The U.S. & U.K. have journalist Julian Assange in prison in the U.K., award winning journalist Chris Hedges has all of his work taken down from YouTube, U.S. Anti-war sites are being taken down & FB & twitter closing accounts, & the U.S. talks about repression in Russia?
On the issue of Russia, WSWS has published a letter David North (Chair of the Interntational Editorial Board of the WSWS) wrote to a friend in Russia. Excerpt:
As the war continues, it becomes increasinly evident that the fate of Ukraine is of significance to the United States only within the context of its expanding struggle for global hegemony. The Biden administration
instigated the war, driving Putin — who up until the last minute hoped
that he could persuade his “Western Partners” to make reasonable
concessions to the Russian state’s “national security” — into a poorly
prepared (both from a military and political standpoint) war. What is
surprising is that Putin and his military command appear not to have
fully grasped the extent to which NATO had armed and trained Ukraine’s
military. But this failure of their intelligence services is rooted in
the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union, which was based on wildly
unrealistic, almost childishly naïve, conceptions of the imperialist
system. While repudiating all association with Marxism, the Kremlin
retained its faith in the possibility of “peaceful coexistence” with its
Western Partners. Putin, shortly before ordering the invasion,
complained pathetically that Russia had been “played” by the West.
Moreover,
it is apparent that Russia — after having failed to pressure the West —
did not have a clear strategic plan. What, exactly, is Putin trying to
achieve? The military operation — at least in its initial stages — has
been a disaster. It seems to consist of a series of reactions improvised
in response to unexpected difficulties. The loss of seven generals in
the opening weeks of the war is evidence of a staggering level of
incompetence. Putin, who draws his inspiration from Imperial Russia,
seems to be no more competent as a war leader than Nicholas II.
The
American and European governments and media are denouncing Russian
brutality. We are not at all inclined to minimize, let alone deny, the
devastating impact of the war on the Ukrainian masses. But the US-NATO
denunciations of Russia are shot through with hypocrisy. The Russian
invasion did not begin with “shock and awe,” i.e., the type of massive
bombing that the United States unleashed against Baghdad in 1991 and,
even worse, in 2003. If the Pentagon had launched the war against
Ukraine, Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities would have been more or
less destroyed on the first day of the war.
Of
course, this does not justify Putin’s invasion, which is a desperate
and essentially reactionary response to the relentless and intensifying
pressure exerted by the US and NATO upon Russia. The politically weak
Russian bourgeoisie, which still lacks a substantial base for its rule,
is trying to counteract this pressure through limited military actions.
But this strategy, based on the conventional logic of bourgeois
nation-state geopolitics, is strategically ineffective, tactically
disastrous, and politically bankrupt. The latter aspect was exposed most
clearly in the speech with which Putin initiated the invasion.
Wars continue around the world. They don't get a moment of silence on the Academy Awards. US troops remain in Iraq. WCBS reports on one US servicemember who just returned to the US:
Sgt. Jake Pletsch had been stationed in Iraq since March 2021, but he got home a month earlier than expected.
His sister and staff at George White Middle School in Hillsdale staged a “Lost and Found Day.”
Most of their fellow believers around the world scarcely know they
exist. But once you meet the Christians of the Nineveh Plains of
northern Iraq, you will not forget them.
“Francis in Iraq,” a new documentary by Stephen Rasche about Pope
Francis’ historic visit to the country on March 5-8, 2021, provides a
memorable introduction.
It took courage, and no little amount of trust in God’s providence,
for the then-84–year pontiff to undertake such a taxing journey, coming
as it did amid a still-perilous pandemic and legitimate concerns for his
security and health.
No pope had ever visited Iraq. Pope John Paul II hoped to do so, but
was never able to go. Francis seized the opportunity, calling the trip
“a duty to the land that has been martyred for so many years.”
Though there is plenty of footage from his visit, the film’s title,
it bears noting, is something of a tease. That’s because the real
protagonist isn’t the pope; it’s the long-suffering people he came to
see.
[. . .]
It is November 2016. Just days before, Islamic State fighters were
driven off after a fierce battle that has reduced to rubble Al Mekko’s
village of Karamless, located less than 20 miles southeast of Mosul, the
center point of the crescent-shaped Nineveh Plains region. The damage
we see is so severe, it is difficult to imagine that anything but a
quarry ever existed in this place, or ever would again.
Wending his way through the ruins, Al Mekko arrives at what remains
of his parish, St. Addai Church. Waiting for him in front of the altar
is a statue of the Blessed Mother, standing upright, its head
decapitated and hands severed. The unspoken message of this surgical
desecration is rendered more explicitly by some ISIS graffiti, left in a
Catholic church in another town, Batnaya, whose own statue of Mary has
met with an identical fate.
“Oh you slaves of the cross, there is no place for you in the land of
Islam,” the graffiti said, in German. “Either get out of here or we
will kill you.”
No moment of silence at the Academy Awards for them. No real coverage from western news for them.
There are statements being made that network news is not covering the Hunter Biden developments. We have highlighted CBS news coverage of this case. A friend with NBC NEWS asked if I would highlight their coverage above.
A number of right-wing outlets are apparently stating that there has been no network coverage. The above is from 2 days ago. Again, CBS NEWS has covered it and, above, so has NBC NEWS.
If you hear otherwise, you're not hearing the truth.
Now that doesn't mean they've covered it well and it doesn't mean they've covered it enough. But if a claim is being presented that the broadcast network news is ignoring the story and refusing to cover it, that is not true.
The RT4 candidates call will be held on Monday April 4th at 8pm EDT. This is your chance to hear from the candidates for RT4's national board of directors. You can join the call through the Jitsi app or through your browser by clicking on this link, or by calling in using the numbers and PIN below.
Bioneers Pulse – updates from the Bioneers Community
Bioneer,
One of the only things critics of capitalism and true believers in Adam Smith-style “free markets” agree upon is how destructive monopolies are to economies and social fabrics. It’s been easy in recent weeks to (justifiably) vilify Russia’s kleptocratic oligarchs, but our own American economy can also very fairly be described as plutocratic. Wealth inequality is even higher than in the “Robber Baron” era and perhaps higher than it’s ever been. Tiny handfuls of enormous enterprises that only the most naive fail to characterize as monopolies control most of our communications media and main economic sectors from energy to agriculture to pharmaceuticals to retail to aerospace.
In this newsletter, we highlight some penetrating analyses of our current form of monopoly capitalism and share models of citizen engagement that point the way to a far more dynamic, creative, fair, and humane economy, that inspire us to move from “greed is good” and “greenwashing" to a society based on unbridled creativity and mutual aid.
Share the news
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Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to Covid-19 Vaccines
Through the sharing of discoveries and knowledge, humans have throughout history sought to achieve progress and increase wellbeing, but the ever greater privatization and commodification of knowledge, especially in the domain of medicine, are now drivers of inequality and pose immense threats to public health. In his new book, Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to Covid-19 Vaccines, New Orleans-based investigative journalist Alexander Zaitchik tells the unknown story of Big Pharma and explores the long, contentious fight over the legal right to control the production of life-saving pharmaceuticals.
Democracy v. Plutocracy: Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime
The extreme concentration of corporate power and the prevalence of monopoly are indeed inarguable. In today’s new Gilded Age of rule by the wealthy, rising anti-trust movements are challenging the stranglehold of corporate monopoly. In this first part of a two-part program, we travel back and forth in time to explore the battle between democracy and plutocracy that goes back to the very founding of the United States.
Seed Diversity Threatened by Monopolies and Patents
Bill McDorman is the founder of a number of small regional seed companies and seed organizations and the former Director of Native Seeds/ SEARCH. He is currently the co-founder and Director of the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance working to connect communities with locally adapted seeds. McDorman was interviewed by Bioneers Restorative Food Systems Director Arty Mangan.
The urgency of our present moment calls for a massive civilization transformation. At Bioneers 2022, we’ll dive deep into solutions, visions, strategies, and paradigm shifts to do just that. We’re excited to return to an in-person event this year in San Francisco, CA, at the Palace of Fine Arts, with live virtual access worldwide for those who can’t make it in person.
Ticket prices will increase soon, so register now!
Kate Aronoff, a Brooklyn, NY-based staff writer at The New Republic, is the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet–And How We Fight Back. Aronoff is a former Fellow at the Type Media Center whose work has appeared in The Intercept, The New York Times, The Nation, Dissent, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian, among other outlets, and is the co-editor of We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style.
This Will All Be So Great If We Don’t Screw It Up
As the power, influence, and scale of the major firms that dominate Silicon Valley continue to grow, the collective response might be best described as befuddled. From our mental health to influence on elections to copyright and fair business practices, the impacts are wide-reaching and complex. Bioneers sat down with Cory Doctorow to discuss the overall state of Big Tech at the moment. Doctorow is a prolific journalist, blogger, creative commons advocate, Electronic Frontier Foundation Fellow, and award-winning science fiction writer.
The Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Medicines is hosting three days of panels and discussions exploring the role psychedelics may have played in the history of religion, as well as the role that religion plays in the modern psychedelic renaissance. Indigenous spirituality, religious freedom, drug policy, and how psychedelics intersect with both Eastern and Western religious traditions. Register now!
Facebook’s censorship of the video “No Third World War! Against the
Ukraine war, NATO aggression and German rearmament!” by the
Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) has
provoked strong condemnation by workers and young people. Under the
hashtag #StopCensoringSocialism, supporters have opposed this act of
political censorship. Under conditions where the threat of a nuclear
world war between NATO and Russia is extremely great, they are speaking
out against the silencing of anti-war voices.
A video statement
by SGP Chairman Christoph Vandreier—which explains the political
motives behind the deletion of the original video and highlights its
importance in the fight against war—received more than 1,200 views and
dozens of “likes” on Tiktok within a few hours. The video was also
widely distributed on Instagram. “This censorship is not only directed
against us, but against the mass opposition to a world war,” says
Vandreier. The socialist anti-war perspective of the SGP “is to be
banned and censored in the midst of deafening war propaganda for a third
world war.”
Through the World Socialist Web Site and
the SGP’s Twitter and other social media accounts, we received protest
statements and solidarity messages, some of which we report here. We
call on all readers to post their own statements under
#StopCensoringSocialism and #DefendSGP and to stand up against
censorship and the threat of a third world war.
So much has to be censored and so much has to be disappeared for governments to get their way. If you can't fool the people, you can't launch endless wars -- wars that steal from the pubic treasury and ensure that the needs of the people will not be met. Andre Damon (WSWS) observes:
With the proxy war between US/NATO and Russia over Ukraine now in its
second month, the social consequences of the conflict are coming into
sharper focus.
All over the world, governments are massively
increasing military spending. The German government has tripled its
military budget with the aim of making the German army the largest in
Europe. France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Australia are all
implementing or planning major increases in expenditures on war.
However, nowhere is this process clearer than in the United States,
the center of world imperialism. On Monday, the White House announced
the largest US military budget in American history, focused
overwhelmingly on preparations to fight a war with Russia and China.
The
budget proposes spending $813 billion on the US military, up from $782
billion in 2022. When the costs of the Department of Veterans Affairs
and the cost of debt from previous defense spending is added in, the
figure rises to over $1 trillion. And that is not to mention the
hundreds of billions spent on federal, state, and local police forces
and the United States’ intelligence apparatus.
The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. Writing in Newsweek,
Lindsay Koshgarian of the Institute for Policy Studies noted, “The U.S.
alone already spends 12 times more on its military than Russia. When
combined with Europe’s biggest military spenders, the U.S. and its
allies on the continent outspend Russia by at least 15 to 1.”
We can't have Medicare For All in the US. We can't have debt fogiveness. We can't even address homelessness. Grasp that what passes for the evening news fails to address the homeless crisis. Every broadcast should deal with that reality but instead they ignore it and condone it. Their silence makes it seem normal. There is no excuse for the United States to have a homelss population and yet, rather than address that, hundreds of billions of dollars are going each year to war and war making.
The homeless population is only going to increase. But we can't address that reality. And, in fact, inflation has been pooh-pahhed and dismissed. We stood alone in calling out the nonsense offered on the Democratic-lite site that the COVID checks were "raises.' That those tiny checks made for an increase in wages. And we've watched supposed economists who love to play populist and pretend to be 'progressive' go out of their way over the last six months to normalize the outages that are taking place, to dimsiss them, to minimize them. At the end of the day, they have revealed themselves to not be on the side of the people -- the ones they depend upon to have a career because corpoarte media is not airing these whores -- but on the side of the elected Democratic power strugture and they are apologist for that structure. Patrick Martin (WSWS) points out:
The rising cost of living will force the average American household to
spend $5,200 more a year just to buy the same goods and services as last
year, according to a report released Thursday by Bloomberg Economics.
This comes to an average of $433 a month robbed from the pockets of
workers and their families, under conditions where 60 percent of the US
population cannot afford an unexpected expense of $500.
. This staggering fact demonstrates the human cost of the rise in the
rate of inflation, which hit a 40-year record of 7.9 percent in
December. The rate of increase in the Consumer Price Index slipped
slightly to 7.5 percent in January and 6.4 percent in February, but it
is still well above the forecast of both the Federal Reserve and the
Biden administration.
The core inflation rate, not counting food
and energy prices, which fluctuate more from month to month, stood at 6
percent in January and 5.4 percent in February, according to figures
released by the federal Department of Commerce Thursday. This means that
regardless of efforts by the Biden administration to manipulate
temporarily the price of gasoline at the pump, the reduction in the
living standards of the working class will continue.
Bloomberg
Economics—part of the publishing empire of billionaire Michael
Bloomberg—pointed out the benefits for capitalist employers of the
inflation “tax” on workers. “Accelerated depletion of savings will
increase the urgency for those staying on the sidelines to join the
labor force, and the resulting increase in labor supply will likely
dampen wage growth,” the authors of the report said.
Patrick Martin is a journalist. That's not an attack. My point is that Patrick Martin can address reality while whores like Dean Baker can't (this week's latest from dean Baker was more whoring distortions insisted "the economy has bounced back" -- again, Dean Baker's not making a living via the corporate media. He's a cheap whore who lies for the Democratic Party and hopes they'll keep him afloat for tricking voters. Robert Reich was always a known whore. People are just starting to catch on with regards to Dean Baker.
But certainly this food crisis has to be taken seriously. It has to be taken seriously in the first place in the United States of America. You have millions of people who exist on food stamps, millions of people who are food insecure, You have prices going through the roof not only because of the eastern European crisis but also because of pre-existing supply chain glitches that has ships lined up as if it's the Long Island Expressway.off the coast of Los Angels' Long Beach trying to deliver goods but apparently unable to do so. So the hunger question in this country will be exacerbated certainly by this crisis. That's not to mention what will happen overseas. Already, in Egypt, you see rumblings with regard to the point that a significant percentage of the bread that is the stuff of life in Cairo comes from the agricultural fields of Ukraine and Russia. That is problematic as we speak and so therefore it can lead to disruption in Egypt. And so this crisis? Obviously, the planners in the State Dept did not think through everything that went in to making a deicison to heighten tensions with Moscow and Russia on the Ukraine border.
But, by all means, continue to depend on Dean Baker because he's billed as our 'friend.' He's not. He's a con artist and a whore. These are life and death matters and clowns are an extravagance that the people just can't afford.
Reailty can be found with ELETRONIC INTIFADA.
The government of Ukraine had to be white-washed or they wouldn't have been able to do their marketing blitz passed off as news in order to sell war to a people.
As soon as the Biden Administration took power, the plan to escalate
the situation in Ukraine was executed — a plan that included a clear
understanding of the nature of forces behind the newly elected
presidential front man for the right-wing Ukrainian oligarchs and U.S.
forces that engineered his election. The Biden Administration also
understood that the most effective military forces in Ukraine were
grouped around and/or associated with various ultra-right and neo-Nazi
elements. But who cared when the commitment to “full spectrum dominance”
and interests of U.S. finance and corporate transnational capital are
driving U.S. policy in Ukraine?
We, the colonized, the working class, the oppressed, must be as
cold-blooded and sober in our analysis and actions. Look at how they
lied to the public on the existence of ultra-right forces in Ukraine and
the nature of that corrupt regime. We will not lie to the people, but
we have to separate ourselves from the propaganda when attempting to
understand the world.
The U.S. press loudly proclaiming that there was no neo-Nazi
influence in Ukraine even though it was common knowledge in the United
States and Europe for years that there was always a problem with the
extremist nationalist elements in that country. Because of that, the
line taken by the U.S. state and the capitalist press after the U.S.
engineered coup in 2014 with the extreme right and neo-Nazi forces at
the center of the action, was that while those forces’ presence in the
street actions was never disputed, the line was that their political
significance in the government was minimal.
That line was taken because the historical record was replete with
references to the role of the ultra-right in Ukrainian politics since
world-war II. And that not only did Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and
literal neo-Nazis end up in the new post-coup government in 2014, but
the press, human rights organizations, the governments of Europe, and
the U.S. were aware of the nature of those forces
That is what made the new line by the liberal corporate press that
there was not an issue with the extreme right in Ukraine so bizarre.
Apparently, to buttress their drive to war, the new narrative required
that the Ukrainian state be represented as the innocent victim of the
mad Vladimir Putin, and the presence of ultra-right forces, including
neo-Nazis, as a figment of his imagination.
Yet, there is always a method to the madness, in this case the real madness of U.S. imperialism.
Also refer to Patrkic Martin's two-part series (Part One | Part Two) at WSWS on the marketing of this war by the Democratic Party for many, many years now.
To sell lies to the people, you have to censor the truth -- thereby explaining US President Joe Biden's continued persecution of Julian Assange for the 'crime' of journalism. Also explaining the disappearance of Chris Hedges from YOUTUBE. At SCHEERPOST, Chris notes:
The entire archive of On Contact, the
Emmy-nominated show I hosted for six years for RT America and RT
International, has been disappeared from YouTube. Gone is the interview
with Nathaniel Philbrick on his book about George Washington. Gone is
the discussion with Kai Bird on his biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Gone is my exploration with Professor Sam Slote from Trinity College
Dublin of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Gone is the show with Benjamin Moser
on his biography of Susan Sontag. Gone is the show with Stephen Kinzer
on his book on John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. Gone are the
interviews with the social critics Cornel West, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky,
Gerald Horne, Wendy Brown, Paul Street, Gabriel Rockwell, Naomi Wolff
and Slavoj Zizek. Gone are the interviews with the novelists Russell
Banks and Salar Abdoh. Gone is the interview with Kevin Sharp, a former
federal judge, on the case of Leonard Peltier. Gone are the interviews
with economists David Harvey and Richard Wolff. Gone are the interviews
with the combat veterans and West Point graduates Danny Sjursen and Eric
Edstrom about our wars in the Middle East. Gone are the discussions
with the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. Gone are the
voices of those who are being persecuted and marginalized, including the
human rights attorney Steven Donziger and the political prisoner Mumia
Abu Jamal. None of the shows I did on mass incarceration, where I
interviewed those released from our prisons, are any longer on YouTube.
Gone are the shows with the cartoonists Joe Sacco and Dwayne Booth.
Melted into thin air, leaving not a rack behind.
I received no inquiry or notice from YouTube. I vanished. In
totalitarian systems you exist, then you don’t. I suppose this was done
in the name of censoring Russian propaganda, although I have a hard time
seeing how a detailed discussion of “Ulysses” or the biographies of
Susan Sontag and J. Robert Oppenheimer had any connection in the eyes of
the most obtuse censors in Silicon Valley with Vladimir Putin. Indeed,
there is not one show that dealt with Russia. I was on RT because, as a
vocal critic of US imperialism, militarism, the corporate control of the
two ruling parties, and especially because I support the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, I was blacklisted. I
was on RT for the same reason the dissident Vaclav Havel, who I knew,
was on Voice of America during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
It was that or not be heard. Havel had no more love for the policies of
Washington than I have for those of Moscow.
Are we a more informed and better society because of this wholesale
censorship? Is this a world we want to inhabit where those who know
everything about us and about whom we know nothing can instantly erase
us? If this happens to me, it can happen to you, to any critic anywhere
who challenges the dominant narrative. And that is where we are headed
as the ruling elites refuse to respond to the disenfranchisement and
suffering of the working class, opting not for social and political
change or the curbing of the rapacious power and obscene wealth of our
oligarchic rulers, but instead imposing iron control over information,
as if that will solve the mounting social unrest and vast political and
social divides.
As reported previously by the World Socialist Web Site, the
Russian state-funded cable news network RT America was shut down in the
US on March 3 and all 120 of its employees were laid off at offices
located in New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Miami.
Although
the management of the news channel said the network had experienced
“unforeseen business-interruption events,” the abrupt shutdown of RT
America was no doubt part of the anti-Russian offensive mounted by
corporate media outlets and governments aligned with the US and NATO in
the proxy war being fought in Ukraine against the regime in Moscow.
Among the RT America programs terminated were several popular left-wing and anti-war TV shows including Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp and On Contact
with Chris Hedges. These programs were specifically targeted for
censorship because they adopted an anti-war standpoint that was opposed
to the narrative developed by the ruling political establishment in the
US and Europe.
This campaign to silence voices critical of the
role of imperialism in provoking the war in Ukraine has been extended to
the removal of video content from YouTube, podcasts from Spotify and
other censorship measures by the social media platforms Facebook and
Twitter.
There's another way to censor. Drop coverage. You know, the way the same US corpoarte media that sold the Iraq War by spewing endless lies now avoids covering the results of their actions.
A powerful Iraqi Shia cleric has decided to step back for the next 40
days and give his Iran-backed rivals the chance to form the country's
next government.
The surprising decision on Thursday by Muqtada al
Sadr comes against the backdrop of a persisting political deadlock in
Iraq, five months after general elections.
Sadr's offer came in a
tweet, in which he also called on his followers not to interfere
"neither positively not negatively" as his rivals form the Coordination
Framework, a coalition of Iran-backed Shia parties, try to cobble
together a cabinet.
This translates into a nod to Sadr's rivals to
pursue the cleric's Kurdish and Sunni allies in possible negotiations.
There was no immediate response from the Coordination Framework to
Sadr's offer.
When they're not lying, they're selling State Dept talking points -- regardless of whether or not they're factual. No one in their right mind who knew Iraq's recent history would have expected Moqtada al-Sadr to be a 'kingmaker' who was going to pull together a government following the election. But three failed attempts now since the October 10th election and we're still not seeing the corporate press admit to the fact that they got it wrong. They got it wrong because they parotted the US State Dept -- the same State Dept that paid (bribed) Moqtada back in August -- but they looked the other way on that too.
