22-26 April 2018: Is Demo Lawsuit Start of Hillary's 3rd Run?

How This Blog Serves the People; How Its Service Defines Its Content

A COUPLE OF READERS have asked me why I didn't link to last Friday's breaking news of the brazenly deceptive lawsuit the Democratic (sic) Party filed in federal court against Hillary Clinton's long list of selected scapegoats -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, WikiLeaks itself, the Russian government and of course the Trump campaign. 

Rather than dodge such questions, I welcome them as potentially corrective feedback; they often tell me what I need to do improve Dispatches' usefulness to readers. In this instance the questions tell me I have not adequately explained Dispatches' form, content and purpose -- an oversight for which I apologize and -- hopefully -- will remedy in the next few paragraphs. 

I did not overlook the lawsuit story or -- Goddess forbid -- choose to ignore it. The suit itself is merely the newest reiteration of the Democrats' endlessly repeated Big Lie that a criminal conspiracy by Assange, Russian intelligence operatives and Trump/Pence campaign officials  stole the 2016 election from Hillary. The reeking taint of its Big Lie is half the reason Dispatches' "Weekend Update" of 20-21 April did not link to the original stories. The other half of the reason is the extensive, favorable and typically misleading coverage the lawsuit was granted by the Mainstream Media propaganda machine. Why sully Dispatches by linking to the sort of disinformation it seeks to neutralize or transcend?  The story was already widely reported, and at that point in the news cycle I could add nothing to the coverage save perhaps a cynical sneer. 
        
Thus -- as I usually do in such circumstances -- I decided I would await further developments. Decades ago the evolution of broadcast media, and more recently the advent of the Internet and social media, relieved print journalism of the scoop-the-world mandate that had ruled during most of my newspaper, wire service and magazine years.  By necessity, print journalists these days focus far less on the rudiments of what happened -- that's now the job of the broadcasters -- and far more on the intricacies of what it means and what it might portend. It is an approach that in the newsrooms of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was known as a "second-day angle," and it was the reportorial lifeblood of all the better afternoon papers. 

(Note too it is the greed-motivated refusal of the news monopolies to adopt this approach that has put U.S. daily newspapers on the endangered species list. Reliably ferreting  out and communicating second-day angles demands of its writers and editors far more than the sorely limited perspective provided by a journalism degree. It is therefore considerably more expensive to produce than the traditional who-what-when-where-and-why brand of reporting. But why should you buy a paper if it merely rehashes what you already saw on  your TV or cellphone?) 

In any case, I knew someone of far greater professional renown than I would soon analyze the implications of the lawsuit, at the very least recognizing it as an obvious effort to further undermine the First Amendment, or as the World Socialist Web Site has since called it, "a frontal assault on democratic rights." Other analyses were similarly forthright.  See also: "The DNC's suit...poses a grave threat to press freedom." Plus this: "The Democratic Party...is seeking to...cripple journalists’ ability to expose corporate and government wrongdoing."  And don't overlook this: "It’s very a risky move. In civil suits 'discovery' runs in both directions. We’re about to learn a lot more about how the Democratic Party really works behind the scenes."  
 

Meanwhile even the more normally astute analysts somehow missed the suit's most glaring implication -- that Hillary Clinton is planning a third run for the presidency. 

The lawsuit's accusations provide precisely the pseudo-factual foundation Hillary needs to support her false narrative of victimization, That's the only way she can redefine her 2016 loss to the Trump/Pence ticket as anything other than what it was -- a colossal blunder fostered by her own astounding arrogance and proven so by her unprecedentedly large victory in the popular vote. 

If proven, the lawsuit's assertions would substantiate the portrayal of Hillary as a feminist martyr. But even as formal though unproven allegations, they turn the Trump presidency into to her springboard. They enable her to offer herself as the reanimated savior come back to lift the nation out of its Trumpian convulsions of cruelty, conflict, chaos and corruption "without ever" -- this next whispered in an aside to her owners -- "damaging so much as the proverbial strand of hair from any One Percenter's head." 

If Hillary makes it onto the 2020 ballot, the notoriously short-memoried gullibility of the U.S. electorate will interact with widespread post-Trumpian loathing of anything Republican to enable her to at last fulfill her all-consuming ambition to be not only the first female president of the United States and ruler of its global empire, but also the first-ever conqueror of Russia.

How else but with a resurrected Hillary candidacy will the Democratic (sic) Party continue to serve its Capitalist masters? How will it (again) suppress the ever-intensifying grassroots effort to leverage it toward another New Deal? 

And what of the so-called "CIA Democrats"? Are they not the perfect Praetorian Guard for a Hillary presidency?  

Given the givens, what other strategic explanation for the lawsuit actually makes sense? 

 

Which brings me to the purpose -- and therefore the form and content -- of Dispatches from Dystopia. 

As its founder and editor, I do my best to avoid regurgitating the rigorously censored... 

(To read the rest go here.)  

Weekend Update 21/4/18: How Capitalism Makes War Inevitable

"...capital’s capacity to produce constantly outstrips the capacity of consumers to consume, as these very consumers are, in the main, the very workers whose wages are driven down, or who are made redundant altogether, by improved technology. Ultimately, this results in a crisis of overproduction, with markets glutted, and workers thrown out of work in their millions...Increasingly unable to rely on economic coercion alone to keep countries within its ‘sphere of influence...the West have been turning more and more to military force. Indeed, the US, UK and France have been permanently at war since the eve of the new millennium – starting with Yugoslavia, through Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria and Yemen (to say nothing of proxy wars such as that in the Congo, or the ‘drone wars’ waged in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere). In each case, the aim has been the same – to thwart the possibility of independent development..."

     

North Korea Says It's Suspending Nuke Tests, Missile Launches 
"North Korea announced yesterday it had suspended nuclear and long-range missile tests and plans to close its northern nuclear test site. It was the latest in a series of concessions offered by Pyongyang in the lead-up to a summit scheduled next Friday between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and a later summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump." See also:  "The decision of Washington, London and Paris to launch missile strike against Syria on April 9, risking a direct military clash with Russian forces in the country, is reverberating internationally. As the Trump administration prepares for talks with North Korean President Kim Jong Un over his country’s nuclear program, it is inflaming military tensions in East Asia."

 

Cuba's New President Pledges to Defend Socialism
"Cuba's new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, began his term on Thursday with a promise to defend the socialist revolution led by the Castro brothers since 1959, giving a sober speech that also emphasized the need to modernize the island's economy."

       

Clinton Case Could Trigger Constitutional Crisis; Media Curiously Silent
"Wednesday’s criminal referral by 11 House Republicans of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as several former and serving top FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials is a giant step toward a Constitutional crisis...With no attention from corporate media, the referral was sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions...

(To read the rest, go here.)

15-19 April 2018: Sighs of Relief, Expressions of Hopeful Anger

Is the Empire at Long Last Learning It Cannot Conquer All Nations? 

"They had long been in favor of ensuring this country’s 'unchallenged supremacy' by building its already staggering military into a force beyond compare...It was to be a Pax Americana planet for the ages...'a position of unparalleled military strength'...a single, unparalleled military power 'beyond challenge'... a dream of dominion that once would have been left to 'Evil Empires' or madmen (or the truly, truly bad guys in Hollywood movies). But in the world as they imagined it then, the one in which only that 'sole' superpower stood tall, how easy it proved to imagine a Great Game with just a single player and an eternal arms race of one." See also: "The fading empire refuses to accept the humiliation of defeat of its jihadist proxies, the head-cutters Washington and Saudi Arabia have nurtured as a foreign terror legion since deploying them against a leftist government in Afghanistan and its Soviet ally almost 40 years ago."  Comment: ultimately, and unabashedly in the tradition of Hitler and Bonaparte, the "New American Century" is just another genocidal effort by another morally imbecilic conqueror, in this case a cabal of Capitalists and their vassals rather than one Capitalist-anointed tyrant. 

       

Attack on Syria Did Not Slake Imperial Warmongers' Blood Lust

"Within hours of the strikes, US and European newspapers began pumping out editorials demanding a further escalation of the war for regime-change in Syria....while tactical considerations led the United States to...(avoid) a full-scale assault that would have led to a shooting war with Iranian and Russian forces, the launching of such an onslaught is only a matter of time. The fact that such a conflict could have cataclysmic consequences for humanity will not deter the imperialist powers from waging it." See also: "Considering the just inflicted U.S. insult to Russia by its attack in Syria, Moscow may well choose to respond by hitting U.S. interests in a very different location, where it enjoys logistical superiority and also where the counter-strike may be less likely to escalate to direct crossing of swords and the unthinkable—possible nuclear war."

    

International Study Damns U.S. as World's Most Corrupt Industrial Nation

"No other 'democracy' in the developed world comes close to the United States when it comes to giving big-money donors unregulated power in their national electoral processes...this plutocratic campaign finance free-for-all is why the Electoral Integrity Project (a research undertaking funded by the Australian Research Council with a team of researchers based at the University of Sydney and Harvard University) ranks the democratic election integrity of U.S. elections below that of all 19 North and Western European democracies and also below that of 10 other nations in the Americas (Costa Rica, Uruguay, Canada, Chile, Brazil, Jamaica, Grenada, Argentina, Barbados and Peru), 10 nations in Central and Eastern Europe, nine Asian-Pacific countries, two countries in the Middle East (Israel and Tunisia) and six African nations...dead last among 'Western democracies.'" Comment: now at last we're being recognized for our true exceptionalism. (Longtime suspicions emphatically confirmed.)

To read the rest, go here.

Weekend Update 14/4/18: Trump Appointees' JesuNazi Yearning for Apocalypse Makes Present Confrontation with Russia Infinitely More Terrifying Than Cuban Missile Crisis

TOO MANY OF US have remained comfortably oblivious to the fact all the most fanatical U.S. Christians are ominously applauding the Trump/Pence Regime as "the most evangelical cabinet in history," a belligerently Bible-thumping boastfulness frighteningly confirmed by Tom Waddell of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. 

The Mainstream Media propaganda machine -- ever faithful to the Capitalist mandate to conceal "the secret fundamentalism at the heart of American power" -- routinely suppresses any reports that reveal the breathtaking speed and vast dimensions of the regime's conversion of our Big-Lie "democracy" to zero-tolerance Christian theocracy. 

Likewise suppressed are analyses that declare theocracy prophetically implicit in the 1954 addition to the Pledge of Allegiance, which redefines the flag as emblematic not of "one nation" of allegedly free peoples but of one nation tyrannized to submission "under God." 

We are also plagued by an obliviousness that is due to the allegedly "progressive" equivalent of the prideful, self-inflicted ignorance that defines the USian national mentality. In this instance it's the stubborn refusal of some secular-minded folks to recognize the U.S. remains more far more opiated by Christianity -- and therefore far more shackled to all its bigotry and hatefulness -- than any other industrial nation.  

Beyond that, even many of us who recognize the multiple horrors of the Trump/Pence Regime's white Christian agenda nevertheless choose to avoid looking closely at its unprecedented ecocidal, genocidal (and therefore ultimately apocalyptic) implications. 
Though in this instance I suspect our denial is a last-ditch mechanism of self-protectiveness, one of the very few ways left us to try to preserve whatever aspects of sanity we might manage to retain in this the darkest and most hopeless of all eras in our species' 200,000-year history.

Quoth Waddell:  

"Most of Trump’s Cabinet nominees...believe that God created the Earth 6,000 years ago, that men and dinosaurs co-existed, that everything is part of God’s plan and that Armageddon is just around the corner. Collectively they oppose civil rights, LGBT rights, a woman’s right to choose, and public education, while they deny climate change, all based on their Christian beliefs." 

Armageddon is of course the final battle of the apocalypse. Christian doctrine states that Armageddon is to be welcomed as the prelude to the second coming of Jesus. When that doctrine becomes a core tenet of the Empire's foreign policy -- as it probably is already and undoubtedly will be after the Senate's all-but-certain  approval of Mike Pompeo as secretary of state -- our species and planetary Motherland will be in jeopardy as never before.
  
Waddell again:

"Pompeo shows he doesn’t understand that the secretary of state’s job is to promote and maintain world peace when he claims that politics is a 'never-ending struggle until the rapture.'"

 

Thus the difference between the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the U.S.-Russian confrontation today.  

During the former I was a married 22-year-old just returned stateside, joyfully reunited with my first wife after nearly two years of soldiering in Korea and newly transferred to the reserves after three years' Regular Army duty. If war broke out, I knew my wife and I would either be killed in the initial nuclear exchange or I'd called back to active duty and -- given the horrors of war -- I'd probably never see her again. But President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had each known those horrors -- Khrushchev's experience included the epic battle of Stalingrad -- and both were men of reason. Otherwise there'd have been no U.S.-Soviet rapprochement and humanity would not have survived. 

But today most of the people in the White House know war only in its sanitized Hollywood version. Moreover they are apocalyptic Christian fundamentalists whose we-have-to-destroy-the-planet-to-save-it fanaticism can neither be appeased nor ameliorated no matter the unquestionable depth of Russian President Vladimir Putin's patience and rationality.

That's why the the sheer terror I feel today is many magnitudes greater than the apprehensiveness I experienced for a few days in October 1962. Today's terror is relentless. It has no discernible end.  It is the spectral companion who peers over my shoulder in my every conscious moment, and it is the omnipresent source of  nightmares too horrifically chaotic to describe.  Its origin is my firsthand experience of the bottomlessly self-righteous lynch-mob malevolence of the white Christian mentality; I lived most of my boyhood in the South, where it rules unchecked and from which its venom has metastasized to conquer the entire nation and now attempt conquest of the entire planet. 

 

I am not afraid for myself or my generational peers; at age 78 my life is effectively over, and the increasing pains of rapidly declining health tell me I will soon be at that threshold beyond which death is welcome. But I am wrenchingly fearful for the young adults and children I know personally and for the millions of other humans like them who might yet live long, fulfilling and useful lives.  I am equally fearful for our Mother Earth, whom the Christians despise as the domain of Satan and treat accordingly -- thus the looming environmental apocalypse that will surely kill us even if by some miracle we escape extinction by thermonuclear war. 

(To read the rest, go here.)

8-12 April 2018: Which Will It Be, Apocalypse or Revolution?

Trump Says He'll Bomb Syria, Russia Pledges Immediate Retaliation
 
"Donald Trump says the United States is about to bomb Syria, and Russia has vowed to shoot down US aircraft...With John Bolton, the new national security adviser and infamous enemy of the United Nations by Trump's side, diplomacy is not in the cards." Earlier report: "Russian officials warned that any military action by the U.S. and its allies would be met with an aggressive response—targeting any U.S. missiles as well as their launch sites." See also:  "'the Russian forces will confront any US aggression on Syria, by intercepting the missiles and striking their launch pads.'" Plus this: "Civilization itself is being put in peril so that the West can continue supporting sectarian armed groups seeking to overthrow the Assad government, in violation of international law and the UN Charter."  And especially this:  "...the deep state...helped prevent Barack Obama from launching a war in which a dozen nations would have fought and millions might have died, which could easily have escalated into a nuclear conflict between the US, Israel and NATO on the one hand and Russia on the other...We can hope that some of these forces, none of whom are friends of peace or justice, will restrain Donald Trump, as they did Obama. (But) the odds don’t look good."

  

Russian Navy's Syrian Squadron Puts to Sea (w/Aerial Photos)
"...satellite images (show) eleven Russian (warships) have already left the port of Tartus..." Comment: while these vessels may indeed have sailed as part of Russia's announced live-firing missile exercises, it is also world naval SOP (standing operating procedure) to get your ships out of port and scattered to relative safely at sea when you are anticipating enemy attack. Hence this is by far the most ominous indication yet to emerge from this escalating crisis. That said, Goddess save us all from the USian Empire's apocalypse-minded tyrants.

     

Also Relevant: Brink-of-War Commentaries by Slane and Greenwald
"Unfortunately American foreign policy was hijacked in the 1990s by fanatical ideologues with a messianic complex who cannot accept anything other than U.S. hegemony over the entire planet" (Slane) and "The exact danger Obama sought to avoid — military confrontation with Russia in Syria — is now upon us, being directly threatened by Trump. And Democrats — who spent years first scorning Obama for not becoming more militarily involved in Syria and then pushing Trump to be more hostile to Moscow — are, just as Clinton last year did, defending Trump’s military aggression" (Greenwald). 

   

U.S. Pseudo-Left Silent on Looming World War
"Four of the most prominent pseudo-left websites—Jacobin magazine, which is closely connected to the Democratic Socialists of America; Socialist Worker, the online newspaper of the International Socialist Organization; the website of Socialist Alternative; and International Viewpoint, the magazine of the Pabloite, ex-Trotskyist United Secretariat, have written next to nothing about the growing danger of a major world war." Comment: a sharp-edged analysis from the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) that exemplifies why Dispatches increasingly links to its reports.

Will U.S. Attack on North Korea (Again) Mean War with China?
"Bolton insists that North Korea’s nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to the U.S. which cannot be tolerated. Bolton claims that within months North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will...

(To read the rest, go here.)

Weekend Update 8/4/18: Vernal Pain and Promise

(Typepad, my primary blog server, is off line with what is apparently major equipment failure. Hence instead of posting a few paragraphs here and linking to dispatchesfromdystopia.net via Typepad for the rest, I'm posting the full text of today's report here on Blogger.)
  
Economic Warfare -- and Worse --  Looms at Home and Abroad
"The corporate-financial elite is preparing the most ruthless measures—economic and political—to counter the emerging rebellion of U.S. workers against the government, the corporations and the corporatist trade unions that do their bidding." See also: "The U.S. regards the economic growth of China...as an existential threat...(and is) threatening to plunge the world into the kind of economic chaos not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, as well as world war if that proves necessary."

36% of U.S. College Students Battle Hunger and Homelessness
"As college students grapple with the rising costs of classes and books, mortgaging their futures with student loans in exchange for a diploma they're gambling will someday pay off, it turns out many of them are in great financial peril in the present...36 percent ...say they are food insecure. Another 36 percent say they are housing insecure, while 9 percent report being homeless."

Sessions Wants Death Penalty for Marijuana Dealers

"This week, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions  sent a memo to the nation’s federal prosecutors urging them to seek the death penalty in cases involving large-scale drug traffickers...(therefore) Anyone convicted of cultivating more than 60,000 marijuana plants or possessing more than 60,000 kilograms of a substance that contains marijuana could face death as a punishment."

  

Federal Secret Police to Intensify Surveillance of Journalists

"The Department of Homeland Security wants to...monitor hundreds of thousands of news outlets and journalists around the world...(collecting) data about each source’s 'sentiment,' influence, language, and circulation...The tracking would apply to online, print, broadcast, cable, and radio sources — essentially, any journalist, editor, blogger, or correspondent deemed a possible 'media influencer' could be included. DHS also wants to follow social media activity..."  Comment: I don't doubt our overseers are already collecting this data -- most likely have been at least since the Vietnam War  -- but now they want to make this especially egregious example of USian fascism formal and legal.

  

Trump, Obama, Hillary All Guilty in Honduran Refugee Crisis
"Put all that Trumpian (anti-immigrant) madness aside for a moment and reflect on Hillary and the Obama administration’s role in generating the annual ragged and desperate march of deeply impoverished Central Americans through Mexico. Most of the caravan participants that Washington’s Orange Dotard railed against are Hondurans fleeing repression, violence, and extreme poverty imposed by a right-wing regime Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama helped put in place in the spring of 2009 – a government the U.S. has funded and equipped ever since."

                   

New Gun Laws: Forcible Disarmament, Confiscation without Compensation
"On Monday, Deerfield, Illinois—a suburb of Chicago—passed an ordinance that makes it illegal to possess, manufacture, or sell assault rifles and large capacity magazines...(and penalizing) anyone refusing to give up their banned firearm...$1,000 a day until the weapon is handed over or removed from the town's limits...In Boulder, Colorado on Thursday night, the city council unanimously passed a first reading of a similar ordinance." Comment: obviously the student anti-mass-murder protest movement, which many of us hoped would focus on the socioeconomic causes of mass shootings, has instead been co-opted by the Democratic (sic) Party with its Ruling Class agenda of forcible disarmament (i.e., mandatory pacifism and compulsory victimhood). The movement has seemingly abandoned reason and now seeks only the sort of draconian, confiscation-without-compensation measures imposed by Deerfield, Illinois and pending in Bolder, Colorado.  Who knows how many more such laws are pending in other locales -- especially in states that lack the protection of preemption laws. Note too how Common Dreams -- a staunch supporter of forcible disarmament -- buried these reports at the very bottom of a story applauding a federal judge's ruling to uphold the 20-year-old Massachusetts gun ban, which outlaws most semiautomatic weapons.

      

FCC Honcho Wants to Cut Poor People Off the Internet
"FCC chairman Ajit Pai is proposing to scale down the Lifeline program (by)...cut(ing) affordable internet access...for 8 million people, about 70 percent of the Lifeline’s recipients. This reduction would be particularly devastating for Puerto Rico, where about 500,000 people, or 17 percent of the population, have relied on the Lifeline program since Hurricane Maria." Comment: another of our Capitalist overlords terrified of what we might be finding out. 

      

Seven More Dead as Israeli Atrocities Continue
"Israel’s military forces killed seven Palestinian protestors along Gaza’s border and injured around 200 more, five of them seriously, according to Gaza’s health ministry." See also: "Gaza death toll climbs to 22 as Israeli forces continue violent suppression of protests..." Comment: given the Israeli/U.S. alliance -- especially the way the two countries gleefully share military and police tactics -- I cannot but wonder when U.S. authorities will begin firing live ammo at protestors here in the imperial homeland. 

Will Teachers' Strikes Trigger a Nationwide General Strike?  
"The strike by teachers in Oklahoma will continue into its second week on Monday, following the passage on Friday of...(deliberately deceptive) measures that will do nothing to meet the demands of the teachers...The attempt by the unions to sell out the strike in Oklahoma is taking place as teachers are winning ever-broader support. This year has already seen strikes and demonstrations by teachers in West Virginia, New Jersey, Arizona, Kentucky and other states. There are growing calls for a nationwide strike that would connect the fight of teachers with the struggles of all sections of the working class for quality jobs, wages, health care and pensions." See also: "Arizona teachers are considering a strike...if they don't receive their requested 20 percent pay raise. An official strike date hasn't been set, but the teachers, following the playbooks from West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky, have staged multiple protests in individual districts and at the state capitol in Phoenix for the last five weeks..." And this: "Transit workers (in New York City) declared their support for striking Oklahoma teachers, expressing the solidarity that workers across America, indeed internationally feel for the growing strike wave of teachers." Plus this: "After Kentucky's GOP-controlled legislature passed a bill last week to slash teachers' retirement benefits—a proposal that has provoked a series of massive protests—lawmakers approved legislation that would cut taxes for the state's wealthiest residents while hiking taxes for the remaining 95 percent." Comment: imagine what could happen if the teachers' strikes went nationwide, then morphed into the imperial homeland's first-ever nationwide general strike. 

     

Expanding Community Support Bolsters Resistance to Pipeline
"As the (Virginia/West Virginia) tree sits continue, residents in the surrounding area, many of which are in the middle of legal battles with MVP (Mountain Valley Pipeline) to keep their homes, began to rally in support of the resistance and also send up supplies. In response, police...attempt to cut off supplies and support, but have so far been unsuccessful in stopping the tree sit and people from mobilizing in solidarity." Comment: jeer not, bourgeois urbanites. I spent much of my boyhood in this area, mostly in East Tennessee, also in Virginia and West Virginia. Hence I know these people are most assuredly not to be fucked with. I also know that so moved, they could be devastatingly effective as leaders in the evolution of genuinely revolutionary environmentalism.

    

Anchorage Votes Down Anti-Transgender Proposal
"Voters in Anchorage, Alaska, have defeated an anti-transgender bathroom measure...(that) would have required everyone in Anchorage public spaces to use the locker room and bathroom that aligns with the gender they were assigned at birth — effectively barring trans people from using the facility that matches their gender identity."

How Community Mobilization and Protest Saved a Teacher's Job
"...a (Portland, Oregon) middle school teacher...was wrongfully suspended...(but) protest pressured administrators to reverse the (unjust) punishment." Comment: hear, hear! 

               

Last Word: How Millennials Are Revitalizing English
"...millennials have created a new rulebook for a variant of written English unique to social media. A rulebook which states that deliberately misspelled words and misused grammar can convey tone, nuance, humour, and even annoyance."

LB/8 April 2018         

   -30-

31 Mar-5 Apr 2018: Tyrannies, Teachers, Metaphors of Change

How Soon Will Imperial Warmongering Bring on the Apocalypse?
"The countries of the West are effectively heading for war with Russia but relatively few among the public seem to know or even care...With the reckless neoconservative warmonger John Bolton now part of the Trump administration, it seems we could be hurtling towards major war much faster than previously thought...Most of the public remains blissfully ignorant of the psy-ops being directed at them through the corporate media." See also: "a twenty-first-century version of the Cold War (with dangerous new twists) has begun and hardly anyone has even noticed." And this: "Russia is the only country that has put its military forces in the way of a U.S. program of regime change—indirectly in Ukraine, where Russia would not get out of the way, and directly in Syria..." Comment: the text mentions the offshoring of production facilities -- a perfect way to move manufacturing outside the U.S., so that when the country is rendered uninhabitable by retaliatory Russian and Chinese thermonuclear bombs, the Capitalists' losses will be minimal. And of course We the Surplus People will all be dead or dying. Not to worry, folks; its just Ayn Rand moral imbecility in action, with a big boost from apocalyptic JesuNazism as well. 

  

Is Blaming Russia for Skripal Poisoning a Warmongers' Hoax?
"It is now beyond any reasonable doubt that the claims of the Conservative government of Theresa May charging Russia with responsibility for the poisoning of the Skripals are fabrications." See also: Scientists at the U.K.’s Porton Down military laboratory have not identified Russia as the source of the nerve agent used in the alleged attempted assassination of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia...(the) admission confirms that the British establishment is guilty of a criminal hoax, surpassing even that of the dodgy “intelligence” dossier manufactured to justify the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003...(Meanwhile) the U.S. and British media have been almost silent on (this development)." And this: "The United Kingdom unknowingly admitted that its government has been lying..."

         

Mainstream Media Propaganda Machine Hides Israeli Atrocities
"Major American media outlets, led by the New York Times, are treating the Israeli military’s mass killing and wounding of unarmed, peaceful Palestinian protesters in Gaza as a non-event." See also: "... you will search in vain for a statement condemning this or the previous Israeli massacres in Gaza from the Congressional Black Caucus or for the most part, its individual members."

      

Democrats Signal Tacit Approval of Trump's Anti-Immigrant Pogrom
"Without any opposition from the Democratic Party and little attention in the corporate media, President Donald Trump and his fascist advisors are quietly carrying out the most dramatic rightwing shift in US immigration policy...

(To read the rest, including an update on the spreading U.S. and international teachers' strikes, go here.)