LORENZO—Noam Chomsky is, as anyone reading this knows, a linguist, MIT professor, and the English-speaking world’s foremost radical dissident intellectual. Chomsky’s work in this latter capacity is so well-documented that it’s not necessary to recapitulate too much—however, a few choice high notes include decades of criticism of US foreign policy, some decent commentary on then-President-elect Barack Obama at a time nearly all of the Western commentariat had turned into a deranged Borg-like collective, and producing the second comprehensive study of corporate constraints on the media along with Edward Herman. As co-author of Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky provided a model illuminating the “political economy of the mass media,” and from this research came a great deal of very useful and incisive media criticism on issues like how concision and sound-bites help the status quo and why a journalist can be both genuine and compromised. Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model purports to show how five corporate filters enable the mass media’s owners to ensure that their interests are expressed. In this way, according to the two, democracies manufacture consent through seamlessly delivered propaganda, the way totalitarian societies do so by coercion and force.
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“THE WORLD CANNOT BREATHE!” SQUASHED BY THE U.S. – A COUNTRY BUILT ON GENOCIDE AND SLAVERY
13 minutes readANDRE VLTCHEK—The endemic, institutionalized brutality at home eventually spilled over to all parts of the planet. Now, for many decades, the United Stated has treated the entire world as full of its personal multitude of slaves. What does it offer to all of us: constant wars, occupations, punitive expeditions, coups, regular assassinations of progressive leaders, as well as thorough corporate plunder. Hundreds of millions of people have been sacrificed on the grotesque U.S. altar of “freedom” and “democracy”.
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JOE GIAMBRONE—Unfortunately for us, his predecessors had already empowered the state with police militarization and the 2012 repeal of Posse Comitatus, by none other than Barack Obama. The US empire has long considered the USA a potential “battle space” to be controlled by the military, should the servant class attempt to disrupt the status quo. This past weekend it finally happened.
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ANDRE VLTCHEK—In some countries, which are seen as close allies of the West, like Indonesia and India, even speaking about independence can lead people to imprisonment, torture, rape, disappearance, and death. In Indian-administered Kashmir and Indonesian “administered” West Papua, hundreds of thousands have already vanished. In such places, just waving a flag of independence, can abruptly end human life. But in the Western lexicon, both Indonesia and India are defined as “democracies”, and their political systems are hardly ever attacked or criticized. No sanctions are imposed due to “human rights violations”.
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The pandemic revives fears the U.S. is developing ‘ethnic bioweapons’ against Russia
34 minutes readMAX PARRY—Israel has made a habit of shielding itself behind America’s adversaries when entangled in political scandal, notably in the case of the recently exonerated former National Security Advisor in the Trump transition team, Michael Flynn, who pled guilty to making false statements to the FBI regarding meetings with a Russian ambassador. Flynn had actually been acting at the behest of Israel trying to persuade member states of the UN Security Council, including Russia, to block a draft resolution on illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory — but that ‘collusion’ was never spoken of by the media for obvious reasons. Now that charges have been dropped against General Flynn, it’s fair to say that Russiagate has been a cover for Israel-gate since the beginning, where the influence of Likudniks over the Trump administration has been downplayed and supplanted with the Kremlin.