Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, January 25, 2020

• The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells from New York magazine.

• 2020 starts with the plain prospect of rising heat by Tim Radford from Climate News Central.

• Against Pacifism from The internationalists. 

• Iran is ready to attack again: Will the US forces withdraw from Iraq? by Elijah J Magnier from his weblog. 

• Aftermath: The Iran War After The Soleimani Assassination by Jim Kavanagh from The Polemicist.

• Houthis Anticipate US Assassination Attempts by Ahmed Abdulkareem from Internationalist 360°.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, January 24, 2020

  

• History’s Largest Mining Operation Is About to Begin by Wil S. Hylton from The Atlantic.

• Warning: Climate change will bring major new health risks for kids by Kathleen E. Bachynski from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

• Paris climate goals may be beyond reach by Alex Kirby from Climate News Network (Note: this is a rather conservative website on the climate crisis.)

• Press Release—IT IS NOW 100 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT by Gayle Spinazze from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 

• The Long History of Elite Rule: What Will It Take To End It? by Chuck Churchill from CounterPunch.

• World’s Super Rich Meet in Davos to Discuss the Climate Change Problem they Created by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News. 

• The Troubling Decline of International Law by Craig Murray (British) from his weblog. (Note: Capitalists have long bragged about their nations' fake democracies which include the rule of law. The trouble is that this class has always made the laws, organized their court systems, appointed the judges, etc. Now it seems that this rule of law is too burdensome for the ruling classes. They now opt for outright violence or the threat of violence--fascism.)

• WikiLeaks Editor: US Is Saying First Amendment Doesn’t Apply To Foreigners In Assange Case by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, January 23, 2020

• World accumulation & Planetary life, or, why capitalism will not survive until the ‘last tree is cut’ by Jason W. Moore from Radical Political Economy.

• Lack of action on climate change leads to warmest decade ever recorded by James Cogan from World Socialist Web Site.

• Busting Cold War propaganda: What China is really like from The Grayzone.

Red Lines host Anya Parampil speaks with Danny Haiphong, a contributing editor at the Black Agenda Report, about his recent, eye-opening two-week-long trip to China.

• Immediate US withdrawal due to its violation of the agreement and Iraq sovereignty by Elijah J Magnier from his weblog. (Note: The assassination of an Iranian official visiting Iraq has led to the exposure of  the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire as an occupying force in Iraq. This combined with the US occupying oil fields in Syria and ignoring international laws has made much of the rest of the world to see the US and its Empire as outlaws (fascists.)

• The prosecution of Glenn Greenwald and the global war on free speech by James Cogan from World Socialist Web Site.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, January 22, 2020

• The Case for Ecological Reparations: A Conversation with Jason W. Moore by Stepha Velednitsky from Edge Effects. 

• Wahrheit Macht Frei… Truth Sets You Free by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• Washington Desperation Drives Nuclear Proliferation by Ulson Gunnar from New Eastern Outlook.  

• How a Hidden Parliamentary Session Revealed Trump’s True Motives in Iraq by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News.

• We Work, They Scam: The Art of the Con in Terminal-Stage Capitalism by William Hawes from Dissident Voice.

• Can your boss now access your private medical data? "NRS correspondent Michele Greenstein talks to Rick Sanchez about Big Tech getting between your doctor and you."

• Greta Thunberg | Averting a Climate Apocalypse | Davos 2020. "'I've been told telling people about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do' Greta Thunberg speaks at Davos 2020." (Note: This is like if she were talking to a group of hardcore alcoholics that they should stop drinking.)

• Progressives Frustrated With Bernie’s Capitulation Strategy, from The Jimmy Dore Show. (Note: Memory challenged and frustrated Bernie cultists are getting angry. Sorry to have posted this video, but I couldn't help wondering about the sanity of my fellow Americans.)

Orwell’s 1984 is a paranoid piece of anti-communist propaganda [a critical review]

Click here to access article by Rainer Shea, a re-post of the article on his own website earlier in the month, and posted on The Greanville Post.

This is a contemporary expression of an old Stalinist view on George Orwell re-regurgitated by Shea, a young blogger in northern California. Yes, like Patrice Greanville, editor and founder of The Greanville Post, I too have been impressed with his knowledge of history. 

However, I soon became aware of his immaturity. He is like a typical 19-year-old blogger who views history as led by stereotypically good guys and bad guys, not as human beings with strengths and weaknesses, and people who make errors. He can say nothing bad about Stalinists (and often defends them--see here and here) and criticizes as "bad guys" like George Orwell who, at the risk of his life and health, went and fought against openly fascists and on the side of the democratically elected Spanish Republic in 1936 in a civil war that proved to be a dress rehearsal for WWII. Shea's citing as supporting documentation, a clearly Stalinist website (The Stalin Society), in this article is suggestive evidence that he has been coached by someone who has an old-fashioned pro-Stalinist view of the Soviet Union.

My readings regarding the Soviet Union, the anti-Bolshevik crusade led by British imperialist Winston Churchill and other capitalist cold warriors has led me to the following view on George Orwell. Orwell was influenced by his experience primarily in the Spanish Civil War as detailed by his book Homage to Catalonia. In this war he fought against the fascist forces of Germany and Italy who came to the rescue of the democratically elected Spanish Republic against the right-wing opposition. Meanwhile, the leading capitalist nations of USA, Britain, and France cynically stood by in neutrality and pretend isolationism. 

Stalin's behavior was informed by his superficial commitment to communist ideology and most of all by his authoritarian desire to maintain power which was reinforced by a nationalist view of the Soviet Union. Briefly put, this orientation led him to a visceral hatred to anyone challenging his authority and his support for the protection of the Soviet Union. Thus purges characterized his rule. When he saw the growing support by Western capitalist countries for Hitler's aggression, he supported the popular front as a first means of preventing the threat of Germany's invasion of his country. (A few years later he signed a non-aggression treaty with Germany as a means to provide time to enable the buildup of Soviet forces.) This support of Stalin's popular front policy occurred while Orwell was fighting in Spain, and led to the Soviet Union withdrawing support for the forces defending the Spanish Republic. 

However, Stalin not only withdrew support of Russian forces, but actively fought against those defending the Republic that they had previously supported. Orwell understandably could not tolerate this betrayal and especially their use of specious, self-serving propaganda to justify this betrayal. This is described graphically in his book Homage to Catalonia, and it left a deep impression upon him. Hence, his book Nineteen Eighty-Four published in 1949, and which is widely viewed by capitalist agents as an exclusive attack on the Soviet Union. But what is less popular is a view that all self-serving ruling classes can, and do, use such propaganda techniques. Orwell saw the British ruling class use such techniques to support the cynical war effort to preserve their Empire, and he merely extrapolated their advanced use in the future. Stalin and his supporters merely used these techniques to rationalize his rule and his supporters in the self-serving bureaucratic ruling class using the Communist ideology that Lenin and Trotsky had created. The reality of Stalinist rule clashed severely with this ideology.

Stalin to this day is widely popular in Russia among people who saw him as successfully defending their country. These people ascribe too much to his leadership and not enough to themselves, or rather, their ancestors who fought for their country against the fascist invaders who wanted to make them slaves of the Third Reich. Most of the captured Soviet fighters ended up as slaves put to work in Nazi weapons factories and were worked literally to death. (In 1957-58 I served in a medical unit of the US Army while stationed in Germany. A sergeant in my unit visited a cemetery associated with Bergen-Belsen prison camp, and to his surprise he didn't find many Jewish names, but mostly Russian names on graves of people who died in the concentration camp.)

The author of this article, Shea, has resurrected an old, tired debate among communists and communist-minded historians: the Trotskyists versus Stalinists. I come down on the side of Trotskyists and Leninists who foresaw that the communist revolutionary movement could not succeed in such a backward country as Russia. Rather they saw a need for revolutions in more advanced countries, especially Germany, as necessary to advance what would become an international workers movement to take power for themselves and support their interests. This did not happen largely because the nascent German ruling class of capitalists in 1919 foresaw the dangers of this movement and assassinated both Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, leaders of the Communist Revolutionary party in Germany, and ruthlessly put down the socialist movement existing in Germany after WWI.

Thus, the history of the human species reveals that this species could not overcome their DNA to protect and advance their own small groups. This defect had served their species for nearly 200,000 years which was characterized by families and clans and ruling classes instead of workers of all countries. When capitalist ruling classes arose based on the private ownership of economic property, they became obsessed with wealth and power through their exploitation both workers, who created marvelous economic benefits, and nature. These ruling classes in their ignorance and arrogance could not adapt to nature and its web of life, and like all other such species, have doomed their human species to extinction.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, January 21, 2020

• How did climate change get so controversial? by John Cook from Skeptical Science.

• The Capitalocene and Planetary Justice by Jason W. Moore from Titanic Lifeboat Academy.

• How To Be A Mentally Sovereign Human by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, January 20, 2020

• NASA, NOAA Analyses Reveal 2019 Second Warmest Year on Record from NASA.

• Australia's heat and bushfires are signs of fundamental shifts in its climate by Peter Sinclair from Yale Climate Connections. 

• Climate change “spin” as Davos gathering confronts mounting environmental and economic crisis by Nick Beams from World Socialist Web Site.

• Why 'Corporate Social Responsibility Is a Hoax by Álvaro de Regil Castilla from Climate & Capitalism. (Note: The headline offers old news, but the author goes on to argue that "Subsequently, I gradually realized that an even larger hoax is our belief that we live in democratic societies."

• Trump’s Latest Plan for Iran: Regime Disruption by Eli Lake from Bloomberg. (Note: What is significant about his argument is that some top geopolitical analysts are supporting his argument. See this and this.)

• Yes Minister Fan Fiction by Craig Murray from his weblog (British). (He satirizes British politicians regarding Britain's treatment (use of social identity politics) of Julian Assange. Murray may explain why British activists did, and are doing, so little to protest and rescue Assange.)

Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, January 19, 2020

• Global Warming and the Future of Investing by Eric Zuesse from The Duran (based in Cyprus). Author of the foolish statement "That’s not what capitalism was supposed to be." ends his report with a rather favorable statement about BlackRock:

As regards the letter to “CEOs,” it’s telling them to transition as fast as is reasonably possible out of fossil-fuel investments and into renewable-fuel ones, in order to become less vulnerable to the shock, when it does hit. This makes good sense: keeping the clients comfortable, while telling the CEOs: “Make major moves on this ASAP!”

If you think for a moment that capitalist ruling classes are serious about global warming, "I have a bridge to sell you" (def).

• Australia’s Fires Give Us a Glimpse of What’s Coming by Jeff Sparrow from Jacobin.

• In neoliberalism’s end, a new world’s beginning an editorial from New Frame (based in South Africa). (Note: These folks still have hope.)

• How Khalifa Haftar’s secret ties with Israel fuel chaos in Libya from TRT World (based in Turkey).

• Secret Wars, Forgotten Betrayals, Global Tyranny. Who Is Really in Charge of the U.S. Military? by Cynthia Chung from Strategic Culture Foundation (independent. international, and based in Russia).

• Ayn Rand with Prof. Lisa Duggan from Chris Hedges' show "On Contact" from RT via YouTube. 

On the show this week, Chris Hedges, discusses the outsized influence of the writer, Ayn Rand, on America’s business and financial elite with New York University professor and author, Lisa Duggan.

 Duggan’s new book is entitled “Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed.” 

• How America Became Capitalist - book review by Dominic Alexander from Counterfire (Britain).

• MAJOR: 16 U.S soldiers killed in Iranian strikes on al-Asad base in Iraq by Joaquin Flores from Fort Russ News (apparently based in Belgrade, Serbia).