Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, Aug. 14, 2020

• New CDC & WHO Study: Face Masks Don't Prevent Virus featuring Ben Swann criticizing FaceBook "fact-checkers" who censored his recent report. Posted on ISE.
  

• Vaccine Fundamentalism—War Metaphors in the Covid-19 Response, Vaccine Policy, and Public Health, Part 1 by Nate Doromal from Children's Health Defense. My commentary follows: 

This excellent article belongs in the "best posts" category. The Deep State, that is, the billionaire financial and corporate owners of not only our government but much of our nation as well, are pushing a faith-based narrative to encourage us to obey our government authorities uncritically. These authorities and the UN's World Health Organization (WHO) know best, and the best weapon in this WHO sanctioned pandemic is vaccination.

Faith-based authorities have been used by all ruling classes since civilization was established around 10-12 thousand years ago. That is precisely why all ruling classes have used organized religions to bolster their authority. Science, as a rigorous evidence-based knowledge, has gradually freed humanity from the superstitions of religious faith. The Enlightenment period was especially celebrated by freeing humans from faith-based knowledge. Since then the benefit to the welfare of millions across the globe has been obvious. Unfortunately, capitalist ruling classes grew and took over control of governments across the planet, and they readily co-opted organized religions to help them dominate, control, and exploit their populations. Now it is evident that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with their substantial contributions, have greatly influenced WHO decisions. The article points to this faith-based knowledge to bolster faith in government authorities which has been supported by incessant propaganda media campaigns.

•  John Ioannidis: Another shutdown would do more harm than good from National Post (Canada).
  

• New Report States Over 40 Million Americans Face Lockdown Eviction Without a $100 Bln Stimulus Bill by Drago Bosnic from FRN (based in Serbia). 

• A cooperative story n°12, Barrio Sur, Montevideo, Uruguay from Aroundtheworld. coop channel of YouTube. (Note: This might be a good idea for some people.)
  

• CIA-Sponsored Propaganda Has Been Around for 75 Years by Wayne Madsen from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• Imperialists Run The Same Tired Old Script Day After Fucking Day by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. 

• What is the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED)? by Tony Cartalucci from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. 

• Why is the US so determined to extend a UN arms embargo on Iran, and will it work? by the staff at Middle East Eye. 

• Battleground Beirut: Western Colony or Back to the East? by Pepe Ecobar from Global Research.

• Lithium: Capitalist extraction and dependency in Latin America by Facundo Escobar from United World (think tank in Turkey).

• How the US helped push Lebanon to the brink of collapse, and now threatens more sanctions by Ben Norton from The Grayzone. 

• 'We were on knees with guns pointed to head' | Belarus starts releasing detained protesters from RT via YouTube.

• Collapse of Capitalism by Bruce Lerro from Planning Beyond Capitalism. 

• Business as Usual Equals Many Extra Deaths from Global Warming by Pete Dolack from CounterPunch.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, Aug. 13, 2020

• After White House, Congress cut aid to unemployed, evictions and food lines spread across the US by Jacob Crosse from World Socialist Web Site. (My reaction: The assault on the "deplorables" and the "dumb-fucks" continues.)

• Biden picks former law-and-order prosecutor Kamala Harris to be his Democratic running mate by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site.
  

• Kamala Is A Cop Except For Billionaire Banksters! featuring Jimmy Dore ranting and Max Blumenthal offering his observations about the Democratic Party candidates, via YouTube. (My reaction: Can you imagine a worse election that are facing the people of the USA in November?! Our masters in the ruling class are both extremely corrupt and extremely cynical about the American people.)
  

• America Desperately Needs a Second Opinion by Jeff Harris from the Ron Paul Institute.

• Consent Rescinded. By Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (Note: She rescinds all the themes with which ideological agents of the capitalist ruling class infected her mind much like a virus when she was younger and more naive. Can you join her?)

• A quick update on Belarus by "The Saker" from his weblog A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. (Note: this is an update to yesterday's re-post about the subversive efforts of the US Empire to change the government of Belarus.)

• Dead Zones: Industrial Agriculture versus Ocean Life by Ian Angus from Climate & Capitalism.
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2020

• Left Gatekeepers Through the New Left: Monitored Rebellion (Part 2) by Bruce Lerro from Dissident Voice. (Note: I guess was so impressed with Part 1 that I overlooked Part 2.)

• Is This a Remake of the 1941 Hitler Stalin Great War? by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook. 

• Our beautifully democratic wars by Philip Roddis from Off-Guardian.

• Iran and China terrify the Empire, but why? by "The Saker" (Andrei Raevsky) from his weblog A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. (Note: If you liked this post, I recommend another entitled "US concerned about Serbia’s intention to buy Chinese weapons".)
  

• Man Killed by Bomb During Belarus Color Revolution Attempt, Biden Openly Supports Protests by Drago Bosnic from FRN (Fort Russ News, based in Serbia).

• US Meddling in Thai Politics Continues by Joseph Thomas from New Eastern Outlook. 

• New Report Reveals US Special Forces Active in 22 African Countries by Alan Macleod from Internationalist 360°. 
  

• Biden Pick His VP -- KAMALA Is A Cop! featuring Jimmy Dore (of The Jimmy Dore Show) doing his take (via YouTube) of Biden's pick for Vice-President in the November elections. (You might also be interested to learn more about Harris from this older post from The Grayzone.)

• Yale Study To Manipulate Americans Into Taking C0VlD Vaccine featuring Ben Swann and his take on a Yale study from the Digital Freedom channel of YouTube. 

• Pharma Lobbying & Corruption featuring Robert F. Kenney, Jr. commenting briefly, via Children's Health Defense YouTube channel on the role of Big Pharma in our society.

• 'Western' Media Falsely Claim That Russia's Covid-19 Vaccine Is Ready To Go by Bernhard from his weblog Moon of Alabama.

• Letters From Melbourne, a ‘Ghost Town Police State’ Under Brutal Covid Lockdown by Robert Bridge from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• What is the best way to measure rates of covid immunity? by Sebastian Rushworth M.D. from his weblog. (Note: He was trained as physician at a medical school on Long Island, but is practicing in Sweden.)

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020

• Defund Fascism, Blue and Orange by Paul Street from CounterPunch. My commentary follows:

Although Street gives an accurate description of the largely colored underclass (but not exclusively so) of capitalist America, he ignores the indispensable part that fascism plays in capitalism to deal with the problem of surplus workers that is an integral part of capitalist rule. This I think largely comes from a misunderstanding of fascism which confuses many people in the USA. (This is not an accident: capitalist ideological agents carefully craft propaganda to confuse people on this subject and many others.)

Fascism is basically an attitude that encourages coercion in one form or another. The fundamental source of this attitude is from the capitalist morality as described by Margaret Thatcher: looking only to the welfare of the individual and of one's family:

 ...you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first.

Therefore fascist methods are employed to deal with capitalist's main antagonists (the unemployed, poverty stricken, etc, (and let us not forget other competitive capitalists), and they can range from the threat of violence to indirect forms by controlling jobs and careers (traditionally favored by capitalists) to controlling the narratives (including censorship) that shape people's understanding of issues. (Caitlin Johnstone writes extensively about the latter subject.) Nowadays the three are combined in various combinations.

• Twitter spreads paid US gov’t propaganda while falsely claiming it bans state media ads by Ben Norton from The Grayzone.
  

• Bombshell Report: Fed Is Aware that Big Banks Are Rigging their Stress Tests and Letting Them Get Away with It by Pam and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.
  

• Trump and Biden, Two Ignoble Minds Here O’erthrown by Andrew Levine from CounterPunch.

• Global Destruction, 
The COVID-19 Lockdown: Economic and Social Impacts by Peter Koenig from Global Research. (Note: A "best posts" article.)
  

• Trump Names Stanford Professor [Dr. Scott W. Atlas] Critical of Lockdowns to White House Covid Task Force from Anti-Empire. (Note: This article was first published on a British website Daily Mail; but because the latter insist on showing ads, I have posted it from the Anti-Empire website. I encourage you to read a further article by Dr. Scott W. Atlas posted on The Hill.)
  

• MAJOR: Tens of Thousands of Quebecois Stage Mass March Against Plandemic Tyranny by Joaquin Flores from FRN (Fort Russ News, based in Serbia).

• Putin and Russia Are Facing a Very Serious Crisis in Belarus by "The Saker" (Andrei Raevsky) from The Unz Review. (Note: Because I posted an article about Belarus yesterday, I thought it apt to include this post today from an author who has ancestral roots in the military and middle-class in Russia and who knows the geopolitics very well in this area. It looks like an attempted color revolution by the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire is going on there with the apparent participation of the Ukrainian government. You will need to know what about some of his more obscure references, but I trust you will look them up on the internet. For another take on this phenomenon, you might be interested in Nikopetr's article from The Internationalists entitled "Winds of Change in Belarus: Neither Dictatorship Nor Democracy Offer Anything for the Working Class".)

• The U.S. Needs to Address Its Climate Migration Problem by Daniel Cusick from Scientific American.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, Aug. 10, 2020

• Is Big Pharma More Interested in Profiteering Than Protecting Us From Coronavirus? by F. Douglas Stephenson from CounterPunch.

• The COVID-19 Vaccine. The Imposition of Compulsory Vaccination with a Biometric Health Passport? by Dr. Pascal Sacré from Global Research. 

• What we can learn from the Swedish paradox by Freddie Sayers from UnHerd. (Note: Sayers, who is British, uses a European meaning of libertarians who emphasize individual freedom from government in contrast to the US version which puts more emphasis on laissez-faire capitalism, that is, more emphasis on freedom of capitalist enterprises from government regulation.)

• Alexandr Lukashenko – a president with scruples by John Goss from Off-Guardian.
  

• Revolutionaries Living in a System of Growing Fascism by Howard Lisnoff from CounterPunch.

• The Undoing Of Illusions: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (Note: Johnstone uses the theme of "narrative matrix" to denote the capitalist ruling class control of all ideological institutions. They do this by using fake news and propaganda that they spread via their ownership and control of media corporations and the control of other ideological institutions (education, entertainment, etc.) in order to control people's minds especially within their US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. This practice is the essence of soft fascism in contrast to the often hard fascism of German and Italian history (reliance on police terror). To be sure, the latter used elements of fake news and propaganda, but they relied on hard fascist methods because of the underdevelopment of propaganda during their rule.) (Editor's note: I edited this note to include comments regarding soft and hard fascism @ 3:50 PM CT.)
  

• Who Profits from the Beirut Blast? by Pepe Escobar from Global Research. (Note: Because Escobar's excellent articles in Asia Times are now behind a paywall, I will be posting his articles from secondary sources in the future.)

• Biden’s Ukrainegate Problem by Gerald Sussman from CounterPunch.
  

• The Jakarta Method: How the U.S. Used Mass Murder To Beat Communism by Daniel Larison from The American Conservative. (Note: I'm posting this mainly because it offers lessons on the US political spectrum, and secondarily because it reminds us of the history of ruling class crimes. The conservatives who write for this website are often labeled as "paleoconservatives" (old-fashioned conservatives) in contrast to neoliberals, often referred to as "ziocons" (Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, etc. most of whom were brought into government during Reagan's administration). Neoliberals or "ziocons" (because of strong Zionist influence) are favored by transnational capitalists who have aggressively pursued an empire compared to more nationalist conservatives who support national capitalist interests. I think that Fox News publishing empire has mixed feelings about Trump because of his more nationalist orientation in contrast with his aggressive foreign policies. Neoliberals have taken over control of the Democratic Party, whereas the paleoconservatives are mostly found in the Republican Party, but there is little of substance to differentiate the two-party system of the capitalist ruling class.)

Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020

• The Evilness of America’s Ruling Class by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation. My commentary follows:

Remarkably, Zuesse uses the term "ruling class" two times, but then reverts to using "oligarchy" and "aristocracy"--maybe he is progressing. Zuesse is the only social-democrat who is still frequently published on the internet. Most often social-democrats settle for highly regulated capitalism, but of course, capitalist ruling classes have always prevented this except during a period of extreme stress such as the Great Depression when there were only mild forms of regulation. Thus Zuesse always has fond memories of FDR.

"Ruling class" is a term used frequently by Marxist or revolutionary socialists to describe class structured societies that have existed since civilization was established around 10,000 years ago. The relations between social-democrats and Marxists have been contentious since the appearance of social-democrats mainly in Britain in the late 1800s. I suspect that such exponents saw that their careers were impaired by Marxist concepts, and to safeguard their careers, adopted this tame form of socialism. In the current USA only academic historians, who specialize in Marxist literature and are known as "Marxians", are allowed to work. Revolutionary Marxists were purged by the ruling class around 1950 during the McCarthy period (as explained by Bruce Lerro).

Most frequently Zuesse is listed as a "historian", sometimes as an "investigative historian". But I have never found his biography: where he was educated, the degrees he's earned, anything about his career, and where he worked as a historian. This is strange given that his articles have been published prolifically on the internet. Don't misunderstand me, I like many of his articles which contain many links to documentation that are overlooked by others. I only fault him for his social-democratic concepts which tend to hide the real nature of organized capitalist class rule by using terms such as "oligarchy" and "aristocracy".

• Democrat think tank calls for color revolution if Trump wins election (Video) featuring Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris discussing an article in the Washington Examiner. The post is from The Duran. (Note: The video discussion lasts until 18:15m).

 

• Australia: Willing Pawn in US Struggle with China by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook. (My reaction: Of course! Isn't Australia a part of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire?)

• Viral Fake Footage Of “Chinese” Atrocities Shows The Power Of Narrative Spin by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (My reaction: Isn't it obvious that the power of money lies behind the "power of narrative spin"?)

• Western media’s favorite Hong Kong ‘freedom struggle writer’ is American ex-Amnesty staffer in yellowface by Max Blumenthal from The Grayzone. (Note: Blumenthal "outs" "Kong Tsung-gan" as Brian Kern.) 

 

• Invasion of the New Normals by CJ Hopkins from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc. (My reaction: Could it be that the typical satire of Hopkins has turned serious in the "New Normal"?)

 

• How bad is covid really? (A Swedish doctor’s perspective) posted by Sebastian Rushworth M.D. from his weblog. (If you liked this post, you may also be interested another post entitled "COVID-19 Down in Sweden Thanks to Invisible Face Masks" from Anti-Empire.)

 

• Dr. Judy Mikovits and the Real Plague Infecting Humanity by Mark Taliano from his website.

• Academia Stoops to Defamation over Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). Groundless Accusations against 2 World-class Scientists by Elizabeth Woodworth from Global Research.

• The COVID 2nd Wave Will Tear Our Communities Apart by Stewart Brennan from AlternativeViews. 

 

• A Conversation with John Ioannidis. In this post epidemiologist John Ioannidis submits to a rather aggressive questioning by Saurabh Jha, MD of The Health Care Blog.

 

•  The World on Fire by Robert Hunziker from CounterCurrents.