I Secretly Recorded Mitch McConnell, And Now the FBI is After Me

Earlier this year, I secretly made an audio recording of Sen. Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Republican on the planet, at his campaign headquarters in Kentucky. The released portion of the recording clocks in at less than 12 minutes, but those few minutes changed my life.
I leaked the recording to Mother Jones, which published it with a transcript and analysis in April, and over the days that followed, blogs and cable news shows lit up with the revelations from that one meeting. At the time, McConnell was prepping for a race against the actress Ashley Judd — it was “the Whac-a-Mole stage of the campaign,” McConnell said smugly — and the recording captures his team in some Grade-A jackassery, including plans to use Judd’s history of depression against her.
But also up for debate was the the ethics of the audio recording itself. Here’s the latest: An assistant U.S. attorney, Brian Calhoun, telephoned my attorney yesterday, asking to meet with him next Friday as charges against me are being presented to a grand jury.
In a technology age marked by vigilante heroes like Julian Assange and Anonymous, the line between journalism and espionage has grown thin. McConnell was quick to frame himself as the victim of a crime, which was to be expected. It was the guilty repositioning of a politician who has been caught being craven.
What I never expected was the pushback from my own political side. One day in April, I turned on MSNBC and saw U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, a Democrat from Louisville and one of my personal heroes, rip me a new one (reference site here http://www.alternet.org/print/media/i-secretly-recorded-mitch-mcconnell-and-now-fbi-after-me")

William Boardman: Kennedy Assassination. No One Knows the Full Story!

of what happened. Fifty Years Later, Kennedy Shooting Less Certain than Lincoln Conspiracy. 50th anniversary commemorations of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy will include a tickets only memorial at the scene of the crime, Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, Texas. No doubt there will be celebrations in some places, just as there were in the aftermath of the November 22, 1963 killing. Whatever events are held, whether formal or impromptu, they will all have one thing in common: no one knows the full story of what happened. The official version put out by the Warren Commission is long since discredited, but independent investigations have yet to present a coherent alternative narrative. That there is such a narrative is certain, since that would be the event as it happened. One reason we don't know what happened is that our government has kept assassination related material secret, protecting national security secrets say secrecy defenders. Others say stonewalling. Polling in April 2013 suggests a waning interest in the Kennedy assassination, since only 59% of Americans now believe the official version is false. That number is considerably lower than a 2003 Gallup poll, in which 75% of Americans said the Kennedy killing was a conspiracy. In 1978, the US House Select Committee on Assassinations lengthy inquiry concluded that JFK was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. In 1978, the US House Select Committee on Assassinations lengthy inquiry concluded that JFK was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The official version holds that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and fired only three shots. The House Committee produced evidence that at least four shots were fired. While coming to the inevitable, evidence-based conclusion that a conspiracy killed Kennedy, the committee did not reach a conclusion as to who was part of the conspiracy. We know it was a conspiracy, but not who were the conspirators. Myriad books have been published arguing various versions of events, but for the most part, the big money from publishers has gone to writers, Gerald Posner, Vincent Bugliosi. But other, conspiracy centered writers, Mark Lane, Jim Marrs, Anthony Summers have far out sold the official version.

Allen L Roland: Prophet For A Dying Empire, Chalmers Johnson!

Every dying Empire has its truth telling prophet, and America had its own with Chalmers Johnson. Johnson correctly compared the decay of the American empire, with its well over 600 overseas military bases, with the fall of the Roman Empire where the Senate becomes a wealthy corporate club, and irrelevant compared to the ruling Military Industrial Congressional Complex. Chalmers Johnson was a truth teller and prophet in a political environment where few would stand up to the interests and secrecy of the Pentagon and the intelligence community, and since his passing in November of 2010, many of his prophetic fears have been realized in the Obama administration. Johnson, author of Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis, The Last Days of the American Republic, talks in this video interview about the similarities in the decline of the Roman and Soviet empires, and the signs that the US empire is exhibiting the very same symptoms, over-extension, corruption and the inability to reform. Johnson's main points were The United States is trading the same three steps as the former Soviet Union: Inability to deal with corporate corruption. Imperial over stretch leading to fiscal insolvency: 600 plus bases throughout the world. Inability to reform, thus accelerating the inevitable fall. Chalmers offered the solution, but suspected that it was already too late for America: Reform Congress. Reform corrupt election laws. Re-division of electoral college. Cutback funding of intelligence agencies and department of the defense, and take steps to break up the Military Industrial Congressional Complex. Chalmers expected considerable resistance but also said that only the truth could avoid the inevitable fall of the American Empire, as it did in bringing down the Soviet Union. Thus, only the role of the alternative media in exposing the truth could avoid the inevitable fall of the American empire, as it did in bringing down the Soviet Union. Thus, only the role of the alternative media in exposing the truth can rescue a crumbling Republic that has rapidly become a corrupt plutocracy. It is my opinion that there is one central truth that can bring down America's Berlin Wall of denial along with the deceit of the War on Terror, its the big, big lie and America's greatest act of treason, its the rationale for the cloak of secrecy, torture, Guantanamo and illegal spying that now erodes our Republic, its the monstrous lie of 9/11 along with its unchallenged official story.

Chuck Collins: Wamt the American Dream?

Get Rich Parents or Move to Canada! Two 21 year old college students sit down in a coffee shop to study for an upcoming test. Behind the counter, a barista whips up their double shot lattes. In the back kitchen, another adult washes the dishes and empties the trash. These four young adults have a lot in common. They are the same age and race, each has two parents, and all grew up in the same metropolitan area. They were all strong students in their respective high schools. But as they enter their third decade, their work futures and life trajectories are radically different, and largely determined at this point. The culprit is the growing role of inherited advantage, as affluent families make investments that give their children a leg up. Combined with the 2008 economic meltdown and budget cuts in public investments that foster opportunity, we are witnessing accelerating advantages for the wealthy and compounding disadvantages for everyone else. One of the college students, Miranda, will graduate without any student loan debt, and will have completed three summers of unpaid internships at businesses that will advance her career path. Her parents stand ready to subsidize her lodging with a security deposit and co signed apartment lease, and will give her a no interest loan to buy a car. They also have a network of family and professional contacts that can help her. While she waits for a job with benefits, she will remain on her parents' health insurance. Ten years later, Miranda will have a high paying job, be engaged to another professional, and will buy a home in a neighborhood with other college educated professionals, a property that will steadily appreciate over time because of its location. The parental down payment assistance program will subsidize the purchase. The other collegiate, Marcus, will graduate with more than $55,000 in college debt, a maxed out credit card, and an extensive resume of part time food service jobs that he has taken to pay for school, both during summers and while in college, reducing the hours he can study. Though he will obtain a degree, he will graduate with almost no work experience in his field of study, lose his health insurance, and begin working two part time jobs to pay back his student loans and afford rent in a shared apartment. Ten years later, Marcus will still be working in low paying jobs, and renting an apartment. He will feel occupationally stuck and frustrated in his attempts to network in the area of his degree.

Gordon Duff: South Africa's Racist Policies!

World News Tomorrow, Washington DC. Does White People or European decedent people have any future in South Africa, we can ask? According to BBC film, the answer is Yes, if they could put the embittered past behind them and embrace the country's new realities, but this is far from being the case, according to Policy experts. World News decided to look at white poverty, something which scarcely seemed to exist a few decades ago, and at the continued murders white farmers. When an article based on the film appeared on the BBC's website, there was a strong reaction in South Africa with mixed feeling. Few denied that there was indeed a growing poverty among white South Africans and most avoided speaking about the white farmers that were being murdered at an alarming rate. Few denied that there was indeed a growing poverty among white South African, and most avoided speaking about the white farmers that were being murdered at an alarming rate. Global genocide recently confirmed that more than 3700 white farmers were murdered since 2004, and the same were confirmed by some opposition political parties within the Country. Farmitraker has kept good count, and records of these murders, with some of them including whole families with children as young as 3 month. It seems that the figures are in question according to some. The civil society organization AfriForum consulted a charity which works with poor Afrikaners, Solidariteit Helpende Hand, and estimated a figure of up to 400,000 white people living in poverty. Real figures indicate that its closer to 670, 000 and that is rapidly increasing. The source of the estimate and they stand by their figures. Other estimates vary wildly, and any figure is inevitably only an estimate, but certainly is getting more by the day. The false figures released by the 2011 census in South Africa said that only 7,754 white households lived in informal settlements. That would indicate that something like 31,000 people lived this way. It now becomes clear that billions of rand's is wasted in producing figures that is influencing the World Bank decision on financial aid, is in fact false and inaccurate. It seems that there is a dispute about about numbers, and according to BBC, it was the numbers that seemed to have upset people in South Africa. However, the question should be asked at which point do murders become genocide, if they are proofed to be linked to political motives. Is it one farmer two three or 1000. More dangerous is the question not haw many, but when Genocide watch is going to react if they will react at all?

Preston James PhD: Secret Space War II!

There is an ongoing Secret Space War that the US Government has been engaged in since 1947. You are not allowed to know about it for certain, but you will be allowed to believe it exists. In fact, soon you will be encouraged to do so as the Old World Order, the International Zionist Criminal Conspiracy (IZCS), is thrown under the bus by the Third Force which is beginning to make its move to restructure the world and seat its NWO Ceasar of the Ages. Controlled information leaks are now being orchestrated to help you believe UFOs and ETs are real, without giving you verifiable proof or established public facts, which will be fully accepted and verified by the Controlled Major Mass Media (CMMM), which in reality is necessary to christen or fully legitimize any such story. This will provide the necessary cognitive dissonance to keep folks somewhat confused, suggestible and passive, until such time that the Powers That Be (PTB) who run the world, the Old Black European Nobility (OBN) decide that full and factual disclosure will help them attain their NWO Globalist goals. This means that you can now gain access to numerous very credible seeming personal testimonies, but no official USG body or the CMMM will carry such stories as established facts. At least for now. But such stories verifying an alien or ET presence on planet Earth will come soon enough, when the Third Force installs a New World Order Leader in Jerusalem, which has been the plan for the ages of those few at the top of the pyramid of control or world hierarchy, going all the way to ancient Babylonia and perhaps even before. Many of those who have worked in beyond black areas of national security have heard rumors that the Secret Shadow Government (SSG) has established various treaties and technology exchange programs with ETs aka aliens or EBEs. Some who claim to have direct contact have come forward, but so far with no hard evidence backing their extreme claims. Take the very interesting case of Charles J. Hall, whom some believe is quite credible. He has written several books about his time working as an enlisted man in the presence of Roswell type greys, and tall white ET's when in the military serving as a weather observer at Nellis AFB. After a careful examination of his claims and the information he has provided, It certainly appears that Mr Hall was set up and allowed to later become a credible source of testimony that ETs are here and in a business relationship with the SSG, but without providing smoking gun proof, and that this was part of an agreement between the USAF high command, or whoever was negotiating with the ET leaders.  

Roi Tov: Go ahead, Iran! What happened to Ralph? Blame it on mob mentality or the lure of primitivity.

But our admirable protagonist just joined the ranks of the savages. For many years, I wondered what happens with school bullies. After all, they are the only nature constant evident in Western schools. One cannot trust that proper topics would be taught, one cannot trust that a proper level would be achieved, but always, always, one can trust that the bullies are out there attacking the righteous sheep. Obscured by propaganda, the scary truth was slow to emerge. Bullies join the government and become self serving civil servants. In early 2013, the people witnessed two overwhelming examples of Western state terror. In the USA, the IRS acknowledged to have targeted conservative groups for closer scrutiny based on their names and political opinions. In Israel, Jewish doctors forced the closer scrutiny based on their names and political opinions. In Israel, Jewish doctors forced the sterilization of Ethiopian women. Apparently they didn't like their skin color. On May 28, we got another scary reminder that the West is nothing but a continental enactment of the Lord of the Flies. The tale, written by William Golding, is about a group of English schoolboys who are plane wrecked on a deserted island. Instead of drinking high tea, they detiriorate into savagery. Two retired generals, James Cartwright USA and Amos Yadlin Israel, published a paper through the Washington Institute. It was entitled Israeli or US Action Against Iran. On May 28, the Atlantic published an abridged version. First, I tagged that hallucinated war plan by bored retired generals, and found momentous interest on a new conscription law. However, dismissing the issue was impossible. Exactly one month before that, I had published Israel Intelligence Directorate Sends America to War. Cartwright and Yadlin were oddly repeating Aman (IDF's) Intelligence Directorate recommendations. What is one supposed to do when a deja vu turns out to be solid reality? Lord of the Flies Announces Attack. On April 29, much of Aman's proposed plan for an American War on Syria were published by Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper closely related to the Shin Beth. The newspaper cited Brigadier General Ytai Brun, Head of Aman Research, the most strategic part of this organization.

Chuck Collins: Want the American Dream? Get Rich Parents or Move to Canada!

The Two 21 year old college students sit down in a coffee shop to study for an upcoming test. Behind the counter, a barista whips up their double shot lattes. In the back kitchen, another young adult washes the dishes and empties the trash. These four young adults have a lot in common. They are the same age and race, each has two parents, and all grew up in the same metropolitan area. They were all strong students in their respective high schools. But as they enter their third decade, their work futures and life trajectories are radically different, and largely determined at this point. The culprit is the growing role of inherited advantage, as affluent families make investments that give their children a leg up. Combined with the 2008 economic meltdown and budget cuts in public investments that foster opportunity, we are witnessing accelerating advantages for the wealthy and compounding disadvantages for everyone else. One of the college students, Miranda, will graduate without any student loan debt, and will have completed three summers of unpaid internships at businesses that will advance her career path. Her parents stand ready to subsidize her lodging with a security deposit and co-signed apartment lease, and will give her a no interest loan to buy a car. They also have a network of family and professional contacts that can help her. While she waits for a job with benefits, she will remain on her parents' health insurance. Ten years later, Miranda will have a high paying job, be engaged to another professional, and will buy a home in a neighborhood with other college educated professionals, a property that will steadily appreciate over time because of its location. The parental down payment assistance program will subsidize the purchase. The other collegiate, Marcus, will graduate with more than $55,000 in college debt, a maxed out credit card, and an extensive resume of part time food service jobs that he has taken to pay for school, both during summers and while in college, reducing the hours he can study. Though he will obtain a degree, he will graduate with almost no work experience in his field of study, lose his health insurance, and begin working two part time jobs to pay back his student loans and to afford rent in a shared apartment. Ten years later, Marcus will still be working in low paying jobs and renting an apartment.

Tomgram: Michael Klare, A Future in Arms

Imagine for a moment that in 2010, China's leaders had announced a long term, up to $60 billion arms deal with an extreme Islamic fundamentalist regime in the Middle East, one that was notoriously repressive to women, and a well known supporter of the Taliban. Imagine as well that the first $30 billion part of that deal, involving 84 advanced jet fighters, was sealed in 2011, and that, since then, the sales have never stopped: Several kinds of helicopters, artillery, armored personnel carriers, upgraded tanks, surface to air missile systems, even possibly a littoral combat vessel, among other purchases. Then include one more piece of information in the mix. In 2013, China added in an advanced class of precision standoff munitions missiles that could be fired from those previously purchased advanced jet fighters. Given all this, we would know what to think. It would be just the sort of thing you might expect from an unscrupulous, retrograde communist regime with no values whatsoever, one willing above all else to keep the production lines of its weapons makers humming. Washington would long ago have denounced such dealings in no uncertain terms. In fact, such a scenario is utterly fantastic and essentially unimaginable, for China. But it happens to be a perfectly accurate description of the lucrative relationship that American arms makers and and the Pentagon have with Saudi Arabia, a country Washington has promoted and sold weaponry to as if there were no tomorrow. And that's just to dip a toe into the strange world of the global arms trade, though in recent years it's becoming something closer to a US monopoly in straightforward dollar terms. Now, Tom Dispatch regular Michael Klare, author of The Race for What's Left, and an expert on energy and also on that bizarre trade, offers a glimpse into its latest grim set of wrinkles, new sales that might signal a twenty first century revival of the Cold War: Are Washington, Moscow, and Beijing Using the Global Arms Trade to create a New Cold War? Did Washington just give Israel the green light for a future attack on Iran via an arms deal? Did Russia just signal its further support for Bashar al Assad's Syrian regime via an arms deal? Are the Russians, the Chinese, and the Americans all heightening regional tensions in Asia via arms deals? Is it possible that we are witnessing the beginnings of a new Cold War in two key regions of the planet, and that the harbingers of this unnerving development are arms deals? International weapons sales have proved to be a thriving global business in economically tough times. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), such sales reached an impressive $85 billion in 2011, nearly double the figure for 2010. This surge in military spending reflected efforts by major Middle Eastern powers to bolster their armories with modern jets, tanks, and missiles, a process constantly encouraged by the leading arms manufacturing countries, especially the US and Russia, as it helps keep domestic production lines humming. However, this familiar if always troubling pattern may soon be overshadowed by a more ominous development in the global arms trade: the revival of undermining rivals and destabilizing regional power balances. The result, inevitably, will be a more precarious world!

Noam Chomsky: The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and What's Wrong with Libertarians

The following is the adapted text of an interview that first appeared in Modern Success [4] magazine.
So many things have been written about, and discussed by, Professor Chomsky, it was a challenge to think of anything new to ask him:  like the grandparent you can’t think of what to get for Christmas because they already have everything.
So I chose to be a bit selfish and ask him what I’ve always wanted to ask him.  As an out-spoken, actual, live-and-breathing anarchist, I wanted to know how he could align himself with such a controversial and marginal position.Michael S. Wilson:You are, among many other things, a self-described anarchist — an anarcho-syndicalist, specifically.  Most people think of anarchists as disenfranchised punks throwing rocks at store windows, or masked men tossing ball-shaped bombs at fat industrialists.  Is this an accurate view?  What is anarchy to you?
Noam Chomsky:Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics.  Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy.  It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified.  It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them.  Their authority is not self-justifying.  They have to give a reason for it, a justification.  And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just.  And, as I understand it, anarchy is just that tendency.  It takes different forms at different times. Anarcho-syndicalism is a particular variety of anarchism which was concerned primarily, though not solely, but primarily with control over work, over the work place, over production.  It took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, [that] they ought to control the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and … democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society.  And then, you know, ideas are worked out about how exactly that should manifest itself, but I think that is the core of anarcho-syndicalist thinking.  I mean it’s not at all the general image that you described — people running around the streets, you know, breaking store windows — but [anarcho-syndicalism] is a conception of a very organized society, but organized from below by direct participation at every level, with as little control and domination as is feasible, maybe none. Wilson: With the apparent ongoing demise of the capitalist state, many people are looking at other ways to be successful, to run their lives, and I’m wondering what you would say anarchy and syndicalism have to offer, things that others ideas — say, for example, state-run socialism — have failed to offer?  Why should we choose anarchy, as opposed to, say, libertarianism? Chomsky:Well what’s called libertarian in the United States, which is a special U. S. phenomenon, it doesn’t really exist anywhere else — a little bit in England — permits a very high level of authority and domination but in the hands of private power:  so private power should be unleashed to do whatever it likes.  The assumption is that by some kind of magic, concentrated private power will lead to a more free and just society.  Actually that has been believed in the past.  Adam Smith for example, one of his main arguments for markets was the claim that under conditions of perfect liberty, markets would lead to perfect equality.  Well, we don’t have to talk about that!  That kind of — Wilson:  It seems to be a continuing contention today … Chomsky: Yes, and so well that kind of libertarianism, in my view, in the current world, is just a call for some of the worst kinds of tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny.  Anarchism is quite different from that.  It calls for an elimination to tyranny, all kinds of tyranny.  Including the kind of tyranny that’s internal to private power concentrations.  So why should we prefer it?  Well I think because freedom is better than subordination.  It’s better to be free than to be a slave.  Its’ better to be able to make your own decisions than to have someone else make decisions and force you to observe them.  I mean, I don’t think you really need an argument for that.  It seems like … transparent. The thing you need an argument for, and should give an argument for, is, How can we best proceed in that direction?  And there are lots of ways within the current society.  One way, incidentally,  is through use of the state, to the extent that it is democratically controlled.  I mean in the long run, anarchists would like to see the state eliminated.  But it exists, alongside of private power, and the state is, at least to a certain extent, under public influence and control — could be much more so.  And it provides devices to constrain the much more dangerous forces of private power.  Rules for safety and health in the workplace for example.  Or insuring  that people have decent health care, let’s say.  Many other things like that.  They’re not going to come about through private power.  Quite the contrary.  But they can come about through the use of the state system under limited democratic control … to carry forward reformist measures.  I think those are fine things to do. they should be looking forward to something much more, much beyond, — namely actual, much larger-scale democratization.  And that’s possible to not only think about, but to work on.  So one of the leading anarchist thinkers, Bakunin in the 19th cent, pointed out that it’s quite possible to build the institutions of a future society within the present one.  And he was thinking about far more autocratic societies than ours.  And that’s being done.  So for example, worker- and community- controlled enterprises are germs of a future society within the present one.  And those not only can be developed, but are being developed.  There’s some important work on this by Gar Alperovitz who’s involved in the enterprise systems around the Cleveland area which are worker and community controlled.  There’s a lot of theoretical discussion of how it might work out, from various sources.  Some of the most worked out ideas are in what’s called the “parecon” — participatory economics — literature and discussions.  And there are others.  These are at the planning and thinking level.  And at the practical implementation level, there are steps that can be taken, while also pressing to overcome the worst … the major harms … caused by … concentration of private power through the use of state system, as long as the current system exists.  So there’s no shortage of means to pursue. As for state socialism, depends what one means by the term.  If it’s tyranny of the Bolshevik variety (and its descendants), we need not tarry on it.  If it’s a more expanded social democratic state, then the comments above apply.  If something else, then what?  Will it place decision-making in the hands of working people and communities, or in hands of some authority?  If the latter, then — once again — freedom is better than subjugation, and the latter carries a very heavy burden of justification. Wilson::  Many people know you because of your and Edward Herman’s development of the Propaganda Model.  Could you briefly describe that model and why it might be important to [college] students? Chomsky: Well first look back a bit — a little historical framework — back in the late 19th-, early 20th century, a good deal of freedom had been won in some societies.  At the peak of this were in fact the United States and Britain.  By no means free societies, but by comparative standards quite advanced in this respect.  In fact so advanced, that power systems — state and private — began to recognize that things were getting to a point where they can’t control the population by force as easily as before, so they are going to have to turn to other means of control.  And the other means of control are control of beliefs and attitudes.  And out of that grew the public relations industry, which in those days described itself honestly as an industry of propaganda. The guru of the PR industry, Edward Bernays — incidentally, not a reactionary, but a Wilson-Roosevelt-Kennedy liberal — the maiden handbook of the PR industry which he wrote back in the 1920s was calledPropaganda.  And in it he described, correctly, the goal of the industry.  He said our goal is to insure that the “intelligent minority” — and of course anyone who writes about these things is part of that intelligent minority by definition, by stipulation, so we, the intelligent minority, are the only people capable of running things, and there’s that great population out there, the “unwashed masses,” who, if they’re left alone will just get into trouble:  so we have to, as he put it, “engineer their consent,” figure out ways to insure they consent to our rule and domination.  And that’s the goal of the PR industry.  And it works in many ways.  It’s primary commitment is commercial advertising.  In fact, Bernays made his name right at that time — late 20s — by running an advertising campaign to convince women to smoke cigarettes:  women weren’t smoking cigarettes, this big group of people who the tobacco industry isn’t able to kill, so we’ve got to do something about that.  And he very successfully ran campaigns that induced women to smoke cigarettes:  that would be, in modern terms, the cool thing to do, you know, that’s the way you get to be a modern, liberated woman.  It was very successful — Wilson:  Is there a correlation between that campaign and what’s happening with the big oil industry right now and climate change? Chomsky: These are just a few examples.  These are the origins of what became a huge industry of controlling attitudes and opinions.  Now the oil industry today, and in fact the business world generally, are engaged in comparable campaigns to try to undermine efforts to deal with a problem that’s even greater than the mass murder that was caused by the tobacco industry; and it was mass murder.  We are facing a threat, a serious threat, of catastrophic climate change.  And it’s no joke.  And [the oil industry is] trying to impede measures to deal with it for their own short-term profit interests.  And that includes not only the petroleum industry, but the American Chamber of Commerce — the leading business lobby — and others, who’ve stated quite openly that they’re conducting … they don’t call it propaganda … but what would amount to propaganda campaigns to convince people that there’s no real danger and we shouldn’t really do much about it, and that we should concentrate on really important things like the deficit and economic growth — what they call ‘growth’ — and not worry about the fact that the human species is marching over a cliff which could be something like [human] species destruction; or at least the destruction of the possibility of a decent life for huge numbers of people.  And there are many other correlations. In fact quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets.  We should recognize that.  If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices.  You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that it’s purpose?  No it’s not.  It’s to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices.  And these same institutions run political campaigns.  It’s pretty much the same:  you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices.  And so this is only one aspect of the PR industry.  What Herman and I were discussing was another aspect of the whole propaganda system that developed roughly at that period, and that’s “manufacture of consent,” as it was called, [consent] to the decisions of our political leaders, or the leaders of the private economy, to try to insure that people have the right beliefs and don’t try to comprehend the way decisions are being made that may not only harm them, but harm many others.  That’s propaganda in the normal sense.  And so we were talking about mass media, and the intellectual community of the world in general, which is to a large extent dedicated to this.  Not that people see themselves as propagandists, but … that they are themselves deeply indoctrinated into the principles of the system, which prevent them from perceiving many things that are really right on the surface, [things] that would be subversive to power if understood.  We give plenty of examples there and there’s plenty more you can mention up to the present moment, crucial ones in fact.  That’s a large part of a general system of indoctrination and control that runs parallel to controlling attitudes and … consumeristic commitments, and other devices to control people. You mentioned students before.  Well one of the main problems for students today — a huge problem — is sky-rocketing tuitions.  Why do we have tuitions that are completely out-of-line with other countries, even with our own history?  In the 1950s the United States was a much poorer country than it is today, and yet higher education was … pretty much free, or low fees or no fees for huge numbers of people.  There hasn’t been an economic change that’s made it necessary, now, to have very high tuitions, far more than when we were a poor country.  And to drive the point home even more clearly, if we look just across the borders, Mexico is a poor country yet has a good educational system with free tuition.  There was an effort by the Mexican state to raise tuition, maybe some 15 years ago or so, and there was a national student strike which had a lot of popular support, and the government backed down.  Now that’s just happened recently in Quebec, on our other border.  Go across the ocean:  Germany is a rich country.  Free tuition.  Finland has the highest-ranked education system in the world.  Free … virtually free.  So I don’t think you can give an argument that there are economic necessities behind the incredibly high increase in tuition.  I think these are social and economic decisions made by the people who set policy.  And [these hikes] are part of, in my view, part of a backlash that developed in the 1970s against the liberatory tendencies of the 1960s.  Students became much freer, more open, they were pressing for opposition to the war, for civil rights, women’s rights … and the country just got too free. In fact, liberal intellectuals condemned this, called it a “crisis of democracy:”  we’ve got to have more moderation of democracy.   They called, literally, for more commitment to indoctrination of the young, their phrase … we have to make sure that the institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young do their work, so we don’t have all this freedom and independence.  And many developments took place after that.  I don’t think we have enough direct documentation to prove causal relations, but you can see what happened.  One of the things that happened was controlling students — in fact, controlling students for the rest of their lives, by simply trapping them in debt.  That’s a very effective technique of control and indoctrination.  And I suspect — I can’t prove — but I suspect that that’s a large part of the reason behind [high tuitions].  Many other parallel things happened.  The whole economy changed in significant ways to concentrate power, to undermine workers’ rights and freedom.  In fact the economist who chaired the Federal Reserve around the Clinton years, Alan Greenspan — St. Alan as he was called then, the great genius of the economics profession who was running the economy, highly honored — he testified proudly before congress that the basis for the great economy that he was running was what he called “growing worker insecurity.”  If workers are more insecure, they won’t do things, like asking for better wages and better benefits.  And that’s healthy for the economy from a certain point of view, a point of view that says workers ought to be oppressed and controlled, and that wealth ought to be concentrated in a very few pockets.  So yeah, that’s a healthy economy, and we need growing worker insecurity, and we need growing student insecurity, for similar reasons.  I think all of these things line up together as part of a general reaction — a bipartisan reaction, incidentally — against liberatory tendencies which manifested themselves in the 60s and have continued since. Wilson:  [Finally, ]I’m wondering if you could [end with some advice for today's college students]. Chomsky: There are plenty of problems in the world today, and students face a number of them, including the ones I mentioned — the joblessness, insecurity and so on.  Yet on the other hand, there has been progress.  In a lot of respects things are a lot more free and advanced than they were … not many years ago.  So many things that were really matters of struggle, in fact even some barely even mentionable, say, in the 1960s, are now … partially resolved.  Things like women’s rights.  Gay rights.  Opposition to aggression.  Concern for the environment — which is nowhere near where it ought to be, but far beyond the 1960s.  These victories for freedom didn’t come from gifts from above.  They came from people struggling under conditions that are harsher than they are now.   There is state repression now.  But it doesn’t begin to compare with, say, Cointelpro in the 1960s.  People that don’t know about that ought to read and think to find out.  And that leaves lots of opportunities.  Students, you know, are relatively privileged as compared with the rest of the population.  They are also in a period of their lives where they are relatively free.  Well that provides for all sorts of opportunities.  In the past, such opportunities have been taken by students who have often been in the forefront of progressive change, and they have many more opportunities now.  It’s never going to be easy.  There’s going to be repression.  There’s going to be backlash.  But that’s the way society moves forward.

Stephen Lendman: Israel Heads Closer to War on Syria!

Syria is Washington's war. Israel is very much involved. It abhors peace and stability. Its history reflects belligerence. It is a direct threat. It borders Syria. Both countries are longstanding imperial partners. The Israeli Lobby plays a key role. Orwell once said who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the presence controls the past. Saving the future requires understanding both past and present. Preventing imperial annihilation depends on it. So called rebel forces are no match against Syria's military superiority. Al Qusayr is a strategic western Syrian city, about 18 miles southwest of Homs. It is located on Lebanon's border. It links Damascus with the government controlled Mediterranean coastal areas. It is also a key smuggling route. Insurgents, weapons, munitions and supplies pass cross border into Syria. Stopping them is strategically important. Fighting for control continues. On May 21, Press TV said Syrian forces control over 70%of the city. According to a Syrian source: We managed to enter the city from several directions. We encountered heavy resistance, but we overpowered them and seized control of these places, and we seized control of these places, and we will pursue them and eliminate them wherever they go. According to Voice of Russia, Syria captured the city. Russia's Rossia 24 TV reported it. Insurgents controlled the city throughout the conflict. No longer. Capturing Al Qusayr prevents supplying insurgents from key parts of Lebanon. Voice of Russia and Rossia-24 reported mopping up operations around Aleppo. According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), Army units restored stability and security to the full eastern area of Al Qusayr in Homs Countryside after killing big numbers of terrorists, and destroying their hideouts. A military source added that army units dismantled a number of explosive devices, planted by terrorists in al Souk area in the middle of the city. The source added that army units are continuing hunting the remnants of terrorists in some hideouts in the northern and southern areas of the city. Insurgents suffered heavy losses. Leadership elements were killed or captured. Tens of terrorists surrendered. Others were arrested. SANA said insurgents were routed in several provinces. Local journalist Abdallah Mawazini told Russia Today that Syria's army managed to make a full circle around the city, fighting the opposition fighters. The main achievement is to stop the line of supply chain between Lebanon and Syria. They started from the western side of the city, in the rural areas. They control this zone with some fighters from Lebanon. Some extremist groups were preparing to go into Syria to fight with the rebels. They were going to go making a larger front in order to fight and expand the fighting line between the government and the opposition.

Steven Lendman: The Treue Story of the Bilderberg Group and What They May Be Planning Now!

For over 14 years, Daniel Estulin has investigated and researched the Bilderberg  Group's far reaching influence on business and finance, global politics, war and peace, and control of the world's resources and its money. His book, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group," was published in 2005, and is now updated in a new 2009 edition. He states that in 1954, the most powerful men in the world met for the first time in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, debated the future of the world, and decided to meet annually in secret. They called themselves the Bilderberg Group with a membership representing a who's who of world power elites, mostly from America, Canada, and Western Europe with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Allen Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, and other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others, some quietly by some accounts like Barack Obama and many of his top officials. Always well represented are top figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the ECB's Jean Claude Trichet, and Bank of England's Mervyn King. For over half a century, no agenda or discussion topics became public, nor is any press coverage allowed. The few invited fourth estate attendees and their bosses are sworn to secrecy. Nonetheless, Estulin undertook an investigative journey that became his life's work. He states: Slowly one by one, I have penetrated the layers of secrecy surrounding the Bilderberg Group, but I could not have done this without help of conscientious objectors from inside, as well as outside, the Group's membership. As a result, he keeps their names confidential. Whatever its early mission, the Group is now a shadow government, threatening to take away our right to direct our own destinies by creating a disturbing reality, very much harming the public's welfare. In short, Bilderbergers want to supplant individual nation state sovereignty with an all powerful global government, corporate controlled, and check-mated by militarized enforcement.