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.
As Stephen Gowans in his new book Israel: A Beachhead in the Middle East explains that the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire needs Israel, a largely European settler colony, to police the interests of capitalists to control the rich energy resources in this vital region. Thus, the directors of this Empire permitted them to acquire nuclear weapons as well as showering them with abundant conventional weapons in order to insure their control over the region. Notice the striking difference of attitudes expressed by these imperialists between Israel and Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
In addition, the Israelis have also expressed the same racist attitudes that are similar to their US and Anglo capitalist partners-in-crime. Gowans writes:
Abroad, Israel's support for colonial movements has been second to none. The Jewish colonial settler state was an energetic supporter of white supremacist Rhodesia, as well as apartheid South Africa, a state also founded by a self-designated 'chosen people' of European origin, the Afrikaners, similarly imbued with a vision based in religious mythology of a divine right to occupy the land of a 'lesser people'.
He goes on to provide documented details of this support.
To have meaningful free elections in the Arab world one needs to control the banking and financial system and monitor the flow of foreign money and interference by Gulf regimes and by Western governments. You need to end foreign Western hegemony before you can have free elections. Furthermore, in the capitalist economies of the Middle East, elections are increasingly an opportunity for billionaires to ascend to political power. In the North Lebanon region alone, four billionaires have reached the Lebanese parliament through their wealth in the last two decades.
This insight, of course, is applicable to all elections whether among Arabs, Africans, or Americans. You can't have a few people with concentrated wealth, which is always a powerful tool or weapon, influencing the outcome of elections. Hence, the only way to establish legitimate elections is to do away with the power of ownership over the economy. An economy is always an essential sector of every society, and to have major concentrations of ownership of the economy in the hands of a small minority always negates the legitimacy of elections.
The author illustrates this insight in the rather recent history of elections in the Arab world in which such minorities frequently depend on the US/Anglo/Zionist capitalist Empire to insure their continued rule. Saudi Arabia and its offshoots of United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar are illustrations of this. These anachronistic feudal kingdoms depend upon the Empire for their very existence. But other countries in the region, such as Egypt, are also affected because these rich elites depend on the Empire for their protection.
However, this is true of the entire world. Elections do not necessarily equal democracy! Capitalist ruling classes have always insured their beneficial outcome of elections through their control of elections, by their selection of candidates, their control of political parties and media corporations, gerrymandering, and outright corruption of election processes.
A people cannot have any kind of legitimate democracy while capitalists control societies either directly or indirectly with their concentrated wealth due to their ownership and control over economies. Thus, the system of capitalism along with the capitalist Empire must be smashed. Until then, we will only see a series of elected puppets who serve only the interests of the rich owners of economies at the expense of workers and the poor.
While our masters incessantly rant and rave about Trump as a puppet of Putin, the latter is busy warning people about the ever increasing probability that we could all be vaporized, incinerated, or wandering deliriously with radiation sickness from a nuclear war if leaders of nations don't sit down and negotiate new nuclear arms treaties.
America's expert on Russia, Stephen F. Cohen, agrees. But is anybody listening? The Russiagate "realities" and diversions created by our masters via their media corporations don't allow time for these voices.
But even Cohen, as erudite as he is, refuses to point to a self-serving, insane ruling class. He must know more than he is letting on about a hidden Deep State, where our masters are hiding, which is saturated with sick capitalists whose only concerns are more, that is, more profits and power over both the people of the world and the environment. Notice that Cohen comes close to doing this by alluding to this reality at 12:04m when he says: "I can't prove it, but one has to think logically: was this begun by somewhere high up in America by people who didn't want a pro-detente president?" But immediately, Chris Hedges, the good liberal-reformist that he is, diverted the discussion by pointing to John O. Brennan who has served in a number of secret spy agencies. Although it is likely that Brennan was involved, he is only an agent of the ruling capitalist Deep State. The latter always act through their unaccountable "security" spy agencies. Yes, one "has to think logically" and there is a mountain of evidence (if one looks carefully) that there is a cabal of Deep State actors who have urged, since the well-connected Henry Luce of Time Magazine published his article entitled "American Century" in early 1941, that all the fascist oriented American capitalists come out of the isolationist woodwork where they were hiding and take control of the USA in order to build a world empire. They saw that the British Empire was threatened by the rising fascist power of Germany, Italy, and Japan, and saw the potential for the establishment of their own empire. And, as they say, the rest is history.
Capitalists in the Deep State are so driven by the obsessions of profit and power that they can't see that humans are only an irritating gnat that Mother Nature will soon dispose of, that is, if humans don't destroy themselves before Nature does.
If you can't accept that we humans are an exceptional species like our masters in capitalist ruling classes believe, and as the nightmares of scientists become reality, then laughter may be appropriate.
... I think that as the catastrophic flooding, heat waves, and other extreme weather events continue to multiply and intensify and as more and more people start losing their minds, all we can do is laugh at the absurdity of our self-inflicted predicament.
Powell gives additional information about Stinnet's book, but I don't remember (having read the book years ago) that the evidence was conclusive that FDR engineered the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After all, we only got a partial release by our masters in the ruling capitalist class:
After eight years of further research and a prolonged case at law under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain partial release of these materials, Stinson published Day of Deceit (2000).
A full release might make this inference conclusive. However, it was enough for most rational people to conclude that indeed FDR suckered the Japanese into the attack which then justified USA's entry into WWII. (Could it be that our fascist-loaded ruling class in 2000 didn't really like the reforms that FDR passed to stifle any revolutionary movements in the 1930s?) FDR along with other anglophiles in the US ruling class saw that the Axis powers were threatening the rule of the British Empire. This was not in the game-plan of most of the Western ruling capitalist classes who loved fascists because they were expected to destroy the Soviet Union--an anathema to the rule of capitalists. USA's own fascists joined the anglophiles and presciently saw this war as an opportunity to establish their own American empire--and they did.
What I object to is the very title of the book which emphasizes only one "day of deceit". Ruling classes always justify their nation's participation in wars in order to get ordinary people to sign up, to disrupt their personal plans to marry, establish careers and families, rather to travel long distances to kill other ordinary people of behalf of the same ruling classes. Lying is built in to this scenario, and the same scenario has played out ever since gangs formed to rule over ordinary people--some 10,000 years. So, what's new? The fact is that ruling classes always lie--not only about their wars--to their subjects because if the latter knew how unjust ruling classes were, there would be revolts. These scoundrels do this by creative writing of histories, protecting religious clergies to preach sermons that justify their rule over ordinary people, keeping ordinary people looking toward a non-existent afterlife to seek their rewards, and keeping the latter in ignorance about their lies and self-serving activities. One doesn't have to delve into ancient history to find prime example of such lying. Look at only the history since WWII and you will find a mountain of examples of such lies. They lied about their assassination of the John and Bobbie Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and numerous Black Panthers. They lied about their well executed plan on 9/11 to justify their subsequent military campaigns in the Middle East. In fact, ruling classes rarely tell the truth. Nowadays, lying is only getting worse. But most humans, with a few rare exceptions, throughout history have devoted their attention to sustaining their families and enjoying their comforts and distractions, and shied away from believing that their masters would ever lie to them.
Now capitalist ruling classes are lying to ordinary people about global warming and the destruction of our habitat because such information would interfere with their addiction to profits and power (over the rest of us). But, as we shall soon see, this is their final lie--a lie that will end all lies. Humans, and unfortunately many other species, will be disappeared from planet Earth which gave birth to them, and new life forms will arise. Hopefully, these life forms will not be fractured into classes in which one self-serving class tells lies to the other classes.