j. edgar mormon's agenda...,

Salon | The masses were summoned by Glenn Beck, Fox News host and organizer of the 912 Project, the civic initiative he pulled together to restore America to the sense of purpose and unity it had felt the day after the towers fell. In reality, however, the so-called 912ers were summoned to D.C. by the man who changed Beck's life, and that helps explain why the movement is not the nonpartisan lovefest that Beck first sold on air with his trademark tears. Beck has created a massive meet-up for the disaffected, paranoid Palin-ite "death panel" wing of the GOP, those ideologues most susceptible to conspiracy theories and prone to latch on to eccentric distortions of fact in the name of opposing "socialism." In that, they are true disciples of the late W. Cleon Skousen, Beck's favorite writer and the author of the bible of the 9/12 movement, "The 5,000 Year Leap." A once-famous anti-communist "historian," Skousen was too extreme even for the conservative activists of the Goldwater era, but Glenn Beck has now rescued him from the remainder pile of history, and introduced him to a receptive new audience.

Anyone who has followed Beck will recognize the book's title. Beck has been furiously promoting "The 5,000 Year Leap" for the past year, a push that peaked in March when he launched the 912 Project. That month, a new edition of "The 5,000 Year Leap," complete with a laudatory new foreword by none other than Glenn Beck, came out of nowhere to hit No. 1 on Amazon. It remained in the top 15 all summer, holding the No. 1 spot in the government category for months. The book tops Beck's 912 Project "required reading" list, and is routinely sold at 912 Project meetings where guest speakers often use it as their primary source material. At one 912 meet-up I attended in Florida, copies were stacked high on a table against the back wall, available for the 912 nice price of $15. "Don't bother trying to get it at the library," one 912er told me. "The wait list is 40 deep."

What has Beck been pushing on his legions? "Leap," first published in 1981, is a heavily illustrated and factually challenged attempt to explain American history through an unspoken lens of Mormon theology. As such, it is an early entry in the ongoing attempt by the religious right to rewrite history. Fundamentalists want to define the United States as a Christian nation rather than a secular republic, and recast the Founding Fathers as devout Christians guided by the Bible rather than deists inspired by French and English philosophers. "Leap" argues that the U.S. Constitution is a godly document above all else, based on natural law, and owes more to the Old and New Testaments than to the secular and radical spirit of the Enlightenment. It lists 28 fundamental beliefs -- based on the sayings and writings of Moses, Jesus, Cicero, John Locke, Montesquieu and Adam Smith -- that Skousen says have resulted in more God-directed progress than was achieved in the previous 5,000 years of every other civilization combined. The book reads exactly like what it was until Glenn Beck dragged it out of Mormon obscurity: a textbook full of aggressively selective quotations intended for conservative religious schools like Utah's George Wythe University, where it has been part of the core freshman curriculum for decades (and where Beck spoke at this year's annual fundraiser).

But more interesting than the contents of "The 5,000 Year Leap," and more revealing for what it says about 912ers and the Glenn Beck Nation, is the book's author. W. Cleon Skousen was not a historian so much as a player in the history of the American far right; less a scholar of the republic than a threat to it. At least, that was the judgment of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, which maintained a file on Skousen for years that eventually totaled some 2,000 pages. Before he died in 2006 at the age of 92, Skousen's own Mormon church publicly distanced itself from the foundation that Skousen founded and that has published previous editions of "The 5,000 Year Leap."

Granny Goodness Phugged Up Putting Catholics in the Deplorables Basket....,

Huff Po | Washington D.C. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Megan Kelly and true Christians are outraged by attacks on Catholics and Evangelicals by Team Hillary. Begging the burning question: “Who has place in Hillary’s America?” She and her team obviously despise these Christian denominations. Catholic and Evangelical Democrats must make a choice between Christ or the Evil One. Mother Teresa’s nuns are praying the rosary daily for voters to receive clarity of truth from The Holy Spirit and vote for the candidate who supports life and religious liberty (Trump) against the party engendering a culture of death and new atheism disguised as liberalism. Sadly, the Democratic Party has been taken over by spiritually bankrupt global conglomerates and foreign billionaire elites like George Soros desiring power over the people. Responding to breaking news of the sinister Team Hillary plot, Bill Donahue, President of the Catholic League informed Neil Cavuto the funding source for the strategy to divide Catholics and elect Hillary is George Soros. 

He is the same foreign billionaire influence funding “legalize marijuana” initiatives in America to control youth and undermine our workforce just as the nefarious global elites did during the 19th century Opium Wars against China to control their people and trade. Military strategist Sun Tzu teaches in “The Art of War,” divide and conquer. Soros makes his billions based on currencies and global conflict. Take away guns, religion and addict people to drugs and you have no resistance. Voters, it’s power, money and greed. It’s anti-Christ, as religion must be mocked and removed from the public square and families divided, just as Team Hillary has advanced while plotting to control the people. Marx taught it and Soros et al through the Democratic Party is funding it. That’s the truth. No new strategies, just repeat what worked in history, fine tune it, grab power, control people. Similar strategy to divide Christians was undertaken surrounding Kennedy’s presidency. By the way, there are some notable Republicans part of the elite-domination circle. Sounds like the Illuminati, New World Order story, Narnia Chronicles or James Bond thriller. Many a truth is disguised. Follow wiki-leaks, Team Hillary emails and money funding the anti-Catholic, anti-pope, anti-Evangelical plots before voting.

This current devious plot unfolds while being suppressed by mainstream media in concert with Team Hillary. Biblical experts see it as signs in The Book of Revelations describing The Apocalypse. We better watch and pray for ourselves and America’s future, is the mantra of the faithful. Surprising reaction to these attacks from humble, holy nuns across America. To my surprise, Religious are not surprised. On the contrary they believe these revelations are God’s way of unveiling the truth about Hillary and her deeply-rooted anti-Christian agenda carried out by her like-minded team, with the pretense of being Christians. Conversations with selfless sisters helping poor families in America’s inner-cities inform voters:

“We must pray the rosary every day as Our Lady of Fatima
revealed in 1917 and stay on the side of Christ and fight the enemy.
All Christians must unite and not scatter the vote.
Even if some believe it is the lesser of two evils, 
all true Christians must vote for Trump.
There are only two choices and Hillary is a vote for the Evil One.”

Faith Trumps Politics for Faithful People

Christians, irrespective of political party, cannot in good conscience vote anti-Christ. Team Hillary emails and aftermath are unapologetic and anti-Christian. They stridently continue to try to divide both Catholics and Evangelicals. Hillary will discover, voters are not deceived or deplorable just because they don’t trust her. Light is shining on Hillary and her team, the real agenda is to further divide America. Every true Christian on Team Hillary starting with purportedly Catholic running mate Tim Kaine should resign and be counted as standing for Christ. This is a rare opportunity to be among the elect that truly matters. Christ taught we must choose God or Evil. The same is expected of Nancy Pelosi and all Catholics. Jesus warned, “What good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul?” Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, John Kasich should stand and be counted for Christ, like Marco Rubio, Dr. Ben Carson, Chris Christie, even Ted Cruz. Put self aside and fight for Trump to help stop the forces of evil from prevailing. Faithful Catholics know the truth. If you choose to hide from it or rationalize it, like Newt Gingrich said “you join Team Hillary” and the Evil One. It’s life or death for souls. That’s the truth.

October: Month of Revelations, Reckoning and The Rosary.

For Jews, October is time of atonement. For Catholics, time of reflection of what really matters, living for the now or preparing for the future. Remember life is short for our bodies but our soul is eternal, where do we want it to go? Trump’s past transgressions, of which he has expressed shame, remorse and apologies, pale in comparison to the revelations we now know about the plot against Christians and the strategy of creating a Catholic Spring, dividing Catholics and undermining the authority of the pope by Team Hillary and the global elite. That’s the truth. On October 13, 1917, Our Lady of Fatima appeared to 70,000 observers for the“Miracle of the Sun.” This prophetic event predicted future wars and disasters if humanity did not change its ways. Documented by media, historians and theologians with relevant news that continues to become reality in the unfolding drama of salvation history. Looking very sad, Our Lady said to the world: “Do not offend the Lord our God anymore, because he is already so much offended.” The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph appeared reminding the world of the sanctity of life and family, which is under attack today. Similar to current America, secular media and humanist government then mocked religion and people of faith. Interestingly, skeptical journalists, atheist government officials and intellectual elite witnesses converted becoming promoters of the truth.

Fatima for Today-The Urgent Marian Message of Hope”

Franciscan Friar, author Andrew Apostoli insightfully states: “We must survive warfare, but it is most often the spiritual warfare brought on by the evils of our times, with its attacks on life, the family and our faith.” Sums up the unfolding real agenda of Team Hillary, evidenced by emails, policies and tactics to win and rule at any cost including the soul of America and her people. Interestingly, like now, there was “great tension and turmoil “preceding the 1917 miraculous events for the elect, bringing about “one of the greatest manifestations of God’s power in the history of the Catholic Church.” The smell test for diabolical interference according to respected theologian Louis J. Camelli in “The Devil You Don’t Know” is counted on one hand: deception, division, diversion, discouragement- leading to death. Fellow Christians and Americans of all faiths, let us choose life, uniting with Christ and vote for Trump-Pence. Conversely a vote for Team Hillary is a vote for bigotry, deception, division, diversion, discouragement and death. Hallmarks of the Evil One. That’s the truth. 

God bless America, land that we love.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us all and keep us in your Immaculate Heart.

Brothers and Sisters, Alleluia. Amen.

the rich push N-1 fairy tales because they cost nothing...,

NYTimes |  Christianity is in decline in the United States. The share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians and attend church is dropping. Evangelical voters make up a smaller share of the electorate. Members of the millennial generation are detaching themselves from religious institutions in droves.

Christianity’s gravest setbacks are in the realm of values. American culture is shifting away from orthodox Christian positions on homosexuality, premarital sex, contraception, out-of-wedlock childbearing, divorce and a range of other social issues. More and more Christians feel estranged from mainstream culture. They fear they will soon be treated as social pariahs, the moral equivalent of segregationists because of their adherence to scriptural teaching on gay marriage. They fear their colleges will be decertified, their religious institutions will lose their tax-exempt status, their religious liberty will come under greater assault.

The Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision landed like some sort of culminating body blow onto this beleaguered climate. Rod Dreher, author of the truly outstanding book “How Dante Can Save Your Life,” wrote an essay in Time in which he argued that it was time for Christians to strategically retreat into their own communities, where they could keep “the light of faith burning through the surrounding cultural darkness.”

He continued: “We have to accept that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend on no longer exist.”

Most Christian commentary has opted for another strategy: fight on. Several contributors to a symposium in the journal First Things about the court’s Obergefell decision last week called the ruling the Roe v. Wade of marriage. It must be resisted and resisted again. Robert P. George, probably the most brilliant social conservative theorist in the country, argued that just as Lincoln persistently rejected the Dred Scott decision, so “we must reject and resist an egregious act of judicial usurpation.”

These conservatives are enmeshed in a decades-long culture war that has been fought over issues arising from the sexual revolution. Most of the conservative commentators I’ve read over the past few days are resolved to keep fighting that war.

NASA, Jesus, and Templeton...,

HuffPo |  More of NASA’s astrobiology strategy for the next decade can be found in its latest roadmap: Astrobiology Strategy 2015. Lindsay Hays of California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is editor-in-chief. 

Microbes are given some attention in a section titled: “How Does Our Ignorance About Microbial Life on Earth Hinder Our Understanding of the Limits to Life?” Curiously, however, there’s not a word in the entire 256-page document (including the glossary) about the existence of viruses — the biggest part of the biosphere — let alone their consortial and persistent nature, when the new thinking in science is “virus first“ and that persistence may be just as crucial to life as replication.

Templeton last year also awarded $5.4 M for origin of life investigations to the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, with funds being administered by FAME synthetic biologist Steve Benner (who once quipped, “If you don’t have a theory of life, you can’t find aliens — unless they shoot you in the leg with a ray gun.”) AND $5.6M to ELSI — the Japanese government’s earth science institute in Tokyo - for its ELSI Origins Network, headed by astrophysicist Piet Hut also of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Steve Benner is listed as a reviewer on NASA’s latest roadmap and is on the editorial board of Astrobiology Journal whose senior editors include NAI’s new chief Penny Boston as well as ISSOL (International Society for the Study of Origin of Life) president Dave Deamer.

Astrobiology Journal is put together in the Kennewick, Washington home of Sherry Cady, a geologist who serves as editor in chief, and her husband Lawrence P. Cady, a fiction writer who serves as the journal’s managing editor and copy editor — according to LP Cady. The magazine is one of 80 of Mary Ann Liebert Inc.’s “authoritative” journals and has close ties to other NASA-funded scientists who serve as reviewers.

If anything substantive is likely to happen as a result of (or in spite of) Templeton funding on origin of life, I would expect it to come from Steve Benner’s project, which includes people like George E. Fox who collaborated early on with Carl Woese on Archaea, and Harry Lonsdale origin of life research funds recipient, Niles Lehman — plus Benner himself and eight others.

On the other hand, I have serious reservations about the NASA award of $1.1M of public funds to CTI. What ever happened to the separation of church and state?

who sponsored the hate?

newyorker |  The big donors in the Republican Party are reportedly flummoxed by the toxic rhetoric of Donald Trump. The billionaire political industrialist Charles Koch has warned that Trump’s proposed registry of Muslims in the U.S. would “destroy our free society.” After pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into promoting their right-wing libertarian views over the past four decades, and budgeting some eight hundred and eighty-nine million dollars to spend in the 2016 election cycle, he and his brother David Koch, and their donor circle, are apparently disappointed that they have bought so little control over the Republican Presidential candidates. “You’d think we could have more influence,” he lamented to the Financial Times. But, in fact, the influence of the Kochs and their fellow big donors is manifest in Trump’s use of incendiary and irresponsibly divisive rhetoric. Only a few years ago, it was they who were sponsoring the hate.

Over the July 4th weekend of 2010, I attended the fourth annual Defending the American Dream Summit, in Austin, Texas, which served in part as a training session for local Tea Party activists. The summit was sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, which purported to be a nonpartisan grass-roots political-advocacy group devoted to the cause of small government, free markets, and liberty. It was in fact an organization that had been founded and heavily funded by the Kochs, whose early activism was entwined in fearmongering and racial intolerance.

The Kochs’ father, Fred Koch, the founder of Koch Industries, the hugely profitable private oil-and-chemical company that his sons inherited, was one of the original members of the John Birch Society, the ultra-conservative group that accused political opponents of treason and was at its core segregationist. After the Supreme Court ruled in favor of desegregating America’s public schools, in 1954, the Birchers launched a nationwide crusade to impeach Chief Justice Earl Warren. In 1960, Fred Koch wrote a self-published book describing welfare programs as a secret government plot to lure rural blacks into cities so that they could foment “a vicious race war.” Before George Wallace declared his Presidential candidacy in 1968, Fred Koch also supported an unsuccessful effort to recruit Ezra Taft Benson, the former Secretary of Agriculture and a leader of the Mormon Church, and Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina senator, to run on a platform calling for the restoration of segregation. The Birchers’ radicalism was so extreme, and delusional, they claimed that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower was a communist agent.

It’s not fair to visit the sins of the father on the sons, but Charles and David have their own dubious record of involvement with racist institutions. They themselves belonged to the John Birch Society, and, in the late sixties, Charles was a trustee at a place called the Freedom School, outside Colorado Springs, which had no black students because, its director explained to the Times, “it might present a housing problem because some of his students are segregationists.” The Freedom School was a font of extreme anti-government ideology, teaching a revisionist version of American history in which it was argued that the Civil War should not have been fought, the South should have been allowed to secede, and slavery was a lesser evil than military conscription. Charles Koch was so enthralled with the Freedom School that he got his three brothers and many friends to attend. He had hoped to expand it into an accredited university, but instead it ran aground financially. It was, however, the first step in the Kochs’ lifelong crusade to use their vast fortune to reshape American academia and politics along the lines of their own ideology.

jesuitical rigor and morality on a collision course with evangelical ignorance and hypocrisy...,

guardian |  In recent months, the pope has argued for a radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements: “An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.

“The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands.

“The monopolising of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness,” he said.

In Lima last month, bishops from every continent expressed their frustration with the stalled climate talks and, for the first time, urged rich countries to act.

Sorondo, a fellow Argentinian who is known to be close to Pope Francis, said: “Just as humanity confronted revolutionary change in the 19th century at the time of industrialisation, today we have changed the natural environment so much. If current trends continue, the century will witness unprecedented climate change and destruction of the ecosystem with tragic consequences.”

According to Neil Thorns, head of advocacy at Cafod, said: “The anticipation around Pope Francis’s forthcoming encyclical is unprecedented. We have seen thousands of our supporters commit to making sure their MPs know climate change is affecting the poorest communities.”

However, Francis’s environmental radicalism is likely to attract resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US – where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives and Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate.

Cardinal George Pell, a former archbishop of Sydney who has been placed in charge of the Vatican’s budget, is a climate change sceptic who has been criticised for claiming that global warming has ceased and that if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were doubled, then “plants would love it”.

How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington

George Monbiot in the Guardian on how the degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.

How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist?

Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.

One theme is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.

But there were other, more powerful, reasons for the intellectual isolation of the fundamentalists. The US is peculiar in devolving the control of education to local authorities. Teaching in the southern states was dominated by the views of an ignorant aristocracy of planters, and a great educational gulf opened up. "In the south", Jacoby writes, "what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order."

The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest denomination in the US, was to slavery and segregation what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the south stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state's state school biology teachers believed humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time.

Monbiot carpet bombs the recent history of national governance-by-moron in the U.S. From old 666's "there you go again" line to James Earl Carter, all the way up through the current talk-radio culture war in which any possessing a GED would be classified as a "liberal elite".

Identity Politics and Bill O'Reilly's Memetic Assault on Obama

Conservatism is not fundamentally about ideology, but about the preservation of elite power, maintained as a form of identity politics. Elites then claim "natural" leadership, in the name of protecting, defending and exemplifying the group identity against evil, enemy "others." Ideology matters to the conservative project solely as a means for justification, including identity formation. It supports the forms of policies, practices and institutions that preserve group identity and power--and, thereby, elite rule. Consistency matters to this ideology only insofar as it proves necessary. Therefore, "the abandonment of conservative principles" is to be expected when those principles no longer serve those in power.

America's history of racism provides examples of how conservatism adapts, responding to repeated movements for social justice, which profoundly alter the relationships of radical, liberal and conservative forces. Inconsistencies are generated at multiple levels whenever this happens.

How Racism Changes Form--Conservatism As Identity Politics

O'Reilly spent the entirety of today's radio factor show making threats about the dire consequences to non-whites of continuing to call what he and his fellow ethnonationalists preach and practice "racism". He also excoriated Media Matters and liberal commentators who have labeled his pattern and praxis racist. At no time has the audacious scope and breadth of O'Reilly/Roger Ailes/Rupert Murdoch's propagandistic ambitions been more clearly evident than over the months during which O'Reilly has mounted a tragically effective, racially motivated and perpetrated campaign to damage Barack Obama's political prospects.

We are to disregard O'Reilly's clearly stated priorities, aims, funding sources etc.., and imagine that all the good works of Trinity United Church of Christ and pastor Jeremiah Wright are as nothing when compared and contrasted with the fiery 30 seconds of decontextualized dissent culled from a decade of his sermonizing? We need'nt decontextualize O'Reilly in any manner, form, or fashion in order to see precisely what he is and what he represents.

About that Roger Ailes; Roger Eugene Ailes (born May 15, 1940) is the president of Fox News Channel and chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group. He was a media consultant for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, as well as Rudy Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign in 1989.

the cross-hairs of american extremism

Washington Post | GEORGE TILLER knew the danger of providing late-term abortions. His home was picketed, his office was blown up and in 1993 he was shot in both arms by an anti-abortion zealot. He never considered stopping his work, because he knew there were women who needed his help. His murder is a tragedy for his family, his patients and his profession. It should serve as a wake-up call that more must be done to ensure that women have access to this legal procedure.

Mr. Tiller was shot to death Sunday as he handed out bulletins in his Kansas church and as his wife sang in the choir. Yesterday, authorities charged Scott Roeder with first-degree murder, and they are investigating what have been described as his virulent anti-abortion views. Mr. Tiller is the fourth abortion provider to be killed since 1993; the attacks he and his Wichita clinic endured are not isolated events. The National Abortion Federation has catalogued 6,143 such incidents of violence in the United States and Canada between 1977 and 2009, including arson, bombings and butyric acid attacks.

It is unclear how this violence has affected decisions by health-care providers. What is known is that the number of places where women can go for abortions has been declining since 1982. About one-third of women live in a county with no abortion providers, reports the Guttmacher Institute, and as a result a growing number of women have difficulty receiving the services in a timely manner.

The vast majority of abortions are performed in free-standing clinics like that run by Mr. Tiller. Very few are performed in hospitals -- a sign that mainline medicine is not living up to its responsibility. What has been overlooked since Mr. Tiller's appalling murder is what will happen to women who need his services. Mr. Tiller was one of the few doctors who performed abortions in the third trimester, and the stories of these women are heartbreaking because, in large measure, they desperately wanted children but were dealing with something gone horribly awry in their pregnancies.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is offering U.S. Marshals Service protection for abortion clinics and the doctors who staff them. It's the right call, but one that underscores the urgency of coming up with better solutions for the delivery of abortion services.

Uhuru LARPing Is A Harmless Hobby Enthusiasm - NOT A Viable Catalyst For Revolutionary Change

mronline |  How should dialectical materialists deal with the cultural question to avoid falling into the Afrocentric trap? The work of Amilcar Cabral and Sekou Toure provides a clue. First, what does the materialist mean by culture? We can use Toure’s definition from his speech “A Dialectical Approach to Culture.” He says:

By culture, we understand all the material and immaterial works of art and science, plus knowledge, manners, education, a mode of thought, behavior, and attitudes accumulated by the people both through and by virtue of their struggle for freedom from the hold and dominion of nature; we also include the result of their efforts to destroy the deviationist politics, social systems of domination and exploitation through the productive process of social life. Thus culture stands revealed as both an exclusive creation of the people and a source of creation, as an instrument of socio-economic liberation and as one of domination.

This definition highlights that culture depends on the relationship between people and their environment. It is not something merely spawned from the head. Indeed, one of the primary ways we come to understand a culture is through material artifacts such as pottery, tools, linguistic codes (like Sumerian scripts), and the like. We even separate historical periods through concepts like the “Iron or Bronze Age” or notions like “Feudalism, Mercantilism, and Capitalism.” It goes to show that the primary factor in cultural development is the political-economic arrangement and the effects of its productive relations.

In Cabral’s speech “National Liberation and Culture,” he states:

The value of culture as an element of resistance to foreign domination lies in the fact that culture is the vigorous manifestation, on the ideological or idealist plane, of the physical and historical reality of the society that is dominated or to be dominated. Culture is simultaneously the fruit of a people’s history and a determinant of history, by the positive or negative influence which it exerts on the evolution of relationships between man and his environment, among men or groups of men within a society, as well as among different societies.

Again, pay special attention to the fact that Cabral highlights that culture is an ideological expression of the material reality of society. Dialectical materialists do not ignore the role of culture. Instead, We point out that the call for cultural change is the ideological reflection of a need for the productive system to change. When one complains about the consumerism of Afrikan people or the high Black-on-Black violence, one should stop to consider the structural elements that bring about those practices.

How exactly should We understand the notion of “ideological reflection” in relation to base? Well, like the notion of simple and expanded reproduction in Marx’s Capital (where the production process cyclically reproduces itself), there is also the process of what is termed social reproduction. Indeed, in Capital, Marx tells us that not only are the productive forces reproduced in the average production process, but there is a reproduction of the necessary relations of capitalist production. In relation to culture as superstructure, everyday of our lives, but especially during childhood development, we encounter and internalize what that i term a “cultural logic.” This “logic” functions similarly to paths that all lead, in one way or another, to the same end.

During socialization, the child comes to acquire not only knowledge of an external world, a mother, and the like, but she also comes to acquire her culture. As the Soviet philosopher, Evald V. Ilyenkov states, “The child that has just been born is confronted – outside itself – not only by the external world, but also by a very complex system of culture, which requires of him ‘modes of behavior’ for which there is genetically (morphologically) “no code” in his body.” He says further,

Consciousness and will become necessary forms of mental activity only where the individual is compelled to control his own organic body in answer not to the organic (natural) demands of this body but to demands presented from outside, by the ‘rules’ accepted in the society in which he was born. It is only in these conditions that the individual is compelled to distinguish himself from his own organic body. These rules are not passed on to him by birth, through his ‘genes’, but are imposed upon him from outside, dictated by culture, and not by nature.

A similar concept is found in the Amerikan philosopher, George Herbert Mead’s, work Mind, Self, and Society with his notion of the generalized other. He says,

The organized community or social group which gives to the individual his unity of self may be called ‘the generalized other.’ The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community. Thus, for example, in the case of such a social group as a ball team, the team is the generalized other in so far as it enters—as an organized process or social activity—into the experience of any one of the individual members of it.

So, We understand that the person comes into a cultural matrix already developed for him or her to which they are then enculturated. We have to remember however, that the culture of any society is largely going to be one that is most fit for the current mode of production and its social relations. For example, during the feudal era, the common sense of the time believed that the nature of reality reflected the experiences of priests, lords, and serfs. The intellectuals of the era erected a grand scheme called the great chain of being that places the serfs at the lowest tier right above animals and had the church at the top right underneath God. If one questioned this logic, they were more often than not, treated as a social outcast or severely punished. There is a similar trend in relation to the rise and maintenance of capitalism.

From the last sentence, a word must be said about the role of law in relation to the struggle. The Marxist legal theorist, Evgeny B. Pashukanis, makes an astounding point in his article “Lenin and the Problem of Law” when he points out that, “Under autocracy and under capitalism it [is] impossible to struggle with the legal impotence and juridic illiteracy of the masses, without conducting a revolutionary struggle against autocracy and against capital. [T]his impotence is but a partial phenomenon of the general subjugation for whose maintenance Tsarist and bourgeois legality existed. But after the conquest of power by the proletariat, this struggle has the highest priority as one of the tasks of cultural re-education, as a precondition for the construction of socialism.” Thus, We need to be wary of those who wish to ground our struggle in the purely ideological realm. In other words, We must engage in a war of position against the decadence of Capital viz. a seizure of the instruments of production and the repressive apparatuses of the state. Only with a structural victory can we hope to wage and win the so-called “culture war”.

why criminal threat tiers 1, 2, and 3 must be terminated with extreme prejudice

questioneverything |  One could reasonably argue that I am, after all, biased and will tend to ignore evidence against my basic hypothesis, that civilization must necessarily collapse due to the decline of net free energy (i.e. peak oil combined with declining energy return on investment — EROI — and still growing populations). I am probably not immune to such selective bias. Thus I put it to you, the readers, to let me know of any evidence of some reasonably impactful institutions or organizations that seem to be working and contributing positively to human happiness (please also include estimates of the magnitude of such impact). As I was writing this one possible example did come to mind, if I allow that some kinds of religious experiences are positive (and I do even if I do not believe in most of what religions teach about an ethereal world). The current Pope of the Catholic faith (Francis), it seems to me, has done some worthwhile things that could have a positive impact on the followers of that religion, if not on other states owing to their leaders paying deference to what the Holy See says (e.g. calls for peace). But I reserve judgment of the effectiveness of his reign on the Church. For example, will he ferret out gross behaviors like child sex abuses or financial corruption in the Vatican's dealings? 

If you have any contributions please make them in comments here. Let's see what sort of list we come up with. But please do not post examples of dysfunction. We already know so many it would be an act of waste of bandwidth.

Economists' View the “New Normal”

Meanwhile if we just examine the state and trends of the global economy we get a basic picture of the developing collapse. An article in today's New York Times Business section by Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University “Signs of a Shakier New Normal”, May 17, 2015, brought into focus a variety of comments made by a number of neoclassical economists of late (including, from time to time, the titular representative of ‘liberal’ economists, Paul Krugman) that we have entered a new kind of economic situation that they don't quite understand but have labeled “the new normal.” I suppose they are trying to subtly say that they expect the current set of conditions to continue indefinitely into the future. But, their reasons for saying so have nothing to do with their understanding the dynamics of the real economy and making predictions based on their bogus models. They are just tacitly admitting that something unusual is happening and it has persisted long enough now to be acknowledged as possibly permanent. 

While the US government and a variety of media talking heads are hailing the “recovery” the reality of life for the vast majority of Americans does not demonstrate recovery. They continue to grow poorer, budgets are stretched even for those who have jobs, the real cost of living is still going up even in spite of the recent relief in energy costs, in short for most people there is no recovery. And that is what these economists are referring to (academically) as the new normal.

Watching The Police: Do You See What I See?

slate |  Someone says he’s bleeding from his ear. Have you just watched an old man die? Is he dying?

For this subset of people, many of whom seem to be in the process of radicalizing, any one of these dozens of videos can become the occasion for a deep dive that unravels most of the assumptions that have shielded police from widespread scrutiny. Take the Buffalo incident: The viewer sees a tall, thin, older man walking toward a group of police officers. He’s wearing a blue sweater. The cops are in short-sleeved shirts and gloves. There are some forbiddingly decorative concrete spheres in the scene, of the sort one might find outside a conference center; the viewer will learn at some point that this is all happening in Buffalo, New York, where, the day before, this very group of officers knelt with protesters in a moving celebration of communal harmony. 

The Buffalo Police Department Emergency Response Team—as you, hypothetical white viewer, eventually learn they’re called—is carrying batons and wearing helmets. The tall old man holds what looks like a police helmet in his left hand. In his right he holds what looks like a phone. As with so many of these videos, you can’t quite hear. This is worrying: You believe in getting all the context. But the first lesson of this mess is that context is a luxury. Like the protesters, like minorities pulled over for a traffic stop, like police, even, the only information you have is what’s in front of you. What you see is this: The old man seems to address the officers briefly, reaching toward one and tapping his arm with his phone. The officer who received the taps reacts as if he’s been stung and shoves the old man hard. The old man falls directly backward, out of the scene. There is an awful sound. The camera pulls back. The man lies on the cement with a dark fluid pooling under his head. His right hand, which is still holding the telephone, gives up; you watch the phone fall as it goes limp. 

Someone says, He’s bleeding from his ear. Have you just watched an old man die? Is he dying? The officer (who knows no more than you do) looks briefly concerned and walks on. Another officer starts to bend toward the man; he is stopped by his colleagues. They walk on. The man bleeds.

Context will come in time, and it will not make this better. You will read that the Buffalo Police Department reported this incident as an injury incurred when one person at the protest “tripped and fell.” Only when the news team that captured this circulates the footage will the public realize that the record has been falsified. Buffalo Police Cpt. Jeff Rinaldo will say there was no deception at all, just an honest mistake. “How the situation was being observed, it was being observed from a camera that was mounted behind the line of officers,” he says. “The initial information, it appears the subject had tripped and fallen while the officers were advancing.” He will congratulate the police on how quickly they corrected the record. “There is no attempt to mislead,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown will say of the police statement, echoing Rinaldo. 

You want to believe there was no attempt to mislead. But something is off. The “initial information” about the incident, you realize, should obviously have come from Buffalo Police Cpt. Jeff Rinaldo’s officers. Not some camera, no matter where it was. In calling an obvious cover-up a mistake, both the mayor and the police captain are acting as if it’s a given that not one of the 14 law enforcement officers you saw in that video—who witnessed what happened—could be counted upon, let alone expected, to tell the truth. Rinaldo speaks in a language so wrenched by adherence to the passive voice that it barely sounds like English: The situation was being observed … the initial information, it appears. 

You’ve heard of the “blue wall of silence”—the anti-snitch code whereby police protect each other from accountability to the public. But maybe you thought it was more a Hollywood invention than a plague sickening American towns. Evidence for it, and evidence for rampant dishonesty by police unaccustomed to being doubted or questioned, is mounting. You read, for example, that police reported that $2.4 million in Rolexes were looted from a store in SoHo, even though the store spokesman said, “no watches of any kind were stolen, as there weren’t any on display in the store.” You start to wonder about other police reports on looting. Maybe you’ll think back to last week, an age ago now, when protesters and journalists were beaten and tear-gassed in Lafayette Park so Trump could pose in front of a church. The following day, the U.S. Park Police strenuously denied using tear gas at all. If you’re unusually attentive, you might also remember that Park Police walked that denial back several days later, citing confusion over whether pepper balls counted as tear gas (they do).

Never mind: You’re trying to focus on this one case in Buffalo, and the next steps matter: The Buffalo Police Department suspends two officers without pay while an investigation is conducted. Most regard this as the bare minimum since the principal offenders—who you now know are named Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe—not only assaulted an old man but might have lied to their superiors about it. Maybe you’re relieved there’s a modicum of accountability. That relief quickly dissolves. It emerges that Torgalski and McCabe’s colleagues find this minimal consequence outrageous: The day after the two officers’ suspension, 57 members of the Buffalo Police Department’s Emergency Response Team resign from the team (though not the police force—they remain employed there) to support their two colleagues. They believe the men who shoved an old man to the ground are being treated abusively. “Our position is these officers … were simply doing their job. I don’t know how much contact was made. He did slip in my estimation. He fell backwards,” said Buffalo Police Benevolent Association president John Evans. Before you can pause and really take this in—he did slip in my estimation—the Buffalo Police Union will post on its website, “These guys did nothing but do what they were ordered to do. This is disgusting !!!”

Maybe, as a hypothetical white American who’s always had good relations with police, you are shocked to find the police union excusing obvious misconduct as “just following orders” and doubling down on the lie that the man slipped. You’ve heard that police lie, but it’s being driven home to you differently now that your attention is focused. You’re watching the lies happen in real time. You saw, with George Floyd’s death, that Minneapolis police initially reported he “appeared to be suffering medical distress”—a curious way of saying a man was asphyxiated. The original statement Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder chose to send reporters read “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction.” That’s all we would have known about George Floyd’s death had it not been for the brave teenager who recorded it in real time. The revelation isn’t that the lies are new. It’s that they’re everywhere.

British Propaganda and Disinformation

strategic-culture |  When it comes to creating bogus news stories and advancing false narratives, the British intelligence services have few peers. In fact, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) has led the way for its American “cousins” and Britain’s Commonwealth partners – from Canada and Australia to India and Malaysia – in the dark art of spreading falsehoods as truths. Recently, the world has witnessed such MI-6 subterfuge in news stories alleging that Russia carried out a novichok nerve agent attack against a Russian émigré and his daughter in Salisbury, England. This propaganda barrage was quickly followed by yet another – the latest in a series of similar fabrications – alleging the Syrian government attacked civilians in Douma, outside of Damascus, with chemical weapons.

It should come as no surprise that American news networks rely on British correspondents stationed in northern Syria and Beirut as their primary sources. MI-6 has historically relied on non-official cover (NOC) agents masquerading primarily as journalists, but also humanitarian aid workers, Church of England clerics, international bankers, and hotel managers, to carry out propaganda tasks. These NOCs are situated in positions where they can promulgate British government disinformation to unsuspecting actual journalists and diplomats.

For decades, a little-known section of the British Foreign Office – the Information Research Department (IRD) – carried out propaganda campaigns using the international media as its platform on behalf of MI-6. Years before Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir became targets for Western destabilization and “regime change.” IRD and its associates at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and in the newsrooms and editorial offices of Fleet Street broadsheets, tabloids, wire services, and magazines, particularly “The Daily Telegraph,” “The Times,” “Financial Times,” Reuters, “The Guardian,” and “The Economist,” ran media smear campaigns against a number of leaders considered to be leftists, communists, or FTs (fellow travelers).

These leaders included Indonesia’s President Sukarno, North Korean leader (and grandfather of Pyongyang’s present leader) Kim Il-Sung, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Cyprus’s Archbishop Makarios, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Chile’s Salvador Allende, British Guiana’s Cheddi Jagan, Grenada’s Maurice Bishop, Jamaica’s Michael Manley, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Guinea’s Sekou Toure, Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara, Australia’s Gough Whitlam, New Zealand’s David Lange, Cambodia’s Norodom Sihanouk, Malta’s Dom Mintoff, Vanuatu’s Father Walter Lini, and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah.

After the Cold War, this same propaganda operation took aim at Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Somalia’s Mohamad Farrah Aidid, and Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today, it is Assad’s, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s, and Catalonian independence leader Carles Puigdemont’s turn to be in the Anglo-American state propaganda gunsights. Even Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, long a darling of the Western media and such propaganda moguls as George Soros, is now being targeted for Western visa bans and sanctions over the situation with Muslim Rohingya insurgents in Rakhine State. 

Chilling Feverish Minds and Pussies...,

israelshamir |  Men love women, we are made that way. We love their beautiful bodies and their compassionate souls, their high spirit and their subtle mind. They are our lovers, friends, comrades. In all the history of art, there was perhaps one poet, Palladas of Alexandria, who said he abhorred women and even that could be a case of sour grapes. Pity that in our post-Christian, or even anti-Christian society a very old type of women has been reconstructed, that of the women who broke with Logos and united with the dark heathen spirit. Debased and debasing, they are eager to serve their Dark Lord of Wall Street.

Even more revolting are the men who had sent these poor misled souls to riot in the cities of America, hoping to provoke police or public violence. They know it was difficult for real men to defend themselves against a women’s attack, and they use that to the utmost.

A Russian Jewish writer Dmitry Bykov considered it a standard Jewish stratagem: they send a woman to provoke a man with nasty words and insults; if he responds, they attack him in defending the offended womanhood, he wrote in his amusing Living Souls. The Jewish masterminds of the virago revolt – George Soros and his fellow billionaire Tom Steyer, who pledged $100 million for the regime change, utilised this time-honoured subterfuge.

The viragos were joined by LGBT, the evil Tetragrammaton, modern worshippers of Cybele. Cybele priests and worshippers castrated themselves in front of their goddess. This is the aim of the gender agenda: castration of the male. Now they have been defeated, as they were defeated centuries ago, and they are not taking it lying down.

So it is not a shift from Democrats to Republicans – it is a shift from Cybele to Christ. This esoteric side of the regime change had been clear to the protagonists. That’s why Trump went to church hand in hand with his lady-wife just before the oath, thus ceremonially restoring the normal order of things. That’s why Trump by his first blessed act has removed the LGBT smut page off the White House site, restoring its whiteness.

4:14 - the worst and most disgusting moment in bush's presidency....,

people |  Standing firm that his decision to invade Iraq was the right one, revealing that he considered dropping Dick Cheney from his 2004 campaign to "demonstrate that I was in charge," and even admitting that a televised insult from Kanye West represented the lowest point of his presidency, former President George W. Bush has put pen to paper for a memoir, Decision Points, due from Crown Publishers on Nov. 9.

Talking about the book in his first TV interview since leaving the Oval Office, Bush met with NBC's Today show co-anchor Matt Lauer in Midland, Texas, from his childhood home and church, and from Centennial Park.

"I faced a lot of criticism as President. I didn't like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to [Hurricane] Katrina represented an all-time low,"

Bloomberg No Stranger to Gestapo Tactics (Bet Not EVER Get Gestapo Power)

theatlantic |  When last in power, Bloomberg presided over the mistreatment of Democrats who sought to protest Republicans, violating the constitutional rights of hundreds of dissenters.

 At the time, Bloomberg was a first-term Republican mayor of New York. The GOP hoped that holding the 2004 Republican National Convention in the city, a site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, would help reelect George W. Bush. Protests in deep-blue New York were inevitable. Bloomberg had months to prepare.

And he did. Nearly as soon as the convention location was announced, the police department that Bloomberg presided over launched a secret mission to infiltrate protest groups, The New York Times later reported:

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.

Some people planned to break the law during protests, but in hundreds of secret reports, the NYPD “chronicled the views and plans of people who had no apparent intention of breaking the law,” including “members of street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies.”

Spying was just the beginning.

freedom's laboratory

NYTimes | To say that the scientific frame of mind has played an important part in the rise of the West is not exactly controversial. Science always gets its moment in the spotlight in “Whig history,” as historians (dismissively) call grand narratives of political and material progress. In “The Science of Liberty,” the veteran science writer Timothy Ferris makes a more extravagant claim, assigning not a mere supporting role but top billing to the celebrated experimenters and inventors of the past several centuries. As he sees it, the standard account of the history textbooks — with the Renaissance giving rise to the Scientific Revolution and thus preparing the way for the Enlightenment — fails to identify the primary causal relationship. Democratic governance and individual rights did not emerge from some amorphous “brew of humanistic and scientific thinking,” he argues, but were “sparked” by science itself — the crucial “innovative ingredient” that “continues to foster political freedom today.”

Ferris, the author of “The Whole Shebang” and a number of other books about cosmology, usefully reminds us that science was an integral part of the intellectual equipment of the great pioneers of political and individual liberty. John Locke was not just the most eloquent philosophical advocate of the social contract and natural rights. He was an active member of the emerging scientific culture of 17th-century Oxford, and his intimates included Isaac Newton, who likewise was a radical Whig, supporting Parliament against the overreaching of the crown. Among the American founders, the scientific preoccupations of Franklin and Jefferson are well known, but Ferris emphasizes that they were hardly alone in their interests. He recounts a charming episode, for instance, in which George Washington and Thomas Paine floated together one night down a New Jersey creek, lighting cartridge paper at the water’s surface to determine whose theory was correct about the source of swamp gas. Ferris also neatly summarizes the prehistory of modern science’s ascent, with subtle takes on Galileo’s clash with church authorities and Francis Bacon’s inductive method.

The most engaging chapters in “The Science of Liberty” concern the dynamic interplay of technology and commerce. As Ferris recognizes, the seemingly irresistible spread of modern principles of liberty derives in large measure from the capacity of modern industrial democracies to deliver the goods in terms of general prosperity, health and diversion. The practical side of the scientific outlook has generated endless rounds of invention and innovation (Watt and his steam engine, Morse and his telegraph, Edison and his electric lights, etc.), and the human benefits of these time- and labor-saving improvements have been extended dramatically, if haltingly, by the free market. The singular insight of Adam Smith, Ferris writes, was to recognize that wealth creation and the production of material comforts might be “increased indefinitely if individuals are free to invest and to innovate.”

By this point in his ambitious narrative, however, Ferris has given up on any real effort to argue for the decisive influence of science as such. He is content to speak of science metaphorically, as the model for openness and experimentalism in all the major realms of liberal-democratic endeavor. Thus, just as in his account of Smith’s free-market economics, Ferris finds in the United States Constitution the underlying principle that citizens should “be free to experiment, assess the results and conduct new experiments.” The American Republic might be compared to “a scientific laboratory,” he writes, because it is designed “not to guide society toward a specified goal, but to sustain the experimental process itself.” Fist tap Nana.

children exposed to religion have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction...,

rawstory |  A study published in the July issue of Cognitive Science determined that children who are not exposed to religious stories are better able to tell that characters in “fantastical stories” are fictional — whereas children raised in a religious environment even “approach unfamiliar, fantastical stories flexibly.”

In “Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds,” Kathleen Corriveau, Eva Chen, and Paul Harris demonstrate that children typically have a “sensitivity to the implausible or magical elements in a narrative,” and can determine whether the characters in the narrative are real or fictional by references to fantastical elements within the narrative, such as “invisible sails” or “a sword that protects you from danger every time.”

However, children raised in households in which religious narratives are frequently encountered do not treat those narratives with the same skepticism. The authors believed that these children would “think of them as akin to fairy tales,” judging “the events described in them as implausible or magical and conclude that the protagonists in such narratives are only pretend.”

And yet, “this prediction is likely to be wrong,” because “with appropriate testimony from adults” in religious households, children “will conceive of the protagonist in such narratives as a real person — even if the narrative includes impossible events.”

The researchers took 66 children between the ages of five and six and asked them questions about stories — some of which were drawn from fairy tales, others from the Old Testament — in order to determine whether the children believed the characters in them were real or fictional. 

“Children with exposure to religion — via church attendance, parochial schooling, or both — judged [characters in religious stories] to be real,” the authors wrote. “By contrast, children with no such exposure judged them to be pretend,” just as they had the characters in fairy tales. But children with exposure to religion judged many characters in fantastical, but not explicitly religious stories, to also be real — the equivalent of being incapable of differentiating between Mark Twain’s character Tom Sawyer and an account of George Washington’s life.

This conclusion contradicts previous studies in which children were said to be “born believers,” i.e. that they possessed “a natural credulity toward extraordinary beings with superhuman powers. Indeed, secular children responded to religious stories in much the same way as they responded to fantastical stories — they judged the protagonist to be pretend.”

The researchers also determined that “religious teaching, especially exposure to miracle stories, leads children to a more generic receptivity toward the impossible, that is, a more wide-ranging acceptance that the impossible can happen in defiance of ordinary causal relations.”