The Evening Blues - 1-15-18



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Detroit Junior

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues piano player, singer and songwriter Detroit Junior. Enjoy!

Detroit Junior & Group- Too Poor

We as a people will get to the promised land.

-- Martin Luther King Jr.


News and Opinion

Martin Luther King Jr. Spent the Last Year of His Life Detested by the Liberal Establishment

In 1999, the polling agency Gallup set out to determine the individuals Americans most admired in the 20th century. Mother Teresa came in first, with 49 percent of Americans putting her at the top; the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., ranked second, with 34 percent placing him on the same list. But, the polling agency would later write, “King was far from universally revered during his lifetime.” They noted that in 1966, 63 percent of Americans held a negative view of the civil rights leader, while just 32 percent held a positive one. This was a marked reversal from five years earlier, when 41 percent of Americans gave King a positive rating and 37 percent a negative one.

King’s slide in popularity coincided with his activism taking a turn from what Americans largely know him for — his campaign for civil rights in the American South — to a much more radical one aimed at the war in Vietnam and poverty. ... In an April 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York City, the civil rights leader publicly denounced American involvement in Indochina. ...

The New York Times editorial board lambasted King for linking the war in Vietnam to the struggles of civil rights and poverty alleviation in the United States, saying it was “too facile a connection” and that he was doing a “disservice” to both causes. It concluded that there “are no simple answers to the war in Vietnam or to racial injustice in this country.” The Washington Post editorial board said King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country and his people.” A political cartoon in the Kansas City Star depicted the civil rights movement as a young black girl crying and begging for her drunk father King, who is consuming the contents of a bottle labeled “Anti-Vietnam.”

In all, 168 newspapers denounced him the next day. Johnson ended his formal relationship with King. ... The NAACP under the leadership of Roy Wilkins refused to oppose the war and explicitly condemned the effort to link the peace and civil rights movements. Whitney Young, the leader of the National Urban League, warned that “Johnson needs a consensus. If we are not with him on Vietnam, then he is not going to be with us on civil rights.”

Following King’s assassination, the mood shifted quickly. Johnson, who had once terminated all communication with King and privately cursed his name, issued a statement saying the “heart of America is heavy, the spirit of America weeps” following the activists’s death. Georgia’s segregationist Gov. Lester Maddox, a frequent critic of King, even begrudgingly allowed Georgia’s flag to fly at half mast following his death. Bobby Kennedy, who once authorized the wiretaps of King’s phones, attended the funeral.

Chelsea Manning releases campaign ad for US Senate run

Centrist Dems Launch Smear Campaign Against Young Trans Woman, All to Keep an Old Straight White Man in Power

Over the weekend, Chelsea Manning announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate by posting a video outlining the broad themes of her campaign. Manning, a whistleblower who served seven years in a U.S. military brig for exposing systemic U.S. war crimes, was held under prison conditions so brutal that the U.N. formally denounced them as “inhumane.” ...

Since her release from prison, she has become a visible and outspoken advocate for the rights of trans people. She has used her position as a Guardian columnist to stake out a wide range of positions, including drafting a proposed law to provide protections for whistleblowers. She certainly has more political experience and activism than many other Senate candidates previously supported by the Democratic establishment (Al Franken comes to mind as one example). If elected, Manning would become the first trans woman ever, and the youngest woman ever, to serve in the U.S. Senate.

Manning’s opponent in the Democratic Party primary is one of the most standard, banal, typical, privileged and mediocre politicians in the U.S. Congress: Benjamin Cardin, a 74-year-old white, straight man who is seeking his third six-year Senate term. Cardin’s decades-long career as a politician from the start has been steeped in unearned privilege: he first won elective office back in 1966, when his uncle, Maurice Cardin, gave up his seat in order to bequeath it to his nephew Benjamin. With this dynastic privilege as his base, he has spent the last 50 years climbing the political ladder in Maryland. Cardin has remarkably few achievements for being in Congress for so many years. One of his few distinctions is that he has become one of the Senate’s most reliable and loyal supporters of AIPAC’s agenda and the Israeli government, if not the single most loyal. ...

Despite all of this, or perhaps because of it, establishment Democrats wasted no time in mocking and denouncing Manning’s bid to become the first ever trans woman in the Senate, instead quickly lining up in support behind the straight white male who has wielded power for decades. To demean Manning, many of these establishment Democrats invoked the primary tactic they now reflexively use against anyone they view as a political adversary: they depicted her as a tool of the Kremlin, whose candidacy is really just a disguised plot engineered by Moscow.


If Martin Luther King Jr were alive today, politicians would denounce him

Modern-day Republicans and Democrats often speak as if they love King, even as they excoriate the real heirs to his legacy: the Black Lives Matter activists and other social justice warriors who fight for racial and economic liberation. But the truth is, many of these American politicians would have hated King when he was alive as much as they hypocritically dishonor his radical legacy today. ...

Take Democrat senators (who love to talk about loving King) and who recently voted for a $700bn war funding package this fall, the kind of bill King would have excoriated as part of “the three evils of society” – “the giant triplets of racism, economic exploitation and militarism”. Our war-loving politicians would not have liked when King got all up at Riverside church a year to the day before he was assassinated to deliver his most powerful speech: “Beyond Vietnam”. They’d have cringed when he criticized American imperialism, warning “if we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam” and that “the world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve”.

If he’d lived past age 39, King would have been offended by Trump calling Haiti a “shithole” country and saying Haitians “all have Aids”. But King would have been equally angry about the exploitation of Haiti for centuries – by enslavement, by colonial plunder, and even by “respectable” US Republicans like George HW Bush. It was under Bush senior in the early 1990s, after all, when the US intercepted hundreds of fleeing Haitian refugees, sent them to a makeshift prison at Guantánamo Bay (this, not 9/11, is how Gitmo became an indefinite detention center), tested them for HIV, and sterilized the HIV positive women without their knowledge or consent. ...

As you listen to American politicians from both parties invoke MLK this weekend, think about if their actions live up to King’s vision of justice – and push them as hard as he would have when they fall short.

Gabbard: Trump should talk to North Korea 'immediately' after Hawaii false alarm

Following a stunning false alert that Hawaii was the target of a ballistic missile threat, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said Sunday the incident underscores the need for President Donald Trump to directly negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on the rogue nation's nuclear weapons. "Absolutely and immediately. This is something that I’ve been calling for for a long time," Gabbard (D-Hawaii) said on ABC's "This Week."

"The people of Hawaii are paying the price now for decades of failed leadership in this country, of failure to directly negotiate, to prevent us from getting to this point where we’re dealing with this threat today, setting unrealistic preconditions," she added.

An emergency alert sent to people in the state Saturday warned: "BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL." The alert was sent in error, but it took 38 minutes to correct the message as a false alarm. ...

A critic of U.S. military intervention in nations like Libya and Syria, among others, Gabbard added that policymakers need to "understand why Kim Jong Un is saying he’s not going to give up his nuclear weapons." It's a reaction, she argued, to U.S. overseas intervention. ... "It is critical that we end our policy, the regime change wars, to provide that credible guarantee that the United States is not going to go in and topple the North Korean regime so that these conversations can begin toward denuclearization."

Military Quietly Prepares To Attack North Korea

Across the military, officers and troops are quietly preparing for a war they hope will not come. At Fort Bragg in North Carolina last month, a mix of 48 Apache gunships and Chinook cargo helicopters took off in an exercise that practiced moving troops and equipment under live artillery fire to assault targets. Two days later, in the skies above Nevada, 119 soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division parachuted out of C-17 military cargo planes under cover of darkness in an exercise that simulated a foreign invasion.

Next month, at Army posts across the United States, more than 1,000 reserve soldiers will practice how to set up so-called mobilization centers that move military forces overseas in a hurry. And beginning next month with the Winter Olympics in the South Korean town of Pyeongchang, the Pentagon plans to send more Special Operations troops to the Korean Peninsula, an initial step toward what some officials said ultimately could be the formation of a Korea-based task force similar to the types that are fighting in Iraq and Syria. Others said the plan was strictly related to counterterrorism efforts.

In the world of the American military, where contingency planning is a mantra drummed into the psyche of every officer, the moves are ostensibly part of standard Defense Department training and troop rotations. But the scope and timing of the exercises suggest a renewed focus on getting the country’s military prepared for what could be on the horizon with North Korea. ... After 16 years of fighting insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, American commanding generals worry that the military is better prepared for going after stateless groups of militants than it is for its own conventional mission of facing down heavily fortified land powers that have their own formidable militaries and air defenses.

Coverage of Iran Protests Illustrated With Protests Not in Iran––Organized by Fringe Cultists

When it comes to covering protests in other countries, it seems any vague picture of brown people protesting can stand in for those actually on the streets expressing their grievances. Since the outbreak of protests across Iran three weeks ago, several major outlets have used pictures of demonstrations  in the United States, France, or United Kingdom—organized by a fringe, cult-like group, Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK)—in place of images of the entirely unaffiliated protesters, 6,000 miles away, who are the topic of discussion.

Fox News, Scientific American, Vox, Salon, National Interest and Axios were among the outlets that used unidentified photos of protests not in Iran to illustrate stories about protests in Iran. ...

Casually throwing around MEK images to represent unrest in Iran is the worst combination of insulting and sloppy. It would be like a Chinese outlet, in 2012, using images of a Westboro Baptist Church protest in a story about Occupy Wall Street, because both opposed the US government. The exact ideology of those protesting in Iran isn’t 100 percent clear—they seem to represent a mix of groups and grievances—but MEK has virtually zero support in Iran itself,  having been disowned by the Green Movement (the last major protest movement in Iran) in 2009, and is widely loathed for working with Israeli intelligence and fighting alongside the Iraqi army in Iran’s decade-long war against Saddam in the 1980s that killed a half-million Iranians. The MEK has carried out several bomb attacks in Iran, and was even officially listed by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist organization for 16 years, until it was removed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012, after a years-long lobbying effort by pro-regime change forces within the US.

What is Syria Border Security Force? Meet the new US proxy army

Erdogan accuses US of planning to form 'terror army' in Syria

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has accused the US of forming a “terror army”, after Washington announced plans for a 30,000-strong force inside Syria to protect territory held by its mainly Kurdish allies.

On Sunday, the US-led coalition said it was working with its Syrian militia allies, the mainly Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to set up the new border force. The force would operate along the borders with Turkey and Iraq, as well as within Syria along the Euphrates river, which separates most SDF territory from that held by the government. The announcement was one of the few insights into the Trump administration’s longer-term thinking for Syria.

The SDF is dominated by the Kurdish YPG, and the plan for the force dashes Turkish hopes that the US would abandon the YPG once the war against Islamic State came to an end. Turkey regards the Kurdish YPG militia as indistinguishable from the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) operating inside Turkey, which it regards as a terror group. “A country we call an ally is insisting on forming a terror army on our borders,” Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara. “What can that terror army target but Turkey? Our mission is to strangle it before it’s even born.”

Russia also opposed the plan, saying it could lead to the partitioning of Syria. For its part, the Syrian regime vowed to win back control of the entire country, including by removing any form of US-backed Syrian Kurdish force. The US plan was a blatant attack on Syrian sovereignty, Syria said.

RAF fighters intercept two Russian bombers near UK airspace

The RAF has been scrambled to intercept two long-range Russian bombers over the North Sea. The Tupolev Tu-160s, known to Nato as Blackjacks, were monitored on Monday as they flew past Norway and Denmark and near the Netherlands.

Two Typhoon jets from RAF Lossiemouth picked them up about 30 miles (48km) from UK airspace and escorted them. Both Russia and Nato, including Britain, routinely test reactions with such sorties, sometimes flying almost up to the boundaries of each other’s airspace. Blackjacks make flights close to UK airspace about eight to nine times a year. ...

Despite an increase in diplomatic tension between Moscow and the west, the number of such sorties by Russia towards UK airspace has not increased.

Newly Discovered 1964 MLK Speech on Civil Rights, Segregation & Apartheid South Africa

Trump insists 'I am the least racist person' amid outrage over remarks

Trump was at his golf course on Monday as the US marked Martin Luther King Jr Day. The president retweeted a video of his weekly address, with words including: “Dr King’s dream is our dream. It is the American Dream.”

But his alleged comments continued to reverberate. On Sunday, congressman John Lewis, who marched with King for voting rights in Selma, Alabama in 1965, told ABC: “I think he is a racist …

“I don’t think there’s any way that you can square what the president said with the words of Martin Luther King Jr and what he said about Dr King. It’s just impossible. There’s not any way you can do that. It’s unreal. It’s unbelievable. It makes me sad. It makes me cry.”

Patrick Gaspard, who was born to Haitian parents in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was US ambassador to South Africa under Barack Obama, told the Guardian: “Methinks he doth protest too much. ...

“These kind of sentiments are disorienting for our partners. They’re not entirely sure what to make of the American identity at the beginning of the 21st century and they worry about what the policy implications will be for our partnerships on trade, economic prosperity, healthcare and, essentially, security. Americans should be concerned about that as well.”

US - 'I am not a racist': Trump forced to defend himself after 'shithole' comment

South Africa hauls in diplomat to explain Trump’s “shithole” racism

South Africa, a country painfully familiar with the dangers of racial division, demanded Sunday the U.S. account for Donald Trump’s “shithole” slur against the African continent. The South African foreign ministry said it would formally protest to the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria Monday and summon the embassy’s charges d'affaires to explain the remarks.

“South Africa aligns itself with the statements issued by the African Union and the Africa group of Ambassadors to the United Nations in New York. Africa is united in its affirmation of the dignity of the people of Africa and the African diaspora,” the statement said. “Relations between South Africa and the United States, and between the rest of Africa and the United States, must be based on mutual respect and understanding.”

Florida Prisoners Prepare to Strike, Demanding an End to Unpaid Labor and Brutal Conditions

Florida prisoners are calling for a general strike to start this week — marking the third mass action over the course of a year in protest of inhumane conditions in the state’s detention facilities. Detainees in at least eight prisons have declared their intention to stop all work on Monday — Martin Luther King Jr. Day — to demand an end to unpaid labor and price gouging in prison commissaries, as well as the restoration of parole, among other requests.

Coordinated, nonviolent prison protests as well as spontaneous uprisings amid deteriorating conditions have escalated in recent years both nationwide and in Florida, which has the third largest prison system in the country. Prisoners in the state were among the most active during a nationwide strike in September 2016, which was quickly dubbed the “largest prison strike in U.S. history.” At least 10 Florida prisons participated in that action, which was planned to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising but started a day early when tensions flared at Holmes Correctional Institution in the Florida Panhandle. Then, in August, in response to prison activists’ calls for another show of dissent, Department of Corrections officials placed the entire state system — 143 facilities and 97,000 people — on lockdown, an unprecedented move. ...

Prisoners are demanding compensation for their work as opposed to “the current slave arrangement,” they wrote, in which they are paid in time deducted from their sentences. “A lot of times people will work in order to get time deducted, and then the prison guards and officials will find ways to punish someone for what the prisoners are saying are made up reasons that then extend the person’s time,” Jacqueline Azis, an attorney with the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Intercept.

“We want to be paid for the work we do, so that somebody doesn’t end up spending 10, 15, 20 years not being paid, and sent home with a bus ticket and a $50 check,” the prisoner speaking in the recording said. “We want to create an environment where someone can do their time, be rehabilitated, and enter into society with some type of hope.”

“That would be helpful for society instead of creating a revolving door where you lock people up and just set them up for failure so that they keep coming back.”



the horse race



Fusion GPS, firm behind disputed Russia dossier, retracts its claim of FBI mole in Trump camp

Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS founder who sponsored the unverified anti-Trump dossier, claimed in August and again Jan. 2 that the FBI has a source inside the Trump camp who lent credence to the document.

When a transcript of his secret August testimony was released on Tuesday, news headlines immediately latched onto the disclosure as a boon to a dossier whose core charges of Donald Trump-Russia collusion have been denied and not confirmed publicly.

Then suddenly, as quick as the headlines went up, some one close to Fusion was waving off reporters. Mr. Simpson had “mischaracterized” the source. It was not some one on the Trump inside, but apparently an Australian diplomat.

Beware Russian Anchor Babies! - Says NBC News



the evening greens


The Justice Department Helped a County Prosecutor Target the Facebook Records of Anti-Pipeline Activists

Nine months after pipeline opponents in Washington state staged a protest that blocked freeway traffic, Facebook ended a protracted legal standoff with a county prosecutor, turning over detailed records on the indigenous-led group behind the demonstration. Despite the fact that no criminal charges have been filed in connection with the February action, Whatcom County Prosecuting Attorney David McEachran repeatedly sought a warrant for the group’s Facebook page, ultimately securing private information including messages to and from the page and a list of everyone “invited” to the protest event.

McEachran’s first two warrant applications were withdrawn after the American Civil Liberties Union and Facebook raised objections. On the third try, however, the warrant was granted thanks to Facebook’s suggestion that McEachran’s office seek formal guidance from the nation’s top law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice. A public records request filed by The Intercept shows that the local agency and its federal counterpart cooperated to draft the ultimately successful warrant using a DOJ template.

Activists affiliated with the climate justice group, Red Line Salish Sea, view the investigation as retaliation for their February protest, a march against local fossil fuel projects and President Donald Trump’s executive orders expediting construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. “Not only does this warrant attempt to scare people from organizing, this warrant attempts to scare people from even looking at information,” Tina McKim, an administrator of Red Line’s Facebook page, wrote in a declaration.

The DOJ’s intervention in the case makes it the latest example of the Trump administration’s direct involvement in law enforcement actions against protesters who allege they are being targeted for protected First Amendment activity: On the other side of the country, the DOJ is pursuing decades of prison time for protesters, journalists, medics, and legal advocates arrested during the anti-Trump “J20” demonstrations on Inauguration Day. In that case, too, the prosecution secured warrants for the Facebook page and website used to organize the protests. Now, Standing Rock-inspired activists in Whatcom County find themselves on the front lines of the battle over Americans’ right to anonymously organize with political groups.

To Save Oceans and Planet, Greenpeace Backs Plan to Create Largest Protected Area on Earth

Greenpeace is launching a campaign on Monday to back the creation of the largest protected  area in the history of conservation by setting aside 700,000 square miles of seas surrounding Antarctica in order to save fragile marine ecosystems and curb the damage to key planetary systems.

"The Antarctic is home to an abundance of wildlife," wrote Will McCallum, head of oceans for Greenpeace, on the group's blog. "Whales, penguins and colossal squid are just a few of the many animals who call it home. And it’s not just important to animals—the health of our oceans sustains our planet, and provides billions of people with their livelihoods. But threats from overfishing, plastic pollution and climate change mean we urgently need a network of sanctuaries across the world to restore our oceans' health."

First proposed by the European Union, the Protect the Antarctic campaign would create the world's largest wildlife sanctuary, banning all fishing in the Weddell Sea and around the Antarctic Peninsula. Industrial krill fishing in the area has killed off large quantities of a small crustacean that larger animals including penguins and whales rely on for food.

"The next few years are absolutely essential for the future of our oceans and we are in desperate need for governments to come together and do what is best for these amazing ecosystems," McCallum told the Guardian.

The group will urge countries including Norway, Russia, South Korea, and China—all of which have large krill fishing industries—to back the proposal.

With Rapidly Falling Prices, Renewables Set to Outcompete Fossil Fuels by 2020

A new report showing that renewable prices may soon out-compete fossil fuels offers just the latest evidence to bolster demands that oil, gas, and coal to be left "in the ground."

The cost analysis from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) for delivering electricity was presented Saturday at the opening of the organization's Eighth Assembly in Abu Dhabi.

Prices are already falling for renewable power generation, the publication notes, and says that wind and solar power will be on par with—or even cheaper than—the cost of fossil fuel-generated electricity by 2020. Among the "remarkable" price reductions has been for utility-scale solar PV which have dropped 73 percent since 2010, the report says.

By 2019, the study predicts onshore wind and solar PV projects will be able to deliver electricity for $0.03/kWh, and offshore wind will be able to meet the task for $ 0.06 to $0.10/kWh starting in 2020. Fossil fuel generation, in contrast, was estimated to be between $0.05 and $0.17/kWh in 2017.


Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Newly Discovered 1964 MLK Speech on Civil Rights, Segregation, and Apartheid South Africa

How Nick Turse Got Blacklisted by the Pentagon’s Africa Command

Get A Room!

What Is The Democratic Party? (and WILDING et al. v. DNC SERVICES CORPORATION et al. Gets a New Lease on Life)

Democrats Openly Back Establishment Candidates for 2018 Primaries

Brazilian Right-Wing Fell Hard for a Fake News Story About Venezuela, Provoking Diplomatic Incident


A Little Night Music

Detroit Jr. - Come On In

Detroit Jr. - Money Crazy

Detroit Junior - Money Tree

Detroit Jr. - Secret Love

Detroit Jr - The Way I Feel

Detroit Junior - So Unhappy

Detroit Junior - Windy City Blues

Detroit Junior - I Got Money

Detroit Junior - If I Hadn't Been High


Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

Way to suppress your base democrats!!!

The endorsements are a signal to the state and local party organizations on which candidates to support, and very importantly, which ones to to cheat and defraud. Through structural control, money and election fraud the establishment candidates may win.

BUT, it looks like a good way to self-suppress (base) votes in the general election by poor turnout or voting for third party anybody. And given some of the thin margins....good luck.

up
0 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@MrWebster

yep, the dems don't want that base activism stuff to get out of hand, again.

heh, i wonder how long it will take for the dem establishment to complain that they have been infiltrated by a base made up of russian dupes.

up
0 users have voted.
divineorder's picture

Hey Medicare for All dreamers, mark your calendars...

We had a great day, though I am still dealing with bronchitis. jb and I spent the day enjoying being at our old shack in the TX Hill Country, with a surprising variety of birds at the feeder. The bird bath has frozen most of the nights we have been back. And now a Winter Storm is headed our way. We located the little propane heater in case the electricity goes off. I worked on tracking down a loose wire in a light switch to a bathroom light, jb cooked some good meals and began preparing for our trip to head in to Austin to see my mom in the technical nursing facilty. jb got our Medicare Wellness exams appointment changed to later in the day Weds in Austin to avoid driving in on the ice. We rode our bikes down by the river to see the waterfowl then back up the the hill to get some supplies from the store. Was above normal temps today, but that will end for sure later this evening. Rain, Sleet, Snow, Ice, all predicted. Have a good one, all!

up
0 users have voted.

A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

@divineorder

sorry to hear that the bronchitis is still pestering you. best wishes for a speedy recovery!

glad to hear that all is well in the hill country and that the birds there are prospering. we have the same forecast for rain or snow over the next couple of days here, though it's cold enough that i suspect that most of it will be snow.

stay warm and toasty!

up
0 users have voted.
Meteor Man's picture

The conclusion from Caitlin Johnstone's article about the love affair between Neocons and Neolibs:

Just as there is nothing moderate about supporting the ecocidal, omnicidal agendas of an Orwellian oligarchy, there is nothing realistic about thinking that doing so is a good way to effect change. The adults at the table, the true realists, are fighting to snap America out of the CIA/CNN lullaby narratives they’ve been sedated with and drag US politics kicking and screaming away from the faux center as aggressively as they can.

Be a realist. Fight the centrists. Don’t let them bully you into silence. They are wrong. You are right. Keep fighting, keep yelling. Get louder and louder and louder.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/get-a-room-87fa049cb00d

up
0 users have voted.

"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

joe shikspack's picture

@Meteor Man

yep, that was quite an article. seeing hillary clinton retweeting bill kristol as if he is something other than a bloodthirsty moron should pretty much tell any decent person which list to add hillary and her ilk to.

up
0 users have voted.

@Meteor Man

Thanks so much for the link! The Medium certainly carries the messages we need to hear.

Followed some other links which spelled out a pretty clear message about the path we're being dragged down, en route to the End Game which The Psychopaths and Parasites That (shouldn't) Be believe they can (in at least some cases, immortally, if lifelessly,) survive.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/assange-keeps-warning-of-ai-censorshi...

Caitlin Johnstone
Rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper.
Jan 17
Assange Keeps Warning Of AI Censorship, And It’s Time We Started Listening

...This is not the first time that Assange has cautioned about these developments. In an appearance via video link at musician and activist M.I.A.’s Meltdown Festival last June, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief expounded in far more detail about his thoughts on the potential for artificial intelligence to be used for controlling online information and discourse in a way human intelligence can’t hope to keep up with.

Pointing out how AI can already outmaneuver even the greatest chess players in the world, he describes how programs which can operate with exponentially more tactical intelligence than the human intellect can manipulate the field of available information so effectively and subtly that people won’t even know they are being manipulated. People will be living in a world that they think they understand and know about, but they’ll unknowingly be viewing only establishment-approved information.

“When you have AI programs harvesting all the search queries and YouTube videos someone uploads it starts to lay out perceptual influence campaigns, twenty to thirty moves ahead,” Assange said. “This starts to become totally beneath the level of human perception.”

To be clear, this is already happening. Due to a recent shift in Google’s “evaluation methods”, traffic to left-leaning and anti-establishment websites has plummeted, with sites like WikiLeaks, Alternet, Counterpunch, Global Research, Consortium News, Truthout, and WSWS losing up to 70 percent of the views they were getting prior to the changes. Powerful billionaire oligarchs Pierre Omidyar and George Soros are openly financing the development of “an automated fact-checking system” (AI) to hide “fake news” from the public.

Whenever they are accused of censoring anti-establishment narratives, these “digital super states” have been consistently denying participating in censorship themselves and instead blaming the algorithm for the information’s disappearance from public view. But what does that mean, exactly?

It means “It wasn’t me censoring you! It was the AI!” Which is the exact threat that Assange is pointing to here. ...

It also means deniability in to-be-continued injustice; probably also to be found useful when they bring out Robocops to police us Disposables and robotic troops to deal with protesters. Note: we'll have to work on ways to short the buggers out when they go on a rampage... we already know that routine 'mistakes' in drones targeting the innocent for death will not be corrected.

Found the most surreal reason for a missing story/site among all those I find on searches, looking up a story I read a while back about the US (court? Government? Both?) refusing to take respected war journalists off a kill list complied by algorithms, which can apparently include data such as simply passing by an area where suspects might be.

Story not found
The story you are looking for can't be found. The reason is that the story doesn't exist.
[Search domain www.rockymounttelegram.com] rockymounttelegram.com/auto/feed/news/2002/04/19/10191

They do try for variety, don't they? So many different reasons given for stories/sites no longer accessible..

http://worldbeyondwar.org/take-off-trumps-kill-list-journalists-urge-us-...

Take me off Trump's kill list. journalists urge US courts

From reprieve.org.

...Bilal Abdul Kareem, 46, is an American who reports on the conflict in Syria. A former stand-up comedian from New York City, Mr Kareem was one of the last journalists reporting from Aleppo until January of this year. Mr. Kareem has narrowly escaped death on several occasions, including strikes by US drones. He has recently received new information that his life is being targeted by the US.

Ahmed Zaidan, 54, is a senior journalist with Al Jazeera who until recently served as the network’s Islamabad Bureau Chief. He has won acclaim for his work with US outlets such as CNN and PBS, as well as for documentaries on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr Zaidan was the first journalist to interview Osama bin Laden.

Mr Kareem and Mr Zaidan have today filed a legal challenge against President Trump and CIA director Mike Pompeo over their inclusion on a US government ‘Kill List.’

The challenge refers to leaked top secret documents showing that SKYNET, a US computer program, has falsely classified Mr Zaidan as a courier for Al Qaeda, based upon an analysis of his ‘metadata.’ The program identifies targets who may be placed on the ‘Kill List’ based on their phone calls and travel patterns as opposed to any direct evidence of illegality. As a result, Mr Zaidan has fled Pakistan for fear of being targeted in a US drone strike, and is now based at Al Jazeera’s Qatar headquarters. ...

... Jeffrey Robinson, attorney at Lewis Baach, said: “It is a basic principle of the rule of law that innocent people should not be targeted and killed. This is especially the case with courageous journalists performing an essential function of keeping the public informed.

And I personally suspect that the informing of the public about what's really happening in areas of US attacks/invasions just might be considered by some as a reason for them to be on a drone kill list...

Interesting, looking and looking down the search page to find nearly all irrelevant and especially MIA sites/stories in the results - and the story I just found seems to no longer be on the page? The story of the refusal to order the journalists removed from the kill lists has probably been seen by at least some here; I know I've posted it before... lack the time to continue looking at any rate.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/ive-been-banned-from-facebook-for-sha...

Caitlin Johnstone
Rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper.
Nov 16, 2017
I’ve Been Banned From Facebook For Sharing An Article About False Flags

...The reason given for this ban by the little pop-up boxes when I logged on just now was that a couple months ago I had shared an article about admitted false flag operations perpetrated by governments around the world. I don’t know what happened that made Facebook’s system decide to crack down on me now all of a sudden, but I do know I’ve been a bit naughtier than usual in my last couple of articles.

The article I got the banhammer for sharing is titled For Those Who Don’t ‘Believe’ In ‘Conspiracies’ Here Are 58 Admitted False Flag Attacks. According to the site’s ticker it has 50,667 shares as of this writing. It’s laden with hyperlinks for further reading, and lists only instances of false flag operations that insiders are on the record as having admitted to themselves. It’s a good compilation of important information. People should be allowed to share it.

The notifications say I can be permanently banned if I continue posting that sort of material. I’ve had that account since 2007.

...In a corporatist system of government, corporate censorship is state censorship. When there’s no meaningful space between corporate power and government power, it doesn’t make much difference whether the guy silencing your dissent is Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Sessions. America most definitely has such a system.

If they’re going to get us locked down and propagandized into their vapid brain boxes, this will be how they’ll do it. Not by government censorship, but by corporate censorship. Government can’t make an overt attempt to stop a dissenting voice from speaking, but the corporations who own the venue of their speech can.

In a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, plutocrat-sponsored senators spoke with top legal and security officials for Facebook, Twitter and Google in a very disturbing way about the need to silence dissenting voices.

Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii demanded that the companies adopt a “mission statement” declaring their commitment “to prevent the fomenting of discord.”

A former FBI agent Clint Watts kicked it up even further, saying, “Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words. America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”

“Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced — silence the guns and the barrage will end,” he added.

This was on the Senate floor. Officials were speaking about the need to censor social media to prevent people from sharing dissenting ideas on the Senate floor. ...

...This is weird. I just really, really don’t want humanity to become what these people are trying to turn it into, you know? Help me make some noise about this stuff, please. Manipulators can’t do their job when there’s a big spotlight pointed at them.

UPDATE 11/17/17 7:30PM EST — Facebook has unblocked me with an anonymous message apologizing for what they claim was an accident and a mistake. It was no accident, but it was most certainly a mistake. The Streisand effect works, everybody. Thanks to everyone who helped me shine a big, fat spotlight on this Orwellian fuckery. I just worry about the 1.86 billion monthly active Facebook users who don’t have a large audience to help kick up a major fuss about it.

I am a bit tickled that the social engineers can’t figure out how to deal with me. Can’t get me fired since I’m crowd-funded, can’t de-platform me since my only platform is social media, the character assassination campaigns always fail, and when they try for overt censorship it backfires.

Keep fighting.

In view of the above:

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/people-believe-in-russiagate-because-...

Caitlin Johnstone
Rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper.
Nov 20, 2017
People Believe In Russiagate Because They Lack Self-Awareness
I recently watched a former Hillary Clinton aide trying to prove in front of his large social media audience that the Sanders supporter who was arguing with him was actually a Russian bot using an improvised Turing test.

This is the new normal.

Remember last year when Rep. Adam Schiff accused Fox’s Tucker Carlson of “carrying water for the Kremlin” for asking questions about the Russian hacking narrative and we couldn’t believe our ears? This is just standard behavior now. Democrats have been so deeply saturated in toxic Russia hysteria that you routinely see political discourse stopped dead in its tracks by accusations of someone being a Russian bot or Kremlin agent. They’ve been propagandized into thinking it’s normal, so they don’t think twice about leveling that obnoxious, conversation-ending accusation with no evidence whatsoever in order to shut down anyone who questions their assertions.

A former Daily Show producer recently tried to kick off a smear campaign against Redacted Tonight for being “Russian propaganda”, then started accusing everyone who objected to this oafish behavior of being “paid people and bots”. She was so locked into the establishment echo chamber that she could not understand how people could possibly take issue with what she was doing, asking in a (since deleted) post how her McCarthyite smears were even a controversial take.

This stuff happens constantly now, and people lacking any amount of self-awareness think it’s perfectly normal and healthy. For everyone else, it looks like Children of the Corn.

Besides the world-threatening new cold war escalations it’s being used to manufacture support for, the most grating thing about all this Russia hysteria has been watching our friends and loved ones succumb to it. How is it not obvious to them that we’re being manipulated into an agenda that neoconservatives have been advancing for decades? How does it not bother them that every single new “bombshell” revelation turns out to be riddled with plot holes and not at all what the media pundits tell us it is? How do they not remember the lead-up to the Iraq invasion 15 years ago? ...

...If you’ve never gotten real with yourself in this way, it doesn’t matter how much knowledge you’ve amassed or how adept at problem-solving your gray matter is — you will not have enough insight to be able to notice when propagandists are working to manipulate what you think. If you’re surrounded by screens full of talking heads all pumping you full of data about Russia infiltrating the highest levels of your nation’s government and taking over the world, it doesn’t show up on your personal radar as the fumbling attempts of a failing empire trying to manufacture support for escalations with a rival power structure, it just shows up as data. If there’s the appearance of a wide consensus among all that data, it shows up as fact. ...

...The establishment manipulators divide us all up at every opportunity, and the frustrations which flare up between people who see through the bullshit and those who don’t are a perfect way of doing that. With a little more awareness on this dynamic, we can have more compassion and understanding for our intelligent friends and family who can’t see what we’re pointing to through no fault of their own, and not waste energy on strangers on the internet who are literally incapable of getting it.

More importantly, I point this out because people who see this clearly are constantly being shouted down and bullied into silence. It’s important to be aware that those who try to silence you on this matter are indeed as blind as they seem, so there’s no need to let it get to you. The escalations between the US and Russia benefit nobody besides possibly a few ruling elites who stand to profit from a complex geopolitical power grab, and they imperil every living organism on earth.

Keep screaming about this, and don’t waste your energy pushing back against pure myopic inertia. Trust your inner truth-finder, and keep speaking. There are many whose eyes are just on the cusp of seeing this disgusting psyop for what it is, and they’ll hear you. Bit by bit we’ll nudge people over the edge, and eventually we’ll hit enough of a critical mass for the whole western world to realize how pervasively they’ve been lied to by unelected rulers they didn’t even know they had. In that moment, a new world will become possible.

Biggest takeaway - never give up, never give in and keep seeking out, as best we can, and voicing the facts, no matter what; we have nothing left to lose, because going with the flow is going to kill us - along with all life on the planet, forming the life support system - right freaking off to extinction in possibly virtually no time - if TPTB are left to their own devices.

https://electricliterature.com/macmillan-to-president-no-you-actually-ca...

Electric Literature
Expanding the influence of literature in popular culture by fostering lively and innovative literary conversations.
Jan 8
Macmillan to President: No, You Actually Can’t Suppress Books You Don’t Like
The publishing company’s CEO has read the dystopias and he’s not interested in living in one

How societies are pathologized by psychopathic propagandists, as has been so noticeable for so long in the US, due to long-running Nazi/psychopath-type propaganda now being globally imposed.

(And I'm hoping that that's a general, feminist 'HER' and not the trademarked Hillary one which is referred to below...)

https://medium.com/@BlairImani/propaganda-dehumanization-and-world-war-i...

Blair Imani
I care about people and I want to change the world • Civic Action & Campaign Lead @dosomething • Founder @equalityforHER • blair@blairimani.com • she/her
Nov 18, 2017
Propaganda, Dehumanization, and World War II

Written June 2015 — The consequences of dehumanization and the emphasis upon nationalist supremacy created a war in which killing was a moral obligation.

...During World War II, propaganda accelerated the construction of racial pride and nationalist identities for the Allied and Axis powers. As populations became emboldened by the assertion of their own superiority they became complicit in the dehumanization of those that fell outside of their constructed identities. As a result of racist propaganda and dehumanization World War II became a war bereft of humanity. John W. Dower’s book, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific, discusses the role of propaganda in the intensification of poisonous myths of racial and national supremacy. Through the indoctrination of those myths whole nations willingly accepted participation in the atrocities against humanity that were committed between 1939 and 1945. By deconstructing the information within War Without Mercy a better understanding of the way in which racist propaganda affected military strategies in America and Japan can be achieved. ...

...George C. Marshall, the United States Army Chief of Staff enlisted Hollywood filmmakers to sway popular opinion in favor of a war against Japan. The result was seven films directed by Frank Capra titled, Why We Fight. In one of the seven films, Know Your Enemy: Japan, Capra effectively constructed the notion that America was “fundamentally peaceful, democratic, and rational” while Japan was “a thoroughly militaristic, repressive, irrational nation” (Dower, 66). As a result of Capra’s propaganda Americans soldiers could kill Japanese soldiers and civilians without the guilt of moral compromise because Japanese people were no longer afforded humanity. This juxtaposition even had harmful implications in the domestic policies of the United States. U.S. civilians had no qualms about the policy of placing Japanese Americans in internment camps. These actions were not viewed as the denial of basic human rights, but it was instead viewed as a necessary measure to ensure the safety of ‘real Americans’ from the ‘monolith of evil’ that people of Japanese ancestry came to represent. Through these harmful ideologies American military strategy could exert morally reprehensible actions against Japan, such as the mass murder of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the enthusiastic support of American civilians. ...

...As racial stereotypes focused on preserving the internal purity of the nation, the very civilians that comprised the nation sacrificed themselves rather than become victims of the American forces. Destruction of the self was inconsequential if it facilitated greater destruction of the other.

The consequences of dehumanization and the emphasis upon nationalist supremacy created a war in which killing was a moral obligation. This phenomenon is best described by Browning in his discussion about the massacre of Jewish people by Nazi forces:

What is clear is that the men’s concern for their standing in the eyes of their comrades was not matched by any sense of human ties with their victims. The Jews stood outside their circle of human obligation and responsibility. Such a polarization between “us” and “them,” between one’s comrades and the enemy, is of course standard in war (Browning).

The failure to recognize those outside of one’s own racial and national identity sits at the heart of the merciless cruelty and brutality seen during WWII. In War Without Mercy, Dower reveals the ways in which brutality became a product of government-sponsored propaganda. In both the United States and Japan, racist stereotypes and mythological constructs of supremacy enforced by propaganda infiltrated military and civilian populations. At home and abroad for both nations, the consequences were devastating. In the United States, the public took no issue with the forced imprisonment of thousands of Japanese-Americans. Outside of the United States, Americans enthusiastically supported the slaughter and defilement of Japanese civilians and military personnel. The twisted consequences of this savage brutality included the bombing of innocents, the dismemberment of corpses, and the collection of body parts from dead Japanese soldiers. ...

We know much of American society is there already, even regarding more vulnerable 'othered' groups of their fellow-Americans, exceptionally so, since the horrendously successful, illicitly human-rights-deleting 9/11 psy-ops that started off this final phase. And it ain't their fault - they're unwitting, mind-twisted victims of legions of experts 'normalizing' their own murderously suicidal psychopathy among the Disposables currently still useful in this area.

It's also not the fault of American citizens that we're inundated with neurotoxins causing an epidemic of bad memories rapidly become a torrent of dementia cases, first among the elderly and most vulnerable but also variably affecting youth and all ages between - a dementia epidemic which was predicted in the corporate news, as with other ills, albeit without mention of the increase and accumulation of toxic corporate causal factors, in a world where mercury levels are so high within oceans that fish consumption (long known as a 'brain food') must be also restricted and where the poop of sea-birds is so toxic as to pollute areas previously thought pristine, where they nest in quantity. But a poor memory among the general public is certainly useful to those seeking to pull wool not only over our eyes, but our minds. And there's extra money to be made by The Right People in a restricted-to-Big-Pharma market in treatments by continuing to limit the personal choices of people to petrochemical/GMO/nanotech monopolists such as the pharmaceutical industry, the biggies remaining after consolidation already having more money and power than small countries.

http://www.anh-usa.org/fda-attacks-brain-health-supplements/

FDA Attacks Brain Health Supplements
16
By anh-usa on February 16, 2016 Reform Healthcare

We think this is to pave the way for a new blockbuster drug. Action Alert!

In October we told you about a potential new blockbuster drug for Alzheimer’s from drug giant Eli Lilly. Solanezumab is in the third and final phase of FDA drug trials, and if approved, could bring in at least $7.6 billion in sales by 2024 and probably much more. Other drug companies also have “big” Alzheimer’s drugs in the works.

Now the FDA has sent warning letters to five supplement companies targeting the supplement picamilon, which may help with Alzheimer’s, anxiety, and general brain health. It is a combination of natural ingredients niacin (vitamin B3) and GABA, a substance our body makes from the amino acid glutamine. This particular combination crosses the blood–brain barrier more effectively than GABA alone. The FDA, however, claims that picamilon does not meet the statutory definition of a dietary supplement because it is neither a vitamin, nor (in its combined form) a completely organic substance, nor a minor component of foods. The agency says that although picamilon can be synthesized from niacin, it is a different chemical entity, and is therefore “adulterated.”

According to the Dietary Supplement Label Database, forty-eight supplements currently list picamilon as an ingredient on the label. There is no public record of a single adverse event report with picamilon. It has also been widely used by doctors in Europe for decades, although it may be an approved drug there. It will never be an approved drug in the US, because it is natural and therefore cannot be patented. Not being patentable, no company will pay billions for FDA approval.

Fortunately there are other natural ways to get GABA to the brain, but we are reluctant even to mention them, lest the FDA go after them too.

One observer noted that “almost all vitamins and minerals are bound to some salt or compound for stability of the molecule, and usually for better bioavailability”—meaning that the same logic could be used to target any number of supplements on the market.

The FDA’s attack on picamilon appears to be an attempt to give Big Pharma an unobstructed playing field for their Alzheimer’s drug. Picamilon is the perfect ingredient to attack if you want to rewrite DSHEA (the law governing supplements) without actually rewriting it—simply because picamilon has very small sales and is too “small potatoes” for anyone to mount a major protest. But banning it sets a massive legal precedent that could affect countless other supplements. It could have devastating ramifications for the supplement industry.

Action Alert! Write to the FDA and tell them that picamilon is not a synthetic drug at all, and needs to stay on supplement store shelves! Please send your message immediately.

From above: :

... The agency says that although picamilon can be synthesized from niacin, it is a different chemical entity, and is therefore “adulterated.” ...

Yet GMO foods, with multi-life-form-added altered genetics and biochemistry are 'essentially the same as' the natural forms of such foods, do not even need to be tested, and must not be labeled because too many of the guinea pigs don't want to purchase and consume them or to support the corporations forcing these on an unwitting/unwilling world, toward a global food monopoly owned and controlled by ruthless polluters. And because labeled GMO foods are identifiable and can be tracked in large-scale studies over time to demonstrate whether any increases in disease/disorders consistently manifest among those regularly consuming them, as opposed to those avoiding them, or consuming fewer. If there were no corporate concerns in this area, this wouldn't be a problem for any company producing a good and healthy product; they certainly wouldn't be acting to repress independent studies and their results, but encouraging them instead.

Big corporate/billionaire money doesn't just talk 'bigly', it apparently deafens some to all sanity.

A very long time ago, niacin was ordered by the US (and other) government(a) to be added to various common foods, because so essential for the prevention of various ills and especially essential for normal brain function...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra

Pellagra
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pellagra
Pellagra2.jpg
The skin features of pellagra including peeling, redness, scaling, and thickening of sun-exposed areas.
Specialty Dermatology
Symptoms Inflammation of the skin, diarrhea, dementia, sores in the mouth[1]
Types Primary, secondary[1]
Causes Not enough niacin[2]
Diagnostic method Based on symptoms[3]
Similar conditions Kwashiorkor, pemphigus, photodermatitis, porphyria[3]
Prevention Addressing poverty[3]
Treatment Niacin or nicotinamide supplementation.[1]
Prognosis Good (with treatment), death in ~ 5 years (without treatment)[3]
Frequency Rare (developed world), relatively common (developing world)[3]
[edit on Wikidata]

Pellagra is a disease caused by a lack of the vitamin niacin (vitamin B3).[2] Symptoms include inflamed skin, diarrhea, dementia, and sores in the mouth.[1] Areas of the skin exposed to either sunlight or friction are typically affected first.[1] Over time affected skin may become darker, stiff, begin to peel, or bleed.[3][1]

There are two main types of pellagra, primary and secondary.[1] Primary pellagra is due to a diet that does not contain enough niacin and tryptophan.[1] Secondary pellagra is due to a poor ability to use the niacin within the diet.[1] This can occur as a result of alcoholism, long term diarrhea, carcinoid syndrome, Hartnup disease, and a number of medications such as isoniazid.[1] Diagnosis is typically based on symptoms and may be assisted by urine testing.[3]

Treatment is with either niacin or nicotinamide supplementation.[1] Improvements typically begin within a couple of days.[1] General improvements in diet are also frequently recommended.[3] Decreasing sun exposure via sunscreen and proper clothing is important while the skin heals.[1] Without treatment death may occur.[3] It occurs most commonly in the developing world, specifically sub-Saharan Africa.[3]

Signs and symptoms
This child has the skin rash associated with pellagra
Person with pellagra with typical skin lesions

The classic symptoms of pellagra are diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death ("the four Ds").[4] A more comprehensive list of symptoms includes:

High sensitivity to sunlight
Aggression
Dermatitis, alopecia (hair loss), edema (swelling)
Smooth, beefy red glossitis (tongue inflammation)
Red skin lesions
Insomnia
Weakness
Mental confusion
Ataxia (lack of coordination), paralysis of extremities, peripheral neuritis (nerve damage)
Diarrhea
Dilated cardiomyopathy (enlarged, weakened heart)
Eventually dementia

J. Frostig and Tom Spies (acc. to Cleary and Cleary) described more specific psychological symptoms of pellagra as:[5][6]

Psychosensory disturbances (impressions as being painful, annoying bright lights, odors intolerance causing nausea and vomiting, dizziness after sudden movements)
Psychomotor disturbances (restlessness, tense and a desire to quarrel, increased preparedness for motor action)
Emotional disturbances

Despite clinical symptoms, blood level of tryptophan or urinary metabolites such as 2-pyridone/N-methylniacinamide ratio

(Can't quote from this following, but it makes evident several relevant points which I'd like to include. Now that some are declaring niacin to be too dangerous to supplement and not worth further study, evidently not despite but because of so many long-previous studies and all actual results over the decades showing otherwise. Just take lucrative pharma drugs, not essential nutrients.)
http://c4oh.org/articles_free/niacin1.pdf

Niacin
(Vitamin B3)
Part 1
:
Dr. Abram Hoffer--Hero or Heretic?
October 2014
Michael Cheikin MD
Holistic Medicine and Physiatry

We are ultimately not to be allowed freedom of choice in any area, even regarding access to essential, naturally produced and biologically necessary, nutrients which cannot currently be patented/monopolized for maximized profits limited to The Right People, this, of course, purely for our own good, which lies in The Psychopaths That (shouldn't) Be owning and controlling the world and all in it, in the brief period before it's made utterly devoid of life. Monsanto et al's corn (and/or soy, etc.) seems to be in virtually all processed foods, with altered biochemistry and saturated in toxic petrochemicals also poisoning the earth and Earth and contributing to neurological and other health issues which have become/are becoming epidemic wherever Corporate-American processed/GMO foods have been commonly introduced throughout a population, but only the pharmaceutical branch of the intermingled petrochemical/GMO/nanotech industries can be trusted to help treat the ills such industry as a whole so commonly creates in its other forms.

And that absolute global take-over, ownership and micromanagement of all aspects of all of our lives requires the exertion of very strict controls even over our minds, which is far easier to attain when our attention spans and memories wither away.

The Zombie Apocalypse is already underway; they are falsifying our perceptions and eating away at our brains. All the better to guide us down the guarded path they choose to limit us to, right over the edge of their created cliff, going over which they apparently believe will enable them to fly, while we fall.

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

enhydra lutris's picture

officers and troops are quietly preparing for a war they hope will not come.

US officers love war, it means promotions, field promotions and permanent ones. Some are also psychopaths, so it suits them just fine at any event.

The Dems, of course, immediately started slinging lies and mud at Chelsea, because that has become all they do. Red-baiting, Russia-baiting, Jew-baiting, and on and on and on. That is because they have no forward looking constructive agenda intended to help and serve the people, nothing of substance to point to as to why they are better than any random thieving grifter, so like caged simians, they throw shit.

up
0 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

heh, of course you can't believe that standard "amber waves of grain" framing. it's from the new york times.

the dems want you to be aware of the fact that they are better monkeys than the ones in the other cage. Smile

up
0 users have voted.

I and 29 others on the tour got the flu. We were so remote, there were no clinics, drs., or pharmacies, not even stores to get over the counter meds.
By the time I got home, what my dr. saw was pneumonia. What happened yesterday with the coughing fits is that I blew some "things" off my retina, popped a blood vessel, and now can't see out of one eye. Well, except for the floating blood clots.
Mexico enacted a law to make criticizing the government a crime.
The people I spoke with plan to sit in the roads, join hands, refuse to work, to consume, or to pay taxes, for as long as it takes. They see the rich getting richer, taking from the poor, see it happening globally.
Pancho Villa lives in their hearts.

up
0 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

i'm terribly sorry to hear about your eye problems (and everything else that you've been going through) - i hope you have a full and speedy recovery.

i remember thinking quite a while ago when calderon beat lopez obrador in a shady and very close election that mexico was going in the wrong direction and might have a collapse or even revolution. since then it appears that the corrupt establishment has managed to have its way and things have only gotten worse for the 99% in mexico.

i hope that the resolve of the people that you met will allow them to finally build a decent country for the themselves.

up
0 users have voted.

@joe shikspack What I saw was Mexicans united. Doctors, lawyers, farmers, indigenous people all Mexicans first and united, "class" second.
As sick as I was, it inspired me, and I want them to be a force on the world's stage.
I swore I would never donate a red cent to a political campaign.
Except Chelsea Manning's.

up
0 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

i am looking forward to chelsea replacing ben cardin. there may be a lawn sign in chez shikspack's future.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

I realize that reading the news on WP and NYT this morning (in Hawaii still late evening Monday) that all off the sudden the papers ask to subscribe, because the numbers of articles I can read online for free, are 'used up'. Which is strange. I seldom click directly on those articles.

Another way to make a profit out of an 'emergency' situation? May be I just have a 'heightened' degree of PTSD trauma? WTF. I can't stand psychological cyber babbling talking heads. STFU already.

up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

when the false alarm was set off? Conveniently in Hawaii, right on time. Bill Clinton discusses Trump's immigration comments with Hawaii lawmakers -
Monday, January 15th 2018, 8:51 pm CET

It’s not known where Clinton was at the time of Hawaii’s false missile alert fiasco on Saturday.

The guy always seems to be at the right time at the right spot to make the right remarks. Yipppeeee. /s

But then having to deal with messages and emails and comments from different time zones and always being confused and having to calculate which damn time somebody said something from where gets
thoroughly on my nerves.

There should be a law that all online and print paper comments and conversations should be listed in the 24:00:00 notation with the date written out, like Month, Weekday/Year notation.

Just venting.

up
0 users have voted.