Thursday, June 27, 2019

"Wars and rumors of Wars" Are Here Today for One Reason Or Another



There's no doubt that there's plenty of "Wars and rumors of Wars" as predicted in Matthew 24:6; however any rational skeptic could easily argue that there have almost always been "wars and rumors of wars" throughout history, and Matthew 24:34 says that "before this generation has passed away, all these things will have taken place." Therefore it would be reasonable to demand extraordinary evidence before making any biblical claims to a connection between current events.

Whether or not that evidence exists there's an enormous amount of insanity going on, and some of it may sound like Biblical Prophecy, and even if it isn't related to this many people think it is, so it is worth considering. But, if we consider this it would be worth looking at history leading up to current events, including enormous volume of evidence to indicate that the mainstream media is routinely misrepresenting or omitting the vast majority of events raising doubts about the United States "defending freedom," as they often claim.

Iran doesn't have a history of invading one country after another, despite all the mainstream media claims about them being a leading supporter of terrorists. It's the United States that's been intervening in far more countries that any one else in the world since World War II. Iran is one of the countries the United States intervened in the most, supporting a coup in 1953, overthrowing a democratically elected government because they wanted a fair deal for their own people, despite an outrageous deal negotiated with foreign oil companies before they were elected, and the CIA helped create SAVAK a few years later which tortured and killed thousands of innocent people to maintain control of the country.the United States also overthrew democratically elected governments in Guatemala, Chile, and many other countries, including Honduras in 2009, and many of these countries also supported death squads oppressing their own people.

That is why we're having so many problem with migrants crossing the borders, they're fleeing tyrants installed, directly or indirectly by actions of our government.

The United States also supported both side of the Iran/Iraq war with weapons prolonging it, and the U.S. Navy warship Vincennes shot down a civilian Iranian airliner killing two hundred and seventy people, including sixty children. Yet after 9/11 Iran condemned the attacks and was still willing to cooperate with the United States by helping detain Al Qaeda members and share intelligence with them.

Then despite their help, George W. Bush declared them to be part of the axis of evil, which was part of a pattern of behavior antagonizing rivals that continues into the Trump administration. It wasn't until after this that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was much more extreme than Mohammad Khatami his predecessor. There's little or no chance that he would have been elected if Bush hadn't been so antagonistic.

Trump also antagonized them for abandoning the nuclear deal that Obama had signed, which is what began this escalation in tensions.

The Iranians are fully aware of this history and much more; however, it's rarely ever mentioned in the US media, while an enormous amount of propaganda claiming they're a leading supporter of terror is repeated over and over again, which is used to drum up support among the complacent people for our foreign policy.



Without going into anything that could be potentially be referred to as a fringe conspiracy theory, there's enough historical evidence to raise major doubts about the media coverage and politicians claims that Iran is the one antagonizing the United States. This evidence also supports claims that wars are routinely based on lies, like weapons of mass destruction, that don't exist, stories about babies being removed from incubators, the Gulf Of Tonkin, and many more lies that led to escalating wars. This is important to keep in mind, if considering evidence of something more far-fetched, which at least to some degree, does exist, and perhaps much more, sicne if more complicated theories fall apart there's still evidence that the military industrial complex is still maintaining pa permanent state of war.

Furthermore, the entire Trump administration has been behaving insanely from the time he began his campaign; and, the only reason he managed to get elected was that the Democrats and mainstream media gave Hillary Clinton an overwhelming advantage, despite their own polls showing that neither Trump of Clinton had high approval ratings during the 2016 election!

Add that to the fact that Iran hasn't been invading other countries, while the United stated surrounded their country with our bases after they overthrew the tyrannical Shah installed against the will of their people, it's no surprise that it's not just the conspiracy theorists that are claiming there's a false flag involved in the Japanese tanker attacks, but our own allies, including Japan, the victim of the attack, Germany, and even some members of the British Parliament are claiming that there's major doubts about the evidence if not calling it an outright lie.



The video of Iranians allegedly removing a second mine from the tanker after the first one exploded makes no sense at all, since it's hard to imaging they would be foolish enough to think they could remove evidence like that without getting caught. Furthermore, if they were making an attack that they didn't want to trace back to them they wouldn't use mines that have evidence of their origins in the first place.

Mike Pompeo's claim that Iran has ties to Al Qaeda is even more unbelievable, at least to those familiar with the Middle East politics, since Al Qaeda has always had much stronger ties to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan than either Iran or Iraq. Iran is dominated by the Shiite and Al Qaeda dominated by the Sunni; If Al Qaeda was inclined to support either Iran or Iraq, while Saddam Hussein was in power, it would have been Iraq; however, they were enemies as well, which is part of the reason why Osama Bin Laden was so outraged that the United States was housing their troops in Saudi Arabia for after the first Iraq War, and part of the motivation allegedly behind the 9/11 attacks!

The entire foreign policy establishment is highly skeptical of this claim, and if Mike Pompeo wanted to know this was inevitable before he made this absurd claim he would have! Why would he make such an absurd claim if he should have known that it would only destroy his own credibility?

Does he even want to have any credibility?

This sounds absurd, but if he did why would he say "We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment?"



While explaining Seven Reasons To Be Highly Skeptical Of The Gulf Of Oman Incident 06/13/2019 Caitlin Johnstone said "Sometimes the things put out by the US State Department feel like they’re conducting experiments on us, just to test the limits of our stupidity," which of course sounds utterly absurd, however even if she is just throwing this out there as wild speculation, it really is close to the truth. They do study how we respond to their propaganda and have done so for decades; and they've learned that if the get demagogues lining up on the talk show circuit scaring people they can drum up support for war every time from a shocking percentage of the public.

However, they want it to seem credible, which should mean they wouldn't want to go too far destroying their own credibility so bad that even those not paying too much attention stop trusting them. there's a growing percentage of the public becoming skeptical of both the political establishment and the media, yet they DO know how to do a better job coming up with propaganda to deceive the public, and they know that if they push it to bizarre extremes then a growing percentage of the public will stop trusting them, which is happening.

There would have to be something extremely far-fetched to believe that they might not want people to believe them, or at least, those paying the most attention to the history behind perpetual war, and that something just might be happening. And anyone familiar with the history of the CIA would know that they lied, cheated, and stole, long before Pompeo admitted it, including when they fabricated the evidence of weapons of mass destruction and many other times, yet the mainstream media routinely presents politicians with background from the CIA including Valerie Plame, who's now running for Congress, and Abigail Spanberger, as the more credible alternative to the fanatical right wing Republicans. And politicians like Senator Gary Peters who recently said on the talk shows that he would always trust the "intelligence community" and Rep. Adam Schiff who said "There's no question that Iran is behind the attacks. I think the evidence is very strong and compelling," Schiff: Evidence of Iran Being Behind Tanker Attacks Is ‘Very Strong’ 06/17/2019

Why are opposition politicians and so many media pundits lining up to agree with the "intelligence community" even though they routinely get caught lying, and Pompeo finally even admitted that it's routine? Why are there still so many people that trust them? They really can do a better job telling lies, yet they don't!

And these scare tactics that might potentially lead us into war aren't the exception, nor are sudden reversals like pulling back the planned attack at the last minute, supposedly after some planes were already in the air after the strike on an unmanned drone; they did the same thing when trump struck that childish pose crossing his arms saying that North Korea "will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen," after he made threats against the United States, which were of course in response to threats from the United States. this was followed by a ridiculous reconciliation that had little credibility because Kim Jong Un wrote him "beautiful letters and we fell in love." Additional clownish threats and caves included the threats to use military force against Venezuela, impose tariffs on countries all around the world, and round up millions of undocumented immigrants this past weekend, all of which were canceled in a clownish manner.

But the current problems didn't begin with Trump, as the media and Democratic establishment often try to imply, they go back decades with conflicts with many countries and lies leading us into war from both political Parties, one time after another, and there's good reason to believe that either the CIA is incredibly incompetent or they let several countries, including North Korea, Libya, Iran, and Iraq get some nuclear technology. Iran first got some nuclear technology for energy purposes, while it was still run by the Shah. Iraq may have also gotten some technology while it was still an ally of the United States for energy purposes. And Libya, North Korea, and Iran among other countries all got some nuclear technology from A.Q. Khan. According to Mohamed ElBaradei the technology that Libya got from him wasn't nearly as good as the press implied, and they gave it up in a deal with the Bush administration, and most credible reports don't indicate that Iran has nuclear weapons; however, regardless of whether or not it was the technology from Khan that enabled North Korea to develop nuclear weapons they all agree that he has them.

In "The Age Of Deception" 2011 Mohamed ElBaradei claims that A.Q. Khan may have had some support within the Pakistan government, and that even the CIA knew he was developing nuclear weapons and sharing it with other countries. He writes "Ruud Lubbers, the former Dutch prime minister, told me that the Dutch had wanted to arrest Khan as early as the 1970s, only to be told not to by the CIA. This was corroborated by other sources. Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in March 2004, reported a senior U.S. intelligence officer as saying, 'We had every opportunity to put a stop to the A. Q. Khan network fifteen years ago. Some of those involved today in the smuggling are the children of those we knew about in the eighties. It’s the second generation now.'[11] Robert Einhorn, who held the post of U.S. assistant secretary for nonproliferation from 1991 to 2001, later made a similar statement: 'We could have stopped the Khan network, as we knew it, at any time. The debate was, do you stop it now or do you watch it and understand it better so that you are in a stronger position to pull it up by the roots later? The case for waiting prevailed.' ..... Whatever the circumstances or arguments at the time, in hindsight the decision to watch and wait was a royal blunder."

"Royal blunder" is putting it mildly, part of the reason why North Korea and many other countries now have some nuclear technology appears to be because at best, the CIA allowed them to develop it, or at worst some espionage, which they refer to as "intelligence," agencies that often work with the CIA shared the technology to develop nuclear weapons, which is insane either way.

However, insane as this sounds there's plenty of good research, including declassified documents like "Operation Northwoods" to show that our government has a history planning false flags and routinely passes up opportunities to establish peace, including when bush arbitrarily abandoned the nuclear deal that could have prevented North Korea from developing nuclear technology, and when Trump did the same with Iran, although they haven't developed the technology, it clearly antagonized them and helped lead up to the current situation.

Last year they also reported on an alleged confession of an Iranian official admitting that they were tied to 9/11, which didn't actually get too much attention on cable news but was reported widely on dozens of internet articles; however, according to Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya under fire for claiming Iran 'confessed' to 9/11 06/11/2018 Mohammad-Javad Larijani "was in fact detailing the accusations against Iran presented in the Commission Report - and stressed the commission had concluded the Islamic Republic had no involvement in the attack." This is presumably why they didn't report it widely on Cable news; however they circulated it on the internet much more widely than this rebuttal in an attempt to build up support for a war.

However, this doesn't mean that Iran also contributed to this potential conflict; they shot down a drone either just beyond their airspace, or just within it, which clearly played right into the propaganda efforts for the war mongers in the United States. And some of their past history, including Wikipedia: 2009–11 detention of American hikers by Iran which never made any sense at the time. The explanation for why they went near the Iranian border or crossed it never made any sense since they had to know about the tensions between Iran and the United States; yet, the media never scrutinized this at all throughout the obsession coverage of it.

Iran claimed they were CIA agents and an Iraqi cop also agreed according to, Iraqi cop: U.S. hikers are CIA agents 08/03/2009 and this article, A Sliver of Truth: The Curious Case of Mother Jones’s Shane Bauer 03/11/2019 shows some indirect funding from the CIA for one of the hikers. Shane Bauer also has ties to David Corn, who also allegedly has ties to the CIA involving his propaganda about the Russia conspiracy. This isn't what I would consider conclusive evidence; however, there's always been something about this story that doesn't make sense; so, I wouldn't completely rule out a CIA connection to the hikers. But the motive behind this would have to be huge, what ever it is.



Nevertheless, regardless of why the hikers were in Iran or if they had ties to the CIA, Iran played into their hands handing them propaganda cover to demonize them by holding the hikers for two years and striking down the drone at a time when it looked like the United States was faking the evidence to justify an invasion, which was clearly against Iran's best interests. They could claim they were responding to antagonization from the United States, which may be true; however, they should have known that they were playing into their hands anyway.

To sum it up, regardless of the details both sides are taking advantage of the eternal conflict to control their own people. But I wouldn't completely rule out other motives, perhaps much bigger.

It certainly seems as if "Many false prophets" have arisen; and they are deceiving "many, and with the increase of lawlessness, love in most people will grow cold" Mathew 24:11-2; however, there're still many problems with prophecies that raise major doubts, or completely rule out many of the most common assumptions about most religious beliefs, including the claim that "God," assuming he or some unknown advanced intelligence that religious people have come to know as "God" exists, has a higher moral authority, and can be trusted.

If you accept the Bible as the literal truth, or if "God" gives it tacit approval to guide people, then that should raise major doubts about his alleged moral authority, when there are examples of obvious entrapment, among other things in the Bible including Exodus 14: 4 "I shall then make Pharaoh stubborn and he will set out in pursuit of them; and I shall win glory for myself at the expense of Pharaoh and his whole army, and then the Egyptians will know that I am Yahweh.' And the Israelites did this." According to this narrative "God" could have avoided the atrocities that led to the freeing of the Israeli's if he simply didn't "make Pharaoh stubborn" and advised him to let them go, or even better, to never have enslaved them in the first place; but he chose to do it this way to demonstrate his power and to show that if they didn't obey him he would terrorize them.

This is part of a control process that is repeated over and over again throughout the Bible, and it certainly doesn't demonstrate a higher moral authority.

It even admits it in Deuteronomy 9: 4-6 when it says "Do not think to yourself, once Yahweh your God has driven them before you, 'Yahweh has brought me into possession of this country because I am upright,' when Yahweh is dispossessing these nations for you, because they do wrong. You are not going into their country to take possession because of any right behaviour or uprightness on your part; rather, it is because of their wickedness that Yahweh is dispossessing these nations for you, and also to keep the pact which he swore to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Be clear about this: Yahweh is not giving you possession of this fine country because of any right conduct on your part, for you are an obstinate people."

The alleged "God" of the Bible doesn't appear to be a higher moral authority at all, but a control freak using fear to force his followers to obey him for one reason or another. Why would he make a "pact" or "covenant" with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to give them this land in the first place, if it meant they had to obtain it through conquest where according to other Bible verses it involved genocide of the Canaanites, especially if he was a higher moral authority? Why wouldn't he just maintain an open line of communication and teach them to live together peacefully develop a fair democracy and educate their children without abusing them?

If he was a higher moral authority he would have done that, or something much better, not what was described in the Bible.

This control process is repeated throughout the Bible including Matthew 10: 34-7 "'Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth: it is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword. For I have come to set son against father, daughter against mother, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law; a person's enemies will be the members of his own household. 'No one who prefers father or mother to me is worthy of me. No one who prefers son or daughter to me is worthy of me." this is not the actions of a higher moral authority, it clearly describes the tactics of a brainwashing cult leader, which, if "God" exists is what he would be.

There are also plenty of biblical verses teaching how to use corporal punishment from an early age to tech children to blindly obey orders and believe what they're told to believe including Proverbs 13:24 "Whoever fails to use the stick hates his child; whoever is free with correction loves him." Proverbs 23: 13-4 "Do not be chary of correcting a child, a stroke of the cane is not likely to be fatal. Give him a stroke of the cane, you will save his soul from Sheol." and additional verses about corporal punishment (ESV)

There's plenty of modern research showing this method of child rearing teaches them to respond to their problems with violence, and it ensures that they're always concerned about when their next beating will come making them emotionally unstable, which impairs their ability to develop critical thinking skills. It also makes them much more likely to go along with crowds, even when they're acting irrational or obey orders in wars based on lies. I went into how this is also used as an indoctrination method in Dobson’s Indoctrination Machine. Modern research about the impacts of corporal punishment is in many ways much more advanced than the bible; however, when it comes to effective indoctrination methods, the Bible is far more effective than some people might have expected out of people that didn't have access to modern psychology research.

These indoctrination methods don't require anything supernatural, although if there was an unknown advanced intelligence influencing early civilization, with an undisclosed agenda, then they might have known how to teach the leaders how to control the masses. Either that, or they learned it on their own, but the Bible is a very advanced indoctrination manual that doesn't appear so to those those that don't understand how people are being manipulated.

One of the ways that the Bible describes indoctrination methods is Jesus's use of parables, which he admits is to ensure that only those chosen will allegedly understand his will as described in Matthew 13: 10-3 "Then the disciples went up to him and asked, 'Why do you talk to them in parables?' In answer, he said, 'Because to you is granted to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not granted. Anyone who has will be given more and will have more than enough; but anyone who has not will be deprived even of what he has. The reason I talk to them in parables is that they look without seeing and listen without hearing or understanding."

Parables or many mythological stories can be interpreted in many different ways, and a charismatic speaker can interpret it one way at one time and another way at another time. This is more effective if there are many followers that are inclined to believe their leaders and help intimidate any cult followers who dare to question their leader, often by thinking rationally. This also means that many of the alleged prophecies throughout history can be interpreted in so many different ways that a cult leader can always find a way to convince people that prophecies are coming true, or if he prefers, he can convince them that they're not interpreting them properly if he doesn't want them to believe.

Therefore from a scientific point of view it would be necessary to confirm prophecies in a more reliable manner, or for that matter that God exists at all. I might think that it's extremely unlikely that early civilizations were able to develop such a sophisticated indoctrination method as they appear to have done so but without something more I would hardly consider it evidence of "God." Why would this "God" teach all these religions to fight against each other, as a close look at the Bible and other religious books seems to indicate is happening? Is there other supernatural activities that could prove he exists?

There are certainly plenty of prophets throughout history that claim to do so and some of them are much more convincing than others, including a few recent ones that can be subjected o closer scrutiny; however, if there is strong evidence that is clear cut the best might be ancient megaliths which may raise major doubts about how our early civilization was developed.

I went into this more in 107 Wonders of the Ancient World which reviews the megaliths that were moved in ancient times and experiments that show that it shouldn't have been possible. In the past two hundred years there have been dozens if not hundreds of efforts to move massive megaliths without using modern technology. The vast majority of them were under ten tons, moved successfully with great difficulty; however most of these experiments involved putting the megalith on a sledge and using massive amounts of coordinated manpower to pull the sledge. The majority of the ones in the twentieth century cheated to get the megaliths on to the sledge, but a few did succeed, and efforts in the nineteenth century didn't even have this option, since they were moving them in the desert of Iraq, Egypt or Cambodia. A handful of experiments tried to move megaliths between ten and forty tons, but they cheated on all of these to get them on the sledge, had an enormous problem with broken ropes, and one experiment with a thirteen ton megalith had the sledge fall apart, and, although the sledges moving twenty five or forty ton megaliths didn't fall apart, they were only able to inch it forward a few inches at a time, at best, moving it no more than ten to twenty feet total before giving up and didn't even try anything bigger than forty tons.

If the vast majority of megaliths weren't much if any bigger than ten tons, or at most forty tons, then these experiments might back up the argument that all they needed was enough men and lots of time. Roger Hopkins, who was one of the organizers of a couple of the biggest experiments trying to prove that it could be done with ancient technology, eventually had to admit that he couldn't figure out how they moved it as I explained in Either Pseudo-skeptics can't handle the truth or they just might be involved in a massive cover-up. This article was one of several that speculate about the possibility that there might have been an unknown advanced intelligence influencing our society since it's beginnings. when discussing the ancient megaliths now the most common explanation, besides traditional scientists, that stick with the claim that they moved it with sledges, even though the research they cite actually refutes this, is the claim from Ancient Aliens theorists on the History Channel.

As I reported in previous articles the History Channel explanation has as many, if not more colossal blunders as the skeptics that are in denial about how the megaliths are moved, but at least they admit that it shouldn't be possible, and even though they don't get many of the details right they offer and explanation that might actually be close, if there's good peer review to correct all the colossal blunders form both sides.

In my past articles on this subject I also cited additional evidence that there might be an unknown advanced intelligence influencing our society, including many mystics that can't be explained easily after taking a close look, although the beliefs of their followers are almost always flawed, crop circles, cattle mutilations, and of course UFOs. However the coverage of these subjects has been seriously flawed, with high profile advocates on both sides of each subject ignoring facts that don't suit their belief, and there's rarely any good peer review, except perhaps on the local level where there are almost certainly rational people reviewing it that can't get any media coverage.

But even if high profile debate is is flawed there's an enormous amount of coordination to present this case to the public; which means that either there's something to it; or there's a massive effort to make it seem like there's something to it, and some of this effort is very sophisticated, including the fact that the mainstream media has been providing coverage for the subject for decades, first with a series of shows including "UFOs Then And Now," "The UFO Files," which may have been the most credible series, "UFO Hunters," and for the past ten years "Ancient Aliens."

If there is something to this, perhaps some of the strongest evidence to motive might be Philip Corso's claim that he shared alien technology with corporations, dating back to the forties and fifties. Like all other reporting on this subject, there are flaws with his claims, and as I've reported previously, there's a strong possibility that intentional disclosure of accurate information mixed in with obvious blunders might be part of the cover-up, since most people won't believe it; and most of the people that do believe it will also accept many of the colossal blunders.

To sum up my past theories on this subject, if there was an advanced intelligence influencing our early society, whether it's aliens or not, they must have an undisclosed motive, which might involve using us for a series of research projects big and small. this could include developing advanced medical research and adding to other advanced technology they already have, perhaps sharing it with the leaders of society when, and only when it suits their purposes. If this is the case it could explain incredibly rapid development of technology over the past seventy years picking up the pace dramatically in the past twenty to thirty years.

This could potentially include massive advances to medical technology including heart transplants that have been successful, bionics, and much more. If this is the case, and if they ever plan to disclose it they might offer this as justification for it agreeing to sharing it. Although they shouldn't be counting on that, since if the "aliens," "God," or what ever this unknown advanced intelligence is exists they've been betraying the human race for thousands of years, so if they do want to use us for additional research they might make promises they never intend to keep which is why those involved in the cover-up should begin disclosure immediately, even without permission from their leaders.

If Climate Change is influenced by man, as most credible researchers agree, then it may mean that research into that could be part of what's going on as well. this would mean that, intentional or not some form of Geoengineering is already going on, and there're growing number of scientific reports suggesting that we do this even if we haven't done it intentionally before or recommending more of it if we have. This might be one of the biggest motives for them.

Could there be pieces of the truth, or something close, buried in absurd satire?


This probably sounds insane to most rational people, as it should; however, there's little or no doubt that something insane is going on. With the entire political establishment playing a game of planetary chicken with the environment, while simultaneously developing incredible technology it's clear something strange is going on. If they can develop this amazing technology why can't they prevent this political insanity; or to reverse it with all this political insanity, how can they possibly be developing this technology?

If this theory is close then the political insanity is a massive charade designed to distract the majority of the public from the fact that they're being used for the benefit of the elites.

I first went into the connection to an Apocalypse conspiracy theory in 2016 in Yes Virginia There Is A Trump And Clinton Conspiracy; where I started with a rational theory based on strong evidence showing that the media coverage and elections were being rigged by a small percentage of the public, before going into bigger unsolved mysteries and speculating about an even bigger theory about Hillary Clinton having many of the characteristics of the "Whore of Babylon," and Trump having the characteristics of the "Beast." This theory should have fallen apart; but instead the insanity continued to escalate, if anything making this fringe theory more viable.

However, even if it's not true, then there should be no doubt that we need to stop fighting one war after another based on lies; the research showing this is the case isn't from fringe conspiracy theorists, it's from credible researchers.

Whether this theory is true or not we need to protect the environment in the most effective way possible reversing the enormous amount of damage done by oil companies with renewable energy, and conservation by not buying enormous volumes of wasteful things that we don't need. Mike Hudema is constantly tweeting about new technology that can solve large portions of our problem saying "We have the solutions to the climate and economic crisis. Let's implement them." some of his solutions might not be ready for a mass market, but many of them are, especially the simplest ones. However if the most complicated technology is viable then it could be stronger evidence of advanced technology developed with the help of aliens.

And, whether this theory is right or not there's no doubt that we should control the interview process of candidates at the grassroots level ensuring that we get to hear from all candidates, not just the ones that are supported by the oligarchy, that routinely rigs elections against candidates they don't support by simply refusing to give them any coverage ensuring they never get the name recognition they need to get elected.

There should be no doubt that they're rigging media coverage to give candidates they support an overwhelming advantage however, it's not always easy to tell who they're rigging it for until after it's too late. In 2016 it seemed almost certain that they rigged it for Clinton but they may have actually have faked that and rigged it for Trump. Since this election has begun there have been claims that they're trying o rig it for Biden, Kamala Harris, Beto O'Roarke, Pete Buttigieg, or even Elizabeth Warren with some people claiming that she's trying to take progressive votes from Bernie Sanders so that a centrist can win. I can't rule any of these completely out but there's another possibility, assuming this theory is close, and they do want to implement partial solutions before it's too late.

I'm not completely ruling out the possibility that they're rigging it for Bernie Sanders.

This sounds laughable to most Bernie Sanders supporters since they clearly rigged the primaries in 2016 against him; but he's attracting an enormous following anyway, much stronger than any of the other candidates at the grassroots level, and it might be because of the incredibly incompetent manner they're rigging elections against him, which could conceivably be a bizarre form of reverse psychology. He's also raised doubts about himself when he went along with their requests to preserve the duopoly by agreeing to support the Democratic nominee no matter who it is. He also remained silent about the election rigging.

Bernie Sanders supporters routinely say that he's the only one that can reform the system; and judging by the media coverage they appear to be correct; however, that's only because he's the only one the mainstream media gives coverage to, and in some cases, he's demonstrated that he won't call out their cheating, or call for major media reform enabling much more diverse media, nor is he supporting ranked choice voting or trying to break up the duopoly by joining the green Party. He's also gone along with the propaganda about Russia rigging the elections even though it's mainstream media that rigs them with help of the DNC and RNC; and he also gave lukewarm opposition to attempts to overthrow the Venezuela government.

This doesn't mean I don't support him anyway, but on some issues it's clear that he is the lesser of two evils. But on many other issues he's far better than any of the candidates that the media is willing to cover. We need major reform but there's little or no chance that we'll be able to elect someone like Sanderson Beck who I covered in Censored Candidates For President By Mass Media and he isn't perfect either.

No matter who gets elected the most important reforms have to come from the grassroots, which Bernie Sanders is energizing, and many of them call him out when he does cave to the establishment. This has shown even the best candidate available needs to be held accountable, and this should go even after we get major election and media reform, assuming we do, which we'll have to push even if Bernie Sanders or any other president doesn't help us out.

Absurd Apocalypse hasn't come to the United States yet, but it has come to many other countries and if we continue with this insanity we could bring it here!


The following are some of my past articles on this subject followed by additional sources for this article:

Hurricane Apocalypse Coming With or Without Fringe Conspiracy Theory

Why so few arrests for Crop Circles makers? Is there microwave evidence?

UFO Hypothesis Far More Credible Than Catholic Claim of A "Miracle Of The Sun"

Spectacular Heart Transplant for Sophia But at What Cost

Who's Controlling Oligarchies Dividing The Market? Aliens?

Do Aliens own Stock in Monsanto, DuPont, or Microsoft? This includes a list of most of my previous articles on this subject.

The following are additional sources for this article including some Biblical verses and more articles showing that they're lying about the justifications for war:

Matthew 24: 6-13 You will hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that you are not alarmed, for this is something that must happen, but the end will not be yet. For nation will fight against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All this is only the beginning of the birthpangs. 'Then you will be handed over to be tortured and put to death; and you will be hated by all nations on account of my name. And then many will fall away; people will betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise; they will deceive many, and with the increase of lawlessness, love in most people will grow cold; but anyone who stands firm to the end will be saved.

24: 23-4 'If anyone says to you then, "Look, here is the Christ," or "Over here," do not believe it; for false Christs and false prophets will arise and provide great signs and portents, enough to deceive even the elect, if that were possible.

24: 34 In truth I tell you, before this generation has passed away, all these things will have taken place.

LDS Last Days: Wars and Rumors of Wars

Japan demands more proof from U.S. that Iran attacked tankers 06/16/2019 (This article was expired after no more than eight days, this copy was retrieved from the Way back machine) A source close to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, "These are not definite proof that it's Iran." "Even if it's the United States that makes the assertion, we cannot simply say we believe it," he said. If having expertise sophisticated enough to conduct the attack could be a reason to conclude that the attacker was Iran, "That would apply to the United States and Israel as well," said a source at the Foreign Ministry.

A US war with Iran looms. Don’t for one second think that it is justified 06/19/2019

How the Trump administration is using 9/11 to build a case for war with Iran 06/14/2019 For months, President Donald Trump and some of his top officials have claimed Iran and al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that launched the 9/11 terror attacks, are closely linked. That’s been a common refrain despite evidence showing their ties aren’t strong at all. In fact, even al-Qaeda’s own documents detail the weak connection between the two.

The Exceptionally American Historical Amnesia Behind Pompeo’s Claim of ‘40 Years of Unprovoked Iranian Aggression’ 06/20/2019

Veteran Navy Officer Exposes Flaws in US Version of Iran Oil Tanker Narrative 06/20/2019

Strait of Hormuz: US confirms drone shot down by Iran 06/20/2019

After Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor Warns of False Flag to Start War with Iran, US Blames Iran for Attacks 06/18/2019

Remember the Vincennes? The US’s Long History of Provoking Iran 06/17/2019

Operation Northwoods

Iran Has Ties to Al Qaeda, Trump Officials Tell Skeptical Congress 06/19/2019

U.S. Intelligence Undercuts Trump’s Case on Iran-al Qaeda Links 06/24/2019

Pompeo brags about the CIA & State Dept’s MO: We lied, we cheated, we stole. April 2019

Japan requests proof of Iran involvement in tanker attack 06/16/2019

Japan Demands More Proof From The U.S. That Iran Attacked Tankers 06/19/2019

Germany joins chorus casting doubt on Trump administration claim that Iran was behind attack on oil tankers 06/14/2019 "Whether it's an attempt to remove Venezuela's democratic government or regime change in Iran, the USA is causing global instability in furtherance of its imperial interests. We must reject the lies being used by the Trump admin to gain public support for their disastrous plans," Chris Williamson, a member of the British parliament with the UK's Labour Party, said in a statement.

Trump says US was 'cocked and loaded' to strike Iran before he pulled back 06/21/2019 "We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights (sic) when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General," Trump tweeted. "10 minutes before the strike I stopped it."

Dan Kovalik’s “The Plot to Attack Iran:” a Tool to Combat Washington’s Middle East Wars 10/03/2018

Iran Gave U.S. Help On Al Qaeda After 9/11 10/07/2008

Wikipedia: Reactions to the September 11 attacks "Iran: Iranian president Mohamed Khatami[52][53][54] and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei condemned and denounced the attacks and the terrorists who carried them out. Iranians who gathered for a soccer match in Tehran two days after the 9/11 attacks observed a moment of silence. There was also a candlelight vigil. Huge crowds attended candlelit vigils in Iran, and 60,000 spectators observed a minute's silence at Tehran's soccer stadium.[55][56] On Tuesday, September 25, in 2001, Iran's fifth president, Mohammad Khatami meeting British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said: "Iran fully understands the feelings of the Americans about the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11." He said although the American administrations had been at best indifferent about terrorist operations in Iran (since 1979), the Iranians instead felt differently and had expressed their sympathetic feelings with bereaved Americans in the tragic incidents in the two cities." He also stated that "Nations should not be punished in place of terrorists." [57] According to Radio Farda's website, in 2011, on the anniversary of the attacks, United States Department of State, published a post at its blog, in which the Department thanked Iranian people for their sympathy and stated that they would never forget Iranian people's kindness on those harsh days. This piece of news at Radio Farda's website also states that after the attacks' news was released, some Iranian citizens gathered in front of the Embassy of Switzerland in Tehran, which serves as the protecting power of the United States in Iran, to express their sympathy and some of them lit candles as a symbol of mourning."

Iranian official: We protected al-Qaeda terrorists before 9/11 06/09/2018

Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya under fire for claiming Iran 'confessed' to 9/11 06/11/2018 But in the original 45-minute interview, Larijani begins by stating "in the commission report it says.." before going into detail about the four official US reports on 9/11, two of which mention Iran. Larijani was in fact detailing the accusations against Iran presented in the Commission Report - and stressed the commission had concluded the Islamic Republic had no involvement in the attack.

Wikipedia: 2009–11 detention of American hikers by Iran

Wikipedia: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

64 Years Later, CIA Finally Releases Details of Iranian Coup 06/20/2017

To what extent was the US involved with the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)? 06/02/2008 U.S. support for Iraq blossomed throughout the war. ..... The United States had sold Iran weapons via Israel, including thousands of sophisticated tube-launched optical-tracking wire-guided (TOW) antitank missiles and Homing-All-The-Way-Killer (HAWK) surface-to-air missiles, in a bid to get Iran to release American hostages held by Iran's Lebanese ally, Hezbollah.

I was right about Vietnam. I was right about Iraq. I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran. I apologize to no one. 05/24/2019

Wikipedia: Iran–Iraq War

Who has invaded the most countries in history? April 2016 Probably Britain, but most of that was before World War II

These are all the countries the USA has invaded, in one map 08/23/2017

These are the only 3 countries America hasn't invaded 08/31/2016

US-funded police linked to illegal executions in El Salvador May 2017

Terrorism with a “Human Face”: The History of America’s Death Squads 07/14/2016

Iran refrained from targeting US plane with 35 on board flying beside downed drone – commander 06/21/2019

The US isn't interested in dialogue with Iran, France says 06/26/2019

NY Times admits it sends stories to US government for approval before publication 06/24/2019

U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid 06/15/2019

Christian Theologians Prepare for Extraterrestrial Life 06/12/2008

US and Israel fabricating lies to provoke war with Iran: Ex-CIA officer 05/12/2019



Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Books From The Underground



The best non-fiction books are almost never the best selling books, primarily because they never get any promotion from the mainstream media. Perhaps the biggest exception is Howard Zinn's "A People's History Of The United States" which made it onto the best seller list several times staying there for extended periods, including shortly after his death.

It's not hard to figure out why this is happening, once your familiar with alternative media or many of the good books that traditional media refuses to promote. A fraction of one percent controls well over ninety percent of the media and the same fraction of one percent decides which political candidates we get to hear from. The media is a for profit organization, whose primary objective is to make as much money as they can, which they do very well, regardless of how well they inform the public.

Many of these books that the mainstream media never covers expose a large portion of the fraud the wealthiest people commit against the vast majority of the public, which is presumably why they refuse to provide fair coverage for them. This isn't something new, the ruling elite have controlled the vast majority of information that the public uses to make their decisions for hundreds of years; however, since the development of modern technology and creation of a centralized commercial media, the methods they've used to control education have changed significantly.

When it comes to control of the media, which along with control of education systems, is among the most important methods used to rig the political and economic systems, Robert McChesney reported on the history of how corporations consolidated control in "Rich Media Poor Democracy" and "The Problem Of The Media." He researches it dating back at least to the development of radio, and how there were some efforts by educators to control the radio system to better inform the public. However, for the most part it was turned over to commercial broadcasting that gave the vast majority of radio programs over to for profit organisation, and this carried over in to television.

For a while they had what they called a "wall of separation" between advertising and news or editorial content; or at least they pretended to; however, it was never fully implemented in practice and if they did a good job pretending otherwise, those days are over. Part of the problem is the way we finance media, through advertising. It's entirely a for profit institution and when their advertisers are involved in epidemic levels of fraud as they often are the media has a financial incentive not to report on it, especially with the vast majority of the media controlled by six corporations, and the majority of remaining media outlets are all controlled by multimillionaires of billionaires.

Without that separation between advertising and media content the truth is treated like a commodity that can be sold to the highest bidder, although they study to see what most people are willing to believe so they don't push it quite too far and they can usually fool the majority of the public on most issues. One of the leading solutions Robert McChesney and John Nichols often recommend in books they co-author together is that we finance a much more diverse media through tax payer subsidies chosen by tax payers when they fill out their income taxes. This is presented as an opening bid which I went into in Copyright & "Intellectual Property" Are endangering Lives & Democracy! where I extended this idea to include paying for intellectual property so it can be put into the public domain.

If we can afford to spend billions of dollars on war because of weapons of mass destruction that don't exist, or many other lies leading us into other wars, we can afford to fund research to reduce violence and enter it into the public domain, or reform the copyright laws, possibly buying some of the most credible copyrights so that they can be shared for free! If there's a chance that it can reduce violence, which anyone familiar with the research might not doubt, then it would be far less expensive than dealing with it after the fact.

The mainstream media routinely refuses to provide much if any promotional coverage of the best research on any given subject, unless they can make a profit off it, and it doesn't expose their fraud. Copyright is one of the ways they slow down education of material they don't like, even about preventing violence. In the article, 'Copyright & "Intellectual Property" Are endangering Lives & Democracy!' I mention how Murray Straus, who wrote about how early child abuse and corporal punishment leads to escalating violence later in life he had to sue the media companies to get his own copyrights back after they failed to provide adequate promotional material for it as is usually done. Even if they did what was usual, it wouldn't have been nearly as much as the obsession promotion they provide for many media pundits or politicians like Sarah Palin, who's book became a best seller as a result of obsession coverage by the media, and deep discounts, even though I find it extremely hard to believe that she had anything worthwhile to say, while many of the best researchers on any given subject can't get nearly as much coverage.

We have research that can drastically reduce violence available; however, since there's no profit in it, it gets little or no media coverage and is only read by a small fraction of the public, passing up opportunities to save thousands of lives lost to violence every year!

Promotional coverage for books that expose epidemic levels of fraud by corporations is even worse, at least in the traditional media, including books about how advertising is being used to indoctrinate children into becoming obsessiveness shoppers for useless crap from the time they begin watching TV, if not earlier. Juliet Schor, author of "Born To Buy," Susan Linn author of "Consuming Kids," Murray Fox author of "Harvesting Minds" have all reported on the fact that corporations are indoctrinating children from an early age and they even solicit help from parents without full disclosure about the purposes of their research, with a lot of it considered proprietary, which means instead of demanding disclosure so the public knows how advertiser are manipulating children before thy develop critical thinking skill, they pass laws protecting secrecy so that it's illegal for insiders to disclose unethical behavior that might be harming children.

Fortunately they haven't been able to keep it completely secret, with Schor, Linn and Fox writing about it; however, since it takes a while to explain it to the majority of the public and the media provides obsessive distractions pushing celebrity and sports worship, few people are aware of this research, outside of the academic world and a small percentage of people involved in activist organizations to protect children. One of the things they write about is how advertising and making schools dependent on it is interfering with the education of children and even the curricular which provides favorable coverage to corporations, including coal companies as Susan Linn reports in Consuming Kids where she writes "Have you visited your child’s school lately? Perhaps she’s learning about energy production and consumption through the lens of companies like Exxon Mobil or professional associations like the American Coal Foundation ('Unlocking Coal’s Potential through Education'). Her inspiration for reading may be coming from Pizza Hut-complete with coupons to be redeemed at your local franchise. She may be attending mandatory assemblies where she can learn about job interviewing from McDonald's. If she lives in Washington, D.C., and wants to go into the hotel business, she might be attending the Marriot Hospitality Charter School. If she’s a kid in trouble, she could attend a Burger King Academy."



Additional research into how corporations are trying to take control of the education system is also reported in books that the mass media never reports, including how Charter Schools are being controlled by billionaires, and how they're also ensuring that slow income families can never get their schools funded properly, often living in a violent environment where schools are falling apart, and they have little or no resources for good teaching supplies. Jonathan Kozol wrote about how poor people, especially minorities are kept in poverty in at least half a dozen books including "Savage Inequalities," "The Shame of the Nation," and "Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America" where he exposes epidemic levels of fraud designed to keep poor people in poverty from ever getting out of it, while business owners with political connections often profit off of this, often providing incredibly bad service for the homeless in programs that are guaranteed to fail, with funds from the government. Hotels that are supposed to help get homeless out of poverty are designed to guarantee that they stay in poverty while the owners make a fortune off government subsidies.

Some of this has been exposed and ended, but there's a pattern of behavior, virtually guaranteeing that they're replaced by other programs that are doing virtually the same thing, unless they get exposed as well, and since the mainstream media often have ties to corporations involved in it and local activists don't have the resources to expose it they often get away with it for years before being exposed then only get a slap on the wrist!

Kozol also reports on how business interests often spend an enormous amount of money in legal expenses to avoid being required to provide fair education and how San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez virtually overturned Brown v. Education in Savage Inequalities and "The Shame of the Nation," goes even further literally arguing that we have an apartheid education system, which no doubt, most people would consider totally false; however, after reading his books it may be much more difficult if not impossible to disagree with his conclusions. and looking at the statistics, including murder rates or how pollution is dumped in the poorest communities in our country further confirms his conclusions, but you wouldn't know this if you relied on traditional media to draw your conclusions.

Diane Ravitch, who served as Assistant Secretary of Education under Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander from 1991 to 1993 and previously supported education policies from both political parties, including on education reform had second thoughts writing "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education" and "Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools" exposing how economists and "The Billionaires Boys Club" are taking over the education system and turning it into a disaster! Of course the mainstream media practically never invites her on, at least not in the highest profile shows where larger audiences would be watching and when they mention her at all they try to portray her as radical or fringe if they can get away with it but those who read her books or blog surely disagree.

One of the biggest problems is the people most likely to read good books about how unequal the education system is are more likely to be well educated, which means that the system is rigged in their favor. Many sincere educated people are outraged by this; however those most motivated by it might be least likely to understand it, or know what to do about it without a good educational background!

The same goes for any other subject including labor rights, environmental protection, health care, and even wars based on lies, where the media routinely misrepresents the truth and a shocking percentage of the public is unaware of how they're being misled, including about the current stories pushing for military action against Iran, and if this doesn't escalate, it's virtually guaranteed that we'll be pushing for war against another country based on false or distorted information, which is routinely exposed on alternative media outlets that are much more active on this subject than most others.



There have always been alternative media outlets reporting on some of the most reliable news about foreign affairs; however, the vast majority of the public is unaware of them. In the sixties many people were well aware of the deception used to get us into Vietnam, possibly because they got their news from grassroots organizations, or some of the few print media outlets that hadn't gone out of business since the postal subsidies that Robert McChesney reported on were eliminated, although some of the worst consolidation of the media didn't escalate until the eighties and hit it's peak in the nineties under Bill Clinton.

Even though the mainstream media wasn't inclined to report it, some alternative media outlets must have reported how the Vietnamese signed their own Declaration of Independence patterned partly on ours that the French version of it. The United States didn't invade them to defend freedom of fight communism; they invaded for economic control, just like the coups in Iran, Guatemala, Chile and numerous other countries. They knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and even though I wasn't familiar with some of the best alternative media outlets until later, so did I, since even the mainstream media reported on Scott Ritter and Mohamed ElBaradei years before the invasion took place and they both reported accurately that the weapons of mass destruction weren't there.

In the build up to that war they stopped covering them and fired Phil Donahue for speaking against it, enabling them to convince the majority of the public, that didn't take the time to keep up with more reliable sources, assuming they they knew it was available, that there were weapons of mass destruction and some even believed that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al-Qaeda, even though traditional media reported that he didn't; but many right wing media outlets were reporting that he did and high profile pundits also repeated this in the traditional media sending mixed messages.

If we had diverse media controlled by people of different points of view, not only would it be virtually impossible to start wars based on lies, due to overwhelming opposition from the public if they were better informed, but there would be far less corporate fraud and less traditional blue collar crime and violence, since there's plenty of research showing what the leading causes of crime and violence are, and some of this is the poverty and economic inequality created by an incredibly corrupt economic system that suppresses wages for the working class while providing massive pay-offs for advertisers, lobbyists, public relations people, lawyers, politicians etc. who're involved in epidemic levels of fraud or creating propaganda to make it seem like our current economic system is in the best interest of the majority despite the evidence.

Good research from psychologists like James Garbarino, Jonathan Kozol shows that far more effective ways to reduce crime and violence can actually bye much cheaper than our mass incarceration system like the home visitor program cited by Professor Garbarino in one of his books. This is far less expensive than mass incarceration, which involves outreach to at risk parents from low income families. The Boston Globe wrote an article about this program in the mid-nineties saying that it had started in Hawaii and that studies there showed how it dramatically reduced the chance of children being involved in crime raised in families that have help. These visits to advise them and help them don't cost much but saved an enormous amount in court costs, which was confirmed in additional studies after it spread to several other states cited by Professor Garbarino. Jonathan Kozol reported on how providing fair help and training to homeless people is far more effective than politically connected hotels oppressing them, also reducing crime.

Murray Straus provides plenty of statistics showing how much damage corporal punishment does to children and how it contributes to long term violence; I did some of my own fact checking as reported in Research On Preventing Violence Absent From National Media and found that the states that still allow corporal Punishment in schools, and presumably use it more in homes, for the past ten years have murder rates that are 22% to 31% higher than those banning it. Additional research as shown in Insurance Executives Profit By Inciting Murder Occasionally Paying Killers that insurance provides an incentive for murder for hundreds of people every year if Murderpedia is statistically representative, and if it's not unless it's more than four times the real rate it's still over a hundred people every year.

The list of successful programs goes on much longer, however mainstream media refuses to report on them, so only those checking academic sources, good books or alternative media outlets are aware of them, and best research to reduce violence isn't used to make policy decisions.



This also applies to many other subjects, including how the economy is rigged, how votes are suppressed, how people are being used for medical research without full consent, and how the government subsidizes this research enabling pharmaceutical companies to keep patents even though tax money pays for development. There's even research showing how some local communities do more to stand up to corrupt corporations and how it helps solve social problems, including reduction of crime!

At least a dozen or so of the best non-fiction books have managed to get onto best seller lists; however, to the best of my knowledge they haven't had nearly as many promotions from the traditional media as most other books that make it onto the best sellers list. The reason for this is presumably quite simple, many of the people accustomed to reading good non-fiction books learned not to rely on promotions from mainstream media and they were often promoted through alternative media outlets, or the grassroots. After looking through the best sellers for the last few years I only recognized a couple authors that I thought were reasonably good, Lawrence Wright and Doris Kearns Goodwin, although they're not nearly as good as many other authors, and a few other books that looked like they might be reasonably good, although I didn't read them and can't be sure and dozens of high profile celebrities that clearly made it onto the list because of their fame, not because they're good writers, many of them are propagandists, often from the extreme right wing, which gets much more media coverage than progressive authors exposing corporate fraud or good research on how to prevent violence.



The following are some related articles or list of good books:

Wikipedia: The New York Times Best Seller list: Criticisms include how publishing companies misrepresent sales to get on the list, or how many books with a longer shelf life that sell more through word of mouth instead of "fast sales" which is presumably a result of heavy promotions, get preferential treatment.

Robert W. McChesney: "Blowing the Roof Off the Twenty-First Century" 2014 first Chapter "Capitalism as We Know It Has Got to Go" 12/30/2014

"Breaking Down the Wall" By Ira Basen 12/19/2012 How the alleged wall between advertising and news or editorial content broke down, or perhaps never worked very well in the first place.

Robert McChesney on Third World Traveler

Third World Traveler excerpts from dozens if not hundreds of books

Book Excerpts And Other Pages (Within a few weeks this list might grow close to a hundred)

Tracking the elite ruling class showing how a fraction of the wealtheist people control the media and political establishment.

Alternative Media is an Absolute Necessity!! Includes extensive list of alternative media outlets

Mainstream Media Inciting Fake News With Their Incompetence Includes list of about two hundred news outlets Washington Post reported on from a site that they implied was run by "experts" listing outlets they claim might be Russian propaganda. When the Washington Post article came out there was an enormous amount of backlash, because although some of the media outlets had credibility problems others were very good, and Washington Post distanced themselves from "Is It Propaganda Or Not?," which created this list. the clear conclusion was the people creating the list were as bad, if not worse propaganda than those they tried to discredit.

The Online Books Page Listing over 3 million free books on the Web - Updated regularly mostly classics now in the public domain.





Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Economics 101: When Ever possible, Local Control Of Economies Is Far More Efficient Than Globalized Control



I don't have a PhD. in economics but I can still figure that it's not efficient to ship subsidized cotton half way around the world so it they can take advantage of sweatshop labor to increase profits, forcing workers to toil in outrageous conditions to manufacture cheap goods, before before shipping them half way around the world, again through complicated distribution systems.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that they're shipping jobs overseas to countries that don't protect their workers so that they can use globalization to force local workers to compete with the workers in the most oppressive parts of the world, driving down wages in both the third world and locally.

Another incredibly simple principle that mainstream economists routinely ignore is the fact that in order to maintain a strong economy we have to have a planet that's capable of sustaining life, which we've taken for granted for thousands of years; however, thanks to the growing amount of pollution and Climate Change over the past two centuries it's increasingly obvious that it's a matter of time where we destroy our environment and the ability of sustain life if we keep going.

If we're shipping merchandise half way around the world to be processed before shipping it back this is incredibly inefficient, and it contributes much more to epidemic levels of environmental destruction. with local control of economies, including local manufacturing then we have much more opportunities to reserve local jobs and increase efficiencies that have been eliminated in the globalized economy, including factory direct options that have been virtually eliminated except when used for false advertising purposes.

When it comes to both labor, environmental protection, and numerous other social issues, including education, violence prevention, democratic participation, etc. there's an enormous amount of evidence to indicate that local economies are far more effective at looking out for the best interests of people at the local level and in third world countries.

There are numerous studies showing that locally owned businesses invest significantly more in local communities, often contributing to local charities and helping solve local social problems. Communities with more locally owned businesses have less violence, on average, better health lower poverty and stronger democratic participation, among other things. Some of these studies are listed below; however if any claim that I make aren't backed up they can easily be confirmed through a relatively quick search.



One of the biggest problems of "free trade" policies pushed by corporations with overwhelming help from establishment politicians in both parties is the threat to democracy, preventing countries around the world from protecting workers rights or the local environment. there have been numerous examples where large corporations have used trade agreements to sue local governments for preventing them from protecting their own environment or forcing them to allow drilling for oil or enable energy projects because they violate trade agreements. Trade agreements have also been used to create "export processing zones" or "economic zones" where workers don't have the same protections as other parts of the world or that can be used to avoid paying taxes to support local or international communities as reported in "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein.

Trade and immigration laws are also used to provide cheap labor from undocumented workers that have few if any rights, so corporations can force them to work in outrageous conditions, often doing farm work abroad and importing the produce, or using illegal immigrants to work on domestic farms. However, when they prosecute someone for this it's almost never the corporations making massive profits off human trafficking, instead they prosecute the illegal immigrants. Many of these immigrants are forced to flee their own countries due to oppressive conditions, partly as a result of foreign policy and trade policies designed to prop up dictators abroad.

For dozens if not over a hundred years our foreign policy, controlled by elites with ties to large corporations, has been designed to help maximize profits protecting corporate interests often overthrowing democratic governments like Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, all of which the United States government now admits that hey supported coups, although it took them decades to make this admission and Honduras which also had a coup in 2009 that the United States hasn't admitted to yet, despite the evidence and many other examples. The media partially never reminds the public of these coups, only disclosing them briefly in low profile locations, ensuring that most people are unaware of them. However in academic journals, non-fiction books, or alternative media outlets they're reported more widely.

The mainstream media has tried to argue that Trump's recent alleged deal to get Mexico to enforce immigration laws in return for not increasing tariffs at least temporarily is unrelated to trade, however trade, foreign police, immigration and democracy or lack of it are all intertwined. This deal may be bad, but not because trade isn't related to immigration. They're various ways to suppress wages for working class people. And of course, it has also been reported that Mexico Agreed to Take Border Actions Months Before Trump Announced Tariff Deal 06/08/2019

This policy does more to suppress the rights of immigrants fleeing from oppressive governments supported by United States corporations and the our government; however, it's not supported by the majority of the American people who aren't even aware of how our politicians are misleading us, since the media doesn't report it widely.

Nor do they report on some of the basic fundamentals of our economic system, which isn't a "free market" system as they claim, as I reported in Democratic-Socialism is far better than Socialized-Capitalism. It's an oligarchy system, with a small number of corporations controlling every sector of the economy rigging it in favor of the wealthy. Dwayne Andreas a former Archer Daniels Midland executive admitted it when he said "The competitor is our friend, and the customer is our enemy," and "There isn't one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians," and this was confirmed by various other sources.

Strong opposition to tariffs is primarily so that nothing interferes with corporations ability to force workers to compete with each other driving down wages, however this also comes at additional expenses, especially when the entire economic system is controlled by a small percentage of the public. Many consumer goods seem cheaper, however the quality has been slowly going down over decades so many products have to be replaced four or five times as often as they used to. Sneakers that used to last two years before falling apart began falling apart in under six months until a few years ago when there was backlash from consumer, partly restoring quality, jeans, toasters, coffee makers refrigerators and many other items still only last a fraction of the time they used to last.

Instead of spending money on quality or fair pay for workers they're spending it shipping goods all around the world through complex distributions systems with corporations taking a cut every step of the way. And if workers were paid more they would have more money to spend creating a higher quality of life for almost every one, except those profiting off of sweat shop labor!



Not only are large industries controlled by a small number of oligarchies, but so is the mass media enabling them to repeat the same propaganda over and over again as if it's unchallenged, even misrepresenting many of the economists that have been cited to found our current economic system, including Adam Smith. This includes the economists that got us out of the great depression which was caused by extreme economic practices, which we've returned to causing the collapse of 2008 and now leading to more problems as the largest corporations were bailed out without helping working class people.

Current economists or media pundits don't remind the public that the great depression was caused by massive surpasses that were a result of government incentives to increase production during the first World War, guaranteeing payments for food, then when they no longer needed large surpluses to feed Europe, farmers couldn't get paid as much as it cost to produce food so they had to implement controls to prevent surpluses. the free market simply didn't work without some planning, despite all the propaganda from media pundits.

However since then whatever controls were put in place were designed to consolidate into a small number of oligarchs virtually eliminating antitrust regulations or enforcement over the last several decades.

Our current system is controlled by the wealthy for the benefit of the wealthy; only those that are approved by these people can present their views to the vast majority of the public. This means that quality of life for working class people isn't a factor unless it's necessary to increase profits for the wealthy!

Another incredibly simple principle that should show that the current system isn't working is that it simply doesn't provide job opportunities they pretend to or other social necessities like paying a living wage, reducing or eliminating homelessness, increasing home ownership, reasonable educational opportunities for everyone, and a chance to rise up the economic latter. a dirty little secret is that they keep people in the lower classes because the wealthy need them to do menial chores that they don't want to do for little or no wages!

Contrary to the impression the mass media gives the public a permanently growing economy has never been a possibility, and rational economists know it; however the coverage they provide doesn't including the most rational economists at all, only ones interested in rigging the economy for the wealthy. the best economic research isn't completely suppressed, but it's never mentioned in traditional media so only those that take the initiative to find it or are pointed in the right direction by people at the grassroots would know about it. Even Adam Smith predicted that the economy couldn't possibly grow forever, as reported in the following article:

Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

For centuries, economists have considered a transition from a growing economy to a stable one, from classical economists like Adam Smith down to present-day ecological economists. Adam Smith is famous for the ideas in his book The Wealth of Nations. A central theme of the book is the desirable consequences of each person pursuing self interests in the marketplace. He theorized and observed that people trading in open markets leads to production of the right quantities of commodities, division of labor, increasing wages, and an upward spiral of economic growth. But Smith recognized a limit to economic growth. He predicted that in the long run, population growth would push wages down, natural resources would become increasingly scarce, and division of labor would approach the limits of its effectiveness. He even predicted 200 years as the longest period of growth, followed by population stability.

John Stuart Mill, pioneer of economics and gifted philosopher, developed the idea of the steady state economy in the mid-19th century. He believed that after a period of growth, the economy would reach a stationary state, characterized by constant population and stocks of capital. His words eloquently describe the positive nature of such an economic system:

"It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds cease to be engrossed by the art of getting on."

John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the twentieth century, also considered the day when society could focus on ends (happiness and well-being, for example) rather than means (economic growth and individual pursuit of profit). He wrote:

"…that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable… We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful."

and

"The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion." Complete article


With a steady state economy controlled at the local level it enables people to participate in the decisions made to ensure that other concerns besides profits for wealthy are taken into consideration. It also prevents international events or corrupt politicians from disrupting the economy eliminating jobs with petty arguments over tariffs used to enforce bigoted immigration laws.

Some of the problems with a permanently growing economy was also pointed out by Bill McKibben who cited Bob Costanza comparing the belief in an economy that can grow forever to the belief in a perpetual motion machine that allegedly provides free energy, which is one of the most absurd scientific claims imaginable. In "Deep Economy" he describes how quality of life can be as important if not much more important than economic growth which can only be maintained for a limited time, even if that time does expand for decades.

Bill McKibben "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future" 2007

Well, it’s true that not many of us make our livings as farmers anymore (maybe not enough of us do, as we shall see). But it’s also true that, first thing in the morning, before we go to work in the software design cubicle (or the economics department), most of us prefer to eat breakfast. It’s nice to have microelectronics; it’s necessary to have lunch. If global warming “only” damages agriculture, the rest may not matter much. It’s as if the doctor said, “True, your heart is shot—but look at those six-pack abs!”

The creeping recognition that economics, even in its ever growing mathematical sophistication, had become abstracted from the actual planet we inhabit has spurred the steady development of an increasingly impressive new school of ecological economics. As far back as the 1960s, economists like Kenneth Boulding were at work on what he termed “the economics of the coming spaceship earth. . . . The closed earth of the future requires economic principles that are entirely different from the open ‘cowboy’ economy of the past.”40 (He managed to summarize the basic problem in a short chunk of doggerel: “One principle that is an ecological upsetter / Is that if anything is good, then more of it is better, / And this misunderstanding sets us very, very wrong / For no relation in the world is linear for long.”) In the 1970s, a World Bank economist named Herman Daly published a collection titled Toward a Steady State Economy that actually began to nose around the question whether perpetual growth was possible. And by the 1980s, Daly, with the help of a young professor named Bob Costanza, had formed the Society of Ecological Economics.

Costanza is, in certain ways, the opposite of someone like Larry Summers. From his office at the University of Vermont, where he runs the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, he’s become the loudest voice of an unconventional economic wisdom. He’s had to shout to make himself heard, but it’s getting easier—ecological economics seems to be on the verge of breaking through into the mainstream.

Costanza began his education as an engineer, and then an architect; by the time he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Florida, he’d switched to systems ecology. “But I’d also recognized that everything that was happening was being driven by economics,” he recalled, “so I took economics courses—in fact, I talked them into letting me take economics as my foreign language.” He specialized in energy flows across systems; and his first important paper, published in Science, established that the embedded energy in a final product (the amount of power it took, say, to mine the ore for the car, and grow the food for the automakers, and so on) correlated pretty closely with its final value. Which, if you think about it, raises some difficult questions for the theory of eternal expansion. Or, as he put it, “the universally appealing notion of unlimited economic growth with reduced energy consumption must be put firmly to rest beside the equally appealing but impossible idea of perpetual motion.”41

Since then, Costanza has been at least on the periphery of most of the important advances in ecological economics. In 1997, for instance, he joined with twelve coauthors to publish a paper in Nature that for the first time tried to set an economic value on “ecosystem services,” such as pollination and decomposition, that had always been counted as free. (Their estimate of the worth of these services was $33 trillion annually, far larger than the human economy taken all together.) He and many others have also developed the theoretical tools to explain how important it is to “get prices right”—for instance, to make the cost of a gallon of gasoline reflect the actual damage its production and use do to the environment. (By some estimates, gasoline would cost $7 or $8 a gallon, and the SUV would never have been invented.) Such strategies have led to clever new markets—there is now a trade in permits to emit sulfur and nitrogen, for instance, and as a result utilities have managed to reduce those pollutants quite dramatically and inexpensively. Few economists speak as easily of clean air or clean water as “externalities” as they once did: the essential logic of accounting for costs is slowly spreading. Complete article


McKibben and Costanza both agree that the cost of business should also include negative externalities like destruction of the environment or poor health as a result of environmental destruction. A carbon tax should be a no brainer to reduce this and prevent wealthy people from profiting off of polluting and killing working class people. This is especially important with growing threat from Climate Change! If we want to solve this problem before it's too late we need to take advantage of every method to reduce use of energy, including renewable energies, but the most important thing to do is reduce massive amounts of waste shipping things all around the world in an incredibly inefficient manner!

Charles Tolbert etal. describe how locally owned businesses are more concerned with the best interests of their own community, so cities are far less likely to turn into slums in the following study:

Civic Community in Small-Town America January 2002 Charles M. Tolbert II

Civic Community and Local Capitalism

Locally oriented production firms are likely to contribute to the civic culture because the owners and managers are socially and financially invested in the community (Mills and Ulmer 1946; Piore and Sabel 1984). In part, this local orientation is due to aspects of organizational form associated with size. Small firms usually have less formalized bureaucratic structures and lack the high degree of specialization and compartmentalization associated with their larger, Fordist counterparts (Edwards 1979). A small number of employees precludes a complex division of labor and allows—even requires— informality and mixing of roles. Owners and managers mix and work freely with production workers, creating bridging networks within the workplaces. Without rationalized rules for hiring, new employees often are found through kinship and friendship ties; these practices are advantageous to local residents and maintain employment opportunities for the community.

Further, owners and managers of small firms frequently are active participants in the community’s civic affairs. In the various service and business clubs, organizations, and associations, small businesspeople establish and maintain networks of local contacts and supporters (Mills and Ulmer 1946). Because they are citizens of the community, they develop strong local ties to place. As a result of their strong and enduring community ties, they may be less likely to pull out of the community during an economic downturn, and more likely to support and lead local nonprofit institutions.

A local orientation is particularly instrumental for the selfemployed. For many of these individuals, job and firm are coterminous, and the lines between ownership and employment are blurred. Often the decision to shift from wage work to self-employment is motivated by pressures to leave the local community. Self-employment becomes a mechanism for maintaining and strengthening ties to place; thus it represents a strong form of local orientation.

Local orientation, however, is not the only reason why small producers are likely to remain in a community. Small business owners and the self-employed rely on one another for support and information. These networks allow small producers to capture economies of scale that enable them to compete effectively with larger firms (Piore and Sabel 1984). Networks of small businesspersons are “place-based” and not readily transferable to other communities; small producers remain tied to locality. Because the networks themselves are embedded in local community institutions, they maintain and strengthen shared values and local community identity. Complete article


These small local firms would also be better at addressing quality control problems with consumer goods if they're manufactured locally and there are problems with them, ranging from trivial problems with packaging that have been gradually getting worse, where cans don't open properly or packets of seasoning that don't rip open easily unless you yank at it then they might spill all of a sudden, or larger problems like defective merchandise that is made in large volumes before being shipped half way around the world, which includes food poisoning, chests of drawers that fall over onto kids, or defective toilet seats. A family member once bought a cheap toilet seat manufactured in China with a small piece that was broken in the package, which means that they shipped this product half way around the world before she bought it only to return it to the store where it would be thrown away. Even if it hadn't broken before we opened the package this was so cheesy that it would have broken within a few years so we would have had to replace it again, which is now standard operating procedure.

Another major problem is centralized authoritarian control of the economic system, which we now have leads to more economic inequality and poverty, as a result of suppressed wages and people from wealthy communities getting better education, enabling them to get jobs in the media, advertising, public relations, political pundits, legal establishment, and other jobs that are designed to control the economy which also pay much better than working class people get.

All the people in the media come from the same class of wealthy college educated people, and many of them routinely go back and forth to the political establishment, or they invite pundits including economists that are well paid but support a fiscal ideology rigged heavily in favor of the wealthy, whether it's by shipping jobs overseas union busting, an unequal justice system, or many other issues. Economists like Richard Wolff and Juliet Schor or activists like Bill McKibben are practically never welcome on the mainstream media to explain many of the problems with our economic system, so the majority of the public only hears one side of the issue. But in the academic world or alternative media there's much better research explaining the problems with economic inequality and how it contributes to higher crime, racism, or lower health and quality of life, destruction of the environment including the following study by Wesley Peterson, which shows that the wealthy are leading contributors to many of problems for the poor while they get the majority of the benefits:

Is Economic Inequality Really a Problem? October 2017 E. Wesley F. Peterson

Inequality and Social and Environmental Ills

Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) document correlations between inequality and a wide range of social ills including crime, murder rates, teenage pregnancy, family conflict, obesity, poor health, and social mobility. Although they recognize that correlation is not the same as causality, their conclusions seem to blur this distinction. When Leigh et al. (2009) looked more deeply at the correlation between poor health outcomes and inequality, they were unable to find strong evidence of causality and the same is likely to be true for correlations between inequality and crime or teenage pregnancy rates. Nevertheless, even if it cannot be shown that economic inequality is the prime causal factor behind these problems, there is clearly a strong association and it is likely that it is a contributing factor. Other scholars have investigated the link between inequality and particular sets of problems and much of this work does support the idea that inequality contributes to social and environmental problems. The research reported by Payne (2017) focuses on the effect of inequality on various behaviors some of which do, in fact, lead to crime, violence and conflict. Troutt (2013) argues that inequality is at the root of discrimination in U.S. housing markets and unequal support for public education that have the effect of cutting off avenues out of poverty and economic inequality. He argues that those who are relatively affluent worry that mixing with those at the lower end of the income distribution will threaten their property values and diminish the quality of their schools. Residential sorting in the United States, often driven by racial discrimination, has resulted in enormous spatial inequality. Because public schools are financed primarily from local property taxes, school quality varies with the wealth of the neighborhood in which the school is located. Troutt (2013, p. 216) agrees with other scholars who see U.S. educational and housing policies as tightly connected and driven by a reverence for local control with the result that schools and neighborhoods remain segregated by both economic class and race.

There are two ways environmental concerns are linked to economic inequality. First, greater inequality leads to more environmental degradation because high-income individuals often benefit from polluting activities and have the political power to shield these activities from government regulation (Boyce 2017; Stiglitz 2013; Sayer 2016). Downey (2015) argues that organizations and institutions controlled by high-income elites are the primary causes of current environmental crises ranging from declines in biodiversity and soil fertility to growing global pollution. Baek and Gweisah (2013) find that a more equal distribution of income in the United States would lead to improved environmental quality. The second way that environmental degradation is tied to inequality is through its impacts on people with limited means. Andersson and Agrawal (2011) find that rising inequality has a negative impact on the protection of common property resources such as forests in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a result of the actions of low-income families. Those at the bottom of the income distribution may find that they have little choice but to move into environmentally fragile areas where their activities can lead to environmental damage. Hsiang et al. (2017) show that the effects of climate change are worse in parts of the United States where incomes are lowest. The environmental justice movement has drawn particular attention to the fact that ethnic and racial minorities in the United States often live and work in locations afflicted by pollution and toxic waste (Skelton and Miller 2016). In both low- and high-income countries the effects of such phenomena as air and water pollution and climate change fall most heavily on the least well off. As noted in The Economist (2017):

The rich are disproportionate contributors to the carbon emissions that power climate change. It is cruel and perverse, therefore, that the costs of warming should be disproportionately borne by the poor. And it is both insult and injury that the wealthy are more mobile in the face of climate-induced hardship, and more effective at limiting the mobility of others. The strains this injustice places on the social fabric might well lead to woes more damaging than rising temperatures themselves. (p. 66) Complete article PDF


Wesley Peterson presents many arguments from both sides of the argument, including many that don't seem to believe that economic inequality is a problem at all. These are presumably people benefiting from it that might even be inclined to finance propaganda disguised as research to justify epidemic levels of income inequality. Yet he still recognizes that it's a problem that needs to be addressed. Another argument from the Cato Institute listed below claims there are Five Myths about Economic Inequality in America which are utterly absurd, and any person with rational thinking skills can see through this propaganda. Wesley Peterson seems to accept William Watson's claim that winning the lottery is a fair way that contributes to income inequality; however, even though it's not related to local economies most of the time, a review of the lottery and how it correlates with crime and other social problems, and that it shifts tax burdens to the poor should raise major doubts about Watson's claims.

A few basic principles should also indicate that many of the causes of income inequality are a major reason for some of these social ills, and that many of the wealthiest people really don't earn their money, under the current system, they rig the economy in their favor so they get the majority of the benefits while others do all the work. A few simple examples include considering how certain jobs improve the quality of life for people and how well they pay, even though many of them aren't highly skilled or require advanced education. Growing food or stocking shelves are necessary jobs to make the economy work, yet the people that do this work get minimum wage barely getting enough to survive often being forced to go on welfare, even when they work full time. However college educated jobs like advertising pays much better, but they create a false impression of products and don't do much if anything to improve the quality of life.

One of the most extreme examples as described in Bob Ortega's book "In Sam We Trust" is Kathie Lee Gifford clothing line where she collected three percent of the retail value of the clothes sold using her name while the workers that made the clothes got less than one percent and were forced to work in outrageous conditions. Trying to argue that this is a justifiable distribution of wealth would require an enormous amount of spin and distraction, which is exactly what high paid advertisers, economists, media pundits do. Mostly the way they justify this is by simple refusing to report on it!

In most cases tariffs aren't necessarily the most effective way to protect local economies; a carbon tax might be far more effective since it discourages more shipping than necessary, while protecting the environment at the same time. However, when some countries are becoming more competitive by oppressing workers rights, destroying either their own or other peoples environment to produce good, or if the government subsidizes production to drive prices down to get an unfair advantage, then tariffs are a reasonable way to protect workers, the environment, or prevent unfair trade practices.

In most cases the shipping expenses should make it far more efficient to buy locally manufactured food, and in a reasonable economic system other policies could be put in place protecting factory direct stores, which were eliminated by oligarchy practices. One of the biggest problems is simply that lobbyists paid for by large corporations make all the decisions and they clearly rig things in their own favor.

Lawmakers have no qualms about "protectionism" if it protects their campaign donors, which is what the vast majority of our trade policies are designed to do. One of the most blatant and outrageous examples of that is The Jones Act, the obscure 1920 shipping regulation strangling Puerto Rico, explained 10/09/2017 which is contrary to their alleged "free trade" agenda, although it doesn't involve tariffs. Instead it requires good from one american port going to another American port to be shipped by american ships. This adds a modest expense to most of us but it protects American jobs, although the biggest beneficiary is the owners for American shipbuilders. But it's a much bigger expense for Puerto Rico due to their geographical location.

Since they're closer to many Caribbean counties or Central and South America countries so it would be far more efficient for them to deal with foreign shipping companies, perhaps even buying more foreign goods than many other American's might. Yet the Jones Act is designed to benefit the ship builders, not create an efficient trade system that works well for everyone, presumably since Puerto Rican's don't have equal representation, and even if they did most of the propaganda people used to based their votes on are paid for by campaign donors and elected officials routinely find ways to serve their interests in stead of the public's.

The bigger problem is that our entire economic system is being distorted by the media, politicians, and economists that all cater to corporate interests so a major part of the solution has to include a much more diverse media and enabling all people to hear from different views, including many that are much more rational than the ones presented by the establishment, which routinely ignores many inconvenient facts.

Other countries including those Northern Europe have far more rational economic system, although multinational corporations are trying to corrupt those as well, with less success. If they can do it, we can, perhaps even better if we stop listening to the oligarchs, and only electing candidates that they provide media coverage for!



The following are some sources or additional background information:

Local Ownership Makes Communities Healthier, Wealthier and Wiser 07/18/2012

Regulation & the Economy The Relationship & How to Improve It 09/27/2017

Green Party: Economic Justice & Sustainability

The Multiplier Effect of Local Independent Businesses 2015

Why Local First?

How a Trump decision on trade became a setback for democracy in Vietnam 10/12/2018 Freed from conditions imposed by the Obama administration to join the trade pact, Vietnam's communist government has scrapped plans to allow independent trade unions and unleashed its most severe clampdown on dissent in decades. Authorities have arrested scores of social activists, bloggers and democracy advocates, sentencing many to jail terms of 10 to 20 years.

The TPP Prioritizes the ‘Rights’ of Corporations Over Workers, the Environment, and Democracy 10/07/2015 ‘‘Corporations still have an extra-judicial process to enforce their rights. That’s not the case for labor and environmental standards.’’ By John NicholsTwitter

Getting Trade Right Fall 2015

The obscure legal system that lets corporations sue countries 06/10/2015

Fifteen years ago, Parada’s work was a minor niche even within the legal business. But since 2000, hundreds of foreign investors have sued more than half of the world’s countries, claiming damages for a wide range of government actions that they say have threatened their profits. In 2006, Ecuador cancelled an oil-exploration contract with Houston-based Occidental Petroleum; in 2012, after Occidental filed a suit before an international investment tribunal, Ecuador was ordered to pay a record $1.8bn – roughly equal to the country’s health budget for a year. (Ecuador has logged a request for the decision to be annulled.)

Parada’s first case was defending Argentina in the late 1990s against the French conglomerate Vivendi, which sued after the Argentine province of Tucuman stepped in to limit the price it charged people for water and wastewater services. Argentina eventually lost, and was ordered to pay the company more than $100m. Now, in his most high-profile case yet, Parada is part of the team defending El Salvador as it tries to fend off a multimillion-dollar suit lodged by a multinational mining company after the tiny Central American country refused to allow it to dig for gold. .......

A Century of U.S. Intervention Created the Immigration Crisis 06/20/2018

Fleeing a hell the US helped create: why Central Americans journey north 12/19/2018

Corporate Control in Agriculture

Agropoly: A handful of corporations control world food production - EcoNexus

Five Myths about Economic Inequality in America 09/07/2016 The first "myth" here, "Inequality Has Never Been Worse" may not be entirely true, as they claim; however the other four alleged "myths," including "The Rich Didn’t Earn Their Money," "The Rich Stay Rich; the Poor Stay Poor," "More Inequality Means More Poverty" and "Inequality Distorts the Political Process" are mostly if not entirely true. It wouldn't take much research to show that this is an incredibly bad argument only designed to convince people that benefit from epidemic inequality. If this argument was presented to the majority of the public, especially people with reasonable critical thinking skills that aren't inclined to blindly trust so-called experts, it would clearly backfire since their claims is so bad, regardless of how good their spin is.

The true cost of your cheap clothes: slave wages for Bangladesh factory workers 06/11/2016

Workers endured long hours, low pay at Chinese factory used by Ivanka Trump’s clothing-maker 04/25/2017

Nike Called Out for Low Wages in Asia Amid Colin Kaepernick Ad Promotion 09/06/2018

Nike and America's wage problem 05/14/2015

Snopes: Do Nike Factory Workers in Vietnam Earn 20 Cents Per Hour? 09/07/2018 Partly true, the wages were from the 1990s before being reported, since then they rose to "between $0.61 and $0.89 per hour in 2016." some reports of them working longer than the maximum of 48 hours a week are probably true but 70 to 80 hours is supposedly not typical. doing so might reduce production as they're too tired.

Banning Sweatshops Only Hurts the Poor 07/05/2015 this is an incredibly bad propaganda piece that will only convince those that want to be convinced that abusing people's rights in sweatshops are in their own best interests. I doubt if anyone that ever had to work in a sweatshop would believe any of this, and unless she's intentionally providing propaganda for a living I can't imagine why she would spin things so badly.