently post their views in foreign owned media websites like Strategic Culture, New Eastern Outlook, and TeleSur because they can't get published in domestically owned websites of any size and resources simply because they don't exist. As the news media now exists, the vast majority of Americans are totally confused and distracted by media corporations; meanwhile the left talk to each other in their mostly isolated enclaves of alternative websites. This simply must change if humans are to have any chance of survival!

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Pulitzer-Prize Winning Reporter: FBI Report Shows It Was Seth Rich – Not Russians – Who Gave DNC Emails to Wikileaks

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from Washington's Blog

I am only posting this article because it seems to be raging across the blogosphere, and then this morning I received an email from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) promising to push for what appears to be a left-liberal's wish list: 
...after passing a resolution first proposed by Christine Pelosi in February to prevent corporate donations to the DNC, we adopted a series of similar measures that freed us to champion the most popular, people-friendly, election-winning policies:
    *medicare for all;
   * strong unions;
   * tuition-free college;
   * non-interventionism;
    *reducing corporate influence;
    *the abolition of private prisons - another issue popular across the political    spectrum;
    *and also getting even more firmly behind renewable energy - which three quarters of Trump voters support, perhaps in part because of the huge number of jobs it creates.
I couldn't help but associate the controversy over the murder of Seth Rich, who was a DNC staffer, and this email which in my cynical mind seemed to provide an inspiring distraction for the brewing scandal in the online media. This controversy combined with the shoddy treatment that the Bernie Sanders delegates were given at the 2016 Democratic convention seems to account for this strange email. It's all a hoax to shepherd disillusioned working class Americans back into the fold of the Democratic Party.  

It's obvious that such measures could never be passed with the existing majority Republican Congress. During the Obama administrations, when they sometimes had majority Democratic representation in both houses of Congress, they could have passed such measures, but obviously didn't, and won't in the future. It never ceases to amaze me about the extent to which the ruling capitalist class will seek to manipulate ordinary Americans to support their nefarious agendas with fake news, false-flag operations, and campaign promises such as this.

Neocons Have Been Destroying Sovereign Nations for 20 Years

Click here to access article by Neil Clark from Defend Democracy Press

Clark notices a pattern to all the regime change projects that have been spearheaded by the US ruling class in Yugoslavia, Libya and the Syrian Arab Republic. But the model began with Nicaragua which I witnessed first hand. They used the proxy army called Contras who were based in neighboring Honduras to attack and destroy the clinics and schools set up by the Sandinista government in Nicaragua after they overthrew the Somoza dictatorship and favorite puppet of the US ruling class. 

When activists managed to get Congress to pass a law, called the Boland Amendment, forbidding the government from funding such activities, our imperialist ruling class went around the legislation to finance this project by selling arms to Iran and CIA assisted drug running. The drugs ended up in the African-American ghettos of the US. In the case of Nicaragua our masters were more worried about a good example of the Sandinista government that might inspire other Latin American countries to do likewise. Since then they have perfected this model in the countries that Clark identified.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

America, the Pathological-Lying, Pyromaniac, Faux-Firefighter

Click here to access article by Edward Rhymes from Rhymes Media Group.

I want to introduce to you another online alternative website where you can find real news, information, and analysis that you will not find on corporate media outlets. If you are getting fed up with all the disinformation from the latter that is only designed to fool you and distract you, then you must find other sources of information that attempt to provide you with the real stories behind the issues. I recommend, as I did, to cut the cord to corporate media by cancelling your cable subscription and keeping internet service--preferably high speed. This will not only save you money, but it will help restore your sanity. 

However you must go a step further to find alternative, genuine sources of news, information, and analysis. I have not found them all and new ones are appearing everyday on the internet. Unfortunately most of the sources are operating on a shoe-string budget and begging for money from their followers, and I fervently hope that they will start co-operating and merging to create a more solid financial base so that they can hire excellent journalists and media technicians. 

What struck me this evening as I was surfing the many links related to Rhymes Media Group is their widespread connections to other media outlets such as TeleSur, PressTV, Blog Talk Radio, and others. They are demonstrating that they know how to cooperate and collaborate--a lost skill in the USA, a skill that I observed in my youth when visiting my uncle's farm in North Dakota. 

The farmers in the area especially at harvest time would bring their harvesting equipment together, mostly tractors, combines, and trucks, in order to harvest all their crops before bad weather set in. The summers in this area were short and the harvest period was short, and they needed to harvest when weather permitted. They solved this dilemma by combining resources. Dr. Edward Rhymes, a retired sociology professor, is doing precisely that using several forms of alternative media.

This piece is mostly a rant, but who doesn't need to rant and rave occasionally in the face of such insane actions that our ruling class directorate are imposing on the rest of world while lying to us about what they are doing. So, when he says "America" is doing this or that, which are likely war crimes, you must realize that he is referring to the directorate of the ruling capitalist class, also known as the "Deep State". They are the real government, and are located in "think tanks" such as the Council on Foreign Relations and their action-executors in the many secret (secret to us) agencies like the CIA, NSA, and 15 other such agencies; top Pentagon officials; and where they all meet, the National Security Council. The democratic facades in the forms of Congress, the judicial system, and even the presidency are mere puppets of this Deep State. Corporate-owned media likewise. 

In the last election the Deep State's choice for president, Hillary Clinton, was not elected; and they are furious with the maverick Donald Trump who is by nature a boss--not anyone's puppet. Hence the ongoing fictitious attacks on Trump. There is much to be critical of Trump, but the Deep State through their media corporations are trying to get rid of him on more substantial grounds by concocting fake stories that he is serving Putin and Russia.

Venezuela – The National Constituent Assembly is in Place – But the fight for Sovereignty isn’t Over

Click here to access article by Peter Koenig from The Saker

This article offers the best factual summary of events related to Sunday's (July 30) election of a Constituent Assembly in Venezuela that I have seen. The middle section of the article contains a lot of his views related to foreign governments and media and their positions on the process that is going on in Venezuela. 

I say process because it is only the first stage of a process (as I understand it) that will include two other stages: a drawing up of a new proposed constitution by the Constituent Assembly, and a referendum put to the citizens of Venezuela to approve or reject the proposed new constitution.

If you are one of the unfortunate ones who follow corporate news media, you will largely receive grossly distorted information. In addition to scenes of rioting and attacking the police, I've noticed so far that much of the coverage has recently been about the results of the illegal plebiscite held two weeks earlier on July 16th (Koenig indicates it was held on the 23rd) by the US backed opposition who are based mostly in the neighborhoods of the white, upper classes in Caracas (which I visited on a trip to Venezuela in December of 2005).

In an era characterized by fake news issued by Empire affiliated media corporations, authentic news and information has become a challenge. I can only recommend that you stop following such sources, and instead focus much more of your attention on reliable news sources. Of course I recommend the sources of the articles that I've posted and those which I have recommended on my website. One of the best ones would be an independent American media organization as I proposed in a series of articles entitled "A Revolutionary Model" (Part 1, Part 2a, Part 2b, and Part 3) that could very well ultimately lead to a revolution in the US and the establishment of a genuine democracy.

Monday, July 31, 2017

North Field gas keeps Qatar crisis stalemated: Fuel for Thought

Click here to access article by Tamsin Carlisle, Senior Editor of The Barrel website, a major petroleum industry source of online information. (Updated as of 8:25 PM Seattle time, also several minor clarifications up until 3 PM Seattle time on 8/1/2017.)

The article likely explains by implication why the news has dropped out of corporate media about the major conflict that has recently developed between the ruling classes (more like extended monarchical families in this area) in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Egypt on one side with Qatar and Turkey on the other side. It's obvious with major Western petroleum corporations so involved in highly profitable operations on both sides of this quarrel that Empire media corporations don't know how to integrate this development so that it corresponds well with all their other Empire interests and simplistic propaganda, that is, the "good guys" of the US Empire versus the "bad guys" of Russia and Putin.

However when I searched for articles specifically in major capitalist online publications like the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News, I did find recent extensive coverage of this conflict. The moral of this story is that the purpose of major media corporations is to target the general population and guide ordinary people to support the interests of the Empire's ruling capitalist classes--not to create an understanding of other major issues such as this which deals with inter-capitalist Western interests.

(Writers often use the names of capital cities to represent countries and ruling classes. If you don't know the region very well, here are maps (with pipelines) to guide you as to what the author refers to in the article.)


Your Money or Your Life: Capitalist Health Care

Click here to access article from The Spark.

The happenings in Congress regarding the new Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) associated with the Obama administration has dominated so much coverage by media corporations at the expense of every other subject. It was as if the ACA was so wonderful and was threatened by the Republican plan. This article puts the lie to this type of news coverage: both plans are all about profits to insurance companies, and neither plan serves the people.

America's Big Lie about Bioweapon Crimes in Korea--[interview with] Tom Powell

Click here to access the approximately one hour interview with Tom Powell by Jeff Brown. 

Tom Powell is the son of parents who lived in China during the Korean War and knows a lot about the controversies surrounding the subject. During the interview a lot of material was referenced to, and which I was familiar with from my readings. Much of this material was covered in a recent book by Dave Chaddock (2013) entitled This Must Be the Place in which he extensively covers the subject from both sides of the controversy and comes to the definite conclusion that the US did indeed use bacteriological weapons in Korea and adjacent areas of China. 
The Korean War  (1950-1953) has been actively and purposely censored and suppressed in American textbooks, classrooms and the media, for three reasons. First, the United States got its butt convincingly whipped by the communists – Korean, Chinese and Russian all. Second, America committed genocide, by bombing North Korea with ten times the firepower of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, as well as 33,000 tons of napalm, for evil measure. There was literally not a building left standing north of the 38th parallel, while America exterminated 3,000,000 North Koreans, about 15% of the entire population. This war plan became the blueprint for continuing genocide in Vietnam, a decade later. Third, America committed the most heinous of crimes against humanity: the use of bioweapons against the North Koreans and Chinese.
Sylvia and John Powell were at the center of a legal and media firestorm, which lasted nearly a decade, 1953-1962, for reporting the horrific truth about America’s Korean War atrocities.
Thus it is very understandable that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) are so motivated to defend themselves from the US Empire by developing long range missiles.

Don’t be Fooled, the CIA was Only Half the Problem in Syria

Click here to access article by Steven MacMillan from New Eastern Outlook.

The author sees strong evidence that Trump is favoring the Pentagon in place of the CIA for its strategy to dismember northern Syria using Kurdish forces that they have been supporting for some time. This makes sense in that the CIA has been seen by Trump as an enemy of his administration and the source of negative leaks to corporate media. Also one must consider Trump's appointment of many military generals to his cabinet. Of course the US's pro-Kurdish strategy in Syria is diametrically opposed to Turkey's strong opposition to Kurdish power on its borders.

I think that this US strategy in Syria is likely due to Trump's ignorance of foreign affairs with the result that he is leaning on generals to formulate policies and strategies. Arguably generals are more concerned with battlefield victories rather than political considerations which may be the undoing of their strategy in Syria at the cost of the Syrian Kurds. With the latter's huge gamble on US support they are playing a high stakes game with, in my opinion, the odds very much against them. I see them as merely the current "useful idiots" of the Empire.
Undoubtedly, there are many good forces in the US military (as in any other large organization), and there is nothing wrong with having a military background. But equally, there is also many nefarious forces in the military, and the influence of military-industrial complex is pervasive, constantly agitating for more imperial wars.

With this context in mind, it is hardly surprising that Trump favours the Pentagon program over the CIA one, especially considering the power struggle taking place between the CIA and the military within the US. It should be highlighted that Trump has notcompletely halted all US programs to arm and train militias in Syria, he has merely shutdown one channel.

The Pentagon has been heavily involved in arming Kurdish forces in Syria, using them as a tool to attempt to Balkanize and fracture Syria into micro-states.