Bulletin
N° 843
If you would like to be removed from this mailing list, please
indicate so by return mail.
Pour se
désinscrire de cette liste, renvoyez svp ce courriel avec votre demande.
___________________________________________________________________
The Working Class Goes to Heaven
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=the+working+class+goes+to+heaven+putlocker&&view=detail&mid=FD467BEED18D5341A1C4FD467BEED18D5341A1C4&&FORM=VRDGAR
with
English subtitles
(1971)
Affirmation, Negation &
The
Negation of Negation
May Day 2019
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Today we celebrate the 133rd anniversary of the Haymarket uprising in Chicago in the period of May 1-4, 1886, when the 8-hour-day struggle crescendoed into a bonafide international working-class movement that challenged the capitalist exploitation of labor and put owners of capital everywhere on the defensive. The Eight-Hour Day Movement was at the center of the post-Civil War industrial workers cultre in America as elsewhere. Variations of the famous Eight-Hour Day song were heard around the world :
We want to feel the sunshine;
We want to smell the flowers
We're sure God has willed it.
And we mean to have eight hours.
We're summoning our forces from
Shipyard, shop and mill;
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest.
Eight hours for what we will.
(Cited in The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day, by Peter Linebaugh, pp.86-87)
We
use this occasion to continue our presentation on Freudian concepts of psychology and social psychology, to take a
deeper look at the dynamics that have spawned (and muted) class struggle, as it
were, on both sides of the barricades, while technology goes marching on . . .
.
The
increased pain and misery that accompanies late capitalist development is
inescapable. In his study of Freudian theory, Herbert Marcuse emphasizes that
the wide-spread and escalating dissatisfactions with contemporary society are
due to, among other things, the general perception of “surplus-repression,”
which is to say that ordinary people have grown increasing aware that the
self-sacrifice that is being asked of them is illegitimate, which is to say it is unnecessary for social
progress.
In
his essay, “Progress and Freud’s Theory of Instincts” (
chapter 2 from Five
Essays, 1970), Marcuse presents the orthodox Freudian theory of
sublimation and displaced aggression, before offering his critical evaluation
of the theory.
Happiness
and freedom are incompatible with civilization.
The evolution of civilization is based on the suppression, limitation,
and repression of sensual, instinctual wishes and is unthinkable without a
repressive modification of the instincts. This follows from what according to
Freud is a very clear and unchangeable principle, namely that the human
organism is originally ruled by the “pleasure principle” and wants nothing but
to avoid pain and obtain pleasure, and that civilization cannot afford this
principle. Because men are too weak and the human environment too poor and
cruel, the denial and suppression of instincts became from the beginning
fundamental conditions of all the unpleasurable work,
the denials and renunciation that, as repressively transformed instinctual
energy, make the progress of civilization at all possible. The pleasure
principle must be replaced by the “reality principle” if human society is to progress from
the animal to the human level.
.
. .
Why
does civilization require that the reality principle overcome the pleasure
principle? What actually is the reality principle as the principle of progress?
According to Freud’s later instinct theory . . . the organism with its two
basic instincts, Eros and the death instinct, cannot be socialized as long as
these instincts remain uncontrolled. As such, they are unsuited for the
construction of a human society in which a relatively secure satisfaction of
needs is to be possible. Eros, when uncontrolled, strives for nothing further
than obtaining more intensive and perpetual pleasure, and the death instinct,
if uncontrolled, is simple regression to the state that preceded birth and
therefore tends toward the annihilation of all life. Thus, for culture and
civilization to emerge, the pleasure principle has to be replaced by another
principle, one which makes society possible and sustains it: the reality
principle. This is, according to Freud, nothing other than the principle of
productive renunciation developed as the system of all of the modifications,
denials, diversions, and sublimations of instinct that society must impose on
individuals in order to transform them from bearers of the pleasure principle
into socially utilizable instruments of alienated labor. In this sense the
reality principle is identical with the principle of progress, because it is
through the repressive reality principle that instinctual energy first becomes
released for unpleasurable labor, for labor that has
learned to renounce, to deny instinctual wishes and that can become and remain
socially productive only in this way. (pp. 33-35)
.
. .
What
is the result of the repressive modification of the death instinct? . . . The
final deprival of the mother enforced by the father signifies the permanent
mastery of the death instinct, the Nirvana principle, and its subordination to
the life instincts. For the incestuous desire for the mother also contains the
ultimate goal of the death instinct, regression to the painless, need-less, and
in this sense pleasurable state before birth, which becomes instinctually more
desirable the more unpleasurable and painful the
experience of life itself becomes. The remaining energy of the death instinct
is then made socially useful in two ways. As socially useful destructive energy
it is directed outwards, that is, the goal of the death instinct is no longer
the annihilation of one’s own life through regression, but of other life: the
annihilation of nature in the form of the domination of nature and the
annihilation of socially sanctioned enemies inside and outside the nation. But
almost more important than this external licensing of the death instinct
is an internal one. It consists in the utilization of destructive energy
as social morality, as conscience, which is localized in the superego and
carries out the demands and claims of the reality principle against the ego. The result of the
social transformation of the death instinct is thus destruction. In the forms
of useful aggression and the domination of nature, destruction is one of the
main sources of work in civilization. As moral aggression, unified in
conscience as the claim of morality against
the id, it is an equally
indispensible factor of civilization.
It
is crucial that through the repressive modification of instincts,
and through it alone, progress in civilization becomes not only possible but
also automatic. Once the former has been successfully achieved, the latter is
reproduced by the instinctually modified individuals themselves.
But just as progress becomes automatic through the
repressive modification of instincts, so it cancels itself and negates itself. For it prohibits the enjoyment of its own fruits
and in turn, precisely through this prohibition, it augments productivity and
thus promotes progress.
More precisely, this peculiar and antagonistic dynamic of progress comes into
being as follows. Progress is only possible through the transformation of
instinctual energy into the socially useful energy of labor, that is, progress
is only possible as sublimation. Sublimation, however, is only possible as
expanded sublimation. For, once it is in effect, it is subject to its own
dynamic, which extends the sphere and intensity of sublimation. Under the
reality principle the libido diverted from originally pleasurable but socially
useless or even harmful instinctual goals becomes social productivity. As such
it improves the material and intellectual means for the gratification of human
needs. But at the same time it denies men the full enjoyment of these goods because
it is repressive instinctual energy and has already so pre-formed men that they
do not know how to value life except in accordance with the hierarchy of values
that rejects enjoyment, peace, and gratification as goals or subordinates them
to productivity. With the growth of the quantum of energy stored up through
renunciation comes a growth of productivity that does not lead to individual
gratification. The individual denies himself the enjoyment of productivity and
thereby provides the resources for new productivity, propelling the process to
an ever higher level both of production and of the renunciation of what is
produced. This psychic structure reflects the specific organization of progress
in advanced industrial society. We can speak here of a vicious circle of
progress. The rising productivity of social labor remains linked to rising
repression, which itself in turn contributes to raising productivity. Or, put another way, progress must
continually negate itself in order to remain progress. Inclination must
continually be sacrificed to reason, happiness to transcendental freedom, in
order that through the promise of happiness men can be maintained in alienated
labor, remain productive, keep themselves from the full enjoyment of their
productivity, and thereby perpetuate productivity itself. (pp.35-37)
Marcuse’s
presentation of Freud’s analyses is frequently accompanied by a critique,
giving alternative views which allow readers to profit from another dimension
in the discussion. While we see Marcuse dismissing liberal ideological humanists like
Eric Fromm and Karen Horney for reducing Freud’s deep scientific study of
ontology to a thin surface of moral injunctions, Marcuse’s reference to the
work of psychoanalytical anthropologist Géza Róheim - who challenged not only Freud’s theory a “death
instinct” (Thanatos) but, also, his theory of a “life
instinct” (Eros) - we fine Macuse’s judgment to be
more tentative. The heuristic comments on Freud’s findings are given more
attention. Was Freud guilty of describing how individuals living in a society
of political domination and economic scarcity behaved and mistaking this for the
universal symptoms of civilization on all human beings?
When
Freud ascribes the goal of uniting the organic in ever greater units,” of
“producing and preserving ever greater units,” to the sexual drives, this
striving is at work in every process that preserves life, from the first union
of the germ cells to the formation of cultural communities: society and nation.
This drive stands under the aegis of the pleasure principle: it is precisely
the polymorphous character of sexuality that drives beyond the special function
to which it is limited, toward gaining more intensive and extensive pleasure,
toward the generation of libidinous ties with one’s fellow men, the production
of a libidinous, that is, happy environment. Civilization arises from pleasure:
we must hold fast to this thesis in all its provocativeness.
Freud writes: “The same process occurs in the social relations of men that psychoanalytic
research has become familiar with in regard to the course of development of
individual libido. Libido involves itself in gratifying the major needs of life
and chooses for its first objects the persons who participate in this activity.
And as with the individual, so in the development of mankind as a whole, love
alone, in the sense of turning from egoism to altruism, has acted as the force
of civilization. It is Eros, not Agape, it is the drive that has not yet been
split into sublimated and unsublimated energy, from
which this effect proceeds. The work that has contributed essentially to
the development of man from animal is originally libidinous. Freud
states expressly that sexual as well as sublimated love is “connected to
communal labor.” Man begins working because he finds pleasure in work, not only
after work, pleasure in the play of his faculties and the fulfillment of his
life needs, not as a means of life but as life itself. Man begins the
cultivation of nature and of himself, cooperation, in order to secure and
perpetuate the gaining of pleasure. It is perhaps Géza
Róheim who has most penetratingly presented and tried
to prove this thesis.
If
this is so, however, the Freudian conception of the relationship between
civilization and the dynamics of the instincts is in need of a decisive
correction. The conflict between the pleasure principle and the reality
principle would then be neither biologically necessary nor insoluble not
soluble only through a repressive transformation of the instincts. And the
repressive solution would then be not a natural process extended into history
and compelled by an ineluctable struggle for existence, weakness, and
hostility, but rather a socio-historical process which has become part of
nature. The traumatic transformation of the organism into an instrument of alienated labor is not
the psychic condition of civilization as such but only of civilization as
domination, that is, of a specific form of civilization. Constitutional unfreedom would not be the condition of freedom in
civilization but rather only of freedom in a civilization organized on the
basis of domination, which in fact is what existing civilization is.
Freud
actually did derive the fate of the instincts from that of domination: it is
the despotism of the primal father that forces the development of the instincts
into the rational, domination-based civilization, which, however, never
abandoned its roots in the original domination. Since the rebellion of the sons
and brothers against the primal father and the reestablishment and
internalization of paternal authority, domination, religion, and morality have
been intimately connected, and in such a way that the latter provide the
psychological foundation of the permanence and the legitimized organization –
the “reason” – of domination but at the same time make domination universal.
Just as all share in the guilt, the rebellion, so all must make sacrifices,
including those who now rule. The masters, like the servants, submit to
limitations on their instinctual gratification, on pleasure. But just as
repression of the instincts makes every servant “master of his own house,’ so
it also reproduces masters over all houses: with instinctual repression social
domination fortifies its position as universal reason. This takes place in the organization
of labor.
The
development of domination through the organization of labor is a process the
study of which belong to political economy rather than psychology. But the
somatic-psychic preconditions for this development which Freud uncovered make
it possible to pinpoint the hypothetical point at which civilization based on
instinctual repression stops being historically “rational” and reproducing
historical reason. To demonstrate that this is possible let me summarize again
the main facts in the dynamic of the instincts insofar as they are decisive for
the labor process: first, repressive modifications of sexuality make the
organism free to be used as an instrument of unpleasurable
but socially useful labor. Second, if this labor is a lifelong chief
occupation, that is, has become the universal means of life, then the original
direction of the instincts is so distorted that the content of life is no
longer gratification but rather working toward it. Third, in this way
civilization reproduces itself on an increasingly extended scale: The energy
won from sexuality and sublimated constantly increases the psychic “investment
fund” for the increasing productivity of labor (technical progress). Fourth,
increasing productivity of labor increases the possibility of enjoyment and
thus the potential reversal of the socially compelled relationship between
labor and enjoyment, labor time and free time. But the domination reproduced in
the existing relationships also reproduces sublimation on an increasing scale:
the goods produced for enjoyment remain commodities, the enjoyment of which
presupposes further labor within existing relationships. Gratification remains
a by-product of ungratifying labor. Increasing
productivity itself becomes the necessity which it was to eliminate. Thus,
fifth, the sacrifices that socialized individuals have imposed on themselves
since the fall of the primal father become increasingly more irrational and
more obviously reason has fulfilled its purpose and eliminated the original
state of need. And the guilt which the sacrifices were to expiate through the
deification and internalization of the father (religion and morality) remains unexpieated, because with the reestablishment of
patriarchal authority, although in the form of rational universality, the
–suppressed – wish for its annihilation remains alive. Indeed, the guilt
becomes increasingly oppressive as this domination reveals its archaic
character in the light of historical possibilities for liberation.
At
this stage of development unfreedom appears no longer
as the fundamental condition of rational freedom but rather as a limitation on
freedom. The achievements of domination-based civilization have undermined the
necessity for unfreedom; the degree of domination of
nature and of social wealth attained makes it possible to reduce ungratifying labor to a minimum: quantity is transformed
into quality, free time can become the content of life, and work can become the
free play of human capacities; In this way the repressive structure of the
instincts could be explosively transformed: the instinctual energies that would
no longer be caught up in ungratifying work would
become free and, as Eros, would strive to universalize libidinous relationships
and develop a libidinous civilization. But although in light of this
possibility the necessity of instinctual repression appears irrational, it
remains not only a social but also a biological necessity for men in existing
society. For the repression of the instincts reproduced renunciation in the
individuals themselves, and the apparatus of need-gratification that they have
constructed reproduces the individuals themselves in the form of labor power.(pp.19-22)
Marcuse
goes on to examine the possibility of removing the historic causes of external domination and self-renunciation, a
possibility that was envisioned by Plato in The
Republic (380 BC) and by Friedrich Schiller in his essay, On the Aesthetic Education of Man
(1794), at the time of the French Revolution.
If
the repression of instincts, even according to the Freudian hypothesis, is not
only a natural necessity, it has its roots at least just as much and perhaps
primarily in the interest of domination and the maintenance of despotic
authority, if the repressive reality principle is not only a result of
historical reason without which no progress would have been possible, but above
and beyond this the result of a particular historical form of domination; then
we must in fact undertake a decisive correction of Freudian theory. For if the
repressive modification of the instincts, which has until now constituted the
main psychological content of the concept of progress, is neither naturally
necessary nor historically immutable, then it has its quite definite limit.
This becomes apparent after instinctual repression and progress have fulfilled
their historical function and mastered the condition of human impotence and the
scarcity of goods, and when a free society for all has become a real
possibility. The repressive reality principle becomes superfluous in the same
measure that civilization approaches a level at which the elimination of a mode
of life that previously necessitated instinctual repression has become a
realizable historical possibility. The achievements of repressive progress
herald the abolition of the repressive principle of progress itself. It becomes
possible to envisage a state in which there is no productivity resulting form
and conditioning renunciation and no alienated labor: a state in which the
growing mechanization of labor enables an ever larger part of the instinctual
energy that had to be withdrawn from alienated labor to return to its original
form, in other words, to be changed back into energy of the life instincts. It
would no longer be the case that time spend in alienated labor occupied the
major portion of life and the free time left to the individual for the
gratification of his own needs was a mere remainder. Instead, alienated labor
time would not only be reduced to a minimum but would disappear and life would
consist of free time.
Crucial
here is the comprehension that such a development is not equivalent to an
extension and increase of present conditions and relations. Instead a
qualitatively different reality principle would replace the repressive one,
transmuting the entire human-psychic as well as socio-historical structure.
What really happens when this state, today still repudiated as utopia, becomes
continually more real? What happens when more or less total automation
determines the organization of society and reaches into all areas of life? In
depicting the consequences I keep to the fundamental Freudian concepts. The
first consequence would be that the force of the instinctual energy released by
mechanical labor would no longer have to be expended on unpleasurable
activity and could be changed back into erotic energy. A reactivation would be
possible of all those erotic forces and modes of behavior that were blocked off
and desexualized under the repressive reality principle. I should like to
emphasize sharply, because the greatest misunderstanding is possible on this point, that sublimation would not cease but instead, as
erotic energy would surge up in new force of cultural creation. The result
would not be pansexualism, which rather belongs to
the image of repressive society (for pansexualism is
conceivable only to as an explosion of repressive instinctual energy). To the
extent that erotic energy were really freed, it would
cease to be mere sexuality and would become a force that determined the
organism in all its modes of behavior, dimensions, and goals. In other words
the organism would be able to admit what it could not admit under the
repressive reality principle. Striving for gratification in a happy world would
be a principle according to which human existence would develop.
The
order of values of a non-repressive principle of progress can be determined on
almost all levels in opposition to that of its repressive counterpart. Men’s
basic experience would be no longer that of life as a struggle for existence
but rather that of the enjoyment of life. Alienated labor would be transformed
into the free play of human faculties and forces. In consequence all contentless transcendence would come to a close,
and freedom would no longer be an eternally failing project. Productivity would
define itself in relation to receptivity, existence
would be experienced not as continually expanding and unfulfilled becoming but
as existence or being with what is and can be. Time would not seem linear, as a
perpetual line or rising curve, but cyclical, as the return contained in
Nietzsche’s ideas of the “perpetuity of pleasure.”(pp.39-41)
.
. .
In
conclusion, I should like to defend myself against the reproach that I hope you
have long been addressing to me, that we live in a reality that not only has
nothing to do with the happiness presented here but is rather in all its
aspects its exact opposite and promises to remain so, and that in this
condition it is unjustified and irresponsible to portray a utopia in which it
is asserted that modern industrial society could soon reach a state in which
the principle of repression that has previously directed its development will
prove itself obsolete. Certainly the contrast of this utopia with reality can
scarcely be imagined as greater than it now is. But perhaps the very extent of
this gap is a sign of its limit. The less renunciation and denial are
biologically and socially necessary, the more must men be made the instruments
of repressive policies that restrain them from realizing the social
potentialities they would otherwise think of by themselves. It may be less
irresponsible today to depict a utopia that has a real basis than to defame as
utopia conditions and potentials that have long become realizable possibilities.(p.43)
The
repressive capitalist system is expanding its misery into the very core of the
empire. As imperialist wars rage across the planet, and populations are being
poisoned by capitalist ideology and its chemical by-products, it is the old
men who continue to declare war and the young who are called upon to die. This
is a quantitative change in a centuries-old relationship of exploitation. The
critical examination of psychoanalysis might bring new insights to this phenomenon
of class collaboration unto death. Anyhow, in the great British tradition of
democracy, we continue to insist that: “A cat can look at a king!”
The
16 + items below will bring home the fact that we are living on the
precipice of catastrophe, in a desperate, suicidal capitalist attempt to secure short-term profits
from an empty suite. We might ask ourselves whatever happened to the idea that
our elected political leaders and their entourage - including their corporate sponsors
– should render themselves to their “enemy’s”
homeland to fight their own battles? These bellicose old men and women really
have little to lose at this point in their lives. Youth should save themselves from the
ritual sacrifice of war, and so should the rest of us from the pathology of the
few corporate owners who seek to reduce us to mere instruments of production
and consumption for their own private profits.
Francis Feeley
---
Professor emeritus of American Studies
University Grenoble-Alpes
Director of Research
University of Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and
Social Movements
The University of California-San Diego
a.
Is This Why We Raise
Our Children?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51490.htm
(5min)
Ed
Note - This video should only be viewed by a
mature audience.
This video of a U.S. solder killed in the Republic of Niger, shows his last moments via his attached body webcam.
This is something that needs to be viewed by as
many folks as possible.
It's the bare ugly truth, someone’s son dying as
an invader in a foreign and unfamiliar land where no one knows him except the
guys dragging his body to the cover & protection of a vehicle, hoping and
praying to get out of the mess they find themselves in via our totally corrupt
and dysfunctional government.
===========
b.
From:
Mark
Crispin Miller
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2019
Subject: [MCM] "Our free press" has We
the People under criminal hypnosis
Where
I differ with the author here is that she thinks most people actually have
heard the awful truth, and chosen to ignore it, while my view demonstrated daily in these emails) is that
the media has either blacked it out completely, or cast it as sheer crackpot
fantasy.
This
is what makes her comparison of the US to Nazi Germany especially apt, in that
the Germans too had no clue what was really going on, either at home or abroad,
from 1933 on—i.e., from the burning of the Reichstag, and swift passage of the
Enabling Act (Hitler's PATRIOT Act), to the
apocalyptic
end of the Third Reich. (Yes, a lot of Germans were uneasily half-aware of what
was happening to the Jews, as well as gays and gypsies, among
others, but it was based on word of mouth, not anything that
ran in Goebbels' press machine.)
Some
day, when we have the vast reckoning that the US empire has so long deserved,
and that the whole world badly needs, the leading members of the
Western press will be among the many thousands in the dock, along with
their taskmasters in the CIA, FBI and US military intelligence.
MCM
OpEdNews Op Eds 4/27/2019
at 18:27:13 by Lila York
|
|
(Image by Sander van der Wel
from Netherlands) Details DMCA
- Advertisement -
So
I turned on the telly on a Saturday morning to scan
the MSM headlines, and this is what they decided was important for the public
to know: that the FBI was investigating Russian interference in the 2016
election in Florida (yes, still); that Bernie Sanders was being criticized for
proposing that 'the Boston bomber' be allowed to cast a vote; that Julian Assange was charged with rape in Sweden. Except that none
of those stories were true: Hard evidence shows that Russia did not interfere
in any US election in any way while Israel interfered in several federal
elections by throwing millions at right wing candidates, that the Tsarnaev brothers had nothing to do with the
"bombs" exploded at the Boston marathon and were classic patsies, and
the charge levied against Assange in Sweden, 'having
consensual sex without a condom', had been dropped years earlier, initially
after the first judge reviewed evidence of a honey trap. (I have the facts to
back all of this up, but to explain each would require
book length articles on each subject. email me if you want the data).
So.
What exactly is the point of the news media in the United States? To make
up fiction and then trumpet it round the clock under the theory that any lie
repeated often enough becomes fact. And the majority of Americans have
evidently decided that they so love the lies and hate the truth that they will
scream and yell endlessly to defend the lies rather than be forced to face
uncomfortable facts. Any effort I make to point this out gets the following
response: "If you hate America so much why don't
you leave"? I can't tell you how many times I have heard that
question. I confess I would have left a decade ago if I had not had
responsibility for my parents' care. But it is a phony question anyway.
Insisting on facts and truth is not a trait that qualifies me as being
un-American. It just qualifies me as being awake.
+
Google
Tracks Your Location and Shares It With Police, Even
When Your Phone is Off
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51509.htm
by Derrick Broze
Even if you disable GPS, deactivate
phone location tracking, and turn off your phone, it’s still possible for
Google and the NSA to monitor your every move.
Over the last two decades, cell phone use has
become an everyday part of life for the vast majority of people around the
planet. Nearly without question, consumers have chosen to carry these
increasingly smart devices with them everywhere they go. Despite surveillance
revelations from whistleblowers like Edward Snowden,
the average smart phone user continues to carry the devices with little to no
security or protection from privacy invasions.
Americans make up one of the largest smartphone markets in the world today, yet they rarely
question how intelligence agencies or private corporations might be using their
smartphone data. A recent report from the New York
Times adds to the growing list of reasons why Americans should be asking
these questions. According to the Times, law enforcement have
been using a secret technique to figure out the location of Android users. The
technique involves gathering detailed location data collected by Google from
Android phones, iPhones, and iPads
that have Google Maps and other Google apps installed.
The location data is stored inside a Google
database known as Sensorvault, which contains
detailed location records of hundreds of millions of devices from around the
world. The records reportedly contain location data going back to 2009. The
data is collected whether or not users are making calls or using apps.
+
Noam
Chomsky on Google and Facebook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhpY80qR7zE
+
“The
National Security State”
with Gore Vidal
(March 18, 1998)
+
"Tyrants
and Imperialism | George Galloway | Oxford Union"
===========
c.
EMBASSY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION IN
THE UNITED STATESOF AMERICA
THE RUSSIAGATEHYSTERIA:A CASE OF SEVERE RUSSOPHOBIA
https://washington.mid.ru/upload/iblock/3c3/3c3d1e3b69a4c228e99bfaeb5491ecd7.pdf
(APRIL18, 2019)
TABLE OF
CONTENTSFOREWORD………………………………………………………3
TIMELINE OF MAIN
EVENTS………………………………………………………………7
MAIN DIPLOMATIC ACTIONSBY THE
EMBASSY……………………………………..20
EXAMPLES OF BASELESS ACCUSATIONSBY
MEDIA………………………………27
EXAMPLES OF GROUNDLESS ACCUSATIONS
BYGOVERNMENT OFFICIALS…77
EXAMPLES OF GROUNDLESS ACCUSATIONS
BY EXPERTS……………………..89
DEBUNKING KEY CLAIMSOF
“RUSSIGATE”………………………………………….101
CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………119
HYSTERIA
"If
American democracy is destroyed within the next generation, it will not be
destroyed by the Russians or the Chinese but by ourselves, by the very means we
use to defend it".
-Senator J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT, “American Militarism”,
1970, Epilogue
“It
is an attempt to lay the blame at someone else’s door. This is not our problem.
The problem is in US politics... The other team lost. They are reluctant to
acknowledge the mistake. It is easier to say, “We are not to blame, the
Russians are to blame, they interfered in our election.” It reminds me of
anti-Semitism: the Jews are to blame for everything. We know what such
sentiments can lead to. They lead to nothing good. The thing to do is simply to
work and think of how to get things right”.
-VLADIMIR PUTIN, President of the Russian Federation,
(in response to a question from
American journalist,
Megyn
Kelly at the plenary meeting of the
St Petersburg International Economic Forum, June 2, 2017)
===========
d.
Corporate Joe:
Biden Enters the Presidential Race
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/30/corporate-joe-biden-enters-the-presidential-race/
by Binoy Kampmark
+
Joe Biden
on the relaunch pad: He's worse than you thought
by Norman Solomon
Whether
Biden can win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination will largely depend
on how many voters don't know much about his actual record.
When
the New York Times
front-paged its latest anti-left polemic masquerading as a news article, the
March 9 piece declared: "Should former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
enter the race, as his top advisers vow he soon will,
he would have the best immediate shot at the moderate mantle."
On
the verge of relaunching, Joe Biden is poised to come
to the rescue of the corporate political establishment at a time when, in the
words of the Times,
"the sharp left turn in the Democratic Party and the rise of progressive
presidential candidates are unnerving moderate Democrats." After 36 years
in the Senate and eight as vice president, Biden is by far the most seasoned
servant of corporate power with a prayer of becoming the next president.
When
Biden read this paragraph in a recent Politico
article, his ears must have been burning:
"Early support from deep-pocketed financial executives could give
Democrats seeking to break out of the pack an important fundraising boost. But
any association with bankers also opens presidential hopefuls to sharp attacks
from an ascendant left."
The
direct prey of Biden's five-decade "association with bankers" include
millions of current and former college students now struggling under avalanches
of debt; they can thank Biden for his prodigious services to the lending
industry. Andrew Cockburn identifies an array of victims in his devastating profile of Biden in the March issue of Harper's magazine. For instance:
·
"Biden was
long a willing foot soldier in the campaign to emasculate laws allowing debtors
relief from loans they cannot repay. As far back as 1978, he helped negotiate a
deal rolling back bankruptcy protections for graduates with federal student
loans, and in 1984 worked to do the same for borrowers with loans for
vocational schools."
·
"Even when
the ostensible objective lay elsewhere, such as drug-related crime, Biden did
not forget his banker friends. Thus the 1990 Crime Control Act, with Biden as
chief sponsor, further limited debtors' ability to take advantage of bankruptcy
protections."
·
Biden worked
diligently to strengthen the hand of credit-card firms against consumers. At
the same time, "the credit card giant MBNA was Biden's largest contributor
for much of his Senate career, while also employing his son Hunter as an
executive and, later, as a well-remunerated consultant."
Media
mythology about "Lunch Bucket Joe" cannot stand up to scrutiny. His
bona fides as a pal of working people are about as solid and believable as
those of the last Democratic nominee for president.
+
Joe Biden: Puffery vs. Reality
https://www.laprogressive.com/joe-biden-reality/
Let’s be blunt: As a supposed friend
of American workers, Joe Biden is a phony. And now that he’s running for
president, Biden’s huge task is to hide his phoniness.
From the outset, with dim prospects
from small donors, the Biden campaign is depending on big checks from the rich
and corporate elites who greatly appreciate his services rendered. “He
must rely heavily, at least at first, upon an old-fashioned network of money
bundlers—political insiders, former ambassadors and business executives,”
the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Biden has a media image that exudes
down-to-earth caring and advocacy for regular folks. But his actual record is a
very different story.
Biden
has a media image that exudes down-to-earth caring and advocacy for regular
folks. But his actual record is a very different story.
During
the 1970s, in his first Senate term, Biden spouted white backlash rhetoric, used tropes pandering to racism and teamed up with arch segregationists against measures
like busing for school integration. He went on to be a fount of racially charged appeals and “predators on our streets” oratory on the Senate floor
as he led the successful effort to pass the now-notorious
1994 crime bill.
A
gavel in Biden’s hand repeatedly proved to be dangerous. In 1991, as chair of
the Judiciary Committee, Biden prevented key witnesses from testifying to corroborate
Anita Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment during the Clarence Thomas
confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. In 2002, as chair of the Foreign
Relations Committee, Biden was the Senate’s most crucial supporter of the Iraq invasion.
Meanwhile,
for well over four decades—while corporate media preened his image as “Lunch
Bucket Joe” fighting for the middle class—Biden continued his assist for
strengthening oligarchy as a powerful
champion of legalizing corporate plunder on a mind-boggling scale.
Now,
Joe Biden has arrived as a presidential candidate to rescue the Democratic
Party from Bernie Sanders.
+
Scrutiny into Biden’s Record Should Include
Obama Era Foreign Policies
by Jeremy Kuzmarov
+
The
Real Bobby Kennedy
https://www.counterpunch.org/2008/06/07/the-real-bobby-kennedy/
by
Joe
Allen
I
think we can end the divisions in the United States…the violence, the
disenchantment with our society, the divisions, whether it’s between blacks and
whites, between the poor and the affluent, or between age groups, or over the
war in Vietnam–that we can start to work together
again.
We
are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country…. So my
thanks to all of you, and it’s on to Chicago, and let’s win there.
Robert
F. Kennedy said this to ecstatic supporters at the Ambassador Hotel following
his triumph in the California Democratic primary on June 4, 1968. Shortly after
his victory speech, Kennedy left the stage, and as he was entering the crowded
hotel kitchen to greet supporters, he was shot and mortally wounded. Two days
later, he died.
For
many liberals, the hopes for progressive political change died with him. “The
’60s came to an end in a Los Angeles hospital on June 6, 1968,” Richard Goodwin
mournfully declared in his popular memoir Remembering
America: A Voice from the Sixties. Goodwin was a former White House staffer
during the Kennedy-Johnson administrations who had resigned over the escalation
of the war in Vietnam. He would later become a speechwriter for Sens. Eugene
McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy during their 1968 presidential campaigns.
Jack
Newfield, one of the leading journalists of the Village Voice, wrote in his
memoir of Robert Kennedy that after his death “from this time forward, things
would get worse.”
+
Can Progressives Stop
Biden, the Credit Card Candidate?
https://therealnews.com/stories/can-progressives-stop-biden-the-credit-card-candidate
with Norman Solomon
===========
e.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Subject: [MCM] Is there really a measles virus?
Germany's Supreme Court has ruled that there is not.
If you want scientific and
statistical material to counter the
pro-MMR hysteria now sweeping the US (and blowing us into
a new world of Big Pharma fascism),
this essay is for you.
MCM
What is the Measles?
https://drsircus.com/general/what-is-the-measles/
Published on April
29, 2019
There is
more chance of dying from the MMR vaccine than from the Measles. You would
think that tens of thousands must be infected and dying from measles with all
the hysteria in the news. No one has died from the
Measles so far and no one needs to if proper care is given.
The last person that died from the Measles in the United States died in 2015
and yet New Yorkers are facing jail time for skipping the Measles vaccine.
New York
City declared a public health emergency on the ninth of April in response to
the measles outbreak in ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn and
ordered mandatory vaccinations
for residents in four zip codes. Those who refuse will have to
pay a thousand dollar fine. Better to pay than
get the vaccine because the chance of your child dying is greater from the
vaccine than from the disease itself. However, up to 10 percent of the 695
confirmed measles cases in the current outbreak occurred in people who received one or two doses
of the vaccine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. MMR is a dangerous vaccine that does not work to well.
A search
of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting
System (VAERS) found 415 deaths from the MMR (or MMRV) vaccine
since 1989. In other words, approximately 13 US children die per year from the
measles vaccine. And, keep in mind that experts think that only 1% of adverse
vaccine reactions are reported. And, there are other adverse effects from the
measles vaccine. Seizure occurs five times more often in vaccination from
measles than from measles infection. Febrile seizures can increase the risk for
epilepsy. Other risks of the MMR vaccine include coma, lowered consciousness
and permanent brain damage as well as autism.
More than
1,000 students and staff members at two Los Angeles universities were quarantined
on campus or sent home this week in one of the most sweeping efforts yet by
public health authorities to contain the spread of measles in the U.S., where
cases have reached a 25-year high but still no deaths
reported making us wonder what all the fuss is about. The flu is supposed to
kill lots of people but we do not see mandatory vaccine programs and quarantines for influenza outbreaks.
A good
reference to help us put the present Measles epidemic into context comes
from Dr. David Brownstein,
who tells us to recall the Brady Bunch from TV, who all became infected. Marcia
Brady stated, “If you have to get sick, sure can’t beat the measles.”
Learn a system of medicine that is safe, simple and affordable! Discover Dr Sircus Natural
Allopathic Medicine »
Brownstein wrote, “I do not
recall newspaper headlines blaring about the Bradys
serious illness. I don’t think the health department was on the episode
investigating how the Brady’s became ill. Furthermore, I don’t remember
Congress investigating why all the Bradys became ill.
Nor do I have any memory of state legislatures trying to take parental rights
away because the Bradys developed measles. Here’s
what I remember about the Brady’s measles show: That was in a different era
when measles was considered a rite of passage for nearly all children. In fact,
children who naturally developed measles and recovered had lifetime immunity
from future measles infections. Additionally, girls who recovered from measles
would pass on immunity to their babies which would protect their children at
the most vulnerable time in their lives.”
Very few
children have died over the last 60 years yet unvaccinated people under age 18
are banned from public
places in Rockland County, New York. Measles had ceased
to be a deadly disease before the vaccine was introduced. The Center
for Disease Control (CDC) creates the conditions for hysteria when it comes to
viruses and the vaccines used to prevent them. “The headlines today might make
you think that measles is as deadly as Ebola. That is absurd,” writes
Brownstein.
According
to Dr. Nathan Boonstra, “There were about 400-500 deaths reported
annually in the US during the decade prior to vaccination.
Measles, like chickenpox, was contracted by nearly every child before
adulthood, making the annual incidence of the disease similar to the birth
rate, around 3-4 million cases per year. Now, if we use 400 deaths per year and
4 million cases of measles per year just to make the math easy, that’s one
death per ten thousand cases of measles. Way less
than the oft cited one per one thousand deaths.
Looking carefully at the death
rate from Measles before the advent of the vaccine we have to be realistic
about causes of death. Does not matter what disease, when 3-4 million children
get sick some of them are going to die, have complications due to so many
different factors that it is hard to pin the blame on the Measles.
Deaths
from Measles was already
flat-lining during the 15 years preceding the introduction of the vaccine.
An
outbreak of measles occurred in a high school with a documented vaccination
level of 98 per cent. Nineteen (70 per cent) of the cases were students who had
histories of measles vaccination at 12 months of age or older and are therefore
considered vaccine failures.
As the
measles outbreak that started at Disneyland in 2015 grew to at least 70 cases
medical experts expressed concern about
the five patients who
contracted measles despite being fully vaccinated.
The head
of the National Reference Institute for Measles at the Robert Koch Institute
(RKI), Prof. Dr. Annette Mankertz, has admitted that
the “measles virus” contains
typical cell’s natural components (ribosomes, the
protein factories of the cell). Since the vaccination against
measles contains “whole measles virus,” this vaccine contains our cell’s own
structures. This explains why vaccination against measles causes frequent and
more severe allergies and autoimmune reactions than other types of vaccination.
It could explain as well why some children have slid right into autism after being
vaccinated with the MMR. All claims by the medical establishment that this is
not true are betrayed by the fact that the vaccine court in the USA has paid
out for autism caused by vaccine cases.
Is Measles Really Caused by a Virus
In
November 2011, biologist Stefan Lanka bravely challenged the scientific
community to offer real empirical and definitive proof that the measles virus
actually exists. He was so certain that belief in the
existence of this virus – a widespread and entrenched belief simply taken for
granted – was without foundation that he offered a prize of 100,000 euros to anyone who could offer laboratory proof of
identification and a measurement of the diameter of the virus.
Someone
took him up on the challenge and eventually lost the case. It was the only time
in modern history that Measles has been put to anything close to objective
scrutiny. The final decision was in 2016. Judges at the German Federal Supreme
Court confirmed, through careful examination of all the evidence available, that
the measles virus does not exist, vindicating those who have said that no study
has ever proven the existence of the virus. You will not hear the CDC
commenting on the Supreme Courts findings. The entire medical establishment has
ignored the ruling as if it never happened.
===========
f.
The
Electronic Intifada
https://electronicintifada.net/
+
Clouds
gather above the Middle East: war or no war
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51502.htm
by Elijah J Magnier
+
ISIS
Feeds Off the Chaos of War
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/30/isis-feeds-off-the-chaos-of-war/
by Patrick Cockburn
===========
g.
Washington
Has Destroyed Western Liberty
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51505.htm
by Paul Craig Roberts
+
Death
of the Art House Revolution: Can the Americanized West Ever Stage a Real
Rebellion?
by Jason Hirthler
+
Humpty
Dumpty Has Had a Great Fall
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51516.htm
by Paul Craig Roberts
+
The
European Union is obliged to participate in US wars
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51511.htm
by Thierry Meyssan
+
Trump's
Crusaders March to War on Iran
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51514.htm
by Eric Margolis
The world is still reeling in horror from the deadly Sri
Lanka bombings that may have been the work of Islamic State madmen. Poor Sri
Lanka has suffered so much after three decades of civil war and communal
strife. We weep for this beautiful and once gentle nation.
But behind the horror in Sri Lanka, a huge crisis was
building up of which the world has so far taken insufficient notice: renewed
tensions in the oil-producing Gulf. This is the latest attempt by the United
States to crush Iran’s independent-minded government and return it to American
tutelage.
The Trump administration has demanded that the principal
importers of 1.2 billion barrels of Iranian oil halt purchases almost
immediately. This imperial diktat includes China, South Korea, Turkey, India
and Japan. The comprehensive embargo is very close to an all-out act of war. In
1941, America’s cut-off of oil to Japan provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The oil embargo not only violates international law, it sets
the US on a collision course with some of its most important allies and vassal
states. Brazen threats against Iran by Trump’s two main enforcers, National
Security advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,
have reinforced America’s unfortunate image as an imperial power that threatens
war against disobedient satraps and independent-minded nations.
Iran, a proud, ancient nation of 80 million, has become, with
Turkey, the most effective opposition to America’s imperial domination of the
Mideast and a key supporter of Palestinian rights and statehood. This has put
Iran on a collision course with Israel and its influential American supporters,
notably the Evangelical hard right which somehow believes that Jesus will only
return to earth after Israel expands its border and mankind is destroyed.
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration, which has now become
indistinguishable from Israel’s hard-line far right ruling coalition, has
declared virtual war against Iran.
+
China’s
invitation to Syria to participate in Belt and Road Forum defies US sanctions –
Syrian Arab News Agency
by Shaza/Rasha Milhem
===========
h.
Economic
Update: Capitalism vs. Socialism
https://therealnews.com/third_party_content/economic-update-capitalism-vs-socialism
by Richard Wolff
+
Evaluate
War’s True Costs, Including Massive Debt
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51500.htm
by Ed Flaherty
+
$220,000
For Every Man, Woman And Child – America Is Now 72
Trillion Dollars In Debt
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51503.htm
by Michael Snyder
==========
i.
How
Trump Has Murdered Over 40,000 Venezuelans With
Sanctions
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51494.htm
by Caitlin Johnstone
+
Voices
from Inside the Besieged Venezuelan Embassy
https://www.mintpressnews.com/voices-from-inside-the-besieged-venezuelan-embassy/257910/
by Alexander Rubinstein and Wyatt
Reed
“If [the U.S. invades the Venezuelan Embassy]
tomorrow, it will send a message to the world that no embassy is safe in the
United States… it’s a message that ‘if you don’t bow down to us, do what we
tell you, put in the government that we’d like, we will take your embassy.”
– Kevin Zeese
+
Venezuela coup attempt ‘directly planned in Washington’
(Published April 30, 2019)
==========
j.
#GILETSJAUNES : ACTE 24 • STRASBOURG 27/04/2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jw3dj91K_U
(Published April 28, 2019)
+
"‘Tone-deaf,
arrogant Macron’ on way out – Galloway"
(Published April 26, 2019)
+
Yellow
Vest riots erupt in France for the 24th 'Day of Rage' in a row as police fire tear gas
(Published April 27, 2019)
by Peter Allen
+
L'ENTRETIEN LIBRE | Le Média
https://www.lemediatv.fr/lentretien-libre/
+
Unconvinced
by Macron's promises, Yellow Vests keep up the pressure
(Published April 27, 2019)
+
Macron's
plan to appease Yellow Vests could fuel more rifts in Europe
(Published April 30, 2019)
==========
From: Moshé Machover
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2019
Subject: Newsletter de l’AURDIP du 27 avril 2019
Newsletter de l’AURDIP du 27 avril 2019
https://www.aurdip.org/newsletter-de-l-aurdip-du-27-avril.html?lang=fr
(2019)
+
60 Palestinians wounded in border
protests, some by live fire
(Published April 26,
2019)
===========
l.
Suicide
Watch on Planet Earth
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/26/suicide-watch-on-planet-earth/
by Tom Engelhardt
===========
m.
Death Can be a Slow
Traveler: Peltier, Mumia
and Rap Brown
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/26/death-can-be-a-slow-traveler-peltier-mumia-and-rap-brown/
by Stanley L. Cohen
===========
n.
"William Binney | Snowden Debate | Oxford Union"
(Published March 21, 2019)
+
Do Americans
deserve to hear us, with our 50 yrs intel
experience? ‒ McGovern to Binney
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1BZD6UX3wU
(Published November 13, 2017)
President Donald Trump repeated his assertion over
the weekend that Moscow did not meddle in the 2016 presidential election, in
direct conflict with conclusions drawn by the US intelligence community. But
that official judgment runs counter to a group of former intel analysts who say that the so-called Russian
hack of the Democratic National Committee’s email was actually an inside job.
RT America’s Ashlee Banks speaks to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and NSA
whistleblower Bill Binney, two people involved in
that analysis.
+
Noam Chomsky -
Totalitarian Corporations – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzs_0yqTuvI
(Published
April 27, 2019)
===========
o.
Laura Flanders
Show: Drawing Comix at the Margins
https://therealnews.com/third_party_content/laura-flanders-show-drawing-comix-at-the-margins
(Published April 29, 2019)
+
Humanity Is
Flirting with Extinction - Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
https://www.wagingpeace.org/humanity-is-flirting-with-extinction/
by David Krieger
+
Allen Ginsberg’s
1956 Poem “America”: a Lost Ending
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/30/allen-ginsbergs-1956-poem-america-a-lost-ending/
by Jonah Raskin
===========
p.
The widespread
impact of domestic violence
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51501.htm
by
Cesar Chelala
María Salguero
knows how to leverage her background as a geophysical engineer on behalf of
women. Since 2016, she has been tracking cases of femicide
(also known as feminicide) all over Mexico. Femicide is the deliberate killing of a woman or girl
because of their gender.
Every year, there are tens of thousands of missing women, men, and
children in Mexico, most of whom are believed to have been tortured and killed.
According to government figures, there were more than 38,000 ‘desaparecidos’ in 2018. Salguero
has been building a database with information about women who have been killed
because official figures tend to minimise the
problem. The women killed are at the end of a tragic spectrum of abuse of women
at the hands of men.
Intimate partner violence is the most common kind of aggression
experienced by women worldwide, both in developing and in industrialised
countries. A great number of women suffer physical violence and a significant
proportion among them is also victims of psychological violence. However, many
women do not report the abuse they suffer because of cultural norms and fear of
retribution.
Economic cost
Violence against women has a high economic cost for society.
According to the United Nations, the cost of domestic abuse in the US exceeds
$5.8bn per year: $4.1bn for direct medical and health care services and nearly
$1.8bn for productivity losses. This kind of violence results in almost two
million injuries and nearly 1,300 annual deaths. These costs are considered an
underestimate since they don’t include those figures associated with the
criminal justice system.