FREEDOM 101 – Jason Hirthler and Jeff Brown share their stories of hope, on China Rising Radio Sinoland

The buck stops with YOU. If you don’t share this, who will?

Downloadable SoundCloud podcast (also at the bottom of this page), as well as being syndicated on iTunes and Stitcher Radio(links below):

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]ictured above is Jason Hirthler on the left, in New York and myself on the right, in China. We are twelve time zones apart, geographically halfway around the planet from each other. Yet, we have both succeeded in coming out of the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist closet, continue to work at normal jobs and have friends and family who respect us. We empathize with you that it may seem like mission impossible. We too face the foghorn of withering Western propaganda, with its relentless societal pressure to conform and be a mindless Myrmidon in the mainstream matrix. But, it can be done.

That’s you on the left and the elites’ mainstream media on the right. There’s only one solution: quit watching, listening to and reading their brainwashing propaganda. It’s like a bad drug that makes you stupid and babble. I know, because I used to be a muttering idiot myself. Then, get smart and find your freedom elsewhere in the information world. Read on…

In today’s discussion, you can see by the long list of tag words that Jason and I covered a lot of fascinating and interesting territory. Listen to our stories about how we gained our freedom and dignity, so you too can find the will to liberate your innate intelligence and the courage to unshackle your powers of reason. Regardless of your age, it is never too late. Jason figured it out in his forties, me in my late fifties. Everyone has their own unique life experiences through which to take their journeys of discovery and enlightenment. And there is a critical bonus. It gives you the knowledge and satisfaction of not living the rest of your life as an imperial ventriloquist dummy. That in itself is priceless.

1950’s British ventriloquist Peter Bough on the right and his dummy Archie Andrews, on the left. They are playing the perfect allegory of the West’s deep state and its manipulated masses, respectively. That’s also me on the left, until I was about 58 years old, when I took my life-changing journey across China, in 44 Days (https://ganxy.com/i/88276/). You too can choose to not be Archie Andrews. Read on…

The French have a wonderful proverb, A clear conscience makes a soft pillow. Jason and I both took our separate paths to get there, but we can finally say we sleep soundly at night. You, us, we all deserve the sweet dreams of self-respect.

Jason’s résumé is impressive. He is a writer, media critic, and veteran of the digital communications industry. As a digital media strategist, he is familiar with the techniques and tactics commonly used by mainstream news media to shape narratives that disguise imperialism. He is interested in the false historical narratives that underpin the foreign policies of the United States and which ensure those policies are only feebly resisted. To that end, Hirthler has published more than 150 articles across a variety of progressive sites like Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and The Greanville Post. He has also authored two collections of his political essays, The Sins of Empire, and most recently, Imperial Fictions. He lives in New York City and can be reached at jasonhirthler@gmail.com.

You can read Jason’s work here:

Counterpunch: https://www.counterpunch.org/author/hav3h/

Dissident Voice: https://dissidentvoice.org/search/?q=jason+hirthler&sa=Search

Greanville Post: https://www.greanvillepost.com/?s=jason+hirthler

To start debrainwashing, may I suggest replacing your four favorite mainstream media bookmarks with the three aforementioned websites, along with www.chinarising.puntopress.com? I promise you that overnight, your IQ will go up ten points and your self-worth will suddenly find a noble purpose.

Jason and I talked about a few things to follow up with, on your journey to freedom and dignity:

You can read the prologue to Book #2 of The China Trilogy (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/05/19/the-china-trilogy/) here: http://chinarising.puntopress.com/china-rising-the-book/

Jason recommended Alex Carey’s book, Taking the Risk out of Democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Carey

He also likes reading Paul Street, David Harvey and Anthony De Mello: https://www.paulstreet.org/, http://davidharvey.org/and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_de_Mello.

I mentioned Edward Bernays and his classic treatise, Propaganda: http://whale.to/b/bernays.pdf

I also talked about socialist Upton Sinclair and his history changing investigative book, The Jungle: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/140/140-h/140-h.htm

The book I mentioned about the US’s drive to become a global colonial power is: The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7323969-the-war-lovers

Friends and fans of China Rising Radio Sinoland, it’s time to get smart, and to gain your freedom and dignity from our parasitic elite owners. They may own the system, but they can’t control your brains, once you make the decision to cross the Rubicon and into the realm of clarity and truth.

So, just do it. And when you are ready to celebrate leaving the matrix, send Jason and me an email (jasonhirthler@gmail.comand jeff@brownlanglois.com). We’d love to hear your stories of redemption and newfound liberty.

Finally, while you are attending your own Freedom 101 class, don’t forget to read Jason’s and my books. Sharing is caring. Keep posting our work on all your social media. Your contacts will be glad you did.

SOURCE: Freedom 101 – Jason Hirthler and Jeff J. Brown share their stories of hope, on China Rising Radio Sinoland 171126

Or better yet, buy one of Jeff’s books offered below.

ABOUT JEFF BROWN

Punto Press released China Rising - Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and for Badak Merah, Jeff authored China Is Communist, Dammit! – Dawn of the Red Dynasty (2017). As well, he published a textbook, Doctor WriteRead’s Treasure Trove to Great English (2015). He is also currently penning an historical fiction, Red Letters – The Diaries of Xi Jinping, to be published in late 2018. Jeff is a Senior Editor & China Correspondent for The Greanville Post, where he keeps a column, Dispatch from Beijing. He also writes a column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing Express. Jeff interviews and podcasts on his own program, China Rising Radio Sinoland, which is also available on SoundCloud, YouTube, Stitcher Radio and iTunes.

More details about Jeff Brown's background.

In China, he has been a speaker at TEDx, the Bookworm and Capital M Literary Festivals, the Hutong, as well as being featured in an 18-part series of interviews on Radio Beijing AM774, with former BBC journalist, Bruce Connolly. He has guest lectured at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences and various international schools and universities.

Jeff grew up in the heartland of the United States, Oklahoma, much of it on a family farm, and graduated from Oklahoma State University. He went to Brazil while in graduate school at Purdue University, to seek his fortune, which whetted his appetite for traveling the globe. This helped inspire him to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia in 1980 and he lived and worked in Africa, the Middle East, China and Europe for the next 21 years. All the while, he mastered Portuguese, Arabic, French and Mandarin, while traveling to over 85 countries. He then returned to America for nine years, whereupon he moved back to China in 2010. He lives in China with his wife. Jeff is a dual national French-American, being a member of the Communist Party of France (PCF) and the International Workers of the World (IWW).

Jeff can be reached at China Rising, jeff@brownlanglois.com, Facebook, Twitter and Wechat/Whatsapp: +86-13823544196.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Palestine after Abbas: The Future of a People at Stake.

=By= Ramzy Baroud, PhD

M. Abbas

Although intended to inspire his Fatah Party followers, a televised speech by Mahmoud Abbas on the 51st Anniversary of the group’s launch highlighted, instead, the unprecedented crisis that continues to wreak havoc on the Palestinian people. Not only did Abbas sound defensive and lacking in any serious or new initiatives, but his ultimate intention appeared as if it was about his political survival, and nothing else.

In his speech on December 31, he tossed in many of the old clichés, chastising Israel at times, although in carefully-worded language, and insisted that any vital decisions concerned with “the future of the land, people and national rights” would be “subject to general elections and (voted on by the Palestine) National Council (PNC), because our people made heavy sacrifices and they are the source of all authorities.”

Ironically, Abbas presides over the Palestinian Authority (PA) with a mandate that expired in January 2009 and his party, Fatah, which refused to accept the results of democratic elections in the Occupied Territories in 2006, continues to behave as the ‘ruling party’ with no mandate, aside from the political validation it receives from Israel, the US and their allies.

As for the PNC, it served as the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) until the PA was established in 1994. Propped up by international funds, the PA was initially formed as a means to an end, that being ‘final status’ negotiations and a Palestinian State. Instead, it became a status quo in itself, and its institutions, which largely reflected the political interests of a specific branch within Fatah, replaced the PLO, the PNC, together with all other institutions that expressed a degree of democracy and inclusiveness.

Whatever PLO structure that symbolically remained in place after the PA soft coup is now a rubber stamp that does not merely reflect the wishes of a single party, Fatah (which lost its majority among Palestinians in 2006), but an elitist, wealthy group within the once-leading party. In some way, Abbas’ current role is largely to serve the interest of this group, as opposed to charting a path of liberation for the entire Palestinian collective, at home, in refugee camps or in the Diaspora.

Nothing was as telling about Abbas’ real mission at the helm of the PA than his statement in his speech of December 31, where he completely ruled out the dismantling of the PA – now that it has failed in its mission, and while an elaborate PLO political structure already exists, which is capable of replacing it. Oddly, Abbas described the PA as one of the greatest achievements of the Palestinian people.

I say, ‘oddly’ because the PA was the outcome of the now practically defunct Oslo ‘peace process’, which was negotiated by Abbas and a few others in secret with Israel, at the behest of the late Palestinian Fatah leader, Yasser Arafat. The whole initiative was founded on secrecy and deceit and was signed without taking the Palestinian people into account. Worse, when Palestinians attempted to vote to challenge the status quo wrought by Oslo, the outcome of the elections was dismissed by Fatah, which led to a civil war in 2007 where hundreds of Palestinians were killed.

But aside from the historical lapses of Abbas, who is now 80-years-old, his words – although meant to assure his supporters – are, in fact, a stark reminder that the Palestinian people, who have been undergoing a violent uprising since October, are practically leaderless.

While Abbas explains that the reason behind the ‘habba’ or the ‘rising’ – a reference to the current Intifada – is Israel’s continued violations and illegal settlement, he failed to endorse the current uprising or behave as if he is the leader of that national mobilization. He constantly tries to hold the proverbial stick in the middle so that he does not invite the ire of his people nor that of Israel.

Like a crafty politician, he is also trying to reap multiple benefits, siding with the people at times, as if a revolutionary leader, to remind Israel and the US of his importance as someone who represents the non-violent strand of Palestinian politics, and ride the wave of the intifada until the old order is restored. In fact, signs of that old order – interminable negotiations – are still evident. The PA’s Chief Negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has recently announced that talks between the PA and Israel are still taking place, a terrible omen at a time when Palestinians are in desperate need for a complete overhaul of their failed approach to politics and national liberation.

However, the problem is much bigger than Mahmoud Abbas. Reducing the Palestinian failure to the character of a single person is deeply rooted in most political analyses pertaining to Palestine for many years. (This is actually more pronounced in Western media than in Arabic media). Alas, once aging Abbas is no longer on the political scene, the problem is likely to persist, if not addressed.

While Fatah has made marked contributions to Palestinian Resistance, its greatest contribution was liberating the Palestinian cause, as much as is practically possible, from the confines and manipulation of Arab politics. Thanks to that generation of young Palestinian leaders, which also included leaders of the PFLP and other socialist groups, there was, for once, a relatively unified Palestinian platform that did represent a degree of Palestinian priorities and objectives.

But that relative unity was splintered among Palestinian factionalism: within the PLO itself, and then outside the PLO, where groups and sub-groups grew into a variety of ideological directions, many of whom were funded by Arab regimes which utilized the Palestinian struggle to serve national and regional agendas. A long and tragic episode of national collapse followed. When the Palestinian Resistance was exiled from Lebanon in 1982, following the Israeli invasion of that country, the PLO and all of its institutions were mostly ruled by a single party. Fatah, by then, grew older and more corrupt, operating within geographical spheres that were far away from Palestine. It dominated the PLO which, by then, grew into a body mired in political tribalism and financial corruption.

True, Abbas is an essential character in that sorry episode which led to the Oslo fiasco in 1993; however, the burgeoning political culture that he partly espoused will continue to operate independent from the aspirations of the Palestinian people, with or without Abbas.

It is this class, which is fed with US-Western money and perks and happily tolerated by Israel, which must be confronted by Palestinians themselves, if they are to have a real chance at reclaiming their national objectives once more.

The current wisdom conveyed by some, that today’s Intifada has superseded the PA, is utter nonsense. No popular mobilization has a chance of succeeding if it is impeded by such a powerful group as those invested in the PA, all unified by a great tug of self-interest.

Moreover, waiting for Abbas to articulate a stronger, more convincing message is also a waste of time, since the ailment is not Abbas’ use of vocabulary, but his group’s refusal to cede an inch of their undeserved privilege, in order to open up space for a more democratic environment – so that all Palestinians, secularists, Islamists and socialists take equal part in the struggle for Palestine.

A starting point would be a unified leadership in the Occupied Territories that manages the Intifada outside the confines of factions, combined with a vision for revamping PLO institutions to become more inclusive and to bring all Palestinians, everywhere, together.

Abbas is soon to depart the political scene, either because of an internal Fatah coup, or as a result of old age. Either way, the future of Palestine cannot be left to his followers, to manage as they see fit and to protect their own interests. The future of an entire nation is at stake.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.

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