Happy Friday everybody. A quick teaser before we get to the Daily Ghion Water. Tomorrow, we will be publishing “This Week’s Recap of Corporate Media Bullcrap” as Teodrose Fikre picks one particular corporate media narrative and dissects the truth behind the propaganda our mainstream press is spinning. In the process, one “journalist” is chosen for the “hackery honors” to highlight the duplicity behind the professional dissemblers who get paid to peddle disinformation as news. As they say in the biz, stay tuned. Now, on to your Daily Ghion Water.
The Military-Financial Racket
The Costs of War Project has produced not just a map of the war on terror, 2015-2017 (released at TomDispatch with this article), but the first map of its kind ever. It offers an astounding vision of Washington’s counterterror wars across the globe: their spread, the deployment of U.S. forces, the expanding missions to train foreign counterterror forces, the American bases that make them possible, the drone and other air strikes that are essential to them, and the U.S. combat troops helping to fight them. (Terror groups have, of course, morphed and expanded riotously as part and parcel of the same process.)
A glance at the map tells you that the war on terror, an increasingly complex set of intertwined conflicts, is now a remarkably global phenomenon. It stretches from the Philippines (with its own ISIS-branded group that just fought an almost five-month-long campaign that devastated Marawi, a city of 300,000) through South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and deep into West Africa where, only recently, four Green Berets died in an ambush in Niger. [from Tom Dispatch]
Mass Education
For more than three years, Andres excelled in this program. Unfortunately, Andres’ education began to unravel when suddenly, without warning, his paraprofessional — or educational assistant — was removed from the classroom. She had been the person who helped Andres stay on track in class and helped him when he became dysregulated. “The process was not transparent,” Anaya says, “so I have no idea why the school did this. I could not get a real answer. The [paraprofessional] was essential to him. She was the stop-gap between him and his teachers. Once DOE pulled her, Andres had no support in school.” And once more, he began to flounder.
This time, Anaya decided to completely withdraw Andres from school and began to homeschool him in September 2017. Together, she and her son are now pursuing “unschooling,” a form of homeschooling that allows the child to determine what he or she will study and when. [from Truth Out]
UnBreaking the System
Let’s actually start all the way at the beginning. Humans dominate the planet because we have hands and a brain that cooperatively are able to use tools to make other tools that then make things that we want. This was always our advantage over other animals, and has allowed us to create our own environments (houses and infrastructure in cities, for example), instead of going along with whatever the ecosystem happened to provide.
I said that we make tools that are used to make other tools, not that we simply make tools. The key to human success is ability to use a set of tools together, as a system, and to use one set of tools to make another set. So for instance in the modern economy, there are tools called machine tools that make all kinds of metal parts that are then used to make the machinery that we see in factories, and more machine tools, and which eventually make the goods that we use and the services that use those goods. [from Naked Capitalism]
Corporate Censorship
There really is a vast conspiracy to strangle radical dissent in the United States, under the broad heading of suppressing “Fake News”—meaning reporting, analysis and advocacy that challenges the corporate narrative. The most active early conspirators emerged from Hillary Clinton’s campaign tent, packed with Wall Street and Silicon Valley operatives, lobbyists for all the profiteers of imperialist war, most of the corporate media, and the spies, assassins and information manipulators of the national security state. All were now Democrats—virtually the entire ruling class, brought together in terror of the unpredictable Donald Trump, a man known for his hatreds, but who failed to exhibit sufficient malice toward Russians or rhetorical loyalty to the free movement of global capital. [from Truthdig]
Neocon and Neoliberal Watch (they are the same thing)
The Resistance is not only pushing Bannon as credible and a book that should be read but just recently they were pedaling a fund to give money to families of the FBI. Mueller and Comey are now the darlings of the Resistance, liberals are professing daily, their love and support of an organization that’s known for its systemic racism, profiling and destruction of black communities and activists for decades. James Comey has gotten so comfortable in his planned display of brainwashing that he is now on twitter quoting MLK. The idea of that alone should infuriate every black person in America, and every white liberal who uses MLK daily to hide behind their prejudices and hate. Ask yourselves when have you ever seen anyone from the intelligence community, publicly on social media? [from Politics Peach]
Prison-Financial Complex
Ask yourself this: at a time when crime rates across the country remain at historic lows (despite Sessions’ inaccurate claims to the contrary), why does the prison population continue to grow? The prison population continues to grow because of a glut of laws that criminalize activities that should certainly not be outlawed, let alone result in jail time. Overcriminalization continues to plague the country because of legislators who work hand-in-hand with corporations to adopt laws that favor the corporate balance sheet. And when it comes to incarceration, the corporate balance sheet weighs heavily in favor of locking up more individuals in government-run and private prisons. [from Zero Hedge]
High Times and Misdemeanors
Americans keeping tabs on the fight for legal weed would notice Sessions’ past and present remarks on marijuana policy have been somewhat vague, and may or may not be further cause for concern depending how states enforce them. Sessions’ claim that marijuana, a drug that has never killed anyone, is on the same level as heroin, a substance far more deadly and dangerous, illustrates how warped America’s criminal justice system is; given the money talking on behalf of the private prison, pharmaceutical, and alcohol industries most financially invested in weed’s prohibition, Americans must take on both corporate and government adversaries in this struggle. [from Zach Haller]
Help us Fight Net Apartheid
How is it that six companies, meaning six people who own these companies, can have a near total monopoly on the news and data we depend on to inform our decision about politics, culture and issues of concern? Two words. Corporate censorship. The more technology advances, the easier it for those who own the infrastructure of mass media to corner the market and eradicate competition. Hoarding the marketplace of ideas and crushing competitors is the most insidious face of capitalism. The proliferation of cancerous corporatism is has immense ramification, chief among them is the collusion between Wall Street and government that is witnessing information warfare against free speech as the very wealthy are coalescing power and silencing dissent in the process. [from Our Editorial]
From the YouTubes
For people who stubbornly hang on to the notion that Donald Trump is different and that he is against globalists, here is the same Trump bowing before the same globalist demon who has been a constant in the District of Caligula and who has been the silent puppeteer behind every president dating back to Richard Nixon.
This Day in History
On January 5, 1933, construction begins on the Golden Gate Bridge, as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages.
Quote of the Day
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
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Staff Writer
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