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vrijdag 23 april 2021

What If EVERYONE Threw Shoes At Bush?


What If EVERYONE Threw Shoes At Bush? Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

The US didn’t re-enter Iraq in 2014 to stop ISIS, they re-entered Iraq in 2014 to stop Soleimani from stopping ISIS.

This is important to note right now, because that’s the main argument we’re hearing against withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan: “Oh the terrorists will take over and we’ll just have to go back like in 2014.” They didn’t have to go back in 2014; the people who actually live in the Middle East could’ve resolved it on their own if there wasn’t a world-dominating empire trying to control everything.

The “war on terror” has never been about defeating violent extremist factions, it’s been about keeping the nations in the region from relying on Iran to defeat them, and about justifying endless military expansionism in a key geostrategic part of the world. It’s been about ensuring the US power alliance, not Iran, is the dominant military force in the Middle East.

Soleimani was the strongest argument that the “war on terror” isn’t actually necessary. And that’s essentially why he’s dead now.

I’m thinking of writing a horror story about a dystopian world where weapons manufacturers are allowed to pay large amounts of money to agencies called “think tanks” which circulate narratives designed to convince government policymakers to start wars that profit the arms industry.

It’d be just like those other dystopian horror novels about giant corporations butchering the poor for money, except instead of selling human flesh they’re selling the weapons used to kill them.

What do you think? Too out there and unbelievable?

In tyrannical regimes they don’t let political dissidents speak. In free democracies they just refuse dissidents any influential platforms and use algorithms to keep revolutionary ideas from being heard by a significant number of people.

The US has killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century and its Secretary of State spends all day tweeting about how other countries are human rights abusers.

No other government has done this. No other government has killed millions and displaced tens of millions since the turn of this century. Yet when you say this, you get accused of “whataboutism”. No, idiot, distracting from the world’s very worst offender is the “whataboutism”.

Even if all US narratives about China were 100 percent true (and they aren’t), Washington would still be a far, far worse human rights offender than Beijing and in no position to criticize human rights abuses at all.

Every time George W Bush makes news headlines and it’s not because of a war crimes tribunal, it’s a reminder that laws are for the little people.

What if EVERYONE threw their shoes at George W Bush?

In a remotely sane world creatures like John Bolton would not be given mainstream platforms for decades on end, they would be driven out of every town they enter until they’re forced to crawl into a cave eating bats in the darkness for the rest of their miserable lives.

The simple fact that this reptile keeps getting platformed is by itself complete evidence that our world is dominated by psychopaths. You never see anti-imperialists on the mainstream media, but John fucking Bolton gets the spotlight whenever he wants it. That’s how bat shit crazy our world is. The status quo has no legitimate claim on anything ever.

The rising threat of nuclear war is the most urgent matter in the world and it’s insane that we’re not talking about it all the time.

The day the world ends will start like any other. People will go to work, argue with strangers online. No one will expect it. Then there will be a miscommunication, misfire, miscalculation or malfunction which leads to a nuke being deployed among heightening cold war tensions.

The end of the world won’t be the result of some epic Hollywood struggle between good guys and bad guys. It will be the result of garden variety human stupidity. Someone being a little careless amid the day-to-day management of the US empire’s struggle to maintain global hegemony.

It will be a stupid mistake, just like all the other stupid mistakes humans have made since we first stood upright. Only difference is we won’t be around anymore to recognize and appreciate how stupid this particular mistake was, and to learn from it, and to grow.

There are mountains of evidence that the US and its allies bombed Syria on false grounds in 2018, and yet people who point this out get called “Assadists” and “atrocity deniers”. For scrutinizing the most powerful and destructive government on earth using evidence and journalism.

The entire argument that the OPCW scandal is fake boils down to a bizarre conspiracy theory that OPCW investigators collaborated with Damascus and Moscow to spin Douma as a false flag for some reason. This would’ve been laughed out of the room if it weren’t backed by the empire.

It’s freakish that you get accused of war crimes denial when actually trying to get a war crime solved. The facts are in, the Douma incident needs to be ripped wide open, and Aaron Maté needs to be showered with awards for his excellent work exposing this scandal. It’s crazy that it’s 2021 and people are still acting like you’re a treasonous freak if you believe the US power alliance might lie and manipulate about a government it openly wants to topple, whose country it has been bombing and occupying, right next door to Iraq.

It will never stop fascinating me how full online discussion forums are of accounts who spend their time supporting the foreign policy objectives of the most powerful and destructive government on earth while pretending they’re brave, up-punching rebels.

Someone could publish all the darkest secrets of the western empire online and within hours the imperial narrative managers would have everyone convinced that the leaks don’t matter because the person who published it knows somebody who knows somebody who is anti-semitic.

White supremacism is a lot easier to see when you zoom the camera all the way out and look objectively at the way resources, bombs, and human labor are moving on the world stage as a whole.

The majority of people get that the news is at least somewhat bullshit; the problem is there’s no consensus on why. Is it incompetence? A liberal conspiracy? The plutocratic class protecting its interests (ding ding)? Our job is to clarify both that the MSM lies to us, and why.

If people understand that plutocratic and imperialist interests are being protected by the billionaire media, they know what lies to watch out for. Otherwise all the confusing white noise leaves them screaming at the TV about trans people trying to destroy society or whatever. There’s so much bullshit swirling around that it’s hard to know which way is up. The key is to help people figure out what way’s up, using simple pointers, so they can orient themselves to truth and reality.

Watch this video if you’re unsure why I focus on US politics over Australian politics:

People are so kind to me. I’m basically a digital street busker, relying entirely on reader donations, and I somehow wound up on the kindest, most generous online street corner where people give me money to do what I love full time. I’m really lucky, and I’m very, very grateful.

The internet is a consciousness-expanding substance and our rulers are working to censor it for the same reason they censored psychedelics: dysfunction and awareness cannot coexist.

It’s also the same reason abusers work to isolate their victims and cult leaders seek to isolate their members: outside eyes bringing consciousness to their abusive dynamics makes the abuse much harder to perpetuate.

It’s also the same reason the ego tries to convince us not to look too hard at its nature. At every level of the human fractal it’s a struggle between consciousness and unconsciousness, and between those forces who would benefit from each.

People fail to live their lives in awe, wonder, delight and deep peace for the same reason people keep consenting to abusive governments: our lives are ruled by narrative. And the solution to both is the same: intense curiosity about what’s going on underneath the narratives.

Governments are made up and their economies are collective hallucinations and their money is imaginary and our society is pure narrative construct and the individual self is an illusion.

Have a nice day.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/04/23/what-if-everyone-threw-shoes-at-bush-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/ 



Come to Where the Intelligence is Questioned

 

When the Intelligence is Questionable, Come to Where the Intelligence is Questioned

Bewaren
 

Corporate media unquestioningly regurgitates dubious intelligence that promotes U.S. interests abroad. Consortium News has a track record of questioning the “official story.”

(VCU Library/Flickr)

As Caitlin Johnstone points out in a column on Tuesday, the Central Intelligence Agency’s infiltration of the U.S. corporate media that began in the 1950s has gotten so bad, that the CIA practically owns the media today. What is called national security reporting in the U.S. essentially consists of reporters ludicrously believing whatever they are told by U.S. intelligence officials, who are schooled in the dark arts of deception.   

Reporters’ repeated faith in “high” and “low confidence” whispers, delivered with zero proof, makes a mockery of even the idea of adversarial journalism.  In their book, “confirming” other media’s reporting doesn’t mean obtaining evidence, but soliciting the same whispers.  The unnamed “senior officials” know what suckers for scoops they are, even for scoops that all too often turn out to be false. But the damage is done. 

Consortium News has not been playing that game for a quarter of a century now. Instead it was among the first media outlets to question the bogus intelligence-driven stories of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; the 2014 coup in Ukraine and the 2016 Russiagate fiasco — which refuses to go away.  

Well, with the generous support of our readers, we are refusing to go away too.  

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https://consortiumnews.com/2021/04/21/when-the-intelligence-is-questionable-come-to-where-the-intelligence-is-questioned/




De Sigrid Kaag Propaganda

 


Jort Kelder kritisch over nu al beroemde Sigrid Kaag-foto

Jort Kelder zette gisteren in Op1 zijn vraagtekens bij de overwinningsfoto van D66-leider Sigrid Kaag die ’s ochtends op de voorpagina prijkte van maar liefst zes ochtendkranten.

19 maart 2021, 11:05

Jort Kelder en Sigrid Kaag

© Op1

De foto waarop Sigrid dansend op tafel staat werd verspreid door het ANP, maar bleek een campagnefoto en geen journalistieke foto. De foto werd gemaakt door een fotograaf die was ingehuurd door D66. “We gaan even naar het moment van D66. Hij is al wereldberoemd in Nederland: dé foto op tafel”, aldus Jort Kelder gisteren in Op1.

Campagnefoto

Jort legde zijn kijkers uit dat het eigenlijk een campagnefoto is. “Het is een foto van Martijn Beekman. Ik denk dat als je de verkiezingen van 2021 zou moeten samenvatten, dit toch het beeld is. Er is heel veel aandacht voor geweest en hij heeft in alle kranten gestaan, maar hoe journalistiek is die foto?”

Hij vervolgde: “Het is een fotograaf die is betaald door D66 en D66 heeft dit aan het ANP gegeven. Ze hebben dus zelf de selectie gemaakt van de foto, van: dit kan naar buiten. Daarom is de wereldpers nu op de hoogte van die foto. Wat vinden wij daarvan, journalist Joustra?”

Relativeren

Elsevier-baas Arendo Joustra daarop: “Dit hebben ze dus gewoon verspreid?”

Jort: “Het is wel een spontaan moment volgens mij, maar het is een ingehuurde fotograaf.”

Arendo: “De overwinning van D66 moeten we sowieso wel een beetje relativeren. Het is niet het grote record van ’94. Vier zeteltjes erbij. Dat is toch niet echt een heel grote overwinning?”

Volkskrant boos

De Volkskrant is er niet blij mee dat ANP deze foto aanvankelijk verspreidde, zónder te vermelden dat D66 de afzender was. “Ik vind dit niet kunnen”, zegt Veronique Smedts, chef foto van de Volkskrant, in de krant zelf. “Juist nu het in coronatijd voor fotografen steeds lastiger is om ergens binnen te komen, moet duidelijk zijn hoe een foto tot stand komt.”

Guus Valk, chef politiek van NRC, reageerde gisteren milder in De Vooravond. “Zo’n foto lijkt me onvermijdelijk. Het is wel een soort van iconisch beeld. Het was ook een beeldarme avond natuurlijk, want er gebeurde weinig en er was weinig te fotograferen. Martijn Beekman heeft dit heel mooi gevangen.”

Verbazing

Er is ook verbazing over hoe Sigrid überhaupt losging op tafel. “Ik was zelf ook wel wat verbaasd dat de stilistische Sigrid Kaag opeens op tafel stond te dansen”, aldus presentator Renze Klamer.

Politiek deskundige Thomas Erdbrink: “Ze heeft natuurlijk een heel groot gedeelte van haar leven in Libanon gewoond. Als je daar feestviert dan dans je op de tafel. Daar moest ik meteen aan denken.”

Pr-fabriek

Media-ondernemer Sjuul Paradijs, voormalig hoofdredacteur van De Telegraaf, is sceptisch. “Iconische foto dansje Sigrid Kaag blijkt regelrecht afkomstig uit de pr-fabriek van D66. Kranten, op één na, behangen hun voorpagina ermee. Tijdsdruk, mooi beeld etc. Toch knaagt er iets. Was de Kaag-sirtaki op tafel ook geregisseerd?”

Hij wijst ook op het filmpje dat van het fotomoment is gemaakt (zie onderstaand). “De stoel staat klaar voor Sigrid Kaag”, aldus Sjuul. En Story-baas Guido den Aantrekker: “Volkomen geënsceneerd. En gerepeteerd, vermoedelijk. En de meeste ‘journalistieke’ kranten trapten erin. Likkebaardend. Knap van D66, though.”

Lees ook het artikel in de Volkskrant hierover: ‘Hoe een campagnefoto van D66 zes voorpagina’s wist te halen‘

https://www.mediacourant.nl/2021/03/jort-kelder-kritisch-over-nu-al-beroemde-sigrid-kaag-foto/



De Dansende Corrupte Sigried Kaag


Het Parool
van donderdag 22 april 2021 kon de lezer het volgende vernemen:

voor D66 leider Sigrid Kaag, die haar partij naar de tweede plaats bracht met de verkiezingen, dreigt schade. Ook zij zat bij de ministerraad waar de toeslagenaffaire besproken werd,

en waar Wopke Hoestra:  

als minister van Financiën in de ministerraad over partijgenoot de heer Omtzigt' had gezegd: 

We hebben geprobeerd de heer Omtzigt te sensibiliseren, maar dat is niet gelukt.' Oftewel: we zullen Omtzigt, die zich had vastgebeten in nde affaire, proberen 'tot rede te brengen.' Dit apppeleert natuurlijk aan de indruk die al bestond: dat Omtzigt werd tegengewerkt, 

ten koste van Nederlandse burgers. Wat betekent 'sensibiliseren?' Welnu, 'ontvankelijk maken voor,' in dit geval omkoping via een ministerschap. Aangezien, aldus Het Parool, Sigrid Kaag: 

bij de ministerraden [zat] waar de toeslagen besproken werd aanwezig was,' 

is dit extra 'pijnlijk' aangezien:

zij won in de verkiezingen met de leus dat er 'nieuw leiderschap' nodig was. Nu dreigt de 'oude politiek' waar ze deel van was, haar schade te berokkenen. Kaag zei dat ze niet meer precies wist of ze 'op die momenten er bij was in de ministerraad. 'Ik weet niet of ik in Nederland was of in Niger.'

Deze leugen is dermate stupide aangezien één blik in haar agenda voldoende is om te weten waar ze was. En met dit corrupte gezelschap, dat niets meer weet zodra het de waarheid dient te spreken moet Nederland de komende uiterst gevaarlijke tijd in. Hoe moeten alle goedgelovigen die gestemd hebben zich nu weer verantwoorden dat zij deze corrupte politici opnieuw aan de macht hebben geholpen? Ik verneem het graag van ze.     




donderdag 22 april 2021

The Commodification of Everything

The Commodification of Everything

The anti-capitalist slogans, ‘The World Is Not A Commodity’ and ‘Our World Is Not For Sale’, are tremendously powerful statements about how capitalism insidiously tries to turn human beings into passive consumers for its products.

But where does the real power lie? Daniel Margrain explains.

Consumption is the fuel in the engine that helps keep the capitalist system running. We live in a world dominated by commodities. This leads people to the false idea that the ethical choices we make as consumers can lead to a fundamental change in society. The reality is, that in the battle against commodities, capitalism will always win.

The fundamental point that Karl Marx made in Capital, is that the labour power of human beings is the one unique commodity that capitalism cannot control. Human beings can resist and protest in various ways. Labour power is therefore a peculiarly contradictory form of commodity. This is summed up very well by Henry Ford who is reported to have said, “Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?” 

If society cannot be changed as a result of the choices we make as consumers, why do we invariably focus on tinkering with the consumption side of the equation rather than addressing the production side as the root cause of the socioeconomic injustices that pervade our world?

Capitalism: A distinct mode of production

Much of the confusion appears to stem from both a widespread misunderstanding of what the process of production under capitalism entails. As a system, it is distinct from other modes of production that preceded it. Under feudalism, for example, the purpose of the production process was to meet specific social needs. The social role and connections relating to any transaction were clear and obvious from the start.

By contrast, under capitalism, each producer cannot satisfy his direct needs out of his own production. A worker in a tin factory, for example, cannot eat tin openers. In order to live, they must sell them to others. The producers are thus interdependent in the sense that they need each other’s products. But they also need each other as purchasers of their own products so that they can obtain the money with which to buy what they need. In other words, producers are bound together only by the exchange of their products among one another.

Where production is for exchange, there is no necessary connection between the labour carried out by a particular producer and the needs of society. Private labour under capitalism, therefore, is not necessarily conducive to meeting the social needs of people. It is an economic system in which individual producers do not know in advance whether their products meet a social need. They can only find out by trying to sell their products as commodities on the market.

There is a second aspect to this. Makers of the same product will compete for the same market. The pressure of competition forces producers to adopt similar methods of production to their rivals or find themselves being undercut and potentially going out of business. 

It is useful, in other words, to understand capitalism as both the separation of the owners of the means of production into separate and rival competing units of capital and the separation of the direct producers from their control over the means of production.

So capitalism is about two clashes. On the one hand, there is the constant clash between capitalist and worker that explains exploitation. On the other hand, though, this exploitation is achieved under conditions where capitalists compete against each other to get more surplus value over and above that achieved by their rivals.

What are the consequences of a system that is driven in this way?

The process of turning things from that which are a right into a commodity, is bound up with how capitalism works rooted in the systems drive to accumulate capital. Commodities and markets have existed long before the emergence of capitalism. It is not that capitalism creates commodities, markets or indeed money. Rather the point Marx made in Capital is not that capitalism brings these things into being, rather that it combines them together in a way that expands and extends the capital accumulation process.

The surplus value created by workers that gives rise to profit is embodied in ‘things’ that workers actually produce. Marx calls this the ‘sphere of production’. In order for capitalists to make anything from the sphere of production, these commodities have to be sold in the market place, what Marx calls the ‘sphere of circulation’. The drive in capitalism arises because of the competitive struggle between rival units of capital to extend the sphere of commodities within the system which is seen to have no bearing on the people that produced them.

It appears that the entire nature of society is really about the buying and selling of ‘things’ within the sphere of circulation rather than on the process of production. The impacts on Western capitalist societies from this process are evident in two ways – the sense of the ‘feel-good factor’ associated with shopping and the notion of ‘retail therapy’ that this activity implies. It is impossible in Western capitalist societies to escape this process. All the features of capitalism that Naomi Klein describes in her book, No Logo, such as advertising and branding, are indicative of the power of commodities to take on a mystical character.

Uniformity of plenty

What is also evident is how commodification is creating uniformity within urban spaces by redefining them in the corporate image. The academic, Elizabeth Wilson argues that the ‘consumerization’ of space such as airports and art galleries appear to have led:

“Not to a diversification but rather to a uniformity of the kind that was always feared in the traditional anti-socialist critiques. This is not the uniformity of scarcity but plenty where the high street, airport, shopping mall, museum and art gallery are increasingly speaking corporate culture rather than aesthetic pleasure.”

Another airport…more of the same advertising as we take on more ‘consumerization’ of our public spaces.

It is clear that culture and the aesthetics of urban spaces reflect a set of economic conditions that determine the configuration of these spaces. Culture, by turns, has had to become increasingly ‘flexible’ in order to be accommodated within the aesthetically coded urban framework for the purpose of maximizing urban consumption. Thus the term ‘culture’ has been stretched to include nearly all the service industries and has become enmeshed with capital and identity in the production systems of cities.

Under capitalism, the creative process has been reduced to an industry governed by the same logic of rationalization as any other. This has taken the form of a ‘culture industry’ – a term coined by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer who intended it as an ironical and critical concept, not as a way of converting culture into money.

Commodity fetishism & alienation

But under a system of capitalist commodity production, humans are encouraged to see everything through the prism of profit and loss in which our abilities and needs are translated into money-making opportunities. We consider other human beings as competitors, as inferiors or superiors who make and buy ‘things’ as if somehow they have nothing to do with us. In effect, therefore, humans under capitalism tend to fetishize ‘things’ that we consider being separate and outside of ourselves.

One of the most recent attempts at making sense of twentieth-century capitalism through the conceptual lens of commodity fetishism, was the analysis developed by Guy Debord and the other members of the Situationist movement in the 1960s. Parodying the opening sentence of Capital, Debord announced: “The entire life of societies in which modern conditions of production reign announces itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles.” The spectacle “in all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as an advertisement or direct consumption of entertainments”, must be seen as “a social relation among people mediated by images.” As such, “the society of the spectacle is the absolute fulfillment of the principle of commodity fetishism.”

Exit through the gift shop?

Following this principle, the commodities of each individual producer appear in depersonalized form, regardless of who produced them, where, or in what specific conditions. For Marx, the wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an immense collection of commodities that became a universal category of society as a whole. Commodity production means that everyone appropriates the produce of others, by alienating that of their own labour. Alienation, in other words, is symptomatic of how commodities have come to separate humans from what Marx called “our species being”.

Marx noted:

“The fact that labour does not belong to his essential being he does not develop free mental and physical energy. Hence the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working and not at home when he is working. His labour is therefore not voluntary but forced. It is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need, but a mere means to satisfy need outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists it is shunned like the plague.”

Another application of Marx’s theory of alienation is in the formulation of an analysis of other activities outside the sphere of work, which we undertake through choice rather than necessity. Harry Braverman notes that the more the world of work confronts us as hostile, exhausting and miserable, the more people pour their energies into their lives outside their work. As the system develops new markets are constantly being carved out of our needs and wishes. For example, consider the multi-million pound industries which have developed around commodities which are said to have made us look thin or young, our desire to play games, to experience nature or enjoy art. 

The very fact that we have the ‘leisure industry’ and the ‘entertainment industry’ points to the fact that the separation of work from leisure has left a void in our free hours. Thus filling time away from the job also becomes dependent on the market, which develops to an enormous degree those passive amusements, entertainments and spectacles that suit the restricted circumstances of the city and are offered as substitutes for life itself.

Alienation also explains the miseries of modern life and the ‘lonely crowd’ – those aggregations of atomized dwellers within densely populated cities who feel crushed and benumbed by the weight of a social system in which they have neither significant purpose nor decision-making power. The more densely our cities become, the more our lives are characterized by feelings of isolation and loneliness.

For Marx, these symptoms of alienation are not rooted in the mind or in religion but relate to the lack of control humans have over the labour process. 

What Marx is saying is that it is not only products that become commodities under capitalism but also the individual human being. In going to work, the worker is in effect selling his or her ability to work.

In such a situation labour-power is being sold and therefore becomes in itself a commodity. In referring to the process of alienation, Marx says that “the worker sinks to the level of the commodity” and is alienated in two senses – from the product of his labour and also from the labour process itself.

This all-pervasive process is symptomatic of a system whose entire logic is predicated on the notion that everybody is a customer whose sole purpose is to help generate profit irrespective of whether they happen to be a passenger on a train or a patient in a hospital. All utilities and services, whether ostensibly in the public or private sectors, are driven by financial targets and efficiency savings. 

Over the last four decades, under neoliberalism, we have witnessed the complete freeing up of the market. It is hard to think of anything that has not been commodified – whether it’s the trade in children and human organs, or the privatization of torture. Under capitalism, everything becomes a commodity.

Apologizing for multinationals

The thing about capitalism since its inception has been its ability to be able to be creative and flexible about incorporating and co-opting new dilemmas and anxieties. For example, it can turn punk rock into something chic and expensive and has been able to persuade millions of consumers, through advertising campaigns, that corporations like Adidas and Starbucks are ethically sound. The latter, who pay virtually zero tax on their profits, is arguably the biggest buyer of fair trade coffee in the world. Nevertheless, they have managed to persuade hundreds of millions of their customers of their alleged ethical credentials because they understand that they can attract a new, younger customer if they say their products are fair trade. The reality is that fair trade and environmentally sustainable production continues to remain a tiny drop in the ocean compared to ordinary production.

In short, capitalism will tear down the things it has constructed in order to remake and re-appropriate them as long as we, the consumers, continue to pay the price. 

In terms of the decisions that people can make, the critical transaction is not whether somebody buys something specific but rather it relates to our ability to sell something that is unique and characteristic of us as humans – our ability to labour. Whether human beings decide to sell their labour or not, or whether they decide collectively to withdraw their ability to labour by going on strike are the critical transactions. 

The real power we have is not as consumers but as producers.

https://renegadeinc.com/the-commodification-of-everything/ 



The elimination of the war crimes court is near-complete

  With Karim Khan's dismissal, the elimination of the war crimes court is near-complete Millions of people around the world will now fin...