Thursday 31 October 2019

The Occupation of the American Mind

Despite receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from those who have actually seen it, The Occupation of the American Mind has been repeatedly attacked and misrepresented by right-wing pressure groups and outright ignored by virtually all mainstream media outlets and North American film festivals. To bypass this campaign of misrepresentation and suppression, we’ve decided to make the film available for FREE online so that people can make up their own minds about its analysis of U.S. media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Please watch and share widely!

21 minute version:

45 minute version:

Full length (84 minute) version:

Sunday 27 October 2019

Maria Butina: The Spy Who Wasn't

Here's an excellent article by James Bamford (02/2019 - New Republic) on the ludicrous 'Butina the Russian Spy' case, against the backdrop of Russiagate/the 'New Redscare'. Too long to reproduce here in full, I give you only an excerpt that underlines the role of the Fake News MSM:

Yet the prosecution’s suggestion that Butina traded sex for influence worked very well as a publicity tactic. “Who Is Maria Butina? Accused Russian Spy Allegedly Offered Sex for Power,” read the headline in USA Today. CNN carried the breaking news banner, “The Russian Accused of Using Sex, Lies, and Guns to Infiltrate U.S. Politics.” Within days, a simple Google search using the phrase “Maria Butina” and “sex” produced more than 300,000 hits, and she became the butt of jokes on shows like Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.

[snip]

“They manipulated the evidence,” was the opinion of a former assistant U.S. attorney familiar with the Washington, D.C., office. It was a place he had spent many years prosecuting cases. “The government is basically calling her a whore in a public filing.... I think it was an attempt to influence media coverage.” He added, “This seems like somebody panicked, they moved too early, now they’re trying to figure out what to do.

It is also another example of the media marching in formation with the government, as it did in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. “I think journalism skepticism stops at whatever a prosecutor says,” the former assistant U.S. attorney told me. “If you’re supposed to afflict the powerful, the most powerful people to afflict are the people who have the power to put you in jail. But those are the people reporters are so often most credulous about.”

And on Russian retaliation:

Arresting Butina on such grounds set an extremely dangerous precedent. Why couldn’t the Russian government simply return the favor to the United States? Putin, in fact, even seemed to suggest that Butina’s arrest would lead to retribution. “The law of retaliation states, ‘An eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth,’” he said in a news conference on December 20. On December 28, Russian authorities arrested an American citizen, Paul Nicholas Whelan, a former Marine attending a wedding in Moscow, and charged him with espionage. Like Butina, he had visited the country frequently, exhibited an affinity for it, was involved with guns as a licensed dealer—and is probably innocent. Now facing a possible 20-year prison term in Russia, he was likely arrested simply in retaliation for Butina’s arrest and with the idea of a trade.
GO read!

Sunday 20 October 2019

Hillary Clinton: Descent into Madness?

Hillary Clinton slanders Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, Green Party candidate Jill Stein as Russian spies

Hillary Clinton, the widely despised former Democratic Party presidential candidate, has slandered two of her political opponents—Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein—as traitors and Russian spies.

The World Socialist Web Site has fundamental political differences with both Ms. Gabbard and Dr. Stein. But Clinton’s claims, made without the slightest effort at factual substantiation, are an attempt to criminalize the anti-war statements of the two candidates as treasonous.

Clinton’s attacks on Gabbard and Stein make clear once again that the Democrats’ assertions of “Russian meddling” in the 2016 election were primarily aimed not at Trump, but at the anti-war and anti-capitalist sentiments that led millions of people to refuse to vote for her in 2016.

They underscore how the Democrats have appropriated the McCarthyite tactics historically associated primarily with the Republican right.

As a central part of their anti-Russia campaign, Clinton and the Democrats promoted the media effort to poison public opinion against journalist Julian Assange by slandering him as a “Russian agent,” preparing the way for the Trump administration to indict him on bogus espionage charges and secure his imprisonment in London under conditions that threaten his life.

At the same time, in the name of countering the supposed menace of Russian “fake news,” the Democrats pressured Google to slash search traffic to left-wing political websites and insisted that Facebook and Twitter delete left-wing accounts with millions of followers.

In a podcast interview published Thursday, Clinton told former Obama adviser David Plouffe, “I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.” Implicitly but clearly referring to Gabbard, Clinton continued, “She’s the favorite of the Russians.”

“They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her,” Clinton added.

Asked later if the former secretary of state was referring to Gabbard in her comment, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told CNN, “If the nesting doll fits…”

Clinton then went on to make her strongest assertion yet that Jill Stein was a “Russian asset.”

“That’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not, because she’s also a Russian asset,” Clinton said. “Yes, she’s a Russian asset, I mean, totally. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate.”

Gabbard replied to Clinton’s slander on Twitter by declaring, “Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.”

Gabbard’s performance in this week’s Democratic presidential debate no doubt put her in Clinton’s crosshairs. Gabbard vowed, “As president, I will end these regime-change wars,” and “would make sure that we stop supporting terrorists like Al Qaeda in Syria, who have been the ground force in this ongoing regime-change war.”

Gabbard’s true statement that the United States—with Clinton as secretary of state under Obama—had allied with forces linked to Al Qaeda in the drive to overthrow the Syrian government was passed over in total silence by the rest of the candidates and the CNN and New York Times moderators. It was then blacked out in the post-debate media coverage of the event.

In an earlier debate, Gabbard said the greatest geopolitical danger facing the United States was the threat of nuclear war—another taboo in the broadcast media, which routinely demands that the United States “stand up” to Russia without mentioning what a military confrontation with the nuclear-armed country would look like.

And it gets better [all emph. is mine. Ed.]:

Toward the end of Thursday’s interview, Clinton implicitly called for censorship. She condemned the growth of internet news outlets, which have broadened the number and range of sources of information available to the population.

“I think it’s a lot harder for Americans to know what they’re supposed to believe,” she said. In the 1970s, with only three major national newspapers, “It was a much more controllable environment.”

Jill Stein advocates the reform of capitalism and is an opponent of Marxism. She has stated that she is opposed to “state socialism.” Tulsi Gabbard, a veteran of the Iraq war and major in the Hawaii National Guard, describes herself as a “hawk” in many aspects of US foreign policy.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the statements they have made in opposition to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria correspond to the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of the American people, who see these wars of aggression launched on the basis of lies, which have killed and maimed millions, as a criminal squandering of lives and resources.

Clinton, speaking for a rabidly pro-war faction of the American financial oligarchy and the military-intelligence establishment, sees these sentiments as treasonous and argues for their criminalization.

Her statements make clear once again that the working class has no stake in the struggle between the Trump faction and his opponents in the Democratic Party and intelligence apparatus. Trump, relying on fascistic appeals to his right-wing base, is seeking to turn the United States into a personalist dictatorship. But Clinton’s faction does not oppose his concentration camps for immigrants or his pro-corporate agenda. Rather, it opposes Trump on the grounds that he is “soft” on Russia and insufficiently aggressive in waging America’s wars.

WSWS.org, by Andre Damon.

Sunday 13 October 2019

Wormwood (Netflix)

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Then the third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star burning like a torch fell from heaven and landed on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter like wormwood oil, and many people died from the bitter waters.
Wormwood is told through Eric Olson, the son of Frank Olson, an American biological warfare scientist and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1953.
Nine days after Olson was covertly dosed with LSD by his CIA supervisor as part of Project MKUltra, he plunged to his death from the window of a hotel room in New York City. His death was initially regarded as a suicide, but subsequent investigations have raised questions of a coverup of an alleged murder.[3][4]

Wormwood is interesting on many levels and not in the least because it references a multitude of CIA projects and operations:

  • Project MKULTRA
  • Project ARTICHOKE
  • Operation PBSUCCESS (Guatemala)
  • Phoenix program
  • Alleged use of germ warfare against N.Korea
  • The Rockefeller report on the activities of the CIA and other intelligence agencies within the United States.

    It's now believed that Olson had extensive knowledge of MKULTRA and ARTICHOKE and strongly disagreed with these activities. For this he was murdered and a coverup story involving LSD and depression, resulting in suicide, concocted.

  • Tuesday 8 October 2019

    Those 'Peaceful Hong Kong Angels', their Moving Goalposts... and the Nobel Peace Prize

    Their ransacking of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (video):

    The above series of 'horrendous incidents' (as Beijing keeps referring to them) is far from isolated, as anyone with access to global news or internet can verify.

    The US, engaged in a trade war and struggle for hegemony with China, and its European vassal states have of course smelled a first class opportunity to land Beijing a bloody uppercut. This is cynically exploited by the 'non-leader leader' Joshua Wong of the student movement, who's been sucking it to American legislators and been given red carpet treatment in DC, to the point some of them have nominated Wong for... the Nobel Peace Prize!

    On 1 February 2018, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers, led by Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Chair US Senator Marco Rubio and co-chair US Representative Chris Smith announced they had nominated[63] Wong, Nathan Law, Alex Chow and the entire Umbrella Movement for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, for "their peaceful efforts to bring political reform and protect the autonomy and freedoms guaranteed Hong Kong in the Sino-British Joint Declaration".

    All in the name of 'Freedom', no less...

    Sunday 6 October 2019

    Will the US return this suspected killer to the UK?

    The wife of a US diplomat has left the UK after becoming a suspect in an investigation into the death of a motorcyclist involved in a fatal road collision, police said.

    Harry Dunn [pictured above], 19, died after his motorbike and a car collided near RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire on 27 August.

    Northamptonshire police said a 42-year-old American woman who was being treated as a suspect in their investigation had left the UK.

    The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said he had called the US ambassador to “express the UK’s disappointment that she had left the country.

    “I wish to offer my condolences to the family affected by this tragic incident,” he said.

    Supt Sarah Johnson said the suspect had previously told the force she did not intend to “leave the country in the near future”.

    Johnson said: “Northamptonshire police followed all of its usual procedures following the incident, including liaising closely with the suspect, who engaged fully with us at the time and had previously confirmed to us that she had no plans to leave the country in the near future.”

    She said due process was followed in seeking the necessary paperwork to arrest and interview the suspect, and the force was “exploring all opportunities through diplomatic channels” to ensure the investigation continued. This included working with the Foreign Office to try to resolve the situation.

    Johnson said: “Harry Dunn’s family deserve justice and in order to achieve this, a full and thorough investigation, with the assistance of all parties involved, needs to take place.

    “Northamptonshire police is committed to ensuring justice for Harry and specially trained officers continue to support the Dunn family in their loss, including keeping them fully informed of all developments.”

    Grauniad.

    Wednesday 2 October 2019

    Greta Thunberg and the "Climate Apocalypticism": be very afraid!

    There has predictably been a plethora of hysterical reactions from the Far Right to the Greta Thunberg phenomenon but few as comically OTT as a piece by Sumantra Maitra in The Federalist. Maitra is a doctoral researcher (really?) and has contributed among other things to The Torygraph.

    Lets dig right in:

    If nothing else, the last few days should be enough to prove that Western civilization, a product of more than 1,500 years of Judeo-Christian values, is facing its most significant and sustained challenge in centuries from tribalistic paganism, a force that seeks not only to turn back time but essentially to destroy the entire current edifice.

    Ah yes, that old chestnut: 1,500 of Xtian on Jewish persecution, culminating in the Holocaust but now we're all friends and 'Israel uber alles'...

    That is why members of “Extinction Rebellion” do what they do. Extinction Rebellion is an apocalyptic cult that wants to radically end every thing around you, from your private cars to the burgers you eat and the plastic chairs in your yard. It is a cult that was formed after its founder took psychedelic drugs and prayed for “social change.” Members have blocked D.C. and London intersections, “twerking” the way people in a pre-civilized era would perform a fertility dance to pray to Gaia.

    Here he leaves a glaring omission: the Guns, Sumantra, the Guns! Surely they'll come for your guns?

    So, there you have it. Sexualized dances, psychedelic hallucinogens, worshiping nature, confessing sins in pagan animism, worshiping purified teen saints, and throwing them up on an altar, bereft of their childhood, to promote a greater cause.

    Oo-Kayay, that one can go without comment, methinks.

    The reality is, of course, completely different. Much less than destroying the planet, climate change isn’t even a settled science. Conservatives don’t disagree that climate is changing. That is a straw man. Conservatives, however, are opposed to hysteria, have skepticism about the rate of the climate change, and would like to see an actual cost-benefit analysis of the radical changes being demanded.

    Re. "climate change isn’t even a settled science", only a non-scientific dork with an upcoming phD in (presumably) the humanities would make demands for 'settled science'. But science is never settled and always in flux. Quantum mechanics isn't 'settled'; it has its dissidents and fringe skeptics. How about the round (spherical) Earth? 'Settled'? With regard to the science of AGC, Sumantra can claim the science isn't 'settled' as long as there's one dissenter standing but that claim is meaningless and useless.

    Re. being 'opposed to hysteria' some of them react to it with their own brand of hysteria, like Sumantra's, see e.g. here:

    The modern left is a combination of two of the worst impulses in human history. First are the ultra-privileged bourgeoisie, which, having lost their old Judeo-Christian faith, are instinctively attracted to pre-civilized rituals, from overt sexuality to fewer familial ties. Consider Late Roman public orgies, and you get an idea. At the same time, human minds feel a gaping void that still needs to be filled by an alternate faith. It is in that intersection where this occultist, apocalyptic climate paganism comes from. It gives some privileged people a noble purpose.

    And here he shows a bit of admiration for good old Uncle Stalin:

    For all the Marxists’ faults, the old left at least wanted to conquer nature instead of turning subservient to it. Of course, that went to its own extremes, but one can imagine Joseph Stalin putting all twerking climate fanatics as mentally ill people in a forced labor camp to build railroads in Siberia.

    Better to 'conquer nature' and rounding the climate change people up in forced labour camps, eh? (You have to wonder how he'd feel doing the same to climate change deniers?)

    Perhaps this sort of 'run to the hills!' reaction to Greta Thunberg is a sign she's doing something right? Basically if it deeply riles mousebrains like Mr (soon Dr) Maitra, I can't object to it.

    What's for sure is that Sumantra's 'they're coming to overthrow Western Civilisation' is actually a conspiracy theory, many orders of magnitude sillier than the Troofers'.

    Tuesday 1 October 2019

    EXCLUSIVE: Documents expose how Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA

    By Tom Secker and Matthew Alford

    Tom Secker and Matthew Alford report on their astonishing findings from trawling through thousands of new US military and intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

    The documents reveal for the first time the vast scale of US government control in Hollywood, including the ability to manipulate scripts or even prevent films too critical of the Pentagon from being made — not to mention influencing some of the most popular film franchises in recent years.

    This raises new questions not only about the way censorship works in the modern entertainment industry, but also about Hollywood’s little known role as a propaganda machine for the US national security apparatus.

    When we first looked at the relationship between politics, film and television at the turn of the 21st century, we accepted the consensus opinion that a small office at the Pentagon had, on request, assisted the production of around 200 movies throughout the history of modern media, with minimal input on the scripts.

    How ignorant we were.

    More appropriately, how misled we had been.

    We have recently acquired 4,000 new pages of documents from the Pentagon and CIA through the Freedom of Information Act. For us, these documents were the final nail in the coffin.

    These documents for the first time demonstrate that the US government has worked behind the scenes on over 800 major movies and more than 1,000 TV titles.

    The previous best estimate, in a dry academic book way back in 2005, was that the Pentagon had worked on less than 600 films and an unspecified handful of television shows.

    The CIA’s role was assumed to be just a dozen or so productions, until very good books by Tricia Jenkins and Simon Willmetts were published in 2016. But even then, they missed or underplayed important cases, including Charlie Wilson’s War and Meet the Parents.

    Alongside the massive scale of these operations, our new book National Security Cinema details how US government involvement also includes script rewrites on some of the biggest and most popular films, including James Bond, the Transformers franchise, and movies from the Marvel and DC cinematic universes.

    A similar influence is exerted over military-supported TV, which ranges from Hawaii Five-O to America’s Got Talent, Oprah and Jay Leno to Cupcake Wars, along with numerous documentaries by PBS, the History Channel and the BBC.

    National Security Cinema also reveals how dozens of films and TV shows have been supported and influenced by the CIA, including the James Bond adventure Thunderball, the Tom Clancy thriller Patriot Games and more recent films, including Meet the Parents and Salt.

    The CIA even helped to make an episode of Top Chef that was hosted at Langley, featuring then-CIA director Leon Panetta who was shown as having to skip dessert to attend to vital business. Was this scene real, or was it a dramatic statement for the cameras?

    The Military’s Political Censorship of Hollywood

    When a writer or producer approaches the Pentagon and asks for access to military assets to help make their film, they have to submit their script to the entertainment liaison offices for vetting. Ultimately, the man with the final say is Phil Strub, the Department of Defense’s (DOD) chief Hollywood liaison.

    If there are characters, action or dialogue that the DOD don’t approve of then the film-maker has to make changes to accommodate the military’s demands. If they refuse then the Pentagon packs up its toys and goes home. To obtain full cooperation the producers have to sign contracts — Production Assistance Agreements — which lock them into using a military-approved version of the script.

    This can lead to arguments when actors and directors ad lib or improvise outside of this approved screenplay. On set at Edwards Air Force base during the filming of Iron Man, there was an angry confrontation between Strub and director Jon Favreau.

    Favreau wanted a military character to say the line, ‘People would kill themselves for the opportunities I have’, but Strub objected. Favreau argued that the line should remain in the film, and according to Strub:

    ‘He’s getting redder and redder in the face and I’m getting just as annoyed. It was pretty awkward and then he said, angrily, “Well how about they’d walk over hot coals?” I said “fine.” He was so surprised it was that easy.’

    In the end, this compromised line did not appear in the finished film.

    Moar!!