Bulletin N° 843

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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)

 

 

 

 

 Subject :

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.

 

 

Sincerely,

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

http://www.ceimsa.org/  

 

 

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.

News From Underground

 

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    

Take the blue pill

by Lila York     

Author 11671

https://www.opednews.com/populum/visuals/2019/04/2019-04-11671-256px-bury_your_head_in_the_sand-901.jpg
(Image by Sander van der Wel from Netherlands)  Details   DMCA

- Advertisement -

 

https://www.opednews.com/articles/Take-the-blue-pill-by-lila-york-Assange_Freedom-Of-The-Press_Freedom-Of-The-Press-190427-696.html

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

The Empire Calls Back Cartoon

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”

https://therealnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/john-bolton-1024x809.jpg

https://youtu.be/xxyOpQbAz4E

with Gore Vidal

(March 18, 1998)

+

"Tyrants and Imperialism | George Galloway | Oxford Union"

https://youtu.be/V-Cb60r8TOI

 

===========

 

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

 

Joe Biden
Joe Biden
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Joe-Biden-on-the-relaunch-by-Norman-Solomon-Corporations_Democratic_Joe-Biden_Politics-190311-125.html

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.

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Scrutiny into Biden’s Record Should Include Obama Era Foreign Policies

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/29/scrutiny-into-bidens-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.

News From Underground

 

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.

d

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.”

d

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

d

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

Atrocities

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?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/29/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

https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/trump-military-role-treaties-allies.png?itok=bhVZIqBq

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

https://sana.sy/en/?p=164263

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’

https://www.rt.com/news/457934-venezuela-coup-attempt-planned-washington/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notifications&utm_campaign=push_notifications

(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"

https://youtu.be/u0Wb-NRnBDY

(Published April 26, 2019)

 

+

Yellow Vest riots erupt in France for the 24th 'Day of Rage' in a row as police fire tear gas

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6966779/Yellow-Vest-riots-erupt-France-24th-Day-Rage-row-police-fire-tear-gas.html

(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

https://www.france24.com/en/20190427-france-yellow-vest-macron-great-national-debate-act-24-tax-protest

(Published April 27, 2019)

 

+

Macron's plan to appease Yellow Vests could fuel more rifts in Europe

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/30/macrons-plan-to-appease-yellow-vests-could-fuel-more-rifts-in-europe.html

(Published April 30, 2019)

 

==========

 k.

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

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/60-palestinians-wounded-in-fence-protests-some-by-live-fire-gaza-authorities-say-1.7168978

 (Published April 26, 2019)

 

===========

 

l.

Suicide Watch on Planet Earth

Are We Boiling Yet?

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"

https://youtu.be/KQpTofvZJWU

(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

Trump goes nuclear

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.