in the time remaining, to help us understand how the man-made system of capitalism will lead to the extinction of our human species, and so many others.
ISIS hit the Syrian Arab Army with drone strikes in the eastern Qalamoun Mountains and Syrian Desert. That’s right: ISIS is using drones now. [and tanks, etc]
I wonder how long it will be before they have their own air force.
In addition to fake news, fake rescue outfits like the White Helmets, fake "democratic" governments, fake "revolutions" (Ukraine), we also have fake terrorist armies.
After a leaked Hillary Clinton email tangibly admitted ISIS is being funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who the US supplies with weapons, it would be wise for us to question just how ISIS is able to acquire such things.
Why would ISIS be so determined to attack Syria as the US just happens to have wanted regime change in Syria for decades? We must question who is really funding them and what the situation is now with all the changes in the geopolitical landscape.
Climate chaos is well under way, and has become irreversible over temporal spans relevant to humans because of self-reinforcing feedback loops (so-called positive feedbacks). Such is the nature of reaching the acceleration phase of the non-linear system that is climate catastrophe.
As a result of ongoing, accelerating climate change, I’m letting go of the notion that Homo sapiens will inhabit this planet beyond 2026. I’m letting go of the notion that, within a few short years, there will remain any habitat for humans in the interior of any large continent. I’m letting go of the notion we’ll retain even a fraction of one percent of the species currently on Earth beyond 2030. But I’m not letting go of the notion of resistance, which is a moral imperative.
What the title refers to is how the capitalist ruled state fights government laws that serve worker interests while promoting and accomplishing support for the interests of capitalists.
Social democracy, a euphemism formulated by capitalist intellectuals, was heavily promoted by US-led Empire capitalists in Europe following WWII as an antidote to popular interest in communist and worker-oriented ideas, and their organizations that threatened the rule of capitalists. Meanwhile Operation Gladio, under the direction of the CIA, was setup to counter this threat by force whenever necessary. The social democratic strategy permitted European governments to enact policies that provided workers with generous benefits. Thus, affected workers in these countries were lavished with long vacations, medical coverage, retirement benefits, representation on corporate boards of directors, etc. These carrot and stick strategies worked very successfully to prevent socialist movements from taking control of governments that were under the military control of the Empire. Nowadays these benefits enjoyed by European workers are increasingly under attack. Frequently ordinary Americans have been confused about the meaning of the term "social democracy". They often confuse this with socialism. We saw how Bernie Sanders added to this confusion by identifying himself as a socialist in the recent election campaign. This is a deliberate policy by the ruling class to distract ordinary people away from any thoughts of another social-economic system. And the gains of benefits by European workers under social democratic policies were always kept quiet in US media for fear that American workers would demand similar benefits. Street in this article reviews the dedicated efforts by US capitalists to suppress benefits for American workers and implement policies that serve capitalist interests.
U.S. Big Business has long opposed social democratic governance in no small part because it knows that such state policy would enhance the workplace, marketplace, and political power of the working-class majority. Naturally enough, it has waged a long war against government rules that used to support workers right to organize unions and bargain collectively. Darkly enough, workers unifying to enhance their collective marketplace bargaining power does not qualify as legitimate “free market” behavior as far as capital is concerned.
Beneath all its “free market” talk, capital isn’t opposed to “big government” as such. It’s opposed to what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “the left hand of the state” – the parts of the public sector that serve the social and democratic needs of the non-affluent majority.
The power of concentrated wealth, which rules most of the world today, is well illustrated in this report by a citizens action group efforts in their attempt to unravel the many mysteries of Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11.
As a holdover from feudalism the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is wholly owned and ruled by the king's family, and protected and preserved by the United States since WWII when FDR recognized the vast petroleum potential of the kingdom. In the midst of this devastating war he proclaimed in 1943 that "the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States". Today these petroleum reserves help prop up the dollar (petrodollars), and the Kingdom is more useful to the US-led Empire than ever before.
As reported in this article the Kingdom is also using its vast wealth to counter American activists' efforts at exposing their participation in 9/11 by hiring other Americans to oppose these efforts.
How much would Saudi lobbyists have to pay you to help undermine a new law that enables 9/11 families and survivors to present evidence against the kingdom for its alleged assistance to the 9/11 hijackers?
According to filings with the Department of Justice mandated by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), some of your fellow citizens have done so for as little as $5,000; others are cashing in on a much bigger scale. They’ll say they’re doing it for different, baseless reasons, but there’s no doubting the aim of their faraway masters.
The September enactment of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) was a resounding defeat for Saudi Arabia and its lobbyists in Washington. Undaunted, the kingdom and its fellow travelers in and out of the United States government immediately launched a coordinated assault on the new law.
Donald Trump’s personnel selections have made a complete mockery of his promise to “drain the swamp.” A newly-released list of White House staffers on his National Economic Council — which is helmed by former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn — is a case in point. Among them are lobbyists for the industries they are now supposed to advise the president on regulating. Here’s how various realms of economic-related policy will be overseen by lobbyists.... [three major realms: the internet, retirement, and environment]
The Russian channel REN TV was the first broadcaster to show the documentary ‘Ukraine on Fire’ produced by Academy Award winner Oliver Stone. The film revolves around the bloody armed coup in Kiev that took place three years ago.
The documentary shot by Ukrainian director Igor Lopatonok was screened at the Taormina International Film Festival in Italy early in 2015, but the general public—especially in the USA— hasn’t had a chance to see it yet.
This is the second of a two-part series (I posted the first one here) on the use of genetically altered products that have flooded the market and their lack of adequate safety testing before entering the market. I had wrongly expected a political explanation for this phenomenon. However Latham is a biological scientist and he examines the issue purely from a scientific perspective. In this article he lays out a clear scientific argument that corporations should not be allowed to place genetically modified products on the market simply because they cannot be adequately tested.
In this article he examines two contrasting extremes of products that are tested and studied by government regulatory agencies. At one extreme tests regarding passenger airplanes can be, and are, tested thoroughly before they are permitted to be marketed, but at the other extreme lies GMO products whose potential deleterious effects are very complex and cannot be adequately tested, but sail through the regulatory process with little difficulty. In a prior article of his, he offers a better explanation that points to the interests of corporations.
Some of my concerns with GMOs are “just” practical ones. I have read numerous GMO risk assessment applications. These are the documents that governments rely on to ‘prove’ their safety. Though these documents are quite long and quite complex, their length is misleading in that they primarily ask (and answer) trivial questions. Furthermore, the experiments described within them are often very inadequate and sloppily executed. Scientific controls are often missing, procedures and reagents are badly described, and the results are often ambiguous or uninterpretable. I do not believe that this ambiguity and apparent incompetence is accidental. It is common, for example, for multinational corporations, whose labs have the latest equipment, to use outdated methodologies. When the results show what the applicants want, nothing is said. But when the results are inconvenient, and raise red flags, they blame the limitations of the antiquated method. This bulletproof logic, in which applicants claim safety no matter what the data shows, or how badly the experiment was performed, is routine in formal GMO risk assessment.
To any honest observer, reading these applications is bound to raise profound and disturbing questions: about the trustworthiness of the applicants and equally of the regulators. They are impossible to reconcile with a functional regulatory system capable of protecting the public.
Of course, people hired to supervise government regulatory agencies, like every other institutional unit of our society, are selected based on their motivation to serve the profit and power interests of the ruling capitalist class. (That is precisely why Trump appointed Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency.) Such regulatory agents ignore the impossibility of adequately testing such products, so they have such products go through some slipshod process anyway for the sake of appearances to sooth the safely concerns of the public.
Although I didn't listen to Trump's speech to Congress, I listened to the three corporate news reports (ABC, NBC, & CBS) of his speech. I was amazed at the dramatic change in coverage. Before this, anything related to Trump was reported in a negative context. Last night, they all reported virtually the same coverage: that Trump's "tone" was very different, he was very "presidential", and ordinary people from Michigan loved his address.
It appears that Trump has been impressed by the powerful CIA faction that dominates the US ruling class; and because he respects only power, he has decided to serve their interests. So it should not be surprising that they liked his speech. He likely underwent a short course in how to role play "appearing president".
He wants America more militarized than ever, intending greater funding for police – to protect the nation’s privileged class from beneficial social change.
Changes he’ll propose in America’s tax code are unrelated to letting “our companies…compete and thrive anywhere and with anyone.”
Now I hope the CIA will stop leaking embarrassing phone calls that he or his appointees made and stop smearing him in their scripted corporate broadcasts. I was beginning to feel sorry for him. (sarcasm) I sort of liked the old Trump who said things off the top of his head even if racist and sexist, especially when he castigated his enemies in corporate media. At least he was more like the real Trump. Now we have a fake Trump appearing "presidential".
Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru are experiencing a drought, but the author seems to suggest the President Morales shares some of the blame for the shortage of drinking water.
Bolivia was shaken to its roots in the spring of 2000, when tens of thousands in the city of Cochabamba protested against the privatisation of the city’s water services. One person died and scores were injured in weeks of protest, the company was ejected and the political crisis – known as the first water war of the 21st century – was a catalyst that led to the election of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president.
Morales is still president, but as the longest and deepest drought in Bolivia’s recent history continues to bite in cities across the country, he has cause to fear that water could be his government’s political undoing, too.
While the American people are so caught up in the daily media buzz about the new Trump administration, this author sees through the smoke and mirrors of corporate media reports and notices that nothing much is really changing regarding foreign policies. "The more things change (under capitalist class rule), the more they stay the same."
While supporters of recently elected US President Donald Trump believe steadfastly that among other things, his administration will role back what has been essentially a century of American expansionism worldwide through overt wars and more “covert” methods toward achieving “regime change,” by all metrics it appears such methods will only expand.
Not only do observers note continued subversive activities coordinated through local US embassies around the world since Trump’s presidency began, including across Southeast Asia as part of America’s continued attempts to isolate and contain China, but also movement within US agencies charged with organising and financing this subversion, such as the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
So far I've seen little evidence that the Rockefeller segment of the US ruling class is imposing its will to have better relations with Russia in order to draw them away from China as I argued previously. However, it is still too soon to determine that this theory is invalid. Dan Glazebrook argues that Kissinger's rapprochement policies (Rockefeller faction) with Russia are still in effect in a recent article entitled "Michael Flynn may be gone but his Russia policy lives on" posted in the Middle East Eye.
The Investor-State Dispute Settlement clause is included in all the new trade treaties. This website, in contrast to corporate media, explains how these neoliberal trade treaties actually give more rights to investors than to entire countries. Here is one question and revealing answer provided by the people at the ISDS Platform:
Why is ISDS so problematic?
In effect, ISDS creates a parallel business-friendly judicial system exclusively for transnational corporations. The power rests upon for-profit arbitrators who come from the corporate sector and face unverifiable conflicts of interest. They have no sovereign legitimacy and are not accountable to the public. The decisions they make can be inconsistent between one another and cannot be appealed. Plus, the arbitrators effectively serve as judge and party, because the same appointed arbitrators who plead the case for the parties make the decision. Imagine a football match where the referee plays for one of the teams! With ISDS, this becomes a possible scenario. So much for justice.
If you peruse other current articles on this website you will learn that most of the arbitration hearings are held in secret. It's obvious why corporate media refuses to cover these new trade treaties in any depth. Corporate media's function is to serve the interests of a tiny class of people known by various names: capitalists, investors, corporations, etc. Their mission is to serve their US-led Empire and to maintain your ignorance about the neoliberal trade treaties and all other matters that might impinge upon opportunities to enhance the wealth and power for this tiny class of people.
This anonymous blogger provides tons of links from both old and new sources to document his argument that the CIA is the main source of fake news that is provided through media corporations.
The government is still paying off reporters to spread disinformation. And the corporate media are acting like virtual “escort services” for the moneyed elites, selling access – for a price – to powerful government officials, instead of actually investigating and reporting on what those officials are doing.
One of the ways that the U.S. government spreads propaganda is by making sure that it gets its version out first.
Here is an exclusive the Guardian has held back from its readers for 26 years. It is finally published on its pages today.
In 1991 the Shell oil company produced a half-hour film, Climate of Concern, for showing in schools and universities, that set out the dangers of climate change, apparently with unnerving accuracy. The Guardian calls the film “prescient”.
The paper makes the point that Shell knew from scientists precisely what havoc our addiction to oil would wreak on the planet. Despite its own warnings, Shell carried on extracting oil regardless.
But the Guardian misses the real story, probably because the villain of the piece is less Shell and the major oil companies than it is the Guardian and other liberal media.
The use of the word "liberal" is often confusing to people, and I think that this is deliberate. Keeping ordinary people from understanding the illegitimate system they are plagued with is important to maintain the ruling class and their system of capitalism. Thus confusing words, which are often nice sounding words, are used along with confusing concepts and disinformation to hide the reality of an illegitimate system that produces so much extreme inequality as well as a host of other problems.
Liberalism (in the classic sense) was adopted by early capitalists to describe the ideology of their system. Current usage is a derivative of that old term and is now used to describe well-indoctrinated people in capitalist ideology (classic liberalism) whom owners of media hire to contain and deflect dissent into harmless channels in the interests of the ruling capitalist class. The Guardian is one such "liberal" media company. Such people function essentially as sales people for the capitalist ruling class. The word is also used to describe people who believe the themes, information, and values issued by such corporate media sources. Typically such themes currently emphasize social identity rights (equality of opportunity to be wage slaves regardless of sexual orientation, religion, immigrant status, color, etc), expanding voting and other civil rights, and "human rights" of people in foreign lands.
In this article Cook exposes how the Guardian kept secret a very important article written about 25 years ago that warned about the relationship between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming. Because the capitalist system is so dependent on cheap fuels, the report had to be suppressed.
On YouTube Abby Martin interviews Mark Ames, a journalist.
The increased aggression towards Russia from US politicians and media is
made more clear when taking into account the real history of the
post-Soviet period. The hidden story of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency
explains how deeply the US government, along with Western capitalist
institutions, cheered, shaped and exploited the country after the fall
of the Soviet Union, paving the way for the political system they all
condemn today.
To uncover just how much the US Empire has
interfered in Russia’s political evolution, Abby Martin interviews Mark
Ames, an American journalist who spent a decade reporting from Yeltsin’
and Putin’s Russia and witnessed the country’s transformation from an
American “colony” to it’s “number one threat.”
The biggest media company that has leaked "intelligence" agency information to besmirch Donald Trump has been the Washington Post.
As former Post reporter John Hanrahan told Alternet in 2013:
“It’s all so basic. Readers of the Washington Post, which reports frequently on the CIA, are entitled to know — and to be reminded on a regular basis in stories and editorials in the newspaper and online — that the Post’s new owner Jeff Bezos stands to benefit substantially from Amazon’s $600 million contract with the CIA. Even with such disclosure, the public should not feel assured they are getting tough-minded reporting on the CIA. One thing is certain: Post reporters and editors are aware that Bezos, as majority owner of Amazon, has a financial stake in maintaining good relations with the CIA — and this sends a clear message to even the hardest-nosed journalist that making the CIA look bad might not be a good career move.”
Click here to access article by James Petras from his blog. (Edited for clarity around 9:50 AM Seattle time on 2/28/2017.)
The best and the worst of the experts reporting on AI [artificial intelligence] assert that it is an autonomous system, devoid of any link to the class structure within which it operates. Their version of technological determinism, above and beyond the needs and demands of capitalists, has fits neatly with the corporate ideology of the trash journalists and pundits.
The fundamental questions that must be raised include: 1) ‘AI’, for whom?; 2) How are the productivity gains of AI to be distributed between capital and labor? 3) How are work time, income and pensions distributed between the owners of technology and the labor force?; and 4) What kinds of socio-economic activity does AI serve?
The short answer to all the above questions is "for the benefit of the ruling capitalist class"! Like everything else under capitalism, workers create many wonders like artificial intelligence (AI) only to have capitalists buy them up, "own" them like commodities such as tooth paste, and benefit from them while most workers grind out a day-to-day existence. Capitalist conspirators--yes, they gather in secret behind closed doors and plan to steal the wonders created by workers--have long discovered four great insights to aid in their tiny class's dominance over the vast majority.
First, the new ruling class had discovered under the early charters
granted by monarchs (the East India Company, for example) that they could greatly enhance their wealth at the
expense of workers/peasants in foreign lands by securing exclusive rights over the
material production of workers/peasants. They saw that with this new wealth they could
secure for themselves other productive operations by simply
"purchasing" such rights like commodities. Their new system became known
as "capitalism" and they, "capitalists" schemed to get such an arrangement in their own European countries. Soon they put out all kinds of
propaganda about the merits of buying rights to the products of workers in facilities they "owned". They labeled such arrangements as "free markets" . Likewise they used nice sounding words like "liberalism" to described the theory of their new economic system.
Second, the embryonic capitalist classconspirators mapped out a plan to get workers to aid them in overthrowing the arbitrary rule of monarchs and aristocrats, the descendants of warriors who used violence as a means to conquer territories and put inhabitants under their control. They decided to make all kinds of grand promises such as "liberty, equality, and fraternity", "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and a "social contract" in which they promised to take care of the workers/peasants. The vast majority of people, consisting of the latter, fell for this con, and have lived ever since in a daily struggle just to survive.
Third, the capitalist conspirators promised workers/peasants that
they would no longer be ruled by the arbitrary whims of tyrants, but by
the rule of law created in "democratic" institutions such as
parliaments. Of course, initially they restricted such participation to
themselves, but after some period of time they expanded voting
privileges to include the new upper middle class, and later to most
workers. You see, they learned how to screen out any dissidents from
their parliaments through their control of all the indoctrination
centers (which they "owned"), using jobs which they controlled to reward or punish people (illustrated here in a capitalist governed state), and through the discriminating use of
bribes called "campaign contributions". Fourth, the new ruling class soon discovered that they needed worker bosses and other skilled workers to make their new system of rule work. Thus they decided that they would give these skilled workers and supervisors lots of gold/money and privileges such as eating at the same table as their capitalist rulers. Such workers, described as "upper middle class" by sociologists, were soon seduced into serving their masters by enjoying a much higher standard of living than ordinary workers and enjoying opportunities to socialize with such all-powerful people. (It made them feel so important.) These workers were soon so enamored of their new masters that they began to forget about their role as workers and their natural ties to, and affection for, other workers. (Malcolm X well understood this phenomenon as he expressed it in his observation about "a house Negro and a field Negro".) They, too, fell for this con and devoted their lives to serving their new capitalist masters.
And, it looks like capitalists will live happily ever after...or until they destroy all humans in a nuclear conflagration or destroy the habitat that supports human life while engaged in their mad pursuit for ever more profits and power.
Click here to access article from Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, translated by Tom Winter, and posted on Fort Russ.
It looks like the directors of the Empire, as found in another ruling class "think tank", have resurrected their old plan of "safe zones" in order to carve up Syria. With Turkey seemly taking another u-turn, unfortunately for Syrians this plan has a good chance of success. Not only will this plan weaken Syria, Israel's old nemesis, but will likely permit the construction of a gas pipeline from Qatar via Turkey to Europe which President Assad objected to before.
There are numerous quotes from a Rand study, but no linked reference to the study. This bothered me, so I did some online sleuthing and found what I am reasonably sure is the Rand document entitled "A Peace Plan for Syria III". Scanning the document I found one of the quotes that was in this article (fifth paragraph).
We therefore recommend that the United States propose to put Raqqa province, once liberated, under an interim international administration, thereby creating a neutral area held by neither the regime nor the opposition, pending the ultimate resolution of the civil war.
Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, authors an annual letter to shareholders that receives wide media coverage for the nuggets of wisdom dispersed to the masses.
The Martens make the following comment about some remarks Buffet makes in his letter:
Much of what Buffett has to say in this letter sounds like unadulterated propaganda to reassure the 99 percent that his amassing of a net worth of $76.3 billion was a result of America’s great economic system which is percolating along just fine.
But, isn't this, except for the last clause, absolutely true? No other system has been invented that can rival the capitalist system's ability to accrue fabulous wealth to individuals.
I am not well qualified to comment on the merits of this article, but it makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. I hope that among my many readers there will be one or two, skilled in biological sciences, who will give their informed opinion about Latham's arguments in the comments section. I urge them to do so.
My intuitive understanding of the merits of Latham's arguments is based on my more skilled understanding of societies. They are quintessentially systems. However, ruling classes that arose several millennia agothrough violence, the threat of violence, or some other threat to the welfare of their resistors have also played the same game by convincing their subjects that their rule and their ruling system was the legitimate locus of control over the entire society.
After ruling classes took control, they then went to work on existing religions to insure that supporting myths were included to affirm their legitimate control of societies. In our more modern age ruling classes depend more on indoctrination agents that they use to staff educational institutions, book publishers, book authors, media, etc. to support their ideological version of social arrangements. Many political projects have been driven by the wealth and power benefits practically guaranteed to such ruling classes. It seems reasonable to suspecct the same is true of DNA as the focus of biological science today. The author hints at this explanation at the end of the article, and promises a more substantive explanation in the near future.
How is it that, if organisms are the principal objects of biological study, and the standard explanation of their origin and operation is so scientifically weak that it has to award DNA imaginary superpowers of “expression” and “control” to paper over the cracks, have scientists nevertheless clung to it? [emphasis in the original]
Why is it that, rather than celebrating and investing in Rashevsky, Kauffman, Noble, et al., as pioneers of necessary and potentially fruitful and unifying paradigms, have these researchers been ignored by mainstream biology?
What is the big attraction of genetic determinism?
A compelling and non-intuitive explanation for the monomania of biology does exist. It is set out in a second and forthcoming article: The Meaning of Life. It is an explanation that requires going behind the window dressing of science and examining its active and symbiotic relation to power in modern political systems.
“To me, it looks like 1890, Wounded Knee,” said an elder. “They were all probably standing there [police and military units] like that before they started slaughtering our people.”
Now dispersed, the water protectors removed from Oceti Sakowin are regrouping in other protest camps near the pipeline. Meanwhile, court documents just filed by Energy Transfer Partners indicate that oil could be flowing in less than two weeks.
