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.)

Weekend Update 31/3/18: Warfare at Home and Abroad

China Implicitly Warns Trump It Will Again Defend North Korea
"North Korea and China dramatically showed the two nations are close allies before President Trump’s planned meeting with North Korean President Kim Jong Un."

    

Desperate to Preserve JesuNazi Power, Trump Plans War at Home and Abroad
"Trump is preparing for an epic war over the future of his presidency. This has required purging naysayers from his Cabinet and White House staff, and replacing them with bomb-throwing advocates...Trump has made John Bolton his National Security Advisor not because Bolton has valuable insights about foreign affairs, but because Bolton – for years, an on-air fixture on Fox News – is a showman who knows how to sell big lies and crazy ideas, and thereby help Trump in the looming battles." Comment: I am no fan of Robert Reich, the pseudo-repentant neoliberal who showed his true colors by his fawning support for Goldwater Girl Hillary Clinton. But in this instance his message is a timely warning against an untold number of JesuNazi and fascist efforts to legitimize ever more tyrannical governance. See also: "John Bolton is a hawk’s hawk, a militarist who never saw a U.S. war of aggression he didn’t like."

   

Meanwhile, U.S. First Nations Women Suffer Highest Murder Rates

"For 80 miles across Montana, 19-year-old college student Marita Growing Thunder walked through cold temperatures, and a mix of wind and rain, on a march to raise awareness of the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women...Native American women are murdered at 10 times the national rate in some parts of the country."

Judge's Death Allows Trump to Name JesuNazi to 9th Circuit Court

"Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals died Thursday of a heart attack at age 87...(creating) a vacancy in the judiciary  for...

(To read the rest and view a new photo of domestic strife go here.)

25-29 March 2018: a Bold Challenge to the Imperial Death Cult

Disclosure: as a Communist, a former competitive shooter, a Regular Army veteran (active duty 1959-1962) and a veteran of the Civil Rights, Alternative Press, Anti-Vietnam-War and Back-to-the-Land movements, I remain firmly committed to the Second Amendment right of armed self defense, especially now with the Trump-emboldened JesuNazis and their fascist allies running amok, frequently with police protection. Nevertheless... 

AT ITS EXISTENTIAL CORE, the ongoing U.S. protest against the legal availability of firearms notoriously favored by mass murderers is the nation's first genuinely widespread outcry against the imperial death cult of kamikaze Capitalism.

The protest's potential significance therefore goes far beyond its immediate demands because it includes a definitively revolutionary potential few dare acknowledge. Henri Giroux does so indirectly by noting in a new essay that such "momentary protests" could "become broad-based movements." However, as I write these lines (26 March 2018), most other Left-leaning commentators and public intellectuals have remained curiously silent on this matter. In all probability they see the protest's potential as clearly as I do -- indeed how could they not? But they are no doubt terrified to silence by the professional and socioeconomic consequences of violating the ever-more-ruthlessly enforced taboo against acknowledging, even obliquely,  that revolution is our only alternative -- that if we are to survive as a viable species on a livable planet, we must overthrow Capitalism before it murders us all. 

We as socialists and particularly as Marxists should therefore be asking whether the legitimate fear and fury U.S. high school students are expressing in response to their repeated victimization by mass murderers might evolve into the class consciousness that is prerequisite to such a revolution. It is obvious to us as enemies of Capitalism that if these students are to eliminate the root cause of the atrocities against which they mobilize -- specifically the deadly combination of unyielding hopelessness, murderous rage and conditioned moral imbecility that is Capitalism's unique legacy -- it is Capitalism against which these students and their international comrades must ultimately arise and do battle.

This is not to ignore or downplay the other important issues raised by the form and content of the students' campaign. These include the campaign's limited focus, specifically the fact the students' are apparently unable or unwilling to recognize that school shootings -- like the murders of unarmed suspects by the Empire's militarized local police --  are domestic manifestations of the endlessly repeated atrocities that have become the defining reality of life and death anywhere the Imperial United States has its boots on the ground. A corollary issue is thus the fact the majority of student protestors seem to be children of the One Percent's white Ruling Class vassalage or at least of the white petite bourgeoisie. This of course puts the primary focus on mostly white upscale victims -- which some of the protestors themselves admit is one of the primary reasons their activism has been gifted with such lavishly affirmative publicity by the Mainstream Media propaganda machine. The other reason for the outpouring of favorable publicity is the strategically timely boost the protest is giving to -- and in return getting substantial support from -- the decades-long Ruling Class campaign for forcible proletarian* disarmament, for details of which scroll down to the linked report's final dozen paragraphs.

Obviously the protestors are prime targets for co-optation, an effort Time magazine's disclosures in the preceding link tell us is already well underway.

Meanwhile two of the world's most influential journals of women's fashion have awarded protest leader Emma González the coveted  laurels of...

(To read the rest, go here.)

Weekend Update 24/3/18: Can We Escape Doomsday?

New Study Proves Capitalism's Apocalyptic Deadliness

"Human destruction of nature is rapidly eroding the world’s capacity to provide food, water and security to billions of people, according to the most comprehensive biodiversity study in more than a decade."  Comment: our Capitalist  overlords' murderous exploitation of the environment and contempt for our Motherland Planet Earth also proves their moral imbecility. Obviously their attitude is rape the world now while they can and fuck the future because by the time the apocalypse peaks, they'll  already be dead. Which suggests a new name for what is destroying us: Kamikaze Capitalism.  
    

     Bolton's Appointment Could Mean Apocalypse Is Inescapable
"Eighteen years after the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision and 15 years after Bush's invasion of Iraq, too much of the world is what John Bolton and his PNAC friends have made it: a smoldering crater stinking of permanent war, surrounded by refugees and choking on austerity to pay the butcher's bill." See also: "Bolton is expected to take a hardline stance against...Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua..." And especially this: "...the Empire can now either fold or double down. If it decides to fold, war will be averted and meaningful negotiations finally entered into. If it doubles down, something the Neocons always do, then this means war with Russia."  Comment: it also means war with China, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Vietnam, ultimately with most of the rest of the world. Thus the de facto Fourth Reich of the Empire will either be mercilessly (and often vengefully) crushed as was its Third Reich forefather or -- far more likely given the Empire's Christian belief in destruction as salvation -- it will deliberately nuke Earth into a bug planet.
  

Christian Theocrats Again Prove Their Hatred of Women
      Mississippi Now Has Worst Anti-Abortion Law
"Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed into law the United States’ most stringent abortion restrictions...the starkest example of how...attacks on reproductive rights are growing in both number and stringency throughout the United States."

 

Ohio Seeks Death Penalty for Abortion Doctors, Patients 

"(Ohio Republicans are pushing legislation) that would allow physicians and those who undergo (abortions) to be charged with murder, which is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty." 

Nebraska Law Would Deny Impoverished People Family Planning

"...a (Republican) proposal denying Title X funds to any health center that performs, counsels about, or refers for abortion services...would block access to care for nearly 28,000 Nebraskans who rely on Title X for family planning and reproductive health care. 

                 

Border Patrol Nullifying Constitutional Rights of 66% of U.S. Population
  “...100 miles into the interior, across the entire perimeter of the country...(an area) home to two-thirds of the U.S. population...(the Border Patrol has unlimited)...authority to board and search any vehicle, bus, or vessel without a warrant and (demand) occupants..."


(to read the rest, go here.)

18-22 March 2018: Could "Russiagate" Be a Red Herring to Distract from a Domestic Scandal That's Infinitely Worse?

AN EXPATRIATE NEW YORKER acutely aware (as many New Yorkers are) of the multiple connections that link organized crime (Cosa Nostra, the Irish mob, the Russian mob, etc. ad nauseam) to the construction industry, the political establishment and capitalism in general, I cannot but wonder if the so-called "Russiagate" investigation is perhaps a red herring to distract from an infinitely more disturbing story of homegrown corruption and malfeasance.

Something of this sort is indeed implied by Coleen Rowley's thought-provoking Consortiumnews.com essay "McCabe: a War on (or in) the FBI," especially her reminder that  "both presidential campaigns (were) under under serious criminal investigation in the weeks before the 2016 election."

Certainly both candidates have been linked to organized crime in ways that -- including even the Democratic (sic) Party's Geraldine Ferraro fiasco in 1984* -- have no precedent in my lifetime, which began in 1940 and includes 30 years on daily and weekly newspapers and monthly international trade journals.

For a revealing trip through a genuinely astounding number of under-reported or suppressed stories, merely Google, without the quotation marks here grammatically mandated for clarity, "trump mafia connections"; "clinton mafia connections"; and "clinton dixie mafia connections."

The Trump material contains a BillMoyers.com report by Todd Gitlin that questions why allegations of Trump's criminal connections are so often suppressed or at best downplayed. This Google anthology also includes a wealth of other damning reports.

While the Clinton material is mostly from rightist sources -- which means it should be carefully fact-checked rather than discarded out of hand -- I found three bits of gold amidst the dross. One was published by The Progressive Review on 17 December 2017, "The Clinton stories the media didn't cover" (caps and lower case as in original). The second appeared in The (NY) Daily News of 30 October 2016, "Bill and Hillary Clinton lead diabolical, influence-peddling organized crime syndicate, FBI's former NYC boss says" (caps and lc as in original). The third, a sort of overview of the Empire as a global crime syndicate, is "The Bush-Clinton Mafia," in Counterpunch on 16 March 2015.

Thus my "Russiagate" conjecture: that it is a fake scandal behind which is concealed what is perhaps the most diabolical, most terrifying, most potentially apocalyptic scandal in our species' history -- that of an entire empire become nothing more than the loot-collector (aka "bag man") for organized crime.

 
Indeed the application of Occam's Razor suggests this is the one most likely explanation of the myriad horrors that have befallen us all.

(To read the rest and see the photograph, go here.) 

Weekend Update 17/3/18: Notes on Our Epidemic of Violence

"The Republicans and Democrats alike ignore the underlying causes of school violence—unprecedented social inequality, unending war, the consequences of the militarization of society and the defunding of education and social programs—because a serious examination of the roots of this social phenomenon would expose their own role in creating the social crisis out of which it has developed." Comment: a vital, thought-provoking socio-ecomomic analysis that (correctly) blames Capitalism for USian savagery whether abroad or at home.

    

"I have never spoken with a school shooter, but I’ve talked with many teenage boys and young men who—though behaviorally nonviolent themselves—emotionally connect with the anger, alienation, and hopelessness of school shooters. Regardless of whether they received poor or excellent grades, these teenage boys and young men all tell me that high school was an oppressive experience...Cynical about virtually all societal institutions, these young people... (see) the conservatives’ religion and militarized society and liberals’ schools and shrinks (as) different faces of the same oppressive box...they have no hope that school shootings will decrease because all they hear in the news are authorities’ ideas about how better to control them."  Comment: an essay by a psychologist, vital because it that expands on and thereby authenticates the socio-economic analysis in the preceding essay. 

"While seldom acknowledged, students have a right to engage in political dissent and, more significantly, the entitlement to an education that nurtures their ability to do so." But more importantly see:  "There is no way anyone could object to something so necessary and relevant. Unless, of course, Black people do it." Comment: as noted before, the racism and class warfare implicit in the wildly varying coverage given school shootings is as revealing as the atrocities themselves.   

          

"Farm worker parents of six children die in car crash while fleeing ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents...The future of the children remains uncertain."

        

"The (Denver) Post is just the most recent outlet owned by 'vulture' hedge fund Alden Global Capital to face the ax. Alden controls Digital First Media, the country’s second largest newspaper chain, which has a pattern of gutting newsrooms and selling off valuable office space to squeeze profit from the industry." Comment: given the deadliness that defines the U.S. economy, the forthcoming layoffs will send many of its victims to their graves.

"Teachers in Puerto Rico are planning a one-day strike on Monday, 19 March, to protest...

(To read the rest, go here.)

11-15 March 2018: Mothering the Revolution (See Story Below)

Trump-Pests Blaring: More on JesuNazi Infestation in Tacoma Area

By Ryley KnowlesWASHINGTON FRONT TWEETED on 4 March that Patriot Front had once again been in Seattle, sometime late at night on 3 March. Washington Front posted two photographs that show five Patriot Front members holding up a blue banner that reads “Reclaim America” while waving four highway-safety flares.

This “Reclaim America” flash demo marks the fourth time Patriot Front has been active in Seattle. Assuming there was a sixth unseen person who took the photograph, we can say there are at least six active Patriot Front members in Washington state.

On 5 March, The (Tacoma) News Tribune reported that Patriot Front posters were found on the campus of Tacoma Community College, Tacoma, Washington. On the same day stickers for Identity Evropa, another white nationalist organization, were found in University of Washington, Tacoma. Patriot Front’s postering of downtown Tacoma and the surrounding area had occurred two weeks earlier.

Both Washington Front and Patriot Front Tweeted about the hit on Tacoma Community College. However, Patriot Front did not mention the Seattle flash demo on it’s official Twitter.

In 2017, Patriot Front was active every few months in Washington state. In 2018, Patriot Front seems to aiming for the rate of at least two propaganda attacks per month...

Plus this week's main headliner:


A Global Sisterhood Mobilizes to Save Us from Ourselves
Women May Have Birthed the First Civilizations; Now -- with Patriarchy and Capitalism Threatening Our Existence -- Women May Be Mothering Our Future 

Precisely as one would expect under patriarchy and its misogynistic descendants -- among them Abrahamic Religion, Capitalism, fascism, Nazism and JesuNazism -- to hypothesize that the original face of human society was female is to invite condemnation as a heretic by academics and men of god alike. But we heretics nevertheless persist, bolstered by increasingly supportive evidence, which provides an optimistic context for the events reported in the following post-International-Women's-Day anthology:

"Thousands of women met in Zapatista territory (to organize) against capitalist and patriarchal society."  For more details, see: "the meeting was open to 'all rebellious women around the world' who 'struggle against the patriarchal and chauvinist capitalist system.'"

"Drawing on...(the example of) Latin American feminist movements, we should ask how the abuses of power identified by #MeToo are part of a larger constellation of violence and coercion...(and) would it be possible to find a common cause between low wage, mostly Black and migrant, university housekeepers facing an abusive and violent manager and female students on the same campus facing high rates of sexual assault?"

"Let’s take #MeToo where it hasn’t gone: to speak for the girls, boys, women, and men raped due to US Wars..."  

(to see and read the rest, photography included, go here.)