Bulletin N° 855
War of the Worlds
Radio Broadcast 1938
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0K4ApWl4g&feature=youtu.be
(audio
– 57min))
with OrsonWells
&
The Night America Trembled 1957 - H.G. Wells' War
of the Worlds
(film – 59min)
with Edward R. Murrow
Subject : The Morbid Entertainment of Corporate Media and the Corporate Interests
They Serve.
July 24, 2019
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Historically, the National Socialist German
Workers’ Party (the NSDAP or NAZI Party) came to power in 1933, in part
as the result of the social devastation of World War I (1914-1918) and the
draconian economic effects of The Treaty of Versailles (1919-1920). National
Socialist activities in Germany stretch from 1920 to 1945, but the cultural
roots of this movement extended back much further, to when anti-Semitism, Aryan
racial supremacy, a populist Volkgeist, and authoritarian nationalist identity was promoted
to unite a largely rural population who had suffered repeatedly from military
conflicts and cultural divisiveness since the era of religious wars in the 16th
century. And the future fruits of the German Fascist movement can be detected in the post-second-world-war CIA mobilization of covert activities like strategic assasinations and sabotage conducted by its "stay-behind" Gladio cells in Italy, France and Germany; then in the post-cold-war period of Neo-Nazi Party formations across Europe and the United States of America.
Professor George Mosse’s documentary
history, Nazi
Culture (1966) - which contains some 130 original documents from the period
of the Third Reich - refers only fleetingly to the earlier periods of the
Germanic experience. His anthology of documents is primarily concerned with the
codification and implementation of this German heritage after the Nazi seizure
of power in January 1933. In 1930, the social composition of the Nazi Party
compared with that of German society at large looked something like this,
according to statistics published by Wolfgang Schäfer
in 1956 (p.346) :
Occupational
Groups Nazi Party membership Society
Blue-collar workers 28.1 45.9
White-collar workers 25.6 12.0
Self-employed 20.7 9.0
Officials 8.3 5.1
Civil service employees 6.6 4.2
Teachers 1.7 0.9
Farmers 14.0 10.6
Others 3.3 17.4
____ ____
Total % 100 100
We can see from this profile, that Nazi ideology
had an inordinately strong appeal, as early as 1930, to self-employed Germans,
white-collar workers, and farmers. Six of the eight categories of occupational
groups were “over represented” in the party, the least over represented being
officials and civil servants. The blue-collar workers and the miscellaneous
occupational group, labeled “Others,” were “under represented” in the Party:
for the latter, 17.4% of society and only 3.3% of Nazi Party membership, and
the former constituting 45.9% of German society, but only 28.1% of Party
membership.
In Chapter 8, Professor Mosse
introduces a collection of documents describing public education, where the
“Strength Through Joy” movement was focused on
character building. In one document from this section, it is made clear that
the Nazi concept of “character” did not mean “self-reliance” and
“independence.” Instead, the pedagogical objective in the Third Reich was to
instill obedience and service in the name of the Volk and the Führer. School curriculum included an increased
emphasis on physical education, while book learning was always secondary. As
always, anti-intellectualism prevailed when irrationality was elevated to a
premise for social behavior.
In Chapter 6, on “Science and National Socialism,” Mosse includes a document by Kurt Gauger,
who was a credentialed medical doctor who became an influential propagandist
working in the government office of educational films and published pamphlets.
In 1934, he was invited to speak at the International Medical Congress for
Psychotherapy which that year was held in Berlin. His topic before this diverse
audience was the Nazi version of psychoanalysis.
Since it is my purpose to discuss, to the best of my ability, some
aspects of the fundamentals of German psychotherapy, it is necessary also to
say something about the healing process, about the methodology of treating
patients with psychic disorders.
In order
to treat any sickness and to investigate the path to a cure, it is necessary to
know the etiology, the cause of the illness. To a large degree this is
identical with a thorough knowledge of the genesis of the development of the
illness.
No doubt
it is possible to heal many illnesses without an accurate knowledge of the
etiology. Pains in the upper stomach frequently disappear if the patient is
sent to bed and a special diet and warm bandages are ordered. Such treatment is
beneficial under all circumstances, regardless whether the organs of the upper
stomach are suffering from a slight inflammation or more serious disorders. But
with sicknesses of more severe character it will always be necessary to
diagnose not only the affected organ but also the kind of illness.
The same
is true with psychic illnesses. A great number of so-called psychic disorders
will disappear as the result of suggestive persuasion of the part of the
doctor. Frequently the psychotherapist needs only to mention things which the
patient has already told himself often enough, but the fact that a qualified
physician says them encourages him.
It
depends upon the process of perception, which is a necessary ingredient in the
healing power.
Perception is a total process and only distantly related to knowledge;
just as it defies comparison if a young midwife directs hundreds of births and
then should become a mother herself.
Methodologically the road of retrospection is the road of Freud. At the
risk of being considered a “Freudian,” on this road one must deal with events
that have given a name to the whole segment of life in every human being, the
age of puberty. Methodologically and taken by themselves, many of Freud’s
finding are correct, but the interpretation of their meaning and their assigned
place in the totality of human affairs appears unbearably wrong to us.
The road
of Jung looks forward. Freud asks: Whence? Jung asks. Whither? Freud is the
scientist, only the scientists; Jung is an ethician.
One could also call him a seer, in the deepest and most reverent sense of the
word. Jung is the poet among psychologists. His subconscious is full of living
forms with whom one speaks and consorts like human begins, who can give counsel
and warning, with whom one tries to be on a good footing because otherwise they
may become “angry.” Jung’s psychology is a demonology. The essence of a demon
is contained in its name. Primordial wisdom has it that one can disarm a demon,
even make servant of him, if one knows his name.
This is
nothing but the process of perception, which heals like any other form of
cognition.
While
the true magician knows that his forms are always his forms, even if
occasionally they overwhelm him, it can still happen to the sorcerer’s
apprentice that he seriously believes he can lead German youth to TAO
(the unity-giving symbol of Chinese philosophy, an irrational unity of
contraries] while we are satisfied with the choral music from the carillon of
the Potsdam Garrison Church: “Always practice fidelity and honesty!”
Freudian psychology incorporates all the advantages and dangers of
the Jewish spirit; Jungian psychology, all those of the Germanic soul.
Freud is
atheistic; Jung, not in terms of doctrine but in terms of attitude, is marked
by a Catholic piety. . . .
Perception is courageous, active, clear-eyed self-responsibility – an
attitude which accepts personal responsibility even for those matters for which
the individual human being himself is not responsible. This in the face of the
Biblical saying “Man is wicked from youth,” or in the face of personal,
undeserved calamity.
In such
circumstances, the “ego” and the unconscious are not two different entities;
they are one, as horse and rider are one when the rider truly knows and
understands his horse, can tell him what he wants him to do, and when the horse
has understood that it has a good rider.(pp.223-224)
Chapter 9, “What Is The
State and Who Are Its Citizens?” includes documents that serve to redefine
politics, as a “total way of life” and by extension also redefine the state and
citizenship. “The state was merely an agent of the race, explains Professor Mosse in his introductory remarks to this chapter, “and
thus the Nazi world view, which was based upon race, would determine the
actions of the state.”
Law had one purpose only: to help cement together
the community of the people as a Volk. It was the leader who in his
person united state and the Volk: he was the living embodiment of the ideology
and, through the state, the executor of actions necessary to safeguard the
innermost purpose of the race. He was, therefore, both lawmaker and judge. As
in all areas of culture, law and justice, state and citizenship, were subjected
to a body of thought which desired a total unity.(p.319)
The
rejection of government “by law and not by men” and with it the repudiation of
representative government did indeed put the old legal forms into a new
context. For Hitler, who prided himself upon having seized power legally, kept
most of the old framework intact: the system of courts and judicial officials
which he had inherited from the hated Republic. But he changed its spirit by
changing the theory of law. . . . The people kept the “external” legal system
to which they were accustomed, but in reality they lived under a system of law
which was an instrument of power in the hands of the Nazi leadership.(p.320)
. . .
Civil
rights, by definition, were restricted by the interests of the community of the
Volk, and were not ideals protected either by the law or by the state. . . .
This redefinition of civil liberties pervades all the Nazi culture, and can be
seen in action, for example, where academic freedom was concerned. . . .(p.321)
The
state was merely the “external” instrument of the Volk: the law and judicial
administration must be swallowed up by the encompassing world view. The outward
forms were kept, for Hitler conceived of his Reich as a “revolution of the
spirit.” But his kind of revolution did change the German reality, largely
through the distinction between form
and substance which runs
through these documents and many others in this book. .(p.322)
Carl Schmitt (b.1888) was a legal theoretician and
taught law first at Greifswald University (1921), then at Bonn (1922-1933), and
ended up at Köln and Berlin (1933-1945). Professor Mosse
reproduces an except for Schmitt’s book, State,
Movement, Volk (1933) in which he explains the important role asserted by
the “new context” of Nazi power on the interpretation of civil law.
In view of the fundamental importance of the idea
of leadership, it is necessary to understand clearly, and on a theoretical
basis, the central concept of the National Socialist state law, the concept of
leadership, and never to lose sight of its specific uniqueness. In order to
understand the concept in its fullest importance and to defend it against
falsifications and obfuscations, it is first and foremost necessary to confront
it with several other, seemingly closely related concepts. . . .
It is well known that a consistent liberal democracy looks for its ideal
in political “leaderlessness.” It has not yet dawned
upon the consciousness of most German jurists that for more than a century a
whole system of specific conceptual formulations has been at work to eliminate
the idea of leadership and that the levers of these concepts have been applied
precisely at points where they perforce were politically most destructive, and
even annihilating.
Under
the pretext of building legal concepts, constitutional thinking, dominated by
its fundamental principle of security, calculability, and measurability,
changed all ideas, concepts, and institutions to abstractions for which norms
had been established beforehand. It is maintained, for example, that every
duty, if it is to be a lawful obligation and judicially relevant, should have a
basis that is normatively measurable and, consequently, its content should be
subject to judicial examination. In this simple manner a type of duty
inaccessible to individualistic-liberal legal philosophy is eliminated for
jurisprudence, and the monopoly of jurisprudence as such creates a definite
political world view (which is by no means of specifically legal or scientific
character). The vitally necessary duties of allegiance in a leadership state
–for example, the duties of obedience or the part of civil servants and racial
comrades, which are legal duties in the fullest sense – are thus converted into
“merely moral” or “merely political” matters and thereby stripped of their
legal core. . . . This line of though celebrated its triumph in
the Leipzig lawsuit brought by the ousted Prussian government of the Weimar
system against the German Reich [on July 20, 1932]. The allegiance of the
various states (Länder) to the Reich is
obviously a legal duty of political content, yet the essence was destroyed by
this separation of law form politics, so that an especially typical
representative of the Weimar system could ironically refer to it as
“sentimentality.” From this point of view, the placing of the National
Socialists and the Communists on the same political footing was “law” as
differentiated from “politics”. On the other hand, to distinguish between the
Communist organization (obviously a deadly enemy of the German state) and a
German national movement was regarded as an offensive against “equality before
the law,” and as “political” rather than “legal” evaluation. Here the hostility
to the state that is at the core of the liberal antithesis of law and politics
became manifest. . . .
Our
concept is neither capable of nor does it need any mediating image or
representative comparison. It stems neither form baroque
allegories and representations nor from a Cartesian idée générale. It is a concept of immediate actuality and
real presence. For that reason it demands, as a positive requirement, an
unconditional similarity of racial stock between leader and followers The continuous and truthful contact between leader and
followers and their reciprocal loyalty rests upon the racial similarity. Only
this similarity of racial stock can prevent the leader’s power from becoming
tyranny and despotism: only this makes it essentially different form the
domination of an alien-structured will, no matter how intelligent and
well-intentioned it may be.
. . .
Without the principle of the similarity of kind the
National Socialist state could not exist, and its jurisprudence would be
unthinkable. It would at once be handed back with all its institutions to its
liberal and Marxist enemies, who now either criticize with a show of
superiority or offer obsequious assimilations.
It is
especially necessary for the scientific jurists of the new German law to become
fully conscious of the force with which this concept of similarity of racial
stock penetrates all systematic judicial considerations. The idea that a judge
is normatively bound to a law has today become theoretically and practically
untenable in many fields of practical jurisprudence; No law can any longer
provide the calculability and security which, according to constitutional
thinking, belongs to the definition of law. Security and calculability do not
lie in normativeness but in the situation that is
postulated as “normal.”(pp.324-326)
In his general introduction to this collection of German
Fascist documents, Professor Mosse warns that
although the historical event of Nazism is past, many of the cultural
attributes of this ideology remain with us, and could possibly be mobilized
once again in capitalist society, and with devastating results. He further suggests
that there may be important lessons embedded in these documents, not the least
of which was the non-violent nature of the Nazi takeover. Many people in Germany
were brought into the fold of the Fascist "spiritual revolution" almost without recognizing it, before it was
too late to prevent it.
Hitler’s world has gone
forever. But many of the basic attitudes and prejudices which went into his
world view are still with us, waiting to be actualized ,
to be directed into a new mass consciousness. The documents which follow may
seem to the reader, thirty years late, to be so outrageous as to verge on the
comical! Yet we must remember that at one point in history a regime did take
these ideas seriously and so did millions who lived under it. Nazism was
overthrown by a foreign war, not by internal revolution, and a large resistance
to Nazism grew up only as the war was being lost. This is partly explained by
Hitler’s successes: both in foreign policy and internally. During the years
when these documents were written and their ideas put into practice,
unemployment had vanished (there were over 6 million unemployed in 1933), the
boundaries of Germany were being extended, and the humiliating Treaty of
Versailles was being liquidated. The world view was spread against the
background of considerable success.
Yet the
world view for which Hitler stood is in itself a part of this success. That
some of its basic attitudes are still with us should give pause for thought.
Perhaps far from being farfetched and almost comical, this ideology appeals to
a basic need for an organic community, for historical continuity, and for the
shelter of a firm and established morality. A revolution of the spirit is for
many men more tempting than one which brings about social or economic changes
and which might lead to chaos instead of cementing order. Nazism exemplifies
modern conservatism which is vulnerable to extreme views even if it rejects
them. It is unfashionable to speak of the lessons of history, but perhaps there
is a lesson for the present hidden among these documents of the past.(p.xli)
The 21 + items below reflect the many crises that we are
experiencing today and the dangers that these events present to us. Either
consciously or unconsciously we must adjust to these states of emergency and
allow the uncertainties to penetrate our souls. The alienation and exploitation
of late capitalist production is accompanied by myriad contradictions in our
daily lives, and how we respond to these contradictions will be decisive for
our future. The morbid policies that are pursued today by political leaders and
their mindless base speak to a moral bankruptcy that is thinly veiled by what
seems to be an entertaining delight in the suffering of others. Meanwhile, the
contradictions we are living become increasingly apparent and compel many of us
to new acts of solidarity.
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.
Asteroid the size of Great Pyramid of Giza to zip past Earth tomorrow
https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/asteroid-size-great-pyramid-giza-18672447
by Sophie Curtis
===========
b.
Merger Mania in the
Military Industry
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/07/21/merger-mania-in-the-military-industry/
by William D. Hartung
Lockheed Martin’s government contracts
rival the operating budget of the State Department, writes William D.
Hartung. And now it’s about to have company.
+
The
Military-Industrial Complex on Steroids
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51925.htm
by William D. Hartung
+
War Profiteers and
the Demise of the US Military-Industrial Complex
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51955.htm
by Dmitry Orlov
===========
c.
“Our Squad Is Big”: Reps. Ocasio-Cortez,
Omar, Tlaib
and Pressley Condemn Trump’s Racist Attack
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/16/trump_racist_attacks_congresswomen_of_color
with Amy Goodman
+
'Send Her Back':
The Battle That Will Define Us Forever
by Adam Serwer
+
The “Squad” Will
Need to Realize that You Can’t Defeat White Supremacy with White Supremacy
by Ajamu Baraka
+
Trump's Racist Rhetoric is Deliberate - Will it Lead Us to Fascism?
with Henry Giroux
+
History Holds the Antidote to Trump’s Fascist
Politics
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/history-holds-the-antidote-to-trumps-fascist-politics/
by Henry Giroux
+
Omar and Trump
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/22/omar-and-trump/
by Gary Leupp
===========
d.
Fear spreads on Mexican border with new US policy
+
“Never again means never again.”
From Palestine to the USA-Mexico border
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51940.htm
by Robert Fisk
+
Colonialism is What’s Wrong With
Puerto Rico
https://www.blackagendareport.com/colonialism-whats-wrong-puerto-rico
with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
===========
e.
What makes Iran
strong enough
to stand against a superpower like the USA?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51954.htm
by Elijah J. Magnier
+
Javad Zarif, Foreign Minister,
Iran
(BBC HARDtalk)
with Zeinab Badawi
+
Trump's Iran
Treaty Withdrawal and Sanctions Based on Lies, but War Could Be a Reality
with Khury Petersen-Smith
+
China fed up, goes after Iran sanctions
with Christy Ai
+
A US Led Naval Coalition In
The Persian Gulf
Will Raise The Threat Of
War
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51931.htm
by Seyed Mohammad Marandi
+
Saudi Arabia’s
leader must reset his relationship with the U.S.
as Iran tensions soar
(The Washington Post)
by David Ignatius
+
Schrodinger’s
Drone: US Commander says Americans ‘may have’ shot down another Iranian drone
https://www.rt.com/news/464894-us-shot-two-drones/
+
Brighter US-Iran Prospects
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/07/22/patrick-lawrence-brighter-us-iran-prospects/
by Patrick Lawrence
===========
f.
From: "World BEYOND War" <info@worldbeyondwar.org>
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2019
Subject: WBW News & Action: Really Good Lipstick
|
===========
g.
Opioid death rates soared in communities where pain pills
flowed
by Sari Horwitz , Steven Rich and Scott Higham
+
Drug Statistics – Worldometers
https://www.worldometers.info/drugs/
+
Cocaine, Heroin,
Cannabis, Ecstasy: How Big is the Global Drug Trade?
===========
h.
Michael Hudson:
Rescuing the Banks Instead of the Economy
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/10/michael-hudson-rescuing-banks-instead-economy.html
by Yves Smith
The Guns and Butter
podcast is produced by Bonnie Faulkner, Yarrow Mahko,
and Tony Rango. Visit them at gunsandbutter.org, e-mail them at faulkner@gunsandbutter.org. and follow them on Twitter at gandbradio.
+
Deutsche Bank's
radical restructuring rocks Frankfurt
+
Why Some Countries
Are Poor and Others Rich
===========
i.
Israeli rabbi
educators at military prep-academy
are caught on video congratulating Hitler
https://mondoweiss.net/2019/04/israeli-military-praising/
by Johnathan Ofir
+
2020 presidential candidates' views
on Israel
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51964.htm
+
Israel’s Indispensable Service to Oil
Thieves and Empire
https://www.blackagendareport.com/israels-indispensable-service-oil-thieves-and-empire
by Bruce Katz
+
Zionism and Nazism
cooperated
with George Galloway
+
Israel's Right
Wing Is Worse Than Europe’s
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51936.htm
by Zeev Sternhell
+
Israeli rampage of
destruction in Jerusalem village
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israeli-rampage-destruction-jerusalem-village
by Tamara Nassar
+
Syrian State Media
Report Israeli Attack on Tel Haraa in Southern Syria
by Eva J. Koulouriotis
+
Palestine in
Pictures: June 2019
https://electronicintifada.net/content/palestine-pictures-june-2019/27756
+
Ilhan Omar introduces resolution upholding right to
boycott
by Nora Barrows-Friedman
+
Israel’s
Involvement in Libya’s Civil War
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/07/13/israels-involvement-in-libyas-civil-war/
by Giorgio Cafiero
===========
j.
From:
RT in English
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2019
RT NEWSLETTER
(July 21, 2019)
https://subscribe.rt.com/preview/kx7ZHH
+
A Non-Hack That
Raised Hillary’s Hackles
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51960.htm
by Ray
McGovern
===========
k.
How Hitler Defied
the International Bankers
https://archive.org/stream/HowHitlerDefiedTheInternationalBankers/HowHitlerDefiedTheBankers_djvu.txt
+
Why fascism is so
tempting -- and how your data could power it
with Yuval Noah Harari
+
The ‘new right’ is
not a reaction to neoliberalism, but its offspring
by Lars Cornelissen
+
The American dark
money behind Europe’s far right
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/07/10/the-american-dark-money-behind-europes-far-right/
by Mary Fitzgerald
and Claire Provost
+
Why are people
across France demanding to know 'Where's Steve'?
https://www.thelocal.fr/20190722/why-is-all-of-france-asking-where-is-steve
===========
l.
Anti-Trump’ CNN Presstitute Defends Trump’s
Persecution Of Assange
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51948.htm
by Caitlin Johnstone
+
The US
Police-State Is Now Undeniable: The Assange Case —
Strategic Culture
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/07/20/us-police-state-now-undeniable-assange-case/
by Eric Zuesse
+
Target of a
Malware Attack
as Twitter Takes Down Assange
Support Group’s Account
by Elizabeth Vos
+
Strong support for
Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning
at Tolpuddle Martyrs
Festival
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/23/assa-j23.html
+
From:
Bernadette Evangelist [mailto:bernadette.evangelist@gmail.com]
Subject:
Thurs. July 25 Vigil to Fee Julian Assange &
Chelsea Manning
Thursday Vigil to Free Julian Assange
& Chelsea Manning
Thursday, July 25, 2019
The New York Times Building, 8th Avenue @ 40 Street, NYC
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning are
responsible for making us aware of the killing of innocent civilians,
including children and members of the press in Iraq by the United States.
The people who revealed the truth of the war crimes are in prison, while those
who committed the crimes, ordered the crimes, that
were carried out in our names and paid for with our tax dollars, walk
free. The NY Times and other corporate media have refused
to defend a free press, Julian Assange and Chelsea
Manning during their imprisonment and extradition efforts against Julian Assange to be tried in the US under the Espionage Act. Now,
after the UN special rapporteur on torture, Nils
Melzer, has concluded that Julian Assange’s treatment
during his imprisonment amounts to torture, The New York Times is
also guilty of silence as their fellow publisher and journalist is being
subjected to inhumane conditions for publishing the truth.
We return to The New York Times on Thursday, July 25, to warn The
New York Times that they are next, demand they defend and protect
Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Freedom of the
Press. Please join us.
Chuck, Bernadette, & Patricia
Please rsvp, share, and invite Facebook friends @ https://www.facebook.com/events/356282521732420/
===========
m.
From:
alan haber [mailto:megiddo@umich.edu]
Subject:
InternationalDay(s) of Peace... Join in helping plan
and promote.
Time for
co-creativity...The permit request is in. Now is the timer "Full
Spectrum Cooperation". ...Our answer to the Pentagone
2020 Vision which is “Full Spectrum Dominance"
************************************************************************
Leaflet draft 1. INTERNATIONAL DAY(s) OF PEACE
Saturday, September 21, and
Sunday, September 22, 2019
DOWNTOWN ANN ARBOR, Center
of the City Commons 300 Block, South Fifth Avenue
NOW organizing the
Production Team for the 2019 PEACE DAYs
WHO IS INTERESTED, WILLING
AND ABLE?
Seeking: speakers,
musicians, poets, dancers, singers, artists
Needing Helps:
staging
sound
food
recycling
toilets
games
fundraising
promotions
special for children
Festival of
Nations...gathering from all the places in the world from where people have
come to be in Ann Arbor
Questions to consider:
What would help make Peace in the world and
where you live?
What and who are the Powers and People Blocking
the Way?
What can I do?
INVITED: All Ann Arbor Area Organizations and Projects and People concerned with Peace are invited to be co-sponsors
and have a presentation table for your good works. Free and family
friendly
Respond: Megiddo Peace
Project: megiddo@umich.edu, 734 657 8083
+
From: "Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK" <info@codepink.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July
24, 2019
Subject: What’s the CIA doing in Iran?
|
|
|
Dear
francis, Tensions
are escalating again as we continue to watch the
fallout from the Trump administration’s manufactured crisis with Iran. Last
week Iran seized a British oil tanker — Britain had seized an Iranian ship at
the beginning of July. Now Iran says it has arrested 17 CIA-trained spies,
and some have been sentenced to death. To top it off, the Trump
administration announced that it is deploying 500 troops to Saudi Arabia, the
arch-rival of Iran. The
Iraq war was devastating. The idea of repeating this
colossal failure—on an even bigger scale, with zero justification and no plan
for what would come next—is terrifying. Here are a few actions you can
take:
Before
the theocratic government of Iran today, there was the brutal Shah who came
to power following the CIA overthrow of Iran’s then democratically elected,
pro-Western government. Under the Shah, a contract was signed with the
British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company giving Britain exclusive rights to the
country’s oil for the next 60 years. Public
ire over the giveaway of Iran’s biggest resource culminated with the 1951
election of Mohammad Mossadegh, who introduced a
bill — unanimously approved by Parliament — to nationalize the country’s oil.
Britain responded by appealing to the US and then in 1953, the CIA orchestrated
a coup, reinstating the Shah. Mossadegh’s
removal in 1953 ended up having a tragic impact on
US-Iranian relations and of course the Iranian people. The Shah gained even
more dictatorial powers and all secular parties and organizations that had
opposed the Shah were dismantled and banned, setting the stage for the 1979
Islamic Revolution. Since
1979, US policy towards Iran has largely been one of economic strangulation
through a variety of sanctions in an attempt to foment a counter-revolution.
It was only thanks to Obama getting the nuclear deal that the tide began to
turn, but then came Trump, who tore the deal to pieces. The
Trump administration’s campaign of “maximum pressure” only vindicates Iranian
hardliners who say “See, we told you that you should never have made a deal
with the US in the first place.” Those hardliners are becoming more powerful,
cracking down on dissent. So the Iranian people pay the price, both from
suffering under the sanctions and the conservative backlash. If
you haven’t picked it up yet, get Medea’s book Inside the Islamic Republic of
Iran to learn more and take action to stop a war with Iran by telling
Pelosi to make sure the No War with Iran amendment is included in the NDAA.
Remember to also ask your Senators to support Udall’s legislation, and take
action on social media. Let’s
stop the next war now!
|
|
|
|
|
===========
n.
Economic Update:
Rise and Fall of the USSR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y-TWFKw4tU
with Richard Wolff
+
Economic Update:
China's Economic Record and Strategy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI
with Richard Wolff
+
U.S. Economic
Warfare and Likely Foreign Defenses
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/22/u-s-economic-warfare-and-likely-foreign-defenses/
by Michael Hudson
+
Trump Is Back Under Bolton’s Thumb
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51957.htm
by Paul Crage
+
The World is Dedollarizing
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51934.htm
by Peter
Koenig
===========
o.
From: Mark Crispin
Miller
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Subject: [MCM] Why this great book, by Bobby
Kennedy, Jr., was blacked out by "our free press"
Not to hold you in suspense, they
blacked it out because of what it says about the CIA, which pulls their
strings—and which clearly engineered the murder of our president in
Dallas (among countless other murders).
Although Ed
Curtin's piece is over a year old, I'm sharing it today because that blackout was
so total that even I, who pay attention to these things, didn't know about
this excellent book until quite recently, when I discovered and devoured
it.
MCM
American Values:
Lessons I Learned from My Family
by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
A Review by Ed Curtin
(June 10, 2018)
When a book as fascinating, truthful,
beautifully written, and politically significant as American Values: Lessons I Learned
from My Family, written
by a very well-known author by the name of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and published
by a prominent publisher (HarperCollins), is boycotted by mainstream book
reviewers, you know it is an important book and has touched a nerve that the
corporate mainstream media wish to anesthetize by eschewal.
The Kennedy name attracts the
mainstream media only when they can sensationalize something “scandalous” –
preferably sexual or drug related – whether false or true, or something innocuous that can
lend credence to the myth that the Kennedys are lightweight, wealthy
celebrities descended from Irish mobsters. This has been going on since
the 1960s with the lies and cover-ups about the assassinations of President
Kennedy and his brother Robert, propaganda that continues to the present day,
always under the aegis of the CIA-created phrase “conspiracy theory.” A
thinking person might just get the idea that the media are in league with the
CIA to bury the Kennedys.
Such disinformation has been
promulgated by many sources, prominent among them from the start in the 1960s was the CIA’s Sam Halpern, a former Havana bureau chief for the New York Times, who was CIA Director Richard
Helms’s deputy (the key source for Seymour Hersh’s
Kennedy hatchet job, The Dark Side of Camelot), who began spreading lies about the Kennedys that have become ingrained
in the minds of leftists, liberals, centrists, and conservatives to this very
day. Fifty years later, after decades of reiteration by the CIA’s Wurlitzer
machine (the name given by the CIA’s Frank Wisner to the CIA’s penetration and
control of the mass media, Operation Mockingbird), Halpern’s
lies have taken on mythic proportions. Among them: that Joseph. P.
Kennedy, the patriarch, was a bootlegger and Nazi lover; that he was Mafia
connected and fixed the 1960 election with Chicago mobster Sam Giancana; and that JFK and RFK knew of and approved the CIA
plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Of course whenever a writer extolls the Kennedy name and legacy, he is expected to add
the caveat that the Kennedys, especially JFK and RFK, were no saints.
Lacking this special talent to determine sainthood or its lack, I will defer to
those who feel compelled to temper their praise with a guilty
commonplace. Let me say at the outset that I greatly admire President
John Kennedy and his brother, Robert, very courageous men who died in a war to
steer this country away from the nefarious path of war-making and deep-state
control that it has followed with a vengeance since their murders.
And I admire Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
for writing this compelling book that is a tour de force on many levels.
Part memoir, part family history, part astute political analysis, and
part-confessional, it is in turns delightful, sad, funny, fierce, and
frightening in its implications. From its opening sentence – “From my
youngest days I always had the feeling that we were all involved in some great
crusade, that the world was a battleground for good and evil, and that our
lives would be consumed in the conflict.” – to its
last – “‘Kennedys never give up, ’ she [Ethel Kennedy] chided us. ‘We
have to die with our boots on!’” – the book is imbued
with the spirit of the eloquent, romantic Irish-Catholic rebels whose fighting
spirit and jaunty demeanor the Kennedy family has exemplified. RFK, Jr.
tells his tales in words that honor that literary and spiritual tradition.
So what is it about this book that
has caused the mainstream press to avoid reviewing it?
Might it be the opening chapter
devoted to his portrait of his grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, who comes across
as a tender and doting grandpa, who created an idyllic world for his children
and grandchildren at “The Big House” on Cape Cod? We see Grandpa
Joe taking the whole brood of Kennedys, including his three famous political
sons, for a ride on his cabin cruiser, the Marlin, and JFK (Uncle Jack) singing “The
Wearing of the Green” and, together with his good friend, Dave Powers, teaching
the kids to whistle “The Boys of Wexford” (Wexford being the Kennedy’s
ancestral home), an Irish rebel tune all of whose words John Kennedy knew by
heart:
We are the boys of Wexford
Who fought with heart and hand
To burst in twain
The galling chain
And free our native land.
We see Joseph P. Kennedy sitting on
the great white porch, holding hands with his wife Rose Kennedy, as the kids
played touch football on the grass beyond. We read that “Grandpa wanted
his children’s minds unshackled by ideology” and that his “overarching purpose
was to engender in his children a social conscience” and use their money and
advantages to make America and the world a better place. We learn,
according to Joe’s son, Senator Robert Kennedy, that he loved all of them
deeply, “not love as it is described with such facility in popular magazines,
but the kind of love that is affection and respect, order, encouragement and support.” We hear him
staunchly defended from the political criticisms that he was a ruthless,
uncaring, and political nut-case who would do anything to advance his political
and business careers. In short, he is presented very differently from the
popular understanding of him as a malign force and a ruthless bastard.
Portraying his grandfather as a good
and loving man may be one minor reason that Robert Jr.’s
book is being ignored.
No doubt it is not because of the
picture he paints of his paternal grandmother, Rose Kennedy, who comes across
similarly to her husband as a powerful presence and as a devoted mother and
grandmother who expected much from her children and grandchildren but gave much
in return. Robert Jr. writes that “Grandpa and Grandma were products of
an alienated Irish generation that kept itself intact through rigid tribalism
embodied in the rituals and mystical cosmologies of medieval Catholicism,” but
that both believed the Church should be a champion of the poor as Christ
taught. The glowing portrait of Grandmother Rose could not be the reason the
book has not been reviewed.
Nor can the chapter on Ethel
Kennedy’s family, the Skakels, be the reason.
It is a fascinating peek into certain aspects of Ethel’s character – the
daring, outrageous, fun-loving, and wild side – from her upbringing in a wild
and crazy family, together with the Kennedys one of the richest Catholic
families in the U.S. in days past. But there their similarities
end. The Skakels were conservative Republicans
in the oil, coal, and extraction business, who “reveled in immodest
consumption,” were huge into guns and “more primitive weaponry like bows,
knives, throwing spears and harpoons,” and “pretty much captured shot, stabbed,
hooked, or speared anything that moved, including each other.” The Skakel men worked as informers for the CIA wherever their
businesses took them around the world and they worked very hard to sabotage
JFK’s run for the presidency. Ethel’s brother George was a creepy and crazy
wild man. Once Ethel met RFK, she switched political sides for good, embracing
the Kennedy’s liberal Democratic ethos.
A vignette of Lemoyne Billings, JFK’s
dear friend, who after RFK’s assassination took Robert Jr. under his wing,
can’t be the reason. It too is a loving portrait of the man RFK Jr. says
was “perhaps the most important influence in my life” and also the most
fun. In his turn Billings said that JFK was the most fun person he had
ever met. They referred to each other as Johnny and Billy and both were
expelled from Choate for hijinks. But stories
about Lem, JFK, and RFK Jr. would attract, not repel,
the mainstream press’s book reviewers.
Clearly the chapter about Robert Jr.’s early bad behavior, his drug use, and his conflicted
relationship with his mother would be fuel for the Kennedy haters. “I
seem to have been at odds with my mother since birth,” he writes. “My
mere presence seemed to agitate her.” Mother and son were at war for
decades, and his father’s murder sent him on a long downward spiral into
self-medicating that inflamed their relationship. Moving from school to
school and keeping away from home as much as possible, his “homecomings were
like the arrival of a squall. With me around to provoke her, my mother
didn’t stay angry very long – she went straight to rage.” His victory
over drugs through Twelve Step meetings and his reconciliation with his mother
are also the stuff that the mainstream press revels in, yet they ignore the
book.
The parts about his relationship with
his father, his father’s short but electrifying presidential campaign in 1968,
his death, and funeral are deeply moving and evocative. Deep sadness and
lost hope accompanies the reader as one revisits RFK’s funeral and the
tear-filled eulogy given by his brother Ted, then the long slow train ride
bearing the body from New York to Washington, D.C. as massive crowds,
lined the tracks, weeping and waving farewell. And the writer, now
a 64-year-old-man, but then a 14- year-old-boy, named after his look-alike
father, the father who supported and encouraged him despite his difficulties in
school, the father who took the son on all kinds of outdoor adventures –
sailing, white water canoeing, mountain climbing – always reminding him to
“always do what you are afraid to do” and which the son understood to be “boot
camp for the ultimate virtue – moral courage. Despite his high regard for
physical bravery, my father told us that moral courage is the rarer and more
valuable commodity.” Such compelling, heartfelt writing, with not a word
about who might have killed his father, would be another reason why the
mainstream press would review this book.
It is the heart of this book that has
the reviewers avoiding it like the plague, perhaps a plague introduced by a
little mockingbird.
American Values revolves around the long war between
the Kennedys and the CIA that resulted in the deaths of JFK and RFK. All
the other chapters, while very interesting personal and family history, pale in
importance.
No member of the Kennedy family since
JFK or RFK has dared to say what RFK, Jr. does in this book. He indicts
the CIA.
While some news outlets have
mentioned the book in passing because of its assertion that what has been known
for a long time to historically aware people – that RFK immediately suspected
that the CIA was involved in the assassination of JFK – Robert Jr.’s writing on the war between the CIA and his Uncle Jack
and father is so true and so carefully based on the best scholarship and family
records that the picture he paints fiercely indicts the CIA in multiple ways
while also indicting the mass media that have been its mouthpieces.
These sections of the book are masterful lessons in understanding the history
and machinations of “The Agency” that the superb writer and researcher,
Douglass Valentine, calls “organized crime” – the CIA. A careful reading
of RFK Jr.’s critical history leads to the conclusion
that the CIA and the Mafia are not two separate murderer’s rows, but one
organization that has corrupted the country at the deepest levels and is, as
Kennedy quotes his father Robert – “a dark force infiltrating American politics
and business, unseen by the public, and out of reach of democracy and the
justice system” – posing “a greater threat to our country than any foreign
enemy.” The CIA’s covert operations branch has grown so powerful that it
feels free to murder its opponents at home and abroad and make sure “splendid
little wars” are continually waged around the globe for the interests of its
patrons. Robert Jr. says, “A permanent state of war abroad and a national
security surveillance state at home are in the institutional self-interest of
the CIA’s clandestine services.”
No Kennedy has dared speak like this
since Senator Robert Kennedy last did so – but privately – and paid the price.
His son tells us:
“Days before his murder, as my father pulled ahead in the California polls, he began considering how he would govern the
country. According to his aide Fred Dutton, his concerns often revolved
around the very question that his brother asked at the outset of his
presidency, ‘What are we going to do about the CIA?’ Days before the
California primary, seated next to journalist Pete Hamill
on his campaign plane, my father mused aloud about his options. ‘I have to
decide whether to eliminate the operations arm of the Agency or what the hell
to do with it,’ he told Hamill. ‘We can’t have
those cowboys wandering around and shooting people and doing all those
unauthorized things.’”
Then he was shot dead.
For whatever their reasons, for fifty
plus years the Kennedy family has kept silent on these matters. Now
Senator Robert Kennedy’s namesake has picked up his father’s mantle and dared
to tell truths that take courage to utter. By excoriating the secret
forces that seized power, first with the murder of his Uncle Jack when he was a
child, and then his father, he has exhibited great moral courage and made great
enemies who wish to ignore his words as if they were never uttered. But
they have. They sit between the covers of this outstanding and important
book, a book written with wit and eloquence, a book that should be read by any
American who wants to know what has happened to their country.
There is a telling anecdote that took
place in the years following JFK’s assassination when RFK was haunted by his
death. It says so much about Senator Kennedy and now his son, a son who
in many ways for many wandering years became a prodigal son lost in grief and
drugs only to return home to find his voice and tell the truth for his father
and his family. He writes,
“One day he [RFK] came into my
bedroom and handed me a hardcover copy of Camus’s The Plague. ‘I want you to read this,’ he said
with particular urgency. It was the story of a doctor trapped in a
quarantined North African city while a raging epidemic devastates its
citizenry; the physician’s small acts of service, while ineffective against the
larger tragedy, give meaning to his own life, and, somehow, to the larger
universe. I spent a lot of time thinking about that book over the years, and
why my father gave it to me. I believe it was the key to a door that he
himself was then unlocking….It is neither our position nor our circumstances
that define us… but our response to those circumstances; when destiny crushes
us, small heroic gestures of courage and service can bring peace and
fulfillment. In applying our shoulder to the stone, we give order to a
chaotic universe. Of the many wonderful things my father left me, this
philosophical truth was perhaps the most useful. In many ways, it has
defined my life.”
By writing American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family, Robert F. Kennedy,
Jr. has named the plague and entered the fight. His father would be very
proud of him. He has defined himself.
+
The Nationwide
Scandal Hiding in Plain Sight
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-nationwide-crisis-hiding-in-plain-sight/
by Robert Scheer
===========
p.
Why Boris Johnson
is Even More Dangerous Than Trump
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/23/why-boris-johnson-is-even-more-dangerous-than-trump/
by Patrick Cockburn
+
The Putin Interviews :
Vladimir Putin & Oliver Stone Discuss NATO
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51959.htm
by Oliver
Stone
Vladimir Putin answered questions from
American film director, screenwriter and producer Oliver Stone. The interview
was recorded on June 19, 2019 in the Kremlin.
===========
q.
Sex-Pol: Essays, 1929-1934 - Wilhelm Reich
https://books.google.com/books/about/Sex_Pol.html?id=N7pvDwAAQBAJ
edited by Lee Baxandall
+
"How Could
They?" Why Some Americans Were Drawn to the Communist Party in the 1940s
by Victor Grossman
+
Five Myths of
American Exceptionalism Killing the Left
(Part 1)
https://www.blackagendareport.com/five-myths-american-exceptionalism-killing-left-part-1
by Danny Haiphong
+
The American West
as Judeo-Christian Artifact
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/23/the-american-west-as-judeo-christian-artifact/
by Christopher Ketcham
+
The Honey Trap On E 71St
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51961.htm
by Eric Margolis
===========
r.
Everything Wrong
With MSNBC In One Clip (Live From Chicago)
with Jimmy Dore
+
The Lie
Factory—CNN—Is Collapsing. Thank God
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51942.htm
by Paul Craig
Roberts
===========
s.
Artificial
Intelligence: it will kill us
with Jay Tuck
===========
t.
From: Mark Crispin
Miller
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2019
Subject: [MCM] Operation Gladio is still in
play: Italy seizes weapons from neo-Nazis
That's Operation Gladio, a vast and lethal covert
operation mounted by the CIA - and yet the Western press (of course) is linking
it to Russia.
Those who want to know more about Operation Gladio—the
mother of all false-flag operations - should read Paul Williams' excellent book
of that same title:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/242908/operation-gladio-by-paul-l-williams/9781616149741
MCM
Italy seizes weapons from neo-Nazis...Western media
immediately fabricates a link to Russia
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/464314-italy-neo-nazis-media-ukraine/
by Danielle Ryan
Western media continued its tradition of
whitewashing far-right extremism in Ukraine this week, reporting that Italian
police busted a neo-Nazi gang ‘linked’ to Russia – but this alleged link was
dreamed up out of thin air.
Italian
police said on Monday that they had seized a cache of weapons and Nazi
memorabilia belonging to a neo-Nazi group operating in northern Italy. The bust
was part of a year-long investigation into extremists who had fought “against the separatists” in the Donbass
region of Ukraine.
Those
who read the news via major outlets like the BBC, CNN, The
Guardian, Politico, ABC News, Sky News, CBS and Reuters learned a totally
different version of events, however.
===========
u.
From: "ZCommunications"
<michael.albert@zmag.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Subject: Message from Michael Albert
|
===========
v.
From:
Mark
Crispin Miller
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Subject: [MCM] No, Virginia, we didn't go to the moon.
Once upon a time,
when speaking on the subject of "conspiracy theory," I would make the
point that some conspiracy theories are loony
fantasies—and used, as an example, the claim that the moon landing was a hoax.
After one such talk, someone who'd actually looked
into it came up and suggested that I do the same—which, of course, I should
have done before popping off about the subject. So I did; and found, to my
embarrassment, that I was wrong, and those "conspiracy theorists"
absolutely right.
That that marvelous achievement—which "our free
press" has been screamingly applauding on its (alleged) 50th
anniversary—was (and still is) scientifically IMPOSSIBLE has been demonstrated
indisputably by many independent minds out there, their solid work reflexively
blacked out, deplored and/or derided by the same minions of the state who push
the many other Big Lies that have kept so many of us in the dark.
If you haven't looked into it, I suggest Dave
McGowan's incisive (and hilarious) Wagging the Moondoggie,
and Massimo Mazzucco's excellent documentary American
Moon, as well as the other works linked here.
MCM
Dave McGowan's Wagging the Moondoggie:
http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/moondoggie/
American Moon:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7794734/
Other
relevant writings/videos:
https://www.aulis.com/investigation.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xciCJfbTvE4
https://listverse.com/2012/12/28/10-reasons-the-moon-landings-could-be-a-hoax/
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/ Document:Wagging_the_Moondoggie#The_.27laser-ranging_experiment.27