My Media and Political Studies - What That Ride Was Like

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

To finish up my media and political studies posts for now, my introduction was my radicalizing ride with Dennis.  That set the stage for everything that followed.  We ran into capitalism on steroids (or, you could say, it ran into us  ), and I have continually seen people overplay the influence of retail politics and the military and underplay the capitalist interests.  Capitalist interests run the show, not retail politicians or the military.  Politicians are puppets, the media is the mouthpiece, writing the first draft of “history,” and the military is the muscle.  

Ever since JFK was taken out, American presidents have all been puppets, and even Uncle Noam has stated as much.  He said that Lyndon Johnson was visited by Wall Street’s “wise men,” and less than a week later, he announced that he would not run for reelection.

There has been a battle between Right and Left over “conspiracy theories,” which have been as American as apple pie since the Declaration of Independence, and such “conspiratorial” views go back to the Classic Greeks, as they formed their democracy.  All sorts of “wacky” conspiracy theories have turned out to be true (1, 2), and those are just the tip of the iceberg.  I know that the technologies that could usher in the Fifth Epoch have long existed on Earth, but are under hyper-elite control, and they actively suppress any efforts to independently develop them.  People often dismiss all of that as a conspiracy theory, but when you live through it, it is no theory.

In the end, my media and political studies were invaluable for understanding many proximal causes of our situation.  The ultimate cause has always lied in the economic end, not the political end, of societal dynamics.  The only two things that exist in the universe are energy and consciousness, and understanding those are the key to our future, if it is to be a positive one (which is by no means guaranteed).  Retail politics is useless for righting the ship, as is all “alternative” politics that focuses on the elite and hacks at branches.  Politics has always been about how to slice up humanity’s scarce economic pie, and open imperialism is once again raising its head.  In a world of abundance, all of today’s political stripes become obsolete, as well as elites.  

It is all about what we do, not them.  Going for the root is the only path that I am interested in, and is likely the only approach with a prayer, and that effort has to be grounded in love.  It would not take many of us to right the ship, which is what my work is about.  

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

A little break from the rackets posts to comment on current events.  My work hurricane has passed for now, and I am digging out on the home front.  Yesterday’s bombing of Syria has spurred a great deal of commentary, and what struck me was how stunted people’s perspectives were, as they penned their geopolitical analyses.  A little scientific literacy could go a long way to helping them, such as distinguishing ultimate and proximate causes.  Back in 2014, when I revised my American Empire essay, I could not find hardly any pundits who even mentioned oil in their analysis of the American invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.  Securing Earth’s last easy hydrocarbons, and oil in particular, is the only reason why we keep invading, bombing, and meddling in the Middle East and vicinity.  Any so-called “analysis” that doesn’t acknowledge that from the beginning is fatally flawed, turning such an “analysis” into a delusional exercise, either self-deluded or intended to deceive people.  

I see the same thing today, with all manner of pundit weighing in, as they get into the various players in Syria.  The fact is that the most corrupt player is the one an ocean away, the USA, which is only there to secure the region for the hydrocarbon interests.  Everything else is noise, and has been for more than a century, and it is fitting that the UK is still carrying our bags for us, and that France also contributed to the attack.  The imperial overlords are still playing their evil games.  

Uncle Ed often cited Consortium News in his last years, and their articles are going to be the ones worth reading for current events like this, such as here, here, and here.  You often get military types weighing in for events like these, but what interests them is who shot/bombed/invaded whom, strategy, victory, and defeat, not why they were fighting in the first place.  The mainstream media is worse than worthless, serving up a steady stream of lies and spin, such as when the USA bombed Yugoslavia.  

What is happening is just more oil and empire, over an event that is almost certainly fabricated, which is standard operating procedure for the USA.  We bomb because we can.  Grim times.

Best,

Wade

Edited April 14, 2018 by Wade Frazier

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Here is some current reading…

The long, sad journey of the Kurds is probably about to get sadder once more.  As usual, lies trumpeted by the media help get the wars going, and here is a recent example.  The lies about the Syrian “chemical attack” have been exposed as a White Helmet fabricated incident.  But actual war crimes don’t make the news.  As long as we have a corporate-dominated media, Ed and Noam’s propaganda model will be relevant.  

The disinformation piece in Washington Post on PropOrNot has been exposed as Ukrainian-related, which means that American spooks were involved.  CNN’s involvement is no surprise.  

I was reading some Peter Dale Scott on the similarities between American assassinations and 9/11.  There is certainly a lot being covered up about 9/11, even admitted by members of the 9/11 commission.  As with JFK, RFK, MLK, etc., the public is never going to hear the truth from official sources.  

On the scientific front, lots of good stuff.  More evidence that the Great Oxygenation Event may have been pretty sudden.  In Peter Ward’s latest book, with Joe Kirschvink, they argued that when life invented oxygenic photosynthesis, it took many millions of years before life began using it for respiration, so the oxygen levels spiked.  Fascinating topic.  

On the Mediterranean’s filling and drying out during those events at Gibraltar, it was definitely dramatic.  

On the Permian Extinction, it is not just sulfate-reducing bacteria producing hydrogen sulfide that is a suspect, but we also have methane producing archaeans as a suspect.  Last year, another paper suggested that an ice interval did it.  Let the debates rage on.   

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

This will be a current events post, sort of.  Living where I do, especially across the street from Microsoft’s headquarters, I interact daily with immigrants from all over the world, but particularly from Asia, especially the Pacific Rim.  My company has offices and factories all over the world, and I had to take over the accounting for a company in South Korea that we bought a couple of years ago.  My father was in the Korean War, and as Korea is in the headlines daily of late, I found myself digging into my library to read up.  I reread a chapter on the Korean War in William Blum’s Killing Hope, which Uncle Noam has called, “Far and away the best book on the topic.”  Killing Hope is about American imperial interventions since World War II, from CIA covert action to outright genocidal invasions.  

If I had been a few years older, I might have been drafted for the Vietnam War, so these topics are near and dear to me.  I grew up in the Vietnam Era, but did not really begin to understand the issues until after my radicalization, getting Lies of Times, reading Ralph McGehee’s memoirs, reading Manufacturing Consent, etc.  Last year, as I studied for writing Uncle Ed’s biography, I obtained his earliest political writings, which were on Vietnam.  

Rereading Blum’s chapter on Korea was reminiscent of reading Ed’s books on Vietnam.  The South Korean government in the war days was led, like South Vietnam was, by an American puppet, a murderous thug that slaughtered his own people on behalf of the ruling class, who were subservient to the imperial overlords.  As Ralph discovered the hard way, “anticommunist” was just an Orwellian euphemism for “imperialist.”  Any attempts by the world’s peoples to escape the Western imperial system were rubber-stamped “communist,” and then the genocides began.  

It was not just the USA’s napalming cities and villages into oblivion, as it had done in Japan and would do in Vietnam, but the puppet in South Korea also had villages slaughtered en masse, such as Kŏch'ang Incident, which was just like the My Lai Massacre.  But you will not find the writings listed above in any mainstream media treatments of events in Korea today, as Korea “threatens” to unify, as Vietnam eventually did, as Germany eventually did, no thanks to the USA.  

We will see how it goes, but the American media will be no help, as usual.  

Best,

Wade

Edited May 6, 2018 by Wade Frazier