CORPORATE CRIMINALITY

RUSSELL BENTLEY—There are laws in Europe today that imprison people for questioning the Holocaust and the genocide of  6 million Jews under the German nazis, but there is no law there against disputing or disparaging the sacrifice of 27 million Soviet citizens. US and British hypocrites and revisionists make much of the Non-Aggression Pact signed between Molotov and Ribbentrop at the end of August 1939, conveniently forgetting the capitulation to nazi aggression in the Munich Pact peace treaty signed by Britain, France and Germany almost a full year earlier in September 1938. And it should never be forgotten that it was US and UK oligarchs, along with German corporate leaders, who gave the financial and political backing that brought Hitler and the nazis to power in the first place, beginning in the early 1930’s.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Mass media punditry is divided on where to assign the blame for the plummet in public opinion of their work, with some blaming it on Russia and others blaming it on Donald Trump. Others, like a recent Forbes article titled “Restoring Public Trust In Technology And Media Is Infrastructure Investment” blame it on the internet. Still others, like a Washington Post article earlier this month titled “Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values” blame it on the people themselves.

The one thing they all seem to agree on is that it’s definitely not because the billionaire-controlled media are propaganda outlets which manipulate us constantly in conjunction with sociopathic government agencies to protect the oligarchic, imperialist status quo upon which the members of the billionaire class have built their respective kingdoms. It cannot possibly be because people sense that they are being lied to and are fed up with it.

TONY SUTTON–I’m walking to the shopping mall. Halfway along the route, detouring down a narrow path, I spot an elderly woman walking, head down, towards me. A few metres before we meet, she looks up, sees me, and dashes to one side, her back against the fence. Stunned by her reaction, I spin around. Zombie attack? Big dog with dripping fangs? Nope. Then I realise, it’s me she’s scared of. Well, perhaps not me  – just my breath! . . .

In this episode, Chris Hedges focuses on the harsh criticism Michael Moore’s new film Planet of the Humans has received in many quarters, including some with solid ecological qualifications in knowledge and activism. Guest is the film’s director, Jeff Gibbs.  The film is an indictment of a corporate-friendly environmentalist bureaucracy apparently incapable or unwilling of understanding the nature of corporate power. . 

ANDRE VLTCHEK—Huge funds are now being allocated for the mortal propaganda onslaught, originating predominantly in both London and Washington. Millions of pounds and dollars have been allocated and spent, officially and openly, in order to ‘counter’ the voices of Russian, Chinese, Arab, Iranian and Latin American people; voices that are finally reaching ‘the Others’ – the desolate inhabitants of the ‘global south’, the dwellers of the colonies and neo-colonies; the modern-day slaves living in the ‘client’ states.