Retailers Rejecting Customers' Cash As More Ban Paper Money

Click here to access article by Tyler Durden from his blog ZeroHedge.

This is the first indication I've seen in the USA that the ruling capitalist class is beginning the process of converting to digital money which they control. They will know when, where, and what you spend money on. But far worse, the next time there is a financial bust by major banks, our masters will be able to simply take money out of your digital accounts to bailout the banks.

... as the WSJ report points out, consider that on every US bill the following words appear: “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” However, currently there's no federal law stipulating that business have to accept cash when offered, though likely no body of lawmakers prior to the modern advent of payment by plastic could have ever envisioned such a dilemma as cash being banned by stores.

While it could be true that "no body of lawmakers" could see this happening, it is very likely that our masters in the Deep State did. There has already been a test run in India where the government was induced by various agents of the US Empire to convert to the digitalization of money.

The US war on China’s economic model

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from his blog What's Left. 

Gowans is a long time Canadian political analyst on the left. I regard him as one of a handful of top political analysts in the world. 

Stephen Gowns

As far as I know, his first post was on Canadian Content in January of 2001. Later he founded his own blog at What's Left in 2007. His articles have appeared in numerous online websites. A good place to access his political views is in a November 2004 post from San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia entitled "War, Capitalism & Elections: An Interview w Stephen Gowans – Canadian Political Essayist".

In today's post he explains why the US capitalist ruling class has become so concerned about China's technological and economic progress to the point that they are now engaging in an economic war, and even considering a military war, against China. This startling turn of events was historically initiated by Deng Xiaoping in his leadership of the Chinese government back in the late 1970s. His guiding strategy is summed up by his core theme of "win-win strategy" to resolve conflicts. As I wrote in a commentary in July of 2016:

For background material on contemporary China I recommend reading the Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (vol. 3). Ever since 1978 when Deng Xiaoping took control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China has launched a broad policy in pursuit of economic development. To accomplish this they opened China to the outside world, particularly to Western capitalist countries, under a "one country, two systems" policy. This policy combines significant (but not exclusive) capitalist development of their economy which is under the control and direction of the CCP. This policy induced, or one might argue "seduced", Western corporations to transfer a lot of their operations to China by offering cheap labor and other inducements as a method to rapidly obtain the high technology of the West while improving China's economy, while for Western corporations the prospects of increased profits could not be ignored. Since then the CCP has pursued a peaceful strategy that attempts to use economic development as a method to deal with conflicts both internal to China and external in foreign relations.

Deng knew that Western capitalists were obsessed with profits ("profits über alles"). He lured Western capitalists to set up operations in China with the promise to make them rich with China's low-cost labor supply. Sure enough, companies like Apple abandoned their American workers and moved their plants to China and other countries to reduce their labor costs and to become rich. So, the West's capitalists became rich but also China acquired the advanced technology of the West ("win-win"). Gowans goes into details of how the Chinese accomplished this feat, and became a major economic force in so little time.

The Global Power Elite: A Transnational Class

Click here if you wish to directly access this 13:10 video from The Real News Network in which author and researcher Peter Phillips is interviewed.

The author of a new book entitled Giants: The Global Power Elite has obviously done his "homework" and knows what he is talking about. He reports about how much of the world is directed by three private organizations: the Group of Thirty, the Trilateral Commission, and the Atlantic Council. The only thing that he not directly state, but implied with the fact that these organizations are based in the USA, is that they are the "hidden hand" behind the US-led Empire which has its own army called NATO and media (MSM). The Deep State refers to the "hidden hand" behind the US government. Thus, the Deep State exercises considerable influence over these three organizations. This is what George H.W. Bush was talking about when he referred to a "new world order" in 1991 during a speech when he also ordered an attack on Iraq. He meant a world under the control of the US Empire and the transnational capitalists.

This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made great progress in ending the long era of conflict and cold war. We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.

When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.'s founders.

You simply must watch this video, after which you may want to buy the book.

Yellow vests and government disinformation —list of demands

Click here to access article from "THE BLOG OF GABAS / MEDIAPART. FR" and translated by Patrice Greanville from his website. 

In this latest news of the "yellow vests" they are now making demands on the French government. We now see our capitalist masters imposing austerity on working people in the various countries of the US-led Empire. They like to engage in economic warfare against other countries they don't like, but this is economic warfare directed against their own working people, and the people, particularly the French working people, have had enough.

There are some indications that the protest is spreading to other countries as reported by RT and George Galloway, a British member of parliament, in the following video:

Syria Sitrep - Army To Regain Northeastern Territory - Political Isolation Ends

Click here to access article by Bernhard from his blog Moon of Alabama. (Updated at 11:48 AM CT.)

I don't know where this German blogger gets his information from, but his information is very reliable. In this post he gives so much information regarding the fluid situation in Syria and in the area, and this information corresponds with other Middle East sources: Al-Masdar News, Al Jazeera, and Press TV.

I previously posted some other source in which it was reported that Trump was withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, but since I've learned that he is withdrawing only some of them, although a substantial number of them.

Recommended articles for Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Updated at 1:48 PM CT. Credit goes to an activist for alerting me to the post by the UN Human Rights commissioner. 

• Syrian government forces 'enter' Kurdish-controlled Manbij region from Al Jazeera. Be sure to watch the panel discussion at the end of the article.

• For What It’s Worth: The Yellow Vests and the Left by Jim Kavanaugh from The Greanville Post.

... the American mainstream media has avoided focusing on the Yellow Vest movement. The left, on the other hand, must be overjoyed, right?

Well, it’s more like: Comme-ci, comme ça.

Why? “Identity politics” is, of course, the term that immediately comes to mind, though that term oversimplifies, particularly regarding the French context. As C. J. Hopkins put it: “Nothing scares the Identity Politics Left quite like an actual working class uprising.” Scares and confuses.

• The United States refuse to fight for the transnational financiers by Thierry Meyssan from his blog Voltaire Network.

• Imagining Life After Capitalism -- Sasha Lilley of KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station radio station in Berkeley, California, interviews author Peter Frase regarding the issues in his book, Four Futures: Life After Capitalism Verso (2014). 

We humans have a future?

• UN Says Free Assange Without Extradition To The US by United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner posted on Popular Resistance.

Do Russiagate Promoters Prefer Impeaching Trump to Avoiding War With Russia?

Click here to access two audios posted on The Nation featuring Stephen F. Cohen, a longtime expert on Soviet-Russian affairs, together with John Batchelor on his radio show. The article below the two audio tapes summarize his views which he goes into detail on the show. I strongly recommend that you listen to the two audio presentations to see how he builds his argument that we are in mortal danger of WWIII.

I don't subscribe to many of the views presented by Cohen, but I respect his well-informed views on Soviet Union/Russia. Where I differ is that Cohen doesn't appear to understand that the post-WWII period has seen the rise of US-led capitalist Empire which is now in its fascist stage. This means that the core leadership (the Deep State--read my commentary here) of the transnational capitalist class that runs the Empire is now using their total control of corporate media to spread pure propaganda (ex: Russiagate) to pursue their agendas. 

I've been currently reading a book entitled The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton in which the author, Jefferson Morley, writes with reference to Cord Meyer who became a high level CIA agent:

In 1954, Allen Dulles persuaded him to take over the Agency's International Organizations division. In consultation with Angleton, Meyer orchestrated the Agency's covert funding of labor unions, newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and Hollywood movies.

The point being that this fascist core, being bent on world domination, were active as early as 1954 to construct their "Fourth (capitalist) Reich".

Members of the now powerful Deep State are now seeing their domination of the world severely threatened especially by the rise of Russia and China; but they are also threatened by financial crises and the unsustainability of their capitalist system due to its collision course with environmental concerns. As a result of these combined threats they are like a wounded predatory animal: they are becoming hyper-aggressive. This is what Cohen is concerned about. However, he doesn't see the history of the development of this predatory animal since WWII.

UK And US PSYOP Collusion [a must read!]

Click here to access article by Margaret Kimberley from the Black Agenda Report. (I can't thank an activist enough for alerting me to this article!) 

For more than two years the corporate media, elite think tanks, NATO leaders, and most Democratic Party politicians have insisted that Russia interferes in American and European elections. The charge doesn’t withstand scrutiny but the lies are repeated. There is proof that surveillance state meddling in the affairs of democratic nations is real, but Russia isn’t the culprit. It is the United Kingdom and the United States who lead in skullduggery and meddling with the rights they claim to uphold.

Thanks to the Anonymous hacker community the work of the Integrity Initiative  has been exposed to the public.

The Anonymous hacker community appears to be furnishing authentic information hacked from the British government front agency officially listed as a charity.

The Integrity Initiative is a British “charity” founded in 2015. Its mission is to “bring to the attention of politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North America.” That mission is suspect in and of itself, a phony trope meant to cover up its own imperialist wrong doing. The Integrity Initiative is an arm of the British government and has received more than $2 million in funding from the British Foreign Office and Defense department. It has also raised money from NATO, Facebook and rightwing foundations. 

The author seems to be incredibly naive when she makes this statement:

The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC haven’t covered this story.

These major news outlets, having been infiltrated and subverted by the Deep State long ago, are in on this project. Their executives may or may not know of the details, but they are fully cooperating in the deception of the people of the US-led Empire. (See this, this, this, and this -- a number of similar posts that I've collected over the past few years have been removed from the web.) That is precisely why many journalists that formerly worked for them or similar "news and opinion" organizations have left to go independent or have joined RT.

Recommended articles for Tuesday, December 25, 2018

• The Hypocrisy of Chomsky and the Imperialist Left on Syria, Rojava and Yemen posted on FRN by Jay Tharappel, who is a PhD Candidate at Sydney University. (I agree totally with the author.)

• Wake from the Nightmare or Eternal Sleep for Humanity by Frank Scott from Dissident Voice. 

• New Cold War & looming threats. John Pilger is interviewed by two members of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and posted on Frontline (India).

• "John Pilger special – A look back at 2018, and ahead to 2019." John Pilger is interviewed (the interview begins at 2:00m after a survey of the news) by Afshin Rattansi whose bio information shows that he has worked nearly everywhere. (I formerly watched his programs when I lived in Vancouver, BC from 2002-2006, and I thought he worked for CBC. Apparently all dissident media people end up on RT.)  

I found Pilger's observations regarding H.W. Bush, Bill Blum, and Donald Trump beginning at about 20:00m to the end to be particularly interesting.

 

Trump is leaving behind a trap for Russia, Turkey and Iran in Syria

Click here to access article by Kuwaiti independent journalist Elijah J Magnier from his blog.

The US executive order of withdrawal from Syria has been signed off on, indicating that President Trump is determined to recall the few thousands US troops in Syria back home. It is well known that regular troops are much more vulnerable during withdrawal operations than in combat or deployment positions. Accordingly, the withdrawal, which seems to be happening despite widespread scepticism in Syria and Iraq, will likely take less than the announced 100 days to complete. US military command keeps the dates secret to avoid casualties. Although the departure of the US is much welcomed by all parties in and around Syria – except for the Kurds – Trump is intentionally leaving behind a very chaotic situation in the Levant, and is setting a deadly trap for Russia in the first place, but also for Iran and Turkey.

Look at northern Syria near the border with Turkey. Manbij is in Aleppo (Halab) province, northeast of the city of Aleppo. Tal Abiad is directly north of the city of Ar Raqqa near border with Turkey. Deir-Ezzour = Dayr Az Zawr. Palmyra is located in south central Syria.

Recommended posts for Sunday, December 23, 2018

• John Pilger says Julian Assange is in 'very good spirits' after visit to embassy.

• Erdogan does not object to Damascus’s control over al-Hasaka: the Kurds choose between loyalty to Syria or defeat by Turkey by the Kurdish independent journalist Elijah J. Magnier. 

• The resignation of General Mattis and America’s crisis of class rule by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site. 

Endless War Has Been Normalized And Everyone Is Crazy

Click here to access article by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog. 

After arguing that we are now in a state of endless war, she asks why and how this came about. But she only attributes this to our trusting childhood development being dependent on adult guidance. 

I have a much better explanation for the normalization of endless war. The ambitious false-flag project on 9/11 (see this and/or this for transcript) was vitally important for our Deep State masters in order to turn around our largely anti-imperialist attitudes prior to this event. They succeeded marvelously to turn adults living in the Empire into raving enthusiasts for striking anybody anywhere that could be identified by our masters as "terrorists" or supporting terrorism. Having controlled what adults thought about this event, they knew that the adults would tell their children the same fabricated, false-flag type of story.

No matter how it appears, Trump isn’t getting out of Syria and Afghanistan

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from his blog What's Left. (Bloggers note: I added Bernhard to the list of top geopolitical analysts at 8:27 AM CT on 12/25/2018.)

I regard Stephen Gowans (along with Pepe Escobar, Tony Cartalucci, and Bernhard of Moon of Alabama) as one of the top geopolitical analysts in the world.

Gowans argues, with considerable supporting documentation, that Trump has not changed the fundamental policies of the Empire's imperialist policies, but there is a change in methods to finance foreign military adventure. True to the views which Trump as consistently argued in the past, he wants our allies to bear more of the cost of maintaining these foreign adventures. Gowans further argues that Mattis's resignation was motivated by the opposite view: that the USA must maintain its predominate role. It is a debate between imperialist policies, not imperialism itself. Thus, there is no fundamental shift in the Empire's funding of imperialism. (However, I doubt that USA's allies will be willing to replace US troops in eastern Syria.)

I think that the Mattis camp is right in their opinion that the Trump decision to cut back on the cost to the USA will eventually lead to the weakening of the Empire's control of the world. But Trump is simply recognizing reality: the USA simply can't afford to supply troops and other financing of these adventures any longer. We are too broke to do this. 

Trump's decision puts another marker on the beginning of the end of the US Empire. To be sure, the capitalist ruling classes of the US's subordinate allies will pick up the military and financial burden because they have no other choice. They too have financial problems of their own, and cannot much longer fund such adventures. So, I view Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan in order to shift more of the burden on their partners-in-crime to maintain the Empire as a positive sign in the long run.

Julian Assange controversy

by Ron Horn.

I have been mystified by the lack of reporting regarding the plight of Julian Assange in left-wing British websites. I have emailed many of these website badgering and shaming them in order to get some kind of response. To date I have received none, and my patience is running out. So, I decided to do a little research. What follows is what I've gathered in about three hours time.

Last night I spent a frustrating one hour listening to the discussion of the streamed online broadcast of "United in solidarity for Julian Assange" on their website. I found the experience frustrating because the discussion was mostly focused on the legal aspects of his situation which I don't believe merit much attention given the fact that our fascist ruling classes have so little respect for legal procedures. 

Somehow my attention wandered to George Galloway, the outspoken member of the British parliament. He tells it like it is to audiences who often do not want to hear the truth. I discovered via YouTube an excerpt of a talk he made in 2012 in defense of Assange. He was speaking at the Oxford Union to a gathering of rich, ruling class brats. One statement he made at 6:20m into the talk in which he stated "I've never met Julian Assange. I'm told he is a weird fellow." drew my undivided attention. Unfortunately, his remarks were interrupted by a shallow ruling class kid who took this statement to mean that he was making a slur against gay people. However, this statement of his was full of implications that maybe Assange's personal behavior was looked on with disapproval in Britain, and this was the reason why he lacked support. 

This morning I have done further online research to shed light on these implications. Of course, I ran into a number of biased reports against him, but two sources stood out as being reasonably objective: one from the British New Statesman entitled "Jemima Khan on Julian Assange: how the Wikileaks founder alienated his allies" posted in February 2013, and the second posted online in 2010 on The New Yorker entitled "No Secrets". Both give you insights on his personal behaviors that turn people off. I was particularly impressed with the comments of Jemima Khan, the editor of New Statesman, who reached this conclusion:

On the subject of Assange, pundits on both the left and the right have become more interested in tribalism than truth. The attacks on him by his many critics in the press have been virulent and highly personal. Both sides are guilty of creating political caricatures and extinguishing any possibility of ambivalence. “On the other handism” doesn’t make great copy, but in this particular debate everyone is too polarised. The kind of person who spends his life committed to this type of work, wedded to a laptop, undercover, always on the move, with no security, stability or income, is bound to be a bit different. I have seen flashes of Assange’s charm, brilliance and insightfulness – but I have also seen how instantaneous rock-star status has the power to make even the most clear-headed idealist feel that they are above the law and exempt from criticism.

We all want a hero. After WikiLeaks released the infamous Collateral Murder video in 2010, showing US troops gunning down a dozen civilians in Iraq, I jokingly asked if Assange was the new Jason Bourne, on the run and persecuted by the state. It would be a tragedy if a man who has done so much good were to end up tolerating only disciples and unwavering devotion, more like an Australian L Ron Hubbard.

After so many years of being incarcerated in the Ecuadorian embassy, many journalists and activists have risen above these petty grievances to consider the larger issues involved in his confinement. I think there is a lesson to be learned from this experience: activists in general need to be supported by a large organization. The experience of Assange and associates at Wikileaks have reflected an individualistic spirit that is such an integral part of our capitalist culture. We need to think like socialist revolutionaries who recognize that we need each other to keep our limitations and weaknesses in check in order to avoid being in a situation like Julian Assange is in. 

Trump plans to pull thousands of troops out of Afghanistan – report

Click here to access article from The Guardian.

Donald Trump is planning to withdraw more than 5,000 of the 14,000 US troops in Afghanistan, a US official and US media have said, in the latest sign Trump’s patience with America’s longest war is wearing thin.

On Wednesday, Trump rebuffed top advisers and decided to pull all US troops out of Syria, a decision that was swiftly followed by the abrupt resignation of US defence secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday over significant policy differences with the president.

Watch the 9th Vigil for Assange Live Here Tonight

Click here if wish to access the announcement directly from Consortium News.

Consortium News will broadcast live the 9th Online Vigil for Julian Assange as the pressure continues to mount on the WikiLeaks publisher. Among the special guests tonight will be journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, who has just visited Assange at the Ecuador embassy in London.

Join us tonight beginning at 8 pm U.S. EST for the latest Unity4J vigil in support of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. The show will begin with CN Editor Joe Lauria interviewing John Pilger, who’s just been to see Assange.

Why Trump Decided To Remove U.S. Troops From Syria

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

This German expert geopolitical analyst offer his broader view on why Trump decided to withdraw US troops from bases in eastern Syria in spite of neoconservative opposition.

Trump knows that the United States' 'unilateral moment' after the demise of the Soviet Union, which left the U.S. was the sole superpower, is over. Russia is back and China is rising. Trump's policy to adopt [adapt?] to the decreasing U.S. power is to end the 'globalization' that allowed for China's rapid rise. He wants to geopolitical[ly] split this world into two influence spheres. These will be separate from each other in the political, economic, technological and military realms. [my insertions]

....

Trump decided that to prevent Turkey from leaving NATO, and from joining a deeper alliance with Russia, China and Iran, was more important than to further fool around at the margins of the Middle East. It is the right decision.

Why is the United States suddenly withdrawing from Syria?

Click here to access article by Valentin Vasilescu from Voltaire Network. 

This widely recognized Romanian military analyst and expert explains why the US military operations in Syria were essentially checkmated by Russian-Syrian military coordinated with Turkey's obsession to eliminate all Kurdish forces. One must understand that the Syrian Kurds permitted their forces to be used by the USA which then established numerous military bases on Syrian territory that the Kurds controlled. By doing this, they allied themselves with the US Empire that was trying to destroy the Syrian government.

The US military air bases in Syria consist essentially of troops for special operations. By this we mean a light infantry, without any armour or support. They could not therefore ward off any land attack carried out by the Syrian army supported by the Air Force. Having understood that the US Air Force will not be able to pass the Syrian anti-air barrage without unacceptable losses, any US intervention becomes inappropriate. This is why the US has just announced that it will start to withdraw 2,000 soldiers from Syria [1]. At the same time, Turkey, supported by Russia, is getting ready to launch a new offensive against the YPG in Northern Syria. These new circumstances ensure the Syrian Army will fight on the side of Turkey. The YPG, trained and supported by the United States, is quickly losing all the territories that it had taken from the Islamic State which itself had taken from Syria.

It wasn't Trump abandoning the Syrian Kurds as corporate media pundits and government official declared, but US military analysts who, no doubt, saw that their continued military occupation of Syria was now untenable. 

(You may also be interested in Elijah J. Magnier's take on the withdrawal of US forces by reading "USA announces withdrawal from the Levant: time for all parties to rethink their next move".)

World’s governments indulge in symbolism, not action, at COP24

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from his blog Systemic Disorder.

Our masters, the owners of the economic enterprises in which we work but have no voice, in the mostly capitalist class-structured world met to discuss measures to halt global warming and the destabilization of our climate, but did essentially nothing. What did you expect?

... our descendants will curse us for doing essentially nothing to combat global warming as they evacuate from flooded coastal cities and struggle to minimize large-scale agricultural disruptions. Each year that nothing concrete is done, the likelihood of catastrophic environmental damage increases. And there are not many years left before worst-case scenarios become inevitable. Just two months ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report on the effects of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and that of 2 degrees warming. There is a significant difference between the expected results of 1.5 and 2 degrees, but the effects at 1.5 are nonetheless serious. The Earth has already warmed by 1 degree, and the IPCC report states that, if current patterns continue, 1.5-degree warming will be reached between 2030 and 2052.

Thus, catastrophic changes well beyond what we are already experiencing could begin to occur in as few as 12 years.

US withdrawal from Syria is ‘major blow’ to Kurdish forces: envoy

Click here to access article from AMN (Al-Masdar Al-‘Arabi--The Arab Source).

My esteem for the investigative reporting of Pepe Escobar just grew greater after the news that Trump ordered US troops out of Syria and abandoning the Syrian Kurds. Back in 2014 he warned that the USA was merely using these people for their own geopolitical interests and would likely abandon them when the Kurds no longer served the Empire's interests. That day has come. However, Escobar was also caught up in the well-touted progressive nature of the Syrian Kurds like many other leftists. Also, Eric Draitser warned about the cynical nature of US intervention to help the Kurds when they were in danger of being wiped out by ISIS. (Unfortunately, Draitser seems no longer to be publishing much of significance.)

But following these warnings we saw various sources extolling the "progressive nature" of the Syrian Kurds. For some examples, read articles by David Graeber and Marcel Cartier who uncritically and consistently accepted the entire progressive themes of the Syrian Kurds. Graeber now appears on the board of The Region which to me smells like a Zionist propaganda operation.

One website, Reflections on a Revolution, vigorously promoted the progressive nature of the Syrian Kurds. ROAR which was founded by Jerome Roos 2011 and sold it a few years ago to a Dutch based "equity fund" by the name of "Democracy and Media Education Foundation". Jerome remained as editor. Now I notice that it is referred to as "Dutch Foundation for Autonomous Media". Whether Roos is some Israeli agent running a propaganda organization or a misguided "progressive" who genuinely believes the progressive narrative cannot be determined. I do know that he never posted or published articles by independent journalists who saw indications that suggested there were also narrower Kurdish aims involved as well as the geopolitical aims of the US Empire: establishing a Kurdish nation by linking up with the Iraqi Kurds and the Syrian Kurds being used as a pawn by the US Empire to justify their military incursion. I am referring to articles I posted by Thierry Meyssan, Marwa Osman, Alison Banville, Brandon Turbeville, Sarah Abed, Stephen Gowans, etc.

Recommended articles for Wednesday, December 19, 2018

• Report: U.S. To Leave Syria Immediately - Updated by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama. This news has been run by numerous other websites. (At 5 PM CT I've noticed that much of msm are framing it as "after the defeat of ISIS".)

• The working class and the environmental crisis by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site. 

The inability of capitalism and the nation-state system to resolve the climate crisis was on display over the past two weeks in Katowice, Poland, the site of yet another UN-sponsored climate summit. The representatives of more than 200 governments, including 25,000 bureaucrats, scientists and diplomats, could not even agree to endorse a report on the looming dangers of global warming, let alone take any serious action to forestall it.

They adopted a meaningless rulebook to implement the Paris climate agreement, which climate scientists regard as completely inadequate.

• Burying the axe of war by Elijah J Magnier, a Kuwaiti independent journalist, from his blog. I much prefer the headline in the same post from Russia Insider: "Sudanese President Arrives in Syria Aboard Russian Plane as Mailman of the Saudis".

• The Fed Is Panicking by Naomi Prins from Daily Reckoning.

• The political fraud of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” by Will Morrow from World Socialist Web Site.

A socialist response to climate change cannot take place through the Democratic Party or within the framework of capitalism. It requires the organization of production according to a rational, scientific plan on a global scale. This requirement is fundamentally incompatible with both the private ownership of humanity’s productive forces (and the subordination of production according to the profit interests of the capitalist class), and the continued division of the world into rival national states, who compete on behalf of their own capitalist class for markets, profits and geostrategic control.

Preface to "The Enemy of Nature"

Click here to read this preface to a new book by Joel Kovel (by the above title), and posted on The Greanville Post.

I wrote The Enemy of Nature according to the principle that the truth – a sufficiently generous and expansive truth, it may be added – can make us free. If truth gives clarity and definition to our world, if it weans us from dependency on alienating forces that sap our will and delude our mind, and if it can bring us together with others in a common empowering project – a project that gives us hope that we can become the makers of our own history – why, then, then it makes us free even if what it reveals is terrible to behold. Better this than the unrevealed terror in the dark, unenvisioned, without opening to hope, better than what inertly weighs on us under the aegis of the capitalist order.

The Enemy of Nature was written in service of such an ideal. It tries to give expression to an emerging and still incomplete realization that our all-conquering capitalist system of production, the greatest and proudest of all the modalities of transforming nature which the human species has yet devised, the defining influence in modern culture and the organizer of the modern state, is at heart the enemy of nature and therefore humanity’s executioner as well.

I think to clarify this issue, I would assert that nature in general will not be threatened or assaulted by the activities of capitalists; but that part of nature--our habitat on this planet--is being, and will be, destroyed by them. The planet will hardly blink at the disappearance of humans and so many other species that they will have destroyed. New species will thrive without us.

How Putin's Russia Weaponizes X

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

Several of the pieces listed [below in the article] in it are products of the recently uncovered British government financed disinformation campaign, or of similar efforts by other governments. But these are only a part of the general anti-Russian reflex that is ingrained in our 'western' culture. Nothing else can explain the craziness of these 'weaponizing' claims. [my insertion]

The updated list with some 65 issues, ideas and things that Russia allegedly 'weaponizes' will hopefully help to convince people that most of what is said or written about Russia is likewise blatant nonsense. 

Why people believe such nonsense is a mystery to me. Given that such propagandists very often project onto others, in this case Russia, what the agents of the Empire are actually doing, is something we should all worry about. For example, read this article entitled "Just like Color Revolutions, Cyber Conflicts can Still Get People Killed" by Martin Berger.

Film on the CIA “On Company Business”

Click here if you wish to access the restored film directly from Counter Currents. 

It was first created in 1980 in VHS format, but now reformatted to view over the web. It is in three parts which last nearly three hours. Right now I don't remember having previously viewed this film; but because I was very politically oriented at the time of its original production, I was very aware of the CIA's role in the creation of the US-led capitalist Empire after WWII. 

I plan to view the film shortly, probably tonight. I don't usually post videos that I have not previously seen, but this looks very authentic and has the support of people who are interested in piercing the barrage of Empire propaganda that we, the people, are flooded with from every direction while living in the USA. I will express my views on it as soon as I am able to watch all three parts of it. 

Climate Change and the Limits of Reason

Click here to access article by Michael F. Duggan from The Greanville Post. (On 12/19/2018 at 9:40 AM CT, I changed the title of this article to the accurate one by eliminating the misleading title "What have you done to help the planet today?".)

Is it too late to avoid a global environmental catastrophe? Does the increasingly worrisome feedback from the planet indicate that something like a chaotic tipping point is already upon us? Facts and reason are slender reeds relative to entrenched opinions and the human capacity for self-delusion. I suspect that neither this article nor others on the topic are likely to change many minds.

With atmospheric carbon dioxide at its highest levels in three to five million years with no end in its increase in sight, the warming, rising, and acidification of the world’s oceans, the destruction of habitat and the cascading collapse of species and entire ecosystems, some thoughtful people now believe we are near, at, or past a point of no return.

Twenty-One Thoughts On The Persecution Of Julian Assange

Click here to access article by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

This gutsy Aussie woman lists 21 reasons why she posts articles regarding the plight of Julian Assange. She also participated in the recent three hour marathon broadcast called United in Solidarity for Julian Assange.

The Coming of the American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920–1940

Click here to access a synopsis of a book by Michael Joseph Roberto, its author, posted on Monthly Review. (My commentary was edited for clarity at 2:52 PM CT.)

Most people in the United States have been trained to recognize fascism in movements such as Germany’s Third Reich or Italy’s National Fascist Party, where charismatic demagogues manipulate incensed, vengeful masses. We rarely think of fascism as linked to the essence of monopoly-finance capitalism, operating under the guise of American free enterprise. But, as Michael Joseph Roberto argues, this is exactly where fascism’s embryonic forms began gestating in the United States, during the so-called prosperous 1920s and the Great Depression of the following decade. [my emphasis]

Yes, the USA began gestating (def. #2) fascism during this period. After our masters in the ruling capitalist class gained so much confidence from their success in WWI involving our young men and women to go overseas to fight in order to insure the success of, and secure their loans to, Britain and France. During and after the war they went on a rampage against any dissident groups using the passage of the onerous Espionage Act of 1917 which they will likely use to put away Julian Assange in a solitary confinement cell for the rest of his life.

However, the birth of quasi-fascism came in 1941 as I explained in these posts: here and here. He splits hairs by writing:

This book is a necessity for anyone who fears America tipping ever closer, in this era of Trump, to full-blown fascism.

The only difference between quasi-fascism and "full-blown" fascism is that many of us still maintain a delusion that we are ruled by some form of democracy. The difference is the difference between overt fascism and disguised fascism. Some difference! It's far more cost-effective to delude people than to threaten them with violence. This delusion has been accomplished by our masters' control over every ideological institution including most especially print and electronic media, education, and Hollywood films. Because of this delusion they had no problem with the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, a number of Black Panthers, students at Kent and Jackson State colleges, etc. Following the false-flag project of 9/11 they insured and reinforced their success by militarizing their police forces, installing 24/7 surveillance of us, censorship of alternative views, and establishing the legal framework of fascism by the passage of the Patriot Acts in case their propaganda campaigns are not successful. I am comforted by his contention that we don't have "full-blown fascism". (sarcasm)

MasterCard, Bill Gates and their “war on cash”

Click here to access article by Norbert Haering from posted on the Real-World Economics Review Blog. (This article is the last section of a complete article entitled "Who is behind the campaign to rid the world of cash?" by Haering from their hard copy of the journal Real-World Economics Review. On my PDF download the article comprises pages 10-13.)

This German economist has been carefully following the project by our financial masters to do away with cash and substitute only digital money which they can entirely control. It also offers the advantages (to them) that they can track your movements by where you spend the money and on what you spend your digital money. Yes, digital money would be far more convenient, but it does come at some costs to your privacy and the control of your own money. When the next time major financial institutions fail again as they did in 2008, they could easily take the money out of our accounts to bail them out. As long as we have ruling classes such abuses will occur. There are a number of reasons we should do away with ruling classes, and this is one more reason. 

The general public seems sound asleep on this issue, and the ruling classes want to keep it that way so that they can slip digital money by you without your being fully aware of the consequences. 

At their industry meetings and in front of financial analysts, banks and card companies like to be bold and explicit about their goal to get rid of cash. However, if the general public is listening, the strategy is one of laying low. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommends letting the decline of cash appear to be a gradual and unplanned side-effect of unrelated measures and developments. The fund advises governments to let the private sector go ahead, because direct official action would cause popular resistance. If they did act, governments should start with harmless seeming steps like phasing-out large denomination notes or (initially) generous upper limits for cash payments. While measures against cash should be presented to be unplanned and independent, they should in truth be closely coordinated with the private sector, recommends the IMF-author.

The article goes on to explain that our masters have been advised on some other strategies to keep us passive and quiet about this issue.

My brief review of the panel discussion at United in Solidarity for Julian Assange last night

I listened to the last two hours of this program last night and was impressed after the aged Mike Gravel, the former courageous US Senator from Alaska, appeared and offered his observations. He advised that the only realistic solution was to have organized, huge demonstrations by both British and European activists (someone interjected that flights of American activists to London were already being organized) in London in order to free Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy and to prevent him from being turned over to US authorities. 

The participants should wear some article of clothing like the "gilets jaune" in France, circle through the nearby Harrod's store, the British store for the rich shoppers in London in order to get the attention of British mainstream media, and then, if need be, physically free Julian from the Embassy of Ecuador. This proposal broke the ice of reluctance of the others to support such a necessary and obvious solution.

Some time ago I surveyed British alternative websites and, to my surprise, I found none that covered the plight and significance of Assange's imprisonment in the Ecuadorian embassy and the likelihood that he will soon be turned over to American authorities! Since then I've badgered and shamed some of the British alternative and activist websites, but as yet have received no reply. I encourage you to do likewise.

This project of United in Solidarity for Julian Assange is obviously operating on a shoe-string budget. I wanted to propose a similar comment that was then offered by Gravel but I couldn't send the message. Later when the audio was missing, I successfully sent them a message to that effect. Also, I thought I heard that there will be another such marathon program next week on Friday, but their website does not confirm this nor does it list last night's program. Such technical problems must be corrected. 

(12/16/2018 @ 11:24 AM CT: I just noticed that Consortium News has re-posted this broadcast.)

Julian Assange: No Surrender

Click here to access article by Ann Garrison from Black Agenda Report.  

Ann Garrison adds her voice to the thousands of other activists trying to arouse the world's public to come to the aid of one of their own who has reported the secret crimes of our masters. Do we care? This issue is much bigger than protecting one human being. Julian Assange represents all who have stopped trusting our drugged-out capitalist masters and their control of our lives. It is now our responsibility to take control from them in order to secure peace and the survival of humans on our damaged planet Earth. By securing Assange's freedom, we will take an importance step in that direction.

Stay tuned, better yet, stay active for it is your actions, along with millions of others, that may determine the outcome of this drama that has vastly more significance than the fate of Julian Assange. In the meantime while you are being active, join Margaret Kimberley and many other activists to participate in the defense of one of our own:

The three-hour video conferences regarding developments and possible responses to the UK and US governments pursuit of Julian Assange can be viewed every Friday evening beginning at 8 pm Eastern Time on the website Unity4J.com. Viewers can ask questions, make suggestions, and share details of upcoming Assange solidarity events in the YouTube chat window.

Articles about the "yellow-jacket" protests in France

• The Revolution and its meaning by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos from United World International (My educated guess is that this website is based in Turkey.)

• The Yellow Vests: Spontaneous Anger or Precursor to Revolution? by Donald Courter from United World International (My educated guess is that this website is based in Turkey.)  

• Yellow-vest protests in France- An extraordinary political school from LeftEast (I think that this website is based in Romania.) 

• France in crisis from Defend Democracy Press. This post contains a number of articles.

• Despite Macron’s TV Mea Culpa, France Set for Showdown by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• Paris 08.12.18: Yellow Vests shift to the left from ReelNews via YouTube.

The yellow vests movement in France is now shifting decisively to the left, as shown by the huge anti-capitalist bloc in Paris on the December 8. Led by prominent campaigners against police violence, The Adama Committee for Justice and Truth, it included railworkers, striking postal workers, other rank and file workers, students, migrant workers groups, important collectives such as The Rosa Parks Collective, sex workers, LGBTQ groups and many more. The mood has changed completely since the horrific mass arrest at a school in a Paris banlieue; now workers are calling for a general strike, and the student movement is exploding with schools and universities blockaded throughout the country. [my link]

Recommended articles for Wednesday, December 12, 2018

• Deciphering Economic Warfare Code: The Sub-Saharan Africa Front by Phil Butler from New Eastern Outlook.

• Twitter enforcing Israeli military censorship by Ali Abunimah from The Electronic Intifada.

• Subhankar Banerjee, The Vanishing by Subhankar Banerjee from TomDispatch. (You may want to skip Tom Engelhardt's introduction by scrolling down to the article.) 

Note that this website is "A project of the Nation Institute", and as such expresses a liberal point of view regarding the issue of species annihilation by ignoring the effects of capitalism on the environment and other species. The system is regarded by this liberal website, as in all liberal websites, as a fixture of reality, much like the sun. Note also that this post downplays the importance of the issue by entitling the article the way it does. Other websites have re-posted this article (see this, this, and this) with different titles that emphasize the importance of the issue. Although the author recognizes that species extinction is related to the threat of global warming, he rather vaguely suggests only in the last paragraph that it might also threaten humans, and refuses to recognize that global warming is caused by the man-made capitalist system.

Veneration Of Power Leading To Climate Catastrophe

Click here to access article by an editor of Media Lens.

The article begins describing the uniformly unreal eulogies of H.W. Bush in nearly all corporate media in the US Empire as an illustration of the Empire's veneration of imperialism, and ends by noting that corporate media compulsively ignore signs that the fascist capitalist system is leading us inevitably toward environmental catastrophe and our extinction as a human species.

All this matters because the media's veneration of Bush, and western leaders generally, is a glaring symptom of a deep truth about the corporate media: their primary function is to project a severely distorted view of world events, one that embodies state and corporate priorities rooted in power and short-term profit at any cost.

The public is perennially starved of rational facts about the real state of the planet, and the greed-driven policies that hold sway over electorates and even over global ecosystems. The appalling consequence is that we are now certainly headed for climate catastrophe.

The Indiscreet Charm of the Gilets Jaunes

Click here to access article by C.J. Hopkins from The Unz Review. 

This master of ridicule aims his weapon at our capitalist masters who are making frantic efforts to delegitimize the Gilet Jaunes in France.

... this is the problem the corporate media (and other staunch defenders of global neoliberalism) are facing with these gilets jaunes protests. They can’t get away with simply claiming that what is happening is not a working class uprising, so they have been forced to resort to these blatant absurdities. They know they need to delegitimize the gilets jaunes as soon as possible — the movement is already starting to spread — but the “Putin-Nazi” narrative they’ve been using on Trump, Corbyn, and other “populists” is just not working.

No one believes the Russians are behind this, not even the hacks who are paid to pretend they do.

He also "trains his sights" (def.) on the "Identity Politics Left".

These leftist gatekeepers have been struggling a bit to come up with a response to the gilets jaunes … a response that doesn’t make them sound like hypocrites. See, as leftists, they kind of need to express their support for a bona fide working class uprising. At the same time, they need to delegitimize it, because their primary adversaries are fascism, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and assorted other isms and phobias, not the neoliberal ruling classes.

Nothing scares the Identity Politics Left quite like an actual working class uprising. 

Other posts that I found particularly interesting

• Renegade Inc: Lights Camera Redaction Feat. Dr. Alford & Jay Dyer posted on Jay Dyer's website. I found Alford's exposé of the CIA's use of Hollywood films most fascinating.

Security Services Cinema – Lights, Camera, Redaction. It was the screenwriter Blake Snyder who said that screenplays are Swiss clocks of emotion. But what effect on society do screenwriters have if their work is being influenced by institutions that push a government narrative? Could that Swiss clock of emotion be used nefariously to further geopolitical agendas – or is that just conspiracy theory from cloud cuckoo land? Host Ross Ashcroft is joined by author of ‘Reel Power, Hollywood cinema and American supremacy’, Dr. Matthew Alford and a few interview questions with Jay Dyer toward the end. 

• How Plutocratic Media Keeps Staff Aligned With Establishment Agendas by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

• We are all Julian Assange by Daniel Margrain from Renegade Inc. 

• Truth and Free Speech Are Being Taken Away From Us by Paul Craig Roberts from his blog. (Added this article at 1:45 PM CT thanks to an activist who alerted me to it.) What Roberts doesn't know is that any significant truth that exposes the lies of a ruling class has never been tolerated. It's just that now the lies are major war crimes and are much more frequent due to the desperate conditions of the Empire.

The U.S. Government’s Plan Is to Conquer Russia by a Surprise Invasion

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse posted on Washington's Blog. 

The following combination of articles explains — and they link to conclusive evidence proving — that the United States Government is actually designing its nuclear forces now with the intention to win a nuclear war against Russia (World War III), and no longer (if they ever really were) adhering to the idea (“Mutually Assured Destruction”) that WW III would produce unacceptable catastrophe for both sides, and must therefore be prevented. The U.S. Government is definitely set upon winning WW III, not avoiding WW III. Nuclear weapons are thus being built and deployed by the U.S. Government with the intention to conquer Russia, and this goal has become NATO’s mission, and its only remaining core function, though this fact is not publicly acknowledged.

The fact that the Empire's military plans for all kinds of wars is not news, and the fact that they are planning to destroy Russia is quite reasonable given that the US Empire is desperately trying to remain top dog in the world. But the key question is: will the Empire's Deep State (see this, this, and this) have the nerve to implement these plans? No, it wouldn't be Trump that would make the decision. As Alastair Crooke, the former member of the British MI6, wrote:

All in all, President Trump emerges from this summit, a pussy-cat. Big on talk, short on action: Short on action domestically; short on action in cleaning the swamp; and short on action generally. Jatras concludes, more in sorrow than in anger, “it would be only a small exaggeration to say that with respect to foreign and security policy, Trump is now a mere figurehead of the permanent state. Even if Trump and Putin do happen to meet again, what can the latter expect the former to say that would make any difference?”.

After all, the war would likely destroy much corporate property and make large parts of the globe uninhabitable. Well, I wouldn't bet on the sanity of the capitalist members of the Deep State to avoid such a war.

Police Violence and Mass Policing in the U.S.

Click here to access article by Howard Lisnoff from CounterPunch. 

Wondering which side police in the U.S. are on…. left or right, is a more certain social science proposition than attempting to guess how many angels can safely fit on the head of a pin.

For those close to protest from the 1950s through today, including all facets of left protest, the broken and murdered bodies of protesters in the civil rights movement and the Vietnam antiwar movement, and movements beyond those heady days of protest are quite telling. Guns, fire hoses, batons, tear gas, fists, planting evidence, etc., have all been used viciously by police throughout the U.S. in doing the bidding of their political and financial overlords.

Who does Emmanuel Macron owe?

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from his blog Voltaire Network. 

By reading this article you will learn from the French geopolitical analyst, among other insights, how well-connected people are chosen to lead the various nations that make up the US-led Empire. 

Emmanuel Macron did not feel destined for a career in politics. As a young man, he hoped to become a philosopher, then a senior civil servant, then a business banker. To help him on his way, he frequented Uncle Sam’s fairy godmothers - the French-American Foundation and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

It was in this milieu that he met Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis, in their residence on Park Avenue in New York.

MASSIVE Breakthrough In 9/11 Investigation! - Must WATCH (with Richard Gage & Barbara Honegger)

Click here if you wish to access the video directly from YouTube. The 33 minute video (the last three minutes was a pitch to donate to WAM) was produced by WAM (Winnipeg Alternative Media) and featured prominently on AE911Truth (Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth) website. The founder of WAM is Josh Sigurdson who functions largely as a moderator for this excited discussion by Richard Gage and Barbara Honegger.

Josh Sigurdson talks with Richard Gage AIA of Architects & Engineers For 9/11 Truth as well as Barbara Honegger who famously exposed the truth behind the Iran Contra scandal in the 1980s as a member of the Reagan White House with her book 'October Surprise' and now works with the Lawyers Committee For 9/11 Inquiry.

Some massive news has come out in recent days regarding a petition originally filed in April of 2018 asking for a new investigation into 9/11. Just a few days ago, LCfor9/11 got a letter back from a US attorney agreeing to comply with a Federal law requiring submission to a special grand jury of report by Lawyers' committee and 9/11 victim family members of "yet to be prosecuted 9/11 crimes."

The implications of the case they are pursing are staggering. They do have a mountain of evidence that the government's interpretation of this event was false, and events since then overwhelmingly suggest a coverup. It's obvious that the government led by the Deep State and its "security" and "intelligence services" were involved to bring it off. Cui bono? This is also obvious which leads Sigurdson to ask a most obvious question at 7:38m--essentially that the government cannot investigate itself with any credibility. 

The people at AE911Truth and the Lawyers Committee For 9/11 Inquiry are, as the names suggest, consist of professionals in the engineering, architecture, and legal professions. As professionals they have gone through long years of education and have enjoyed the perks that all professionals enjoy in a capitalist economy. Thus, they have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the ideology of capitalism, specifically with regards to the much vaunted "rule of law". Now they will find out how shallow this part of capitalist ideology is. 

Yet, I don't expect that their futile efforts will change many of their minds because they, who have served an indispensable function for capitalists, have enjoyed so many advantages. They will not "bite the hands that feeds them" in spite of the fact of their mountain of evidence (which they cite at length in the video), the fact that some of them lost loved-ones in this false-flag operation, and millions of people have been terribly impacted throughout the Middle East. Barbara Honegger clearly has not lost her faith in the system because of the Kennedy and other assassinations (the Zapruder film she mentions in the video was given immediately to the authorities), and her own experience with exposing the October surprise which the Reagan operatives engineered to get him elected. Nobody was held accountable for any of these crimes!

It will be interesting to see how the Deep State handles this grand jury investigation. It doesn't take much political intelligence to predict that it will be given minimal coverage in corporate media, the process will be drawn out and will take many years, the litigants will be offered some non-consequential legal rewards, but in the end nothing will come of it. I don't expect to still be alive when the case is ultimately concluded even though I am in very good health at the age of 82.

Foreign Interventions in Revolutionary Russia

Click here to access article by Jacques R. Pauwels from CounterPunch. 

This article should have been posted last year during the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Anyway, I will re-post it because I think it is an accurate report of the strong efforts by the capitalist allies to overturn the socialist revolution. Also, most schools in the USA ignore this history with the result that few Americans know about it.

Big oil and gas nations sideline the science at Katowice, even as emissions rise and warming accelerates

Click here to access article by David Spratt from Climate Code Red (Australia). (I added an extra post to this article at 7:57 AM CT.)

Just as four big oil and gas producers block the UN climate policymaking conference in Katowice, Poland from welcoming a report on the science of the 1.5 degree Celsius (°C) target which it had commissioned three years earlier in Paris, new evidence has emerged of the striking contradiction between word and deed at the 24th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP24).

Well, what could anyone expect from the ruling capitalist classes of the world and their dependent allies? They simply must lie. The striking underlying problem is that their economics depend on fossil fuels like an addict needs to consume his/her drugs ... until they kill themselves. The only problem is that they will bring the world's population along with them to extinction.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1.5°C report states in plain language that averting a climate crisis will require a wholesale reinvention of the global economy. By 2040, the report predicts, there could be global food shortages, the inundation of coastal cities and a refugee crisis unlike the world has ever seen. A number of scientists contend that the report wasn't strong enough and that it downplayed the full extent of the real threat. They say it doesn't account for all of the warming that has already occurred and that it downplays the economic costs of severe storms and displacement of people through drought and deadly heat waves. [my emphasis]

An article related to this entitled "The G20 and the Counter-Protests in Argentina" from LeftEast provides an excellent example of a nation going into deep debt in an effort to expand their GDP.

Economists have proven that GDP growth cannot be ‘decoupled’ from the energy sources that power economic growth. Put simply you need more energy to power more GDP and most of this energy still comes from fossil fuels. The planet needs a new energy source. We know now that we cannot burn all of the known reserves of fossil fuels (like Vaca Muerta) into our atmosphere. Explaining this to an oil or coal company is analogous to giving an alcoholic a bottle of whiskey and telling him not to drain the last sip. But as the oil companies point out they just extract the oil they don’t burn it. Industry will not change either because, for a while anyway, any transition from fossil fuel implies less energy consumption. Less energy means less profits and less GDP, which means less debt repayments and less economic growth!

Scientists tell us we need to get off fossil fuels fast. 

Watch Vigil for Assange

Click here if you wish to access the video directly from Consortium News.

ConsortiumNews broadcast the latest vigil for Julian Assange as the publisher comes under new pressure to be expelled from Ecuador’s London embassy, while charges await him in the United States.

The broadcast was Friday night. With Ray McGovern, Chris Hedges, Margaret Kimberly, Suzie Dawson and more:

Book review: Professor Stephen Cohen’s “War with Russia?”

Click here to access article by Yvonne Lorenzo from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

Over ten years ago, one of the few voices that I listened to that provided facts outside the propaganda narrative of the legacy mass media and the U.S. government on what the situation was regarding Georgia fighting with Russia was from Russia scholar Professor Stephen Cohen. I felt blessed to discover him and his work.

After the events in Ukraine, where a U.S. sponsored putsch installed a fascist government in power, he and conservative radio talk show host John Batchelor held numerous conversations on the “New Cold War” with Russia. Professor Cohen has decided to collect the summaries of those conversations, up to recent events including the Kerch incident, in a new book, War with Russia?: From Putin and Ukraine To Trump and Russiagate. While Professor Cohen has written several works of scholarship and is unique in not sticking to the “party line” that Russia is greatest enemy of America and the West, this book is special because it’s both timely and accessible to interested readers.

Articles/videos relating to the "yellow vest" uprising in France

• Yellow Vests Rise Against Neo-Liberal ‘King’ Macron125,000 French Take To Streets As Trump Trolls Macron; Protester's Hand Blown Off In Graphic Video posted by Tyler Durden from ZeroHedge. Includes several videos of on street clashes between protestors and police in Paris.

• France’s Yellow Vests: It’s just 1 protest…which has lasted 8 years by Ramin Mazaheri from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. 

• Why are the 'yellow vests' protesting in France? by Rokhaya Diallo from Al Jazeera.

• Yellow Vests Rise Against Neo-Liberal ‘King’ Macron by Diana Johnstone from Consortium News. 

• France’s Yellow Vest Rebellion: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité by Richard Galustian from Global Research. 

• Les Déplorables Demand The Fall Of The Regime by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

• French government threatens bloody crackdown on “yellow vest” protest by Alex Lantier and Francis Dubois from World Socialist Web Site.

How Big Brother Grips Americans’ Minds to Support Invasions

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Added additional content at 10:55 AM CT, and another edit for clarity at 6:08 PM CT.)

I don't mean to shock my fellow Americans, who have not been following my blog, by attacking the arguments of this old-fashioned liberal who sees the rich (he frequently refers to them as "aristocrats") as the root of all evil in America today. This view conveniently diverts attention from the rise of American fascism. Under the insidious guidance of fascist American capitalists, this development can be dated from about 1941 when the well-connected (to the rich ruling class) Henry Luce, owner of Time Magazine, published his propaganda piece entitled "The American Century". (Previously this fascist element hid under the label of "isolationists". They often had supportive ties with European fascist capitalists. Incidentally, there were real isolationists who opposed getting into European wars.) This event was the launch of American fascism, the inevitable final stage of capitalism, which eventually turns the capitalist ruling class into fascist capitalists.

Under fascist capitalism the addiction to the drugs of wealth and power reach a final stage in which its addicts can no longer function rationally, and must increasingly rely more on the use of violence and deceit to maintain their rule. In order to maintain their system of capitalism, which provides them with the drugs of power and wealth, their use of deceit must increasingly be used to induce beliefs in the general population that share in, and reflect, their fantasies about global power. It is now evident from the author's solid citation of a recent Gallup poll survey that Americans overwhelmingly share in their fantasies of being an "exceptional nation" that should rule the world.

Unfortunately, Zuesse is an old-fashioned liberal much like Pat Buchanan is an old-fashioned conservative. These capitalist ideologues were left behind when American fascist capitalists decided to launch their empire project in 1941. And did they ever launch it! It is now a masterpiece and a monument to the celebration of skulduggery! I am not going to explain how they did it in this commentary because I've devoted much of my website for the last nine years to explain the process. (Look under the label-categories: history, CIA, ruling class, best posts, etc. on the right hand side of this website toward the bottom.) But I insist that fascist capitalism is an inevitable development once the system of capitalism was established in the world first in Holland and Britain in the 17th century, in France and the USA in the 18th century, in Germany in the 19th century. From these powerful colonial nations it metastasized to the rest of the world. 

Anyway, the point I wish to make in this commentary is that Zuesse, as an old-fashioned liberal, has the naive conviction that only if the rich didn't lie, we would enjoy the benefits of a "democracy". 

If you have read most of his other essays, you will notice that he rarely, if ever, mentions the word "capitalism". You will also notice that he always cites the rich capitalists, which he frequently describes with the feudal term "aristocracy", as the root cause of all our problems today. As such, he, along with many other old-fashioned liberals, functions as a welcome propagandist for the fascist capitalist ruling class by diverting our attention from the system that produced the fascists to the rich. Notice, like all old-fashioned liberals, he looks back affectionately to Franklin Roosevelt as a good president who tried to set the USA on a good path. But, alas, the evil rich "aristocracy" took over control of the nation by lying their way to power. This simplistic, childish notion ignores the fact that every ruling class has historically lied their way to power, and they must lie to maintain themselves as a ruling class! 

Only if the population boycott lying individuals and organizations, is democracy even possible to exist in a nation. Democracy can’t possibly exist more than truth does. In political matters, deceit is always treachery; and its practitioners, whenever the evidence for it is overwhelming and irrefutable, should experience whatever the standard penalty is for treachery. Only in a land such as that, can democracy possibly exist. Elsewhere, it simply can’t. The only basis for democracy, is truth. Deceit is for dictators, not for democrats. And deceit reigns, in the U.S. and in its allied countries. Is this really tolerable? Americans, at least, tolerate it. 

Recommended articles for Friday, December 7, 2018

• 9/11 Breakthrough? News provided by Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry posted on PR Newswire. (This article was suggested to me by a diligent activist.)

• On The Road to a Post-G20 World by Pepe Escobar from ConsortiumNews.

• Pakistan not ‘hired gun’ anymore: Imran Khan tells Trump from PressTV.

Whitewash - The 'Last Bastion Of Freedom' Is An Al-Qaeda Infested Town

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama. 

The author blasts the shoddy piece of propaganda about an Syrian town controlled by Al-Qaeda, one of the Empire's terrorist mercenary armies.

In reality "an alternative history" is not what happened to Saraqib, but what is presented in the New Yorker piece. It is a whitewash of a brutal international attack on Syria. A hagiography of one Osama al-Hossein, a Muslim Brotherhood 'activist', who got funding from the United States. It includes every false propaganda cliche about 'barrel bombs' and 'moderate rebels', who never were moderate, that the 'western' agencies inserted into the news stream. It is also full of stupid and nonfactual assertions.

The major question in my mind is: how did the respectable, although ruling class magazine, become a conduit for pure Empire propaganda? This could be asked about a number of ruling class sources of information and opinion. And, what happened to the articles authored by Seymour Hersh? The New Yorker previously published them. Why has he been forced to publish his recent articles abroad? I think these are more indications of the inherent weakness of the Empire and its desperate attempts to cling to power. Don't misunderstand me. The capitalist US-led Empire is most dangerous when it is seriously threatened.

The latest news on the plight of Julian Assange

 (An activist alerted me to this news.)

• Julian Assange: Wikileaks founder rejects deal allowing him to leave Ecuador embassy in London after six years by Adam Forrest from The Independent.

• Julian Assange rejects UK-Ecuador deal for him to leave the embassy posted by Adam Forrest on YouTube:

Recommended articles for Wednesday, December 5, 2018

• Assange’s integrity remains unwavering in the face of heightened threats to his health, safety and freedom by Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli from The Indicter.

• How the West eats its children by Thierry Meyssan from his blog VoltaireNet.

By allowing capitalism to run wild, President Bush Sr. hoped to extend prosperity to the world. But capitalism is not a political project, it is simply a system of logic designed for creating profit [for capitalists]. The logic of the US multinationals was to increase their profits by delocalising production to China, where it is now possible, and where workers are the lowest paid in the world.  [my insertion]

• Extremes of heat will hit health and wealth by Tim Radford from Climate News Network.

Checklist: Are You Organizing Democratically?

Click here to access article by Matt Noyes from Labor Notes. 

Although this is written for labor organizers who work within a capitalist system, there are also important suggestions for organizing an effective bottom-up authority structures absolutely necessary for any kind of authentic revolutionary movement. Unfortunately, many labor organizers, especially those who are indoctrinated in sociopathic norms of a capitalist society, are co-opted by corporations in order to help them manage workers into supporting their profit objectives. But let us examine and take seriously some of Noyes's recommendations. One thing he failed to mention: above all, such organizers must be appointed and controlled by members of any society, be it a group or a nation.

Americans’ Self-Contradictory Views of Socialized Healthcare

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse posted on Washington's Blog.

I'm not so sure that Zuesse's argument is correct. He does support his argument by furnishing data, but I think he is drawing the wrong conclusions. Permit me to argue for another interpretation. 

The data suggests not that the American people hold contradictory views on government administration of universal medical care, but they, consciously or not, do not want the government of the ruling class to administer it. They have already experienced the government's administration of Social Security and Medicare, and they don't like it for quite rational reasons: poor service and/or benefits because the administration of these programs are deeply biased to prevent ordinary Americans from receiving benefits, frequently they reward privately owned insurance corporations abundant opportunities to enrich themselves, and experts like Allen Smith argues that much of the funds of the Social Security Administration are "borrowed" to cover government deficits.

... the truth about the trust fund has been kept from the general public for the past 30 years. Every dollar of the $2.7 trillion in surplus revenue generated by the 1983 payroll tax hike was embezzled by the government and transferred to the general fund. As the government spent the Social Security surplus money, the actual money was replaced with IOUs, which the government calls “special issues of the Treasury.” The public has been led to believe that the IOUs are real bonds, just like the marketable Treasury bonds held by China, and our other creditors. But the IOUs are not at all like the marketable Treasury bonds. They cannot be sold or used to pay benefits. They represent only an accounting record of how much Social Security money has been spent on other things.

Corporate media is flooded with reports emanating from so-called taxpayer and ruling class sources who do no want government funds be diverted to helping people. Instead they want government funds used to enrich themselves which means billions for weapons, support for war policies which require weapons production, and crumbs for the poor. You will rarely find articles posted in corporate media that reflect criticisms of users of government programs. Instead, you will find them in alternative, independent websites that the ruling class is trying to limit via their control of giant internet corporations like Google, Facebook, etc. You must search out and find critical articles from independent websites such as the following: Shock Therapy: Perfect Storm, Seniors Need To Be Tenacious In Appeals To Medicare, In Time for Christmas: A Social Security Plan Only Scrooge Could Love, Social Security: The 14th Amendment and “Odious Debt”, and Social Security in the Great Jambalaya.

Ordinary people need help from the ravages of ruling class government, but they won't get it from a government controlled by the rich and powerful ruling class. Only a government controlled by the people and for the people can accomplish this.

Left-liberals such as Zuesse frequently criticizes government policies, but cannot overcome their well-educated mindset that has been formed through so many years of capitalist indoctrination in capitalist ruling class-controlled schools.