Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, January 26, 2021

• New Stanford Study Claims Lockdowns Are Not Effective To Stop Spread of COVID by Arjun Walia from Collective Evolution.
  

• Poor Nations Left Reeling After Bill Gates Advised Oxford to Ditch Open Source COVID Vaccine by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News (based in Minneapolis).   

... behind the scenes, the Oxford team reneged on their promise, signing an exclusive deal with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, who made no commitment to selling the lifesaving vaccine at a low price. Even less well-known is that the decision was taken at the behest of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. “We went to Oxford and said, ‘Hey, you’re doing brilliant work,’” Gates said, “But…you really need to team up.” The 65-year-old tech tycoon is a strong proponent of patents and spends much of his time shaping global health policy. 

James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit that works to expand access to medical technology, said that “Gates has staked out this outsized role in the vaccine world…He has an ideological belief that the intellectual property system is a wonderful mechanism that is necessary for innovation and prosperity.” 

The decision to put profit before people is likely to have a devastating impact on the Global South.

• ‘The health of the people should be the supreme law’ by Elliot Sperber from Climate & Capitalism. 

• Right On Cue For Biden, WHO Admits High-Cycle PCR Tests Produce COVID False Positives by Tyler Durden from ZeroHedge.  

• Twitter Rolls Out New Wikipedia-Like Program To Narrative Manage Tweets by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. A best post.

• Hillary Clinton set to produce TV show about female Kurdish fighters by Alex MacDonald from Middle East Eye (based in London). My reaction: Is this a sign of things to come: renewed efforts by the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire to re-engage in Syria now that Joe Biden, another Deep State acolyte, is in office? I think--yes. I view propaganda as one of the best signals that point to changes in Empire policies. The directors of the Empire regard manipulation of views, especially targeting the American audience, as a primary means to reach their objectives. The fact that this high-profile representative of the ruling class has joined an effort using identity politics as a weapon to encourage a renewed effort to conquer Syria is an important omen of one objective of the Empire's foreign policy.
  

• Meet Antony ‘Blinkered’ – Biden’s Choice for America’s Top Diplomat by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation. My commentary follows: 

I see Cunningham's accurate portrayal of the new Sec. of State as another indication that the US is returning to the more "sophisticated" capitalist ruling class faction that has ruled American during the past 75 years except during the recent brief Trump regime. It is a difference of style and some substance between the older fascism of Trump and the return to the more sophisticated style and substance of neofascism that is used by the main ruling class.

Neofascism uses a more updated version of propaganda and psychological operations than did the older authoritarian style epitomized by the Nazis which used crude propaganda and censorship. The main faction of the capitalist ruling class regarded Trump and his followers as rank amateurs and an unfortunate accident. Now they will return to the more sophisticated methods of neofascism (fascism 2.0) and to their objective to establish a new world order under their control (see also a longer, detailed history of past efforts at establishing a capitalist "new world order").

• Internecine and Existential Struggles in a Transformed World by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation.

... much has changed .... The structure of the U.S. economy now is unrecognisably different to the myth of U.S. capitalism: Asset markets have been severed from their true returns, and soar away – unconstrained from any anchor in cash earnings; price discovery, via market interaction, no longer exists; markets are not free, but Treasury managed; enterprise capitalism has morphed into monopolistic oligarchism; innovation and small businesses have been crushed; fewer Americans work for younger companies; inequality is rampant; money printing and debt are no longer limited by any prudent considerations – but rather as an exciting MMT ‘opportunity’ ahead; and interest rates no longer act as the mechanism by which capital is directed to its most effective and productive, use. Big changes, all.

• How the FBI Created Domestic Terrorism: 80 Years of Psychological Warfare Revealed by Matthew Ehret from Strategic Culture Foundation.

... if it is revealed that the thing we call “terrorism”, is something other than a naturally occurring, self-organized phenomenon, but rather something which only exists due to vast support from western political agencies, then a very different conclusion must be arrived at which may be disturbing for some.

• US Targets China over Tibet by Brian Berletic from New Eastern Outlook. 

• The ‘Humanitarian’ Left Still Ignores the Lessons of Iraq, Libya and Syria to Cheer on More War by Jonathan Cook from Transcend Media Service.
  

• US-backed Billionaire Hides Behind Class Warfare Rhetoric by Brian Berletic from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. My reaction: Simply amazing that the supporters of a billionaire family would turn reality on its head! Berletic is convincing in this view regarding Thailand's politics due to his establishment of a record of authentic journalism on other geopolitical subjects.