We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore LappĂ©, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Why is Obama Goading China?

Click here to access article by Mike Whitney from CounterPunch. 

Whitney sees signs that the Empire is getting very worried about China and its evolving role as a major player in the world. Empire directors have tried containment, but that doesn't seem to work. He sees a major new aggressive Empire policy unfolding which risks a nuclear war.
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is willing to risk a war with China in order to defend  “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea. Speaking in Honolulu, Hawaii on Wednesday, Carter issued his “most forceful” warning yet, demanding “an immediate and lasting halt to land reclamation” by China in the disputed Spratly Islands.

.... In order to show Chinese leaders “who’s the boss”, Carter has threatened to deploy US warships and surveillance aircraft to within twelve miles of the islands that China claims are within their territorial waters. Not surprisingly, the US is challenging China under the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea,  a document the US has stubbornly refused to ratify.  But that’s neither here nor there for the bellicose Carter whose insatiable appetite for confrontation makes him the most reckless Sec-Def since Donald Rumsfeld.

So what’s this really all about?
You may also be interested in Pepe Escobar's take on this growing dangerous situation by reading his satire/humor laden article entitled "Patrolling the Hood From (China) Sea to Shining Sea".

Pentagon report says West, Gulf states and Turkey foresaw emergence of ‘IS

Click here to access article by Nafeez Ahmed from Middle East Eye.

If you are interested in more analysis of the declassified Pentagon document that Judicial Watch, a right-wing foundation, managed to obtain apparently only to smear Hillary Clinton, then you will be interested in Ahmed's analysis and his rebuttal to Juan Cole's take which tries to defend the indefensible. 
A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.

The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these “supporting powers” desired the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in Syria to “isolate the Syrian regime.”
  

Obama delivers a TPP feast to his bosses

Click here if you wish to access this directly from the Boiling Frogs website where I found it. 

Friday, May 29, 2015

The Reoccurring Financial Woes of Greece

Click here if you wish to access the transcript of the interview with economics professor Michael Hudson, posted on Real News Networks.



It appears to me that European capitalist leaders are narrowly focused on repayment of Greek odious debts to the bondholders who, of course, they represent. Whereas, the American ruling class leaders have very mixed feelings because of a larger agenda--their new cold war against Russia/China. Although US banks apparently have already placed big bets that the Greek government will repay these debts, if the Greek government refuses to squeeze any more money out of their workers or refuse to sell off Greek assets, then they might very well look to Russia or China for help. Then what else might happen? Other countries like Spain, Portugal, and Italy might very well pursue the same course. This would be catastrophic for the Empire's new cold war. With this game of chicken rapidly coming to a head, it looks to me like the mixed feelings of the American Empire directors are now calling for concessions to Greece on the part of their European capitalist friends.
Jack Lew, the US Treasury secretary, has urged Athens and its international creditors to agree a deal as soon as possible, saying putting off a decision was heightening the threat of “an accident” that could force Greece out of the eurozone.
Furthermore, the article goes on to report that the IMF has already agreed that Greece doesn't have to meet the June 5th deadline, instead they can pay at the end of the month. Clearly the transatlantic directors of the Empire are caught in a real conundrum. Meanwhile, mainstream media keeps trying to keep the lid on this developing crisis by issuing calming statements to reassure investors and the stock market to prevent the Empire's capitalist house of debt cards from completely falling down.

Outernet: The Information War on a Whole New Level

Click here to access article by Ulson Gunnar from New Eastern Outlook.

Given the historical burden of promising an abundance of civil rights to ordinary citizens, the Empire's capitalist system's inevitable tendency to fascism must always be offset by efforts to carefully manage what their citizens are able to access as information about their world. Hence such methods like censorship chosen by military dictatorships are avoided by capitalist directors in favor of managing (or "manufacturing") consent of their subjects, in addition to 24/7 surveillance, by controlling information. This article examines the latest effort called the "Outernet" by our masters to do just that, and many people are falling for the ruse.
Thus the "great equalizer" Karim claimed Outernet is, is in fact yet another channel of Western government and corporate propaganda, giving those who already monopolize vast territory amid the information war, yet another weapon to use against unsuspecting minds. The only real feature that makes Outernet different from cable television or the Internet, is the fact that it is broadcast from a satellite, and thus difficult to block in a targeted country, and receivable by whomever the US State Department takes pilfered tax dollars and buys receiver sets for.

CIA Hordes Climate Data from Scientists

Click here to access article by Josh Paniagua from AntiMedia

We see in this article the super-salesman of the Empire's government expressing concerns about the threat of climate destabilization, and meanwhile the CIA is no longer willing to share relevant information. The author reaches this conclusion:
One doesn’t need to be an Obama supporter to recognize that climate change and extreme weather are real concerns and can have detrimental effects on future generations. We need to see it studied and understood further, not have the images that the CIA already has in its possession hidden from climate scientists. But in an act of predictability, the US government has decided to aim its focus on enemies overseas and continue to horde information from the American people.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

TPP Sovereignty Challenge

Click here if you wish to access the transcript of this 6:28m video interview with Michael Hudson, Prof. of Economics, from Real News Network.

The interview begins this way:
PERIES: Michael, what do you make of this fast-track legislation?

HUDSON: It’s appalling. It’s so bad that when I try to describe it to professors who are not economists or to foreigners they can’t believe that there’s actually a law that is classified as secret. That the congressmen and senators can only read by making an appointment, reading in secret, without taking notes. That they will be accused under national security legislation if they tell anybody what it’s all about. It’s amazing, what is happening is of such a great magnitude, that people are not out in the streets.

Julian Assange on TPP: Deal Isn’t About Trade, It’s About Corporate Control

Click here if you wish to access a short article which introduces this Democracy Now! video interview with Assange posted by Don Quijones from his website Raging Bull-Shit.



This major trade deal has been shrouded in secrecy likely because of the bad reputation that NAFTA has and all the outsourcing of American jobs that have occurred since. This time our ruling class heavily ensconced in financial and industrial corporations were not taking any chances with an aroused public.

While viewing Obama's recent, well contrived, and masterful performance in Portland, Oregon following his visit at Nike headquarters located nearby, I was very impressed with the genius of our ruling masters. They knew what they were doing when they sponsored and trained Obama to be president. Now their smooth-talking president with an African-American appearance is using his excellent salesmanship skills to finally push the TTP trade bill through Congress, a bill which benefits corporate America and will be used as another weapon against China.

For some more realty-based reports on the background of this great effort by our ruling masters to pass this bill, I recommend that you read two articles from The Guardian: "Here’s how much corporations paid US senators to fast-track the TPP bill" and "The Trans-Pacific Partnership suggests Obama has no sense of irony" (about the secrecy issue).

(As I understand it, the Senate finally passed "fast track" authority on May 22nd, and now it will go to the House of Representatives.)

China’s New Roads to Russia

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook. 
I know of no comparable global Great Project to equal what is now unfolding, bit-by-bit, as China reveals more about her Silk Road Economic Belt high-speed railway infrastructure network. And it’s now clear that the road will be filled with entire new cities, industrial zones, construction, improving standards of living for hundreds of millions of people previously abandoned. The implications for founding a new global alternative to the bankrupt dollar system are immense.

Ahead Of Israel Expulsion Vote U.S. Orders Raid On FIFA

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama

I believe that this incident provides another illustration of both Zionist influence in our government and another aggressive, anti-Russian effort by our ruling masters. 
Today the U.S. ordered Swiss police to raid, incarcerate and extradite to the U.S. six FIFA officials for alleged corruption. The raid, with obviously pre-alarmed New York Times reporters on the scene, comes shortly before a FIFA vote to expel Israel from the association. 

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Cold War 2.0: Clouds of war above the Asia-Pacific

Click here to access article posted on the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens.

The article contains excerpts from four sources: World Socialist Web Site, Sputnik International (Russia), China.org.cn, and an article from their own website. It is obviously very important that we are kept informed about the growing potential for military conflicts between the armed forces of the Empire and China in the seas and air-space near China that are rarely reported in US corporate-controlled media.

Lack Of U.S. Air Support In Ramadi Points To Disguised Darker Aim

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama

 

It seems that it is the task of the NY Times to provide reasons excuses for the lack of US military action.

Bernhard comes up with a very plausible reason for the lack of US support that could have prevented the capture of Ramadi by ISIS.

No Climate Protection without Climate Justice; No Climate Justice without Degrowth

Click here to access article by Christiane Kliemann from degrowth (Germany).

And as the German author apparently argues, there can be no "degrowth" without ending the capitalist system and rule by capitalists.
To be able to successfully develop a different type of growth, the countries of the South will require their fair share of the global resources and emissions – which must be much more than the leftovers of the rich North. By consequence the Global North will have to drastically reduce its emissions and resource exploitation. This is, however, impossible within the framework of continuous capitalist economic growth. ....

...we can’t simply rely on technological progress without overhauling the whole economic, social and political environment this progress is embedded in. As many examples in history show, purely technological solutions tend to relocate their negative effects to other sectors, ecosystems or continents, or from the present to the future.
However, I'm not so sure she means this. Maybe like Naomi Klein she thinks that we can simply regulate capitalism better so that we don't have continuous growth.

Kiev’s Repression of Anti-Fascism in Odessa

Click here to access article by Eric Draitser from CounterPunch.

Draitser shows us what kind of government in Ukraine that US subversion, under the direction of Asst. Secretary of State Victoria Nuland-Kagan, has created. It is fascism in full bloom. His attention is mostly focused on events in Odessa, a very cosmopolitan city that has a rich left-wing tradition. There the fascist Ukraine authorities are attempting to stamp out all dissent in any form using the most brutal methods. 

Honduras : US-Sponsored State Terror Escalates

Click here to access article by Heather Gies from Libya 360°. 

The author reports on the origins and recent US sponsorship of terrorist organizations in Central America, particularly in Honduras and Guatemala. She focuses much more on their role to terrorize citizens to accept right-wing governments, and is rather weak on their more immediate purpose: to promote the interests of US and Canadian resource corporations. 

I get almost daily reports from human rights organizations of atrocities committed by these terrorist armies and paramilitaries who often function to drive indigenous populations off their lands which the above corporations, particularly mining corporations, want access to. These organizations always urge their readers to write to their corporate-sponsored Congress representatives about such actions--as if that will change anything. Of course, these incidents are never covered in US mainstream media and therefore US citizens have no idea what is going on down there.
“The pretext now is drug trafficking,” .... “The drug war has been the frame within which the United States government has legitimated support for repression by state security forces in Honduras and increased funding for them.”

And while the U.S. goal of maintaining a regional base of power amidst the threat of emerging or consolidating leftist alternatives remains much the same, the political context in the region has significantly changed.

“The larger context is the many democratically elected center and center-left governments all over Latin America that the United States is threatened by because they aren’t going to pay obeisance to United States power,” ....

“The United States wanted to lock down its power in Honduras so that it can maintain what has long been the most captive nation in Latin America.”

In the process, the U.S. also promotes the interests of transnational corporations that are making a killing from state-sponsored death squads that suppress resistance and pave the way for capitalist exploitation of land, labor, and indigenous and campesino resources.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Saker interview with Jeff J. Brown

Click here to access article featuring a Saker interview with Jeff Brown posted on Saker's website, A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.
...now it is all very clear to me. Western colonialism, false flags and color revolutions have never stopped since 1492. The methods and instruments of destabilization, exploitation and resource extraction have simply adapted. Empire, with its capitalism, war and fascism, is a three-headed Hydra, and it is insatiable.

There is a titanic struggle for the soul of humanity, our survival as a species into the 21st century, and it is Western Empire versus China, Russia, BRICS, ALBA CELAC and NAM. It is Xi, Putin, Maduro, Castro, Correa, Kirchner, Zuma, Afwerki and all the hundreds of world leaders the West has assassinated or deposed, versus Obama, Cameron, Hollande, Merkel, Abe and their thousands of satraps in the hallowed hall of imperial power.
I've spent all morning on this rather lengthy interview being totally mesmerized by Brown's observations and impressed by his life experience. While reading this, I've wondered how I have missed his writing. I then did a search on my website and discovered that I did post another article of his back in February and rated it a "best post". Why I did not follow up with his subsequent articles from his website is a complete mystery to me. This time I will not fail to do so.

Because my knowledge and understanding is so weak regarding China's rise on the world stage using capitalist machinery governed by the Chinese Communist party, such articles as this help satisfy a ravenous appetite for such knowledge. China since Mao's rule has been a complete mystery to me. Combining a Communist Party with a capitalist engine has always seemed like an impossible feat and loaded with contradictions that would soon likely devolve into complete capitalist control and all that such a development implies. I'm still not convinced otherwise, but I continue to be impressed with China's leadership, and this interview by such a fascinating author has greatly amplified this impression.

Monday, May 25, 2015

ISIS Furious About 9/11 Conspiracy Theories!

Click here to access a 10 minute video and notes by James Corbett from his website. 

The title to this very interesting 10 minute video report do not do the contents justice. I think the really important parts are 1) an online slick magazine (PDF doc) that "ISIS" is publishing provides an excellent illustration of why many people find it so laughable as to its authenticity, and it also serves up some very interesting propaganda about conspiracy theories; 2) some new additional material obtained from a secret PDF document (linked to here) that a right-wing website, Judicial Watch, obtained and which they used merely to smear the Obama administration and by extension Hillary Clinton. However, other people have scanned the report and found some very interesting material showing that US authorities had knowledge about the arms smuggling from Libya to Syria and that the US supported the overthrow of the Syrian government. 

How the White House plans to help the humble bee maintain its buzz

Click here to access article from The Washington Post.  

Read the article as background for this cartoon created by Gregory Crawford and posted on World News Trust. It shows Obama working for "Big Everything" by posing as an environmentalist to distract people while his bosses go to work on Congress. The cartoon illustrates that our masters knew what they were doing when they promoted Obama to be president.

Ice and the Sky review – powerful eco doc fronts up to climate change deniers

Click here to access this film review by Andrew Pulver from The Guardian.
...Jacquet returns to the Antarctic to tell the life story of climatologist Claude Lorius, now in his 80s, who has spent his life drilling out ice cores at enormous depth, and whose resulting analysis proved key in linking climate change and “greenhouse” gases.
Jacquet presents his film very much as a head-on challenge to climate change deniers: by simply talking us through Lorius’s career, and the progress of his work, we understand the methodical processes by which he came to his conclusions. Essentially, it’s a rebuttal to background-noise deniers’ complaints about flawed science: Lorius says what he found, and what it means, with calm, unflappable detachment. 
The author concludes his review with this statement:
Jacquet’s film is ... a call to arms to the environmental movement destabilised and buffeted by the denial industry. Ice and the Sky ends with a direct challenge to the viewer: “Now that you know, what are you going to do?” What, indeed. This is a powerful testament, and one that ought to have a considerable impact.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Secret Pentagon report reveals West saw ISIS as strategic asset

Click here to access article by Nafeez Ahmed from Insurge Intelligence.

The evidence keeps mounting that US intelligence agencies knew that the Islamic State was going  to appear in the area, and then the Empire intentionally supported them in an effort to destabilize the Assad government in Syria. 
A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.

The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, despite anticipating that doing so could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Ramadi and America’s Fracturing of Iraq

Click here to access article by Eric Draitser from Stop Imperialism. 

Draitser also supports independent journalist Pepe Escobar's apt label for the US-led capitalist Empire as being an Empire of Chaos in the sense that their policies intentionally promote chaos. Together with the cultivation of sect rivalries, the Empire and its head-chopping allies support terrorist armies in order to promote their objective of political fragmentation of the area, a favorite imperial policy of "divide and conquer".
Since the US campaign against the group in Iraq began, there have been countless media reports of US weapons and supplies falling directly into the clutches of ISIS, succoring it at precisely the time that it has suffered heavy losses at the hands of Shiite militias in Iraq and the Syrian Arab Army and Hezbollah across the border in Syria. As Naeem al-Uboudi, the spokesman for one of the main groups fighting ISIS in Tikrit told the NY Times, “We don’t trust the American-led coalition in combating ISIS… In the past, they have targeted our security forces and dropped aid to ISIS by mistake.”

This fact is critical to understanding the true motivation of Washington in this campaign, namely inflicting maximum damage on both ISIS and Shiite militias fighting it. In effect, this ‘controlled chaos’ strategy promotes and extends, rather than concludes the war.

Israel thanks US for opposing Arab plan for nuke-free Mideast

Click here to access article from Middle East Eye.

Here we see the Empire exposing its hypocrisy about nuclear weapons, peace, and disarmament. After years of accusations and sanctions against the supposed development of nuclear weapons in Iran, which were found to be false by a Western intelligence agencies, the Empire balked at declaring the Middle East a nuclear free zone as proposed by Arab countries. The reason? It's clear that they wanted to protect nuclear-armed Israel that looks after Empire interests in the Middle East. This incident is another illustration of the principle of imperialism that guide's the Empire's policies. Everything is decided on the basis of promoting, defending, and expanding the power of the US Empire.

Heat Waves: Exposure to Increase 4-Fold by 2050

Click here to access article by Bryan Jones, Brian C. O’Neill, Larry McDaniel, Seth McGinnis, Linda O. Mearns & Claudia Tebaldi from Nature Climate Change (behind paywall) via Nature World News.
With climate change causing much of the world's hot extremes, heat waves are likely to become more common. Well, now new research shows that, at least in the United States, exposure to extreme heat could increase four- to six-fold by 2050, due to both a warming climate and a population that's growing especially fast in the hottest regions of the country.

Surprisingly, extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather-related event. And with blazing heat becoming the new norm, the number of deadly heat waves, and therefore fatalities, are expected to increase as the climate warms.