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, April 14, 2018

Is the Empire's Deep State merely using the attack on Syria to further prepare for Trump's removal? (fully edited version)

by Ron Horn  (Note: much needed editing was done to clarify my views at 4:15 PM and on the following day at 6:25 AM.)

The other day I was astonished while viewing Fox New's Tucker Carlson rationally arguing against the official narrative regarding a chemical attack on Syrian's by President Assad of Syria. 



My immediate reaction was that he was going to be fired. Then doubts set in. Why didn't Fox News immediately cut his microphone off with some phony excuse? What if Fox News ordered him to do this? Carlson doesn't look at all strained by opposing the official line. This sort of departure from scripted broadcasts by "talking heads" in corporate media is unprecedented in recent decades.

This morning, after digesting the latest attack on Syria by forces of the US Empire, I viewed this astonishing video by Jeffrey Sachs who I regard as likely a member of the Deep State:



I began to think that a move is on by the Deep State to terrify Americans and to prepare for the removal of Trump as head of state. 

Then I read this article entitled "Airstrikes and Slime Balls" from a dissident British website about a book review by the former FBI head James Comey entitled A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership. Now I am rather convinced that the Deep State planned this scam on the American people by pressuring Trump to execute this latest missile attack on Syria as another step in their planned removal of Trump from office. In other words, the Deep State (top financiers, corporate executives, and their ideologue followers who control every institution of our society) used a false-flag attack on Syria in which the real target was Trump. It was not a serious attack on Syria, nor was it designed to harm Russians because the attack was well coordinated with the Russian government. Preliminary indications are that the missile attack inflicted minimal damage.

The Deep State's underlying thought process was something like this: Americans are always prepared to "throw the rascals out" of office when they are offended by the existing administration by electing members of the other party in the next election. So the Deep State is using this event to increase the widespread disapproval of Trump by pressuring him into a missile attack which would likely bring the US Empire in military conflict with Russia. Indeed, there has been widespread fear among all Americans (both ordinary and more informed) of an attack that could provoke a war with the Russians.

The catch is that the other party, the Democratic Party or the "good cop", is the favored party to pursue policies by the Empire's Deep State. (Trump's election was a mistake caused by the Deep State's underestimation of the widespread disapproval of aggressive policies supported by Hillary Clinton.) My thinking is that the Deep State is preparing for the removal of Trump from office at least by the next election or even sooner via an impeachment process.

Recommended articles for Saturday, 4/14/2018

 Articles on the overnight attack on Syria by the US Empire:  (Note: added the post from Roberts at noon Seattle time.)
The US ambassador to Russia said that the US strikes were coordinated with Russia to avoid a great power confrontation.
Other subjects:

Friday, April 13, 2018

Recommended articles for Friday 4/13/2018

(Note: added article from LittleSis at 11:50 PM Seattle time.)
 
We are currently living the most dangerous days in human history. You think that this is hyperbole?
Think again.
... high-tech weaponry and “smart” bombs have dehumanized war and turned it into a video-game-like experience, “in which terms such a ‘surgical strikes’ or ‘collateral damage’ camouflage the actual brutality and consequences of aerial attacks.” War thus becomes a more manageable solution than other non-military options for US leaders, as they are geographically far removed, lack understanding of the complexity and horrors of war when it’s in one’s territory, and turn war into a more scientific, clean, and enlightened endeavor.

However, this experience is not shared by others with recent memories of mass-scale war horrors and conflict in their own territories, and they may react to military threats in a powerful way.
The real target of the censorship campaign is not “fake news,” but true news—that is, genuine journalism and independent reporting, which by its very nature contradicts the lies of the war-mongers in Washington, London and Paris.

US Media Keeping Americans Blissfully Ignorant over Syria As Washington ‘Weighs Options’

Click here to access article by Robert Bridge from Strategic Culture Foundation.
It’s not that the American people are inherently stupid to believe such absurd claims; it’s that they are woefully misinformed by a media machine that is marching in lockstep – sometimes even owned – by the military industrial complex. Mark Twain summed up the Catch-22 situation confronting Americans: “If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”

And it is not just the run-of-the-mill news sources that are serving as cheerleaders for imperialistic regime change operations. The purportedly intelligent ‘thinking man’ publications are also peddling a shameless pro-war stance, which takes the government line for granted.
Bridge arrives at this final conclusion:
This only serves to prove that the United States, and its people, learned absolutely nothing from the Iraq War, which saw the same brazen disregard for legal precedent by launching an attack against Saddam Hussein in 2003, the consequences of which we are experiencing to this day. As the UN weapon inspectors were on the ground, practically screaming that they could not locate weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration shrugged off these uncomfortable truths and carried out its diabolical designs anyways.

In reality, the US did learn one valuable lesson from the Iraq War. It learned it can manipulate the opinions of the people to an astonishing degree. By using the entire media leviathan to coordinate a hate campaign against one state leader, in this case Bashar Assad, it can make the people forget legal precedent, not to mention common sense.
I would go much further back to the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and many activists. Then there was the fairy tale about the biggest false-flag event of them all: 9/11.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

World War III: What It Is And What It Threatens To Become

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from What's Left.
... The United States, and its major media, which connive in the likely chemical weapons deception and elevate a planned illegal act of war into a moral crusade, are playing a very dangerous game. They’re willing to bring the world to the brink of a general conflagration to fulfil their vision of a hierarchy of states subordinate to the US administration’s rule—an undisputed global US empire.

Zuckerberg's mistake

by cartoonist Max Gustafson.

 

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Recommended articles for Wednesday 4/11/2018

In the ideology of US despotism, the compass of civilization includes states that submit to “US leadership”, a euphemized version of “US tyranny,” while states which favor an international order based on the UN Charter’s ideal of the sovereignty and equality of states (Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Venezuela are among the supporters of this alternative, democratic, order) are relegated to the category of barbarism. Once a state has been located outside of civilization, Western legal traditions—testing accusations against evidence and the assumption of innocence until culpability is credibly demonstrated— no longer apply. The “barbaric” state becomes guilty of all acts of which it is accused, regardless of whether there exists credible evidence to corroborate the accusation.
The Russian military has found no trace of chemical weapons use after searching parts of Syria’s Douma allegedly targeted by an “attack.” Photos of victims posted by the White Helmets are fake, Russia’s Defense Ministry said. 
If we lived in the pluralistic society that liberals imagine we live in, then you might think there is some disagreement among the major think tanks in the U.S. But both left and right, including the Brookings Institute, the Institute for National Leadership, the Heritage Foundation, The National Endowment for Democracy and the Jewish Institute for National Security all sing the same song. Isn’t it a serendipitous occurrence they all sing in such beautiful harmonies? We think it has something to do with Russia going off the dollar and creation of an Eurasian independent world-order. 
This introduction to Butler's article struck me personally because in my senior year at a major university I wrote a paper in which I made the same argument: attacking the belief that we live in a "pluralistic society", a doctrine dogma declared by one of the American gods of sociology, Talcott Parsons, at the time (1963). I receive a grade of "D" for that effort, and I knew that the same fate would await me in nearly all universities if I pursued an advanced degree in sociology. I was disciplined for not accepting the conventional ideology--another illustration of what Jeff Schmidt argued in his book Disciplined Minds.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Fact Checking Newsbud's "Syria Under Siege" Video

Click here if you wish to access the 1:39:22 video made by James Corbett directly from YouTube.

Corbett is obviously very upset about this vendetta against independent journalists Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett by Sibel Edmonds on whose website (when she had Boiling Frogs Post) he first posted material that has led to his widespread popularity as an independent investigative researcher and critical thinker. 

He starts off with this extended exposĂ© of the vendetta by issuing a disclaimer: "that this video will not make you a better person in any way, shape, or form. I loathe this type of video." Despite this introduction he races through a critical investigation of the vendetta against Beeley and Bartlett in Edmond's video entitled "Syria Under Siege" and thoroughly debunks it. 

Although Corbett doesn't say it, after he gets through debunking Edmond's tirade against the two independent journalists, I think one must arrive at the conclusion that her tirade is an obviously well-crafted piece of disinformation which tries to discredit Beeley and Bartlett, not unlike all the other lies and false-flags stories we've been fed by media corporations. In fact, I think that this attack on the two independent journalists was because they have been exposing so many lies disseminated by media corporations. And I will further allege that Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI employee, has been used as a fake blogger to attract and control leftists and others critical of US foreign policies. 

To launch her career as a fake dissident blogger, I think that her handlers promoted her as a whistle-blower victim of the FBI. I, myself, contributed to her website when it was "Boiling Frogs Post" after it ran a series on the Gladio operations following WWII. The series accurately revealed all the efforts by the CIA to crush unions and leftists in general and promote right-wing governments in Europe. This effort was designed to attract leftists and dissidents to the website while others, especially young people, didn't especially care much about what they considered as ancient history.  

I also think that the timing of this attack was not accidental. I think that it was in preparation for the launching of another false-flag event (and who knows what else?) that we have just witnessed and spread by the Empire's media corporations as a chemical attack on Syrians by their own President Assad. Hence, I think that Edmond's handlers ordered her to engage in this attack on the two journalists (and probably helped her produce the video) as a way to influence all her followers to go along with this theme. I have little doubt in my mind that both Boiling Frogs Post and Newsbud are fake websites that were set up by the secret services to lure in leftists and dissidents and to gradually steer them away from opposition to the Empire's policies and actions. Watch the following video and decide if you agree with me.


Monday, April 9, 2018

Degeneracy and Fundamentalism of Western Media Control

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

Vltchek who has wandered the world sees millions of people finally waking up from the hypnotic spell of corporate media which serves the Anglo-American Empire, and they are outraged.
The Western regime knows how to lie, shamelessly but professionally, and above all, perpetually. There are thousands of lies piling up on top of each other, delivered with perfect upper-class ‘educated’ accents: lies about Salisbury, about Communism, Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, South Africa, Libya, refugees. There are lies about the past, present and even about the future.

Nobody is laughing, seeing such imperialist thugs like the U.K. and France preaching, all over the world and with straight face, about both freedom and human rights. Not laughing, yet. But many are slowly getting outraged.

People in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America are beginning to realize that they have been fooled, cheated, lied to; that the so called ‘education’ and ‘information’ coming from the West have been nothing else other than shameless indoctrination campaigns.
Read about the latest false-flag attack here which will be repeated endlessly as a real event by the Empire's media corporations.

Sunday, April 8, 2018

Recommended articles for Sunday 4/8/2018

  • The Occupation of the American Mind, a one hour and 25 minute film produced by The Media Education Foundation and delivered to you by Vimeo and posted by The Real News. "A documentary film narrated by legendary musician and activist Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame trains a harsh light on Israel's [and Zionists'] decades-long propaganda war in the U.S."
The recent March for Our Lives, started by remarkable high school students but taken over by the Democratic Party and financed by wealthy corporate and Hollywood patrons, drew effusive praise from mainstream political pundits. But anyone who’s followed gun control knows the Democrats have never stood up to the NRA. In truth, national level Democrats seized on an opportunity to coopt young people and channel them into electoral gains for themselves. 

Our economic and political rulers are vexed that students of color were standing in solidarity with Parkland while simultaneously linking that shooting with systemic violence in Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore. They worry that  young people are becoming concerned with a wide range of issues far beyond gun control and will seek solutions outside the two-party status quo.
  • The Doomsday Machine: 00:00:10 Seconds to Midnight. Nuclear Weapons, Climate Change, Geopolitics and the Dollar from Global Research. Although the author describes the tenuous position of human existence in today's world, he doesn't realize that sooner or later capitalists' addiction to the drugs of profit and power would inevitably and ultimately threaten our existence. He exhibits his ignorance--or possibly cowardice--by using the abstract term "the powers that be". And this ignorance and sometimes cowardice has infected millions, especially in the co-opted upper-middle class, that capitalists depend on so much to keep their system that delivers their drugs functioning.
I have lived my whole life under the notifications of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and their Doomsday Clock. It is currently set a two minutes to midnight after many years of variance, some as far away as seventeen minutes. After reading Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine, it would probably be more appropriate to move it forward to ten seconds before midnight. A combination of two main factors – global climate change and nuclear weapons launch on warning risks – puts not only humanity but virtually all species under threat of extinction. 
  • State Dept Accuses Russia And Syria Of Gassing Civilians Before Any Investigation by Caitlin Johnstone (Australian) from her website. This false-flag event has been widely predicted by informed and honest people who know that the Empire's ruling class has become desperate and degenerate. After all, it must be acknowledged that they've gotten away with so many other crimes: the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the 9/11 false-flag event, etc., and most of the people believed their fairy tales which were widely disseminated by their media corporations.

Trump China Trade War Has Deeper Agenda

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

The author poses a deeper conflict of strategies between that of China's economic strategy to attain what is called "industry 4.0", as elaborated in an official Chinese government document called "China 2025", with the US Empire's strategy of putting China's economic back into the fold of a subordinate economic engine to supply US corporations with cheap labor, high profits, and a market for US high tech products.

Engdahl explains the Chinese history behind this and Trump's rather crude response which is likely to backfire. 
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this will not end in any victory for Trump or the US economy. The reaction of the bloated US stock markets to recent escalations suggest he risks popping the greatest speculative bubble in US stock market history, something that would trigger a financial crisis far worse than 2008. All of which suggests the old saying, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Trump has decided to launch not a trade war but a confrontation between Washington’s version of a US-run globalized economy versus China’s vision of national sovereign economic development. Today we see an increasing divide opening between nations such as China, Russia, Iran and several European countries such as Hungary or Austria who realize that the agenda of US-riven globalization spells disaster for their future. This divergence is the most significant tectonic fault line in world geopolitics and will define whether the world descends into a new depression or develops a model for growth and expansion centered around the infrastructure of China and Russia Eurasian cooperation.

The US economy is in no shape to win such a confrontation, nor will Xi Jinping back down. This could get very nasty. China is responding very carefully and in measured moves.
The US ruling class directorate doesn't like this Chinese strategy anymore than Trump, but it also doesn't like the crude way that Trump goes about fighting the Chinese with the blunt weapon of a trade war. This is revealed in an article published in a Council of Foreign Relations website, a major ruling class organ, entitled "Why Does Everyone Hate Made in China 2025?" in which they explain why they hate "China 2025".
Technology transfer agreements and restrictive market practices in China present a ... problem. Foreign companies often enter agreements to transfer valuable intellectual property to Chinese partner in exchange for market access. These agreements can be exploitative and highlight the asymmetries in market access between China and the rest of the world. Speaking about Chinese takeovers of German firms, Germany's Economic Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Germany should not sacrifice “its companies on the altar of free markets” while China denies German firms equal access to invest in the Chinese market.
Of course, the US ruling class is not only worried about German firms but other firms throughout the world, and with particular concerns with US high tech corporations which are often seduced by agreements that provide them with immense short term profits in exchange for Chinese access to advanced technology.