Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, May 28, 2021

• Good news: Mild COVID-19 induces lasting antibody protection by Tamara Bhandari from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

• Covid-19: Who fact checks health and science on Facebook? by Laurie Clarke from the BMJ (British Medical Journal).
  

• So the Ruling Class Was WRONG WRONG WRONG About Covid-19. What Else Are They Wrong About? by Lance Welton (a pseudonym) from The Unz Review. 

• Alarming Casualty Rates for mRNA Vaccines Warrant Urgent Action F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook. (Note: I thank an activist for sending me this post.)

• 9 New ‘Vaccine Billionaires’ Amass Combined Net Worth of $19.3 Billion During Pandemic by Children's Health Defense Team from their website/weblog.
  

• Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity? by James Bovard from American Institute for Economic Research.
  

• 💥Whitney Webb Interview – Cyber Hacks, White Powders Scares & Vaccine Tracking, It’s All Come To Pass from The Last American Vagabond (1:47:47hr). This is a best post. (Note: I hesitated to post this because of its length, but I thought it important because Webb brings us up-to-date on her personal circumstances, and other observations on important topics based on her extensive research efforts. This interview begins at 0:22m.) My reaction: She does not let Ryan Cristián dominate the interview. This post is especially for independent thinkers who are not programmed what and how to think about various important issues.
  

• The Smarmy Sacrilege of Corporate Divinity Consultants by Adam Vander Tuig from Current Affairs.
  

• Washington is playing a losing game with China by Chas W Freeman Jr, of Brown University from East Asia Forum.

• 💥“Xinjiang in My Eyes”: Debunking the Lies and Anti-China Propaganda Focusing on China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region by Peter Koenig from Global Research. This is a best post.
  

• Sombre truths behind bright green lies by Paul Cudenec from Winter Oak (Acorn), a British website. (Note: This post is essentially a book review in which the author clearly likes the book. In his review Cudenec spots three truths. "But wait, there's more." He argues that there are two more additional truths for a total of five.) My reaction: I have followed articles by top scientists since the 1970s, and, in contrast to this author, I have arrived at the conclusion that it is far too late for the human species and most other species to survive the ravages of capitalism on our very unique planet. But what do I know? I agree with, and follow, retired professor Guy McPherson who as a devoted climate scientist has specialized many years in the independent study of the subject, and has reached similar conclusions which convinced me that my gut-felling was right. That is why a few years ago I changed the title of my weblog/website to "Surviving Capitalism" by adding the word "(not)" to the title. But, in the meantime, I have not abandoned my promotion of real socialism (the economy owned and controlled by all of the people) and my hatred of capitalism. I see this intellectual position, if somehow accomplished, as redemption for the centuries that humans have allowed capitalists to rule.

• Squad Finally Strategized Votes -- To Fund The Police!?!? featuring Jimmy Dore (of The Jimmy Dore Show) using his YouTube channel (16:34m) with Ron Placone to satirize The Squad and their vote to furnish more funds to the police.
  

• Australia Is A Giant US Military Base With Kangaroos by Australian Caitlin Johnstone, with her American husband furnishing an audio narrative, from her weblog. 

• Eisenhower rejected military chiefs’ demand for nuclear war on China, classified account of ’58 Taiwan Strait crisis reveals by Gareth Porter from The Grayzone.

• House Hearing: Only Jamie Dimon’s Microphone Mysteriously Malfunctions During Pivotal Questioning by Pam & Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.
  

• What Will Israel Do to Counter Hezbollah’s Missiles? by Elijah J. Magnier from Internationalist 360°. (Note: Magnier's weblog is behind a paywall.) My reaction: One cannot expect first-rate journalists and political analysts to work for nothing. Unfortunately, many of us have next-to-nothing.

• Syria, Israel, the Resistance bloc and Syrian elections – Vanessa Beeley on Syria Insider. From Beeley's website via YouTube (11:55m). (Note: Syria Insider Weekly is obviously a Syrian radio/TV station and Beeley is a British journalist currently living in Syria.)

• The Company They Keep by Stephen Karganovic from Strategic Culture Foundation.
  

• New climate predictions increase likelihood of temporarily reaching 1.5 °C in next 5 years from the World Meteorological Association.
  

Posts that I especially recommend for Wednesday, May 19, 2021 (very abbreviated post)

• Biden, Reversing Trump, Permits a Key Putin Goal: a New Russian Natural Gas Pipeline to Germany by Glenn Greenwald from his weblog at Substack. My commentary follows: 

I was totally "blown away" by the headline of this article. Although I consider myself as excelling at detecting propaganda, I was so influenced by major and other more independent media to believe their reports about what was purportedly Biden's statements against Putin in his recent meeting (March 10) with Putin. I even had sufficient doubts about Greenwald's article (he didn't provide confirming links). 

 

After two hours of research on the internet, I found some information about the actual meeting between Putin and Biden on March 10 as is stated in Greenwald's article (caption under the lead photo of their meeting), and I did find reports that partially confirmed his main allegation that Biden agreed to withdraw sanctions. Biden withdrew sanctions against some firms, mostly German firms, as reported in these articles: this, this, this, and this. 

 

Other than that I was only able to find future prospective meetings and current propaganda related to Biden's reference in 2014 that he told Putin to his face that he was a "killer" and that he didn't have a "soul". This was recently dredged up by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, the source of which was an interview by The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos in 2014 when Biden was Vice-President, in which he claims to have said these dramatic statements to Putin in the interview with Osnos. Was he telling the truth? There is no corroborating evidence. All the mainstream media played up this 2014 incident following the March 2021 meeting and many independent sources didn't question it.

After my research I again examined Greenwald's article. Too much of his article, in my opinion, makes Obama look like a good-guy. Wasn't the Ukraine coup engineered by the State Department not on his watch? Wasn't the Syrian project to overthrow the Assad government not on his watch?

 

I think I have learned my lesson to not trust any mainstream source for important news. And I think you can only trust thoroughly independent journalists like Glenn Greenwald, even though at times I disagree with him. I urge all of you to subscribe to his newsletter. 

• Gaza Is Better Than Auschwitz by Israel Shamir from The Unz Review. (Note: Yes, I know this article with an ironic title is published by an old-fashioned conservative website representing an old capitalist ruling class that has been replaced by Zionist-conservatives, popularly known as "Neo-cons". The latter have taken direct control of the US and they have been since WWII stealthily building an empire. But, I don't care whose website speaks the truth! That said, I don't necessarily agree with all of his arguments.) 

Only a rabid antisemite would say Gaza is worse than Auschwitz. No, it is better, but only just. And it has gone on longer, year upon year, with no end in sight. 

• The Suffering of the Palestinians Continues and the World Simply Watches by James O'Neil from New Eastern Outlook. My reaction: The suffering will continue because the new imperialist Empire is replacing the Third Reich which had produced so many "good Germans" with the "good Germans" of the 21st century. They are obediently following their new fuehrers in the same ruling class as the Third Reich in the same expansive adventures to rule the world. But this time the fascist-capitalists have a different brand: Made in America!

• Israel's crimes are America's crimes by Bradley Blankenship from CGTN, a major Chinese onsite news publication.
  

• New Zealand Refuses to Accuse China of “Genocide” by Brian Berletic, an ex-Marine living in Thailand, expressing his approval and explanation of New Zealand's rejection of anti-China propaganda in a 4:30m from his weblog Land Destroyer report.
  

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, February 20, 2021

• Coronapocalypse; Big Pharma's Doomsday Vaccine #666 by Mike Whitney from The Unz Review.

• The Twilight Zone: Covid, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Eugenics by Peter Koenig from Global Research. 

• The Pandemic Modellers Have a Conflict of Interest Problem featuring Rosemary Frei on a 5:58m video from Vimeo reporting on the conflicts of interest of key players of coronavirus in Britain.

• Meanwhile, in Australia | Melbourne COVID-skeptics rally results in arrests from Ruptly via RT and YouTube.
  

• Dr. Cornel West Is A Free Man featuring West along with Jimmy Dore from the latter's channel on Rokfin. (Note: Listen to the 10:12m video to find out what the title means, and other insights.)

• Understanding the Dangers of Innovation Zones and Smart Cities by Derrick Broze from The Last American Vagabond. My reaction: You, too, can be smart by living in a smart city. (sarcasm)

• Role of NGOs in Promoting Neo-Colonialism by Syed Ehtisham from CounterCurrents. (Note: Read this to find out about NGOs. They can be used for good or for evil. The US/Anglo/Zionist Empire often uses them for subversion of nations that they do not like. This report offers extensive documentation.)
  

• Schwab Family Values by Johnny Vedmore from Unlimited Hangout.

... the past that Klaus Schwab has worked to hide is explored in detail, revealing the involvement of the Schwab family, not only in the Nazi quest for an atomic bomb, but apartheid South Africa’s illegal nuclear programme. Especially revealing is the history of Klaus’ father, Eugen Schwab, who led the Nazi-supported German branch of a Swiss engineering firm into the war as a prominent military contractor. That company, Escher-Wyss, would use slave labor to produce machinery critical to the Nazi war effort as well as the Nazi’s effort to produce heavy water for its nuclear program. Years later, at the same company, a young Klaus Schwab served on the board of directors when the decision was made to furnish the racist apartheid regime of South Africa with the necessary equipment to further its quest to become a nuclear power.

• They Don’t Work To Kill All Dissent, They Just Keep It From Going Mainstream by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. 

In a society that maintains the illusion of freedom in order to prevent outrage and revolution, it does not serve rulers to stifle all dissent. Just the opposite in fact: their interests are served by having a small number of dissidents hanging around the fringes of society creating the illusion of freedom. If Johnny Hempshirt over there is allowed to stand on a soapbox and criticize the US war machine, then the US must be a free country.

So they don’t work to silence all dissent. What they do is work to make sure that dissent never hits a critical mass and goes mainstream.

My commentary follows:

This grabbed my attention because I don't see my lifetime of telling the truth (as I see it) has done much good. The capitalist ruling class has to maintain the illusion of freedom and "democracy" by keeping dissidents marginalized to the numerical fringes of acceptable debate. That way they can "eat their cake, and have it too", that is, they can preserve their propaganda about freedom and democracy, and at the same time, manage their self-serving rule.

 

I was only once asked, and this was in person, how I had permitted to write such vigorous criticism about the rule of capitalism. I answered that it didn't matter to the ruling class if a few voices criticized the social-political arrangements under their rule because it was permitted only to a few dissidents in order to maintain the illusion of democracy and civil rights. However, I've noticed in the last several years that I don't see any of my posts go viral, but I occasionally did before there was a concerted effort to marginalize dissident voices. I agree with Johnstone--they are only worried about numbers of dissidents.

 

I don't share her optimism that eventually things will change. I'm particularly concerned about the word "eventually"--that is, if we had enough time, we might eliminate the ruling capitalist class. I don't think we human animals have much time left on planet Earth before we also become extinct after our (I hold the capitalist classes primarily responsible) destabilization of the climate really sets in. I think we have devoted too (def #2) much time to ancient religions which erroneously put us in the center of the universe. We have failed to recognize that we are a part of the web of life on planet Earth. In the meantime, I and other dissidents will continue our work to tell the truth about our ruling class and the system which serves them with so much wealth and power.

However, I think we should also accept our ultimate defeat. Our masters in the ruling class (I hold upper-middle-class workers and their self-centered concerns primarily responsible) have been much too clever with their control of information. Unfortunately, we human animals can't seem to overcome the weakness of our species' Achilles heel, that is, the devotion to ourselves and our families; and instead with a class consciousness, a dedication to overcoming our subservience to a ruling class. Perhaps Margaret Thatcher was right when she said "there was no such thing as society, there were only individuals and their families".

• Congress Escalates Pressure on Tech Giants to Censor More, Threatening the First Amendment by Glenn Greenwald from his weblog on Substack. 

• Facebook: Genocide is Cool but Don’t Threaten our Profits by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News (based in Minneapolis). (Note: You may also be interested in a post from Off-Guardian regarding Facebook's operations in Australia.) My reaction: The title could be improved by stating after "Facebook" the phrase "Genocide is Cool When It Doesn't Threaten Our Profits". 

• The Nature of Money by M.K. Anderson from Current Affairs. My reaction: The author is an accountant and his closing comments reflect his views on the use of money in our existing capitalist societies:

... it’s a tool used to describe workers with the goal of extracting wealth and labor from them. It is an incredibly poor tool for holding the wealthy accountable, and so we will have to come up with other methods.

• Talking with Jack Rasmus about Well Street and Us featuring host of the program, Michael Albert of RevolutionZ interviewing Rasmus about the stock market in a 52-minute podcast.
  

• NATO announces huge expansion of ops in Iraq, after Trump wind-down from RT via YouTube. (Note: This 2:09m video features Scott Ritter who offers a commentary on this NATO announcement. Also, see how Bernhard, a German independent blogger, reports on this news.) My reaction: I'll bet this news won't be reported in corporate media.
  

• The Greater Danger of Israeli Provocations in Syria by Brian Berletic from his weblog Land Destroyer Report.
  

• Biden's policy of containing China, Russia and Iran is no longer viable by Marco Carnelos from Middle East Eye (based in London). My reaction: I think this policy of containment could also lead to a nuclear war.

• How Democratic is China? by Godfree Roberts from his weblog Here Comes China!
  

• UN Report: Action Needed Now to Solve Triple Emergency from Climate & Capitalism. (Note: This is an example of a report that will never be published in mainstream media.) 
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, January 20, 2021

• Same Networks that Sold Us War Promote Pfizer’s Vaccines featuring Brian Berletic in a 9:28m video (via YouTube) from his weblog Land Destroyer Report.

• Italian Doctors Sanctioned for Raising Questions About COVID Vaccine by Michael Day from Anti-Empire. 

• Two Years to Stop the Spread: Australia to Shut Borders Until 2022 Despite Vaccine by Michael Day from The BMJ.

• The New Domestic War on Terror is Coming by Glenn Greenwald from Substack. 

• 15a) War Propaganda 2: The Cult of Militarism by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room. My commentary follows: 
  
  I detected two biases in this otherwise excellent article: the understandable bias of George Orwell and the bias of Rod Driver whose immersion in capitalist propaganda explains his bias. I'll not get into all the propaganda uses of the word "communism", but it is a word that is diametrically opposed to capitalism, and this explains why communism is always and everywhere trashed in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.
  
  You have to know about the history of the Soviet Union to understand how this word is used to defame communism. You have to know about the visceral hatred and actual deeds that capitalist ideologues have toward, and against, any system that opposes the private ownership and control of the economy. But you will have a hard time to access information about either subject in any location where the Empire exists--such is the power of capitalist ruling classes to censor and propagandize any subject.
  
  Understanding Orwell's attitude toward the Soviet Union is derived from his experience fighting for the newly elected government in Spain during the 1930s. This experience added to an understanding of the history of the Soviet Union illuminates Orwell's attitude toward what he saw as "communism", but in reality was central planning of the economy by a privileged bureaucratic class as represented by Stalinist rule. To create this understanding, read my commentary of a year ago in which I criticized Rainer Shea's article and explained why the Soviet Union withdrew forces from the Spanish Civil War. I would add the factual history that the Soviets were severely degraded by the constant invasions from many capitalist countries, mainly by the British Empire that aspired to rule the world and which had a visceral antagonism against any form of socialism, or public ownership and control of the economy.
   
• I’m Blocked From Uploading to GooTube (and Other News) by James Corbett from his weblog The Corbett Report.  
  

• A Soviet Dissident Explains American Censorship by Barry Brownstein from American Institute for Economic Research.  
  

• Biden Lifts Health Care Plan From Insurance Lobbyists by Andrew Perez and Julia Rock from The Daily Poster. 
  

• Here Are 18 Ways Trump Supported The Swamp During His Presidency by Derrick Broze from The Last American Vagabond.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, Sept. 13, 2020

• The Melbourne Syndrome by Steve Kates from American Institute for Economic Research. 

• America's Metastasizing Class Wars by Charles Hugh Smith from his weblog Of Two Minds.
  

• America’s Current Jobs ‘Great Depression’ by Jack Rasmus from his weblog.
  

• Why The ‘Journalists’ Don’t Like Julian by Jeremy Salt from American Herald Tribune. My commentary follows:

The essay barely skims the surface of what is wrong about journalism as practiced in mostly capitalist countries. The author's very treatment of this subject betrays his bias toward capitalism and the capitalist ruling class. His views are summed up in two sentences near the end of the essay: 

... journalists have power, the power and the money of the institution behind them. Assange has no institution behind him. Indeed, the institutions are all against him. A media which used him up has abandoned him.  

This begs the question of what kind of basic "institution [is] behind them" (the critics of Assange, that is, most journalists)? The fundamental institution behind most journalists is capitalism and the morality of capitalism that Margaret Thatcher, a total sociopath, revealed to the embarrassment of her masters in the ruling class:   

...there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

Constrast this moral code with that of Caitlin Johnstone.

Upper-middle-class people who serve the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire are rewarded for on-the-job behaviors that supports the moral code illustrated by brainwashed Thatcher, but are unemployed if they behave according to Johnstone's moral code. Unfortunately, most journalists conform to their boss's expectations which conform to the ruling class's moral code because they need to protect their well-paid careers to support their families. Thus, all institutions (education, media, and entertained) controlled by capitalists insure their rule by indoctrinating their working classes according to capitalist morality.

• Contrived Spectacles of “Protecting and Caring for the People” by Thomas Harrington from Off-Guardian.

• COVID-911: From Homeland Security to Biosecurity by James Corbett from his weblog The Corbett Report.

• WATCH: 9 Demolitions and 1 Fire from Off-Guardian.
  

• 9/11 Two Decades On… A Legacy of Horrors and Imperial Defeat by the editor from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• 19 Years Later, Questions Still Hang Over the 9/11 Attacks by Derrick Broze from The Last American Vagabond.  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, January 4, 2020

With the killing of a high ranking Iran official while visiting Iraq is a signal that the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire is now baring its fascist claws for all to see. Only diehard and thoroughly indoctrinated Americans and their sycophants across the world will be blind from seeing what the last capitalist empire is made of. No, not democracy or the rule of law, but the fascist style of mafia gangsters that capitalists have become. It appears that our capitalist masters have decided to use violence against their resisting enemies to prolong their rule and have abandoned their quest to overcome the more powerful environmental threats of nature. They know something that most of us do not: they cannot defeat nature. But it's a pity that we will go down with them.

These are today's posts mostly about our descent into the gangster world:

• US starts the Raging Twenties declaring war on Iran by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times.

• The murder of Qassem Soleimani and assassination as state policy by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

• OPCW leaks expose ‘criminal’ Syria cover-up — and US media is silent by Aaron Maté from The Grayzone. 

• Ruling class bereft of answers while catastrophic fires escalate across Australia by James Cogan from World Socialist Web Site.

• Few countries on track to meet Paris climate goals by Sarah Kennedy from Yale Climate Connections.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, January 1, 2020

• Full-Spectrum Fubar by Paul Edwards from CounterPunch.

• These Charts Show Why the Fed Is Still in a Panic Over the Repo Loan Market by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• Putin Reminds the West: Those Who Ignore History Are Doomed to Repeat it by Matthew Ehret from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Note: Putin's understanding of history is absolutely correct.)

• The Left is Dying Because it’s Turned Into a Bonfire of Vanities by Australian Umair Haque from Eudaimonics. (Note: I think Patrice Greanville, editor, is absolutely correct in his note prefacing the re-posted article in The Greanville Post.)

• Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’ from Defend Democracy Press. 

• Allseas will not resume work on Nord Stream II project. Germany miffed, but will do nothing. Gazprom subsidiary will finish it. A translated re-post originally from Deutsche Welle, a mainstream German publication, on Fort Russ News.

Examples of what I think are "grasping at straws" in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire:

• Bank of England unveils climate stress test by Kieran Cooke from Climate News Network. 

• The super-cool materials that send heat to space by XiaoZhi Lim from Nature.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, December 31, 2019

• What we're told about ISIS is a lie (full show) reported by Michele Greenstein on the Rick Sanchez program from RT. Although guest-speakers on this program engage in rapid-fire delivery of their comments, Greenstein focuses on the Deep State and its propaganda organs, and as such I view the first 20:10 minutes as essential viewing.

• US Embassy in Iraq evacuated amid angry protests over airstrike on PMU from PressTV (Iran).

• As Honduras Collapses, Its People are Forced to Flee by Laura Carlsen from CounterPunch.

• Congress Just Passed Nightmare Legislation that Strips Trillions in Wealth from the Middle Class by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. 

• Bolivian Vassals Are Merely Aping Their Imperial Masters by Stephen Karganovic from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• Police in Hong Kong Brutalized by Rioters While Attacked by the Western Press by Andre Vltchek from Dissident Voice. 

• ‘I’m slowly dying here’: ‘Sedated’ Assange tells friend during Christmas Eve call from UK prison as health concerns mount from RT.

• Fires create hellish conditions across Australia by Mike Head from World Socialist Web Site.

Articles recommended for Monday, August 19, 2019

• Condescension and Climate Change: Australia and the Failure of the Pacific Islands Forum by Binoy Kampmark from Dissident Voice.

• Extreme Heat: How it Kills and Who from Radio Ecoshock posted on Titanic Lifeboat Academy.

• Video: ‘Hands – The True Story of a Mother & Her Son’ posted and remarks by Benny Wills on 21st Century Wire.

• Economics and ideology by Lars Syll from Real-World Economics Review Blog.

• All along the watchtower: The follies of history by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times.

• The Ultimate Conspiracy Revealed by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

• Hong Kong in the Crosshairs of Global Power and Ideological Struggles by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers from Popular Resistance.

The global war on journalism

Click here to access article by Mike Head from World Socialist Web Site. 

By targeting journalists, as well as the individuals leaking the damning information, the Australian government is directly following the lead of the Trump administration’s charging of Assange, a journalist and publisher, with 17 counts under the US Espionage Act, for which he faces life imprisonment and possibly the death penalty.

The Prisoner Says No to Big Brother

Click here to access article by John Pilger from his blog.

Pilger reports on a recent visit with Julian Assange in which the parallels between Julian Assange and George Orwell's characters and themes are striking.  He uses Assange's courageous example to inspire all of us to:

... stop scrolling. Organise. Occupy. Insist. Persist. Make a noise. Take direct action. Be brave and stay brave. Defy the thought police.

War is not peace, freedom is not slavery, ignorance is not strength. If Julian can stand up to Big Brother, so can you: so can all of us.

A Call to Bring Julian Assange Home

Click here to access article by John Pilger from ConsortiumNews.

The Australian government has an obligation to free Julian Assange, John Pilger told a rally in Sydney on June 16 [their time, but our time on Sunday, the 17th], marking Assange’s six years’ confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

 Also, for a description of this event, read this piece from World Socialist Web Site.

A three-track strategy for climate mitigation

Click here to access article by Graeme Taylor from Climate Code Red (Australia). (This a shortened version of a scholarly, full-referenced article. Dr. Taylor is an adjunct professor associated with Griffith University, Nathan, Australia.)

This is posted on a leading worldwide environmental website that is based in Australia. The post illustrates how some environmentalists, preoccupied by climate destabilization as a threat to humans, recognize that capitalism is driving us to extinction, but refuse to name the system.

Thus the author recognizes the scale of the concern with passages like this;

There is an enormous (and currently unbridgeable) lag between the pace of political, economic and technological change and the rapid (non-negotiable) rate of climate change.

To ensure safe outcomes the global economy will have to be rapidly restructured. This will require a massive response similar in scale and urgency to the Allied effort in World War II. However, at this time strong international action is a distant dream.

Most experts assume that even under the most optimistic scenarios aggregate emissions will increase until mid-century, pushing global temperatures far past international goals. The hope is that this overshoot will be corrected over time with as yet undeveloped technologies for carbon capture and storage.

I think they do this out of fear for their careers especially private industry and government, with this caution maybe less so compelling in academia. Although you will find numerous circumlocutions like consumerism and "political and economic frameworks", you will not find a single reference to capitalism. This in itself is a manifestation of the power of capitalists to control discourse on a subject which casts even doubts about the system, much less that it must be removed and replaced with a sustainable system to prevent cataclysmic climate destabilization.

A Tale of Two Cities: Aleppo and Mosul

Click here to access article by James O’Neill, an Australian-based Barrister at Law from New Eastern Outlook.

After comparing the Empire's corporate media coverage of the two battle-scarred cities, he asks the obvious questions and reaches obvious conclusions.

Why does the western media not ask the obvious questions, such as how is it possible for these disparate terrorist groups to go on fighting for years, with limitless access to modern armaments? Or why are wounded terrorist fighters treated in Israeli and Turkish military hospitals and allowed to return to the fighting?

They avoid these questions for the reasons given above. It would expose the real reasons for US and their allies’ military intervention in the Middle East and their support for terrorist groups as an instrument of foreign policy. Promoting sectarian warfare is an essential component of that policy.

Those policies are unlikely to ever change as long as the media continues its role as essentially a propaganda outlet for unbalanced depictions of what is actually happening in the Syrian and Iraqi war zones. Aleppo and Mosul are but two illustrations of a wider process.

In another article posted in New Eastern Outlook, Tony Cartalucci provides more fuel to the increasing alternative media fire that exposes these phony terrorist army themes that the Empire's media are full of.

Record-busting heat in eastern Australia as climate warming goes extreme

Click here to access article from Climate Code Red (Australia).

2016 was by far the hottest year in the observation record, with the global average surface temperature 1.24 degrees Celsius (°C) warmer that the late nineteenth century, according to NASA data. This broke the record set just the previous year of 1.12°C, which in turn broke the previous mark set in 2014 of 1.01°C.

 ....

And now Ben Domensino of Weatherzone reports that the month of February is about to put eastern Australia's record-breaking hot January to shame....

Afghanistan: What has Fifteen Years of Occupation Achieved

Click here to access article by James ONeill from New Eastern Outlook.


In spite of the article's glaring weakness, the author, who is an Australian attorney, provides an excellent summary of the results of NATO's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, and compares the realities of this conflict with the myths propagated by mainstream media. The glaring weakness: he doesn't provide a single link to any evidence that support a number of his factual allegations. I am posting this for those of you who have been following accurate alternative sources of information for at least since the 9/11 event and know from this experience that most, if not all, of his allegations are correct. 

Still, I would have been elated to find supporting links about the US use of their military bases to transfer opium to markets in the US, Europe, and elsewhere. I think that this is very likely correct because of the security and secrecy that such transfers would provide. I do know that the CIA was using their airline Air America to import illicit drugs into the US during the Vietnam War. And there is no doubt that the US has currently been experiencing an epidemic of heroin addiction in the US as widely reported in mainstream media, but the latter never ask questions about how opium is imported into the US.

The rape of East Timor: “Sounds like fun”

Click here to access article and 51:05m video by John Pilger from OffGuardian. (Note: I didn't have time to view the video for this commentary.)

Here is a summary of the history of the Empire's early and worst crimes against humanity. Only war criminals resort to such crimes as this. At the time when these crimes were happening, I was only able to receive brief reports. This is an illustration of a censorship problem over news that the Empire doesn't want people to know. It is only many years later that we learn about the details, and then nobody seems to care enough. 

This is happening today with human rights criminals that are in control of the Empire, and we will have to wait many years to find out the whole story. Thanks to the web, we can learn about these events much earlier, but such reports will always be relegated to obscure websites that few people will access. It is our duty as activists to learn about these websites and the independent journalists and observers who often risk their lives and welfare to bring us reports. One such very credible journalist is Australian John Pilger who with the aid of more leaked documents brings us up-to-date with this summary history about this monstrous crime perpetrated many years ago by our capitalist masters.

Secret documents found in the Australian National Archives provide a glimpse of how one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century was executed and covered up. They also help us understand how and for whom the world is run.

The documents refer to East Timor, now known as Timor-Leste, and were written by diplomats in the Australian embassy in Jakarta. The date was November 1976....

Snowden and Allies Issue Warnings as Australia Unleashes Mass Spying

Click here to access article by Nadia Prupis from Common Dreams. 

Looks like much of the advice could apply to us in the US.

Think Tank Memories

Click here to access the transcript and 37:35m audio recording of an Australian podcast featuring an interview with economist Michael Hudson.

In this free-flowing conversational style interview, I found Hudson at his best by being both very informative and entertaining. After explaining how think tanks function to promote self-serving policies while selling these policies to the public in the language of public relations, he frequently cracked me up with his sardonic humor expressed in anecdotes about the various shenanigans played by banksters and assorted (or sordid) capitalists. The interview sometimes reminded of a comedy routine featuring a comic and a straight guy. Although I only read the transcript, listening to the interview might be even more entertaining.

14 things we learned – and the Abbott government didn’t

Click here to access article by Giles Parkinson from RenewEconomy (Australia). (Note: the term "furphy" in the article is Australian slang for "rumor".)

Climate change is real, and it [is] man-made, Australia’s policies are a joke, renewable energy investment is leaving Australia, wind and solar do not add costs to the grid, they don’t need new back-up, and they have been reducing prices. And the world is changing while Australia stands still.

I doubt that there is any place on earth where people are experiencing worse extreme weather events as they are in Australia. I am reminded of this every year when I watch tennis players competing in temperatures over 100 degrees at the Australian Open in January. Tournament tennis officials were forced to put a roof on top of some of their stadiums to handle this, but I think they will soon need air conditioning if they want to continue to hold the Australian Open.

This piece reports on all the deceptions and games the Australian capitalist government plays to continue with business as usual. Also, as an antidote to this discouraging news, the author has placed at the end of the article a parody of their ruling establishment performed by two outstanding Australian comedians (Clarke and Dawe).