Welcome back to your daily serving of Ghion Water. It’s Thursday and “bombogenesis” is on our minds! If you have not heard yet, “bombogenesis” is the name they have given the new snowstorm that is hyped to be the storm of the century. I don’t know how many storms of the century we can have in one century, but here we go again. A quick clarification here, this is not to throw our lots in with climate change deniers. It’s just a recognition of the fact that corporate media has come up with these storm naming gimmicks and catchy slogans like “snowmagedon” as a means to keep our eyes glued to their medium. This is a form of disaster capitalism, get ready for wall to wall coverage of #bombogenesis throughout the weekend. Parenthetically, did you know that the weather segment is the most profitable part of local news networks. Corporate media will be doing a happy dance as mother nature reverts to Gap Band mode and drops a bomb on the East Coast. Now on to the news and happenings from non-corporate journalists and independent media sources, enjoy these tall drinks of Ghion Water.
The Valor of Dissent
When you take the journey of dissent, you lose friends, alienate family, confuse confidants and become a lonely voice in your professional world. I’ve spent years sitting in military classrooms from West Point to Fort Knox to Fort Leavenworth as the odd man, the outlier, the confusing character in the corner. It’s like leaving the church, becoming an atheist, all while still living in the monastery. Still, the truth is that the military is more accommodating than one might suspect. I wrote a critical book, published some skeptical articles, but it’s not as though anyone ever outright threatened me. The pressure is different, more subtle: veiled warnings from superiors, cautious advice from mentors.
I waited too long. I admit as much. Maybe I needed a decade to stew, or perhaps my brief sojourn in civilian graduate school shook something loose. Nonetheless, a few years back, the emotional weight was unbearable and out poured the dissenting waves. [from Truthdig]
About Cancerous Corporatism
Crucially, it is impossible for workers to take collective action if a sizeable portion of the workforce can be sacked in a day. This makes advocating for important things like health and safety or productivity improvements almost impossible. As a result, manufacturing in places like Norfolk and Suffolk is in a grim state. The majority of workers we spoke to said that firms hire agency workers instead of permanent staff to avoid having to pay redundancy when the inevitable closures happen.
Options for Britvic workers in Norwich are limited. One worker “didn’t know anyone who’s come out [of a factory] and is better off… or on the same level”. Their most likely destinations are low-skill, low-wage jobs in service industries on part-time or zero-hour contracts. [from Naked Capitalism]
Reviving McCarthy
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.
Amazingly, the Democrats attacked Trump from the Right, reprising the McCarthy era of three generations ago. Trump was soft on the Kremlin, which is depicted as the home of Euro-Asiatic totalitarianism, no matter who is actually in charge. However, the new “Red Scare” requires the linking of Trump/Putin with domestic Reds – thus, the vilification of BAR and other Left sites by Prop-or-Not, a toy in the hands of Amazon and Washington Postowner Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man and business partner with the CIA. [from Black Agenda Report]
Reprising Apartheid
“Temporarily protected” individuals technically have no right to work, and their identification cards state as much, although the Israeli government has avoided prosecuting businesses who employ individuals with protected status. Much like in the U.S., this ambiguous situation leaves migrants with little bargaining power at their workplaces, and migrant populations are consequently highly vulnerable to labor exploitation. In a shockingly brazen and petty attempt to make day-to-day life even less livable for these individuals, the government recently passed a law allowing them to confiscate 20% of all migrants’ wages and place them in an escrow account, claiming that it would be returned to them as a lump sum when they chose to leave Israel. (There is no procedure for returning wages to individuals who eventually win asylum, presumably because the government has no intention of allowing this to happen.) For migrants who are already living on extremely meager wages, the loss of a fifth of their income is a huge blow that can make subsistence a practical impossibility. [from Current Affairs]
Neocon and Neoliberal Watch (they are the same thing)
And then there are the smaller things, suspicious little details that might fly over the heads of Westerners seeking to analyze the situation in Iran. For instance, the protests have not been widely televised within the activist Iranian community. It seems many of the individuals who would have been fertile ground for a typical protest (the youth who want reform and who are suffering under economic stagnation) have not been included in the memo to get out into the streets. Even the people who took part in the 2009 Green Revolution are claiming that this current protest is not their doing and that they have no links to the organization of the demonstrations. Many of them are simply looking at one another, wondering what is happening in their own country. [from Activist Post]
World War Omega
Chinese military officials have recently conducted the so-called “war ceremony” – urging their troops to be ready to fight. If the media report is accurate, it would suggest that China - fearing the worst - is preparing for war on the Korean Penisula. Previously, internal documents leaked from China’s main state-owned telecommunications company shows three villages and cities in the northeastern border province of Jilin, have been designated for refugee camps-if war breaks out. China is afraid a swarm of refugees from North Korea could cross the Tumen River into China. [from Zero Hedge]
Military-Financial Complex Boondoggles
Anti-terrorism funding has proven to be a boon for the travel industry. Many DHS grant recipients paid to send their employees to the HALO Counter-Terrorism Summit in 2012, which took place at the Paradise Point Resort & Spa on an island near San Diego. Invitees were told that “this luxury resort features over 460 guestrooms, five pools, three fantastic restaurants overlooking the bay, a world-class spa and state-of-the-art fitness center. Paradise awaits.” The highlight of the conference was a “zombie apocalypse” show featuring “40 actors dressed as zombies getting gunned down by a military tactical unit…. Conference attendees were invited to watch the shows as part of their education in emergency response training,” as a Senate investigation reported. This type of federally subsidized mass-shooting rehearsal did not spur any protests from anti-gun groups. [from FEE]
From the YouTubes
This Day in History
On January 4th, 1999, the Euro made it’s debut on the world stage. Back then, it was seen as a revolutionary change for good and a way to increase European cohesion. Now we see the Euro and the EU as a whole for what it truly is, a gambit by globalists to tie up world currencies and the planet by extension into a web of Central Banking tyranny, a way to indenture billions into a life of corporate servitude and a means to erase sovereignty.
Quote of the Day
“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
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