Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, March 19, 2021

• The Chicken Little act isn't working – COVID Mania is wearing off by Jordan Schachtel from his weblog The Dossier.
  

• Biohazards News Tracker: Best articles on SARS-CoV-2 origins, biolabs and gain of function research by Sainath Suryanarayanan from U.S. Right to Know.
  

• World Wide Rally For Freedom featuring James Corbett and James Evan Pilato in a 28:34m video first commenting on media corporation's reporting on the upcoming worldwide protests of the pandemic restrictions. After about 18 minutes they talk about censorship issues.
  

• Columbia University Caught Lying For Biden Over Stimulus Bill featuring Jimmy Dore using his channel at Rokfin in a 12:26m video to expose a current example of Columbia University's participation in the ruling class's management of consent/dissent. 

• 💥VIDEO: With Katie Herzog on the Expansion of LGBTQ Identity and How it is Wielded in Political Discourse featuring Glenn Greenwald and Herzog, from Greenwald's weblog on Substack. This is a best post. (Note: I received this post from Greenwald shortly before I finished work on yesterday's post, and wanted to thoroughly read and understand it--which I subsequently did.) My commentary follows:
  

The ruling capitalist class has used the social identity trick for many years to elect first Barack Obama and then in their attempt to elect Hillary Clinton. Now they have expanded their scope of operations to other social identity groups and smear anyone who challenges them (in addition to anyone who questions their pandemic policies). They do this in order to divide us into hating each other, to distract us from forming other ideas that might be influenced by class politics, and to divert our attention away from real issues of inequality under a capitalist system. 

 

I think they expanded their psychology operation to extend to other identity groups after they failed to elect Hillary Clinton to the presidency. But they saw it as useful because it greatly influenced the upper-middle-class of college-educated professionals which is their core constituency. They drew on their highly trained advertising and public relations experts to study how to "sell" ruling class policies to the rest of the American society. I think Eric London was right when he wrote the following:

 

Identity politics has become a key mechanism through which the next 9 percent situated below the top 1 percent advances its grievances within the political establishment, fighting for “space” in the universities, trade unions, political parties, state apparatus, and corporate media. This layer, which forms a principal social base for the Democratic Party, is generally pro-war and supportive of the right-wing policies that have produced a soaring stock market. 

 

Comics like Jimmy Dore exposed their feminist trick, and radical film reviewers like Michael Walsh did likewise in his review of Hollywood film. Satirists like CJ Hopkins cited in 2018 the advantages that this project of social identity had for our masters in the ruling class. He argued that its appeal extended to other groups and all classes of society. But our masters didn't quit--they had finally found the magic key to the manipulation of the general population. 

 

Over the years the public opinion shapers improved on his project by using it against major dissidents to control and limit their influence on the general population. They discovered last year the benefits of declaring a pandemic: it enabled them to add censorship to their project by using "fact- checkers" to prohibit the use of privately owned social platforms by disobedient dissidents in order to limit their influence. Now they have turned their new weapon on the likes of Glenn Greenwald and Katie Herzog whose writings challenged their newfound weapon. This could not be tolerated. The two in this post, besides commiserating with each other, explain the victimization as a phenomenon of recent converts to prior forbidden social identities as the source of the attacks on them. However, unlike Walsh and Hopkins, the two do not explicitly link this recent persecution to a ruling class that doesn't like their brand of independent journalism.

• New Cold War is Built on Humanitarian Interventionist Lies and Dismissal of Actual War Crimes by Danny Haiphong from Black Agenda Report.
  

• The Puppet Masters: Is There Really a Deep State? by Philip Geraldi from Strategic Culture Foundation (based in Russia, but independent and international). My reaction: For a long time I have suspected Geraldi to be an agent of one of the Empire's many secret services, and now I am sure. You see, they have heavily infiltrated many news agencies located in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire in order to shape public opinion according to the orders of the Deep State. For the past several years Geraldi has posed as a supporter of Palestinian rights and in opposition to Israeli policies to the extent that one could label him with an anti-Semitic bias. However, now that he is firmly established in various publications and has collected an audience of mostly left-wingers, his bosses in the Deep State ordered him to obscure the CIA, the foremost US secret service, and gaslight the Deep State, the hidden, real government of the USA. In this article he poo-poos the concept of a Deep State, reverses the role they play in relation to their secret services, and he conflates the term "Deep State" with "establishment". Contrary to his assertion, the concept of "deep state" was not coined by a Turkish author, but by Peter Dale Scott. You see, for more than 50 years, I have observed and read about the subversive actions of the CIA, the hidden government represented by the Deep State, and I've developed an advanced "nose" for detecting such fake opinion-shapers. In this case, the stench is overwhelming.

• Vanessa Beeley Interview – Inside The West’s Illegal Yemen Occupation & CIA Caught Rescuing al-Qaeda featuring a 1:08:11 video posted on The Last American Vagabond in which Ryan Cristián interviewing Beeley regarding her meeting with the Yemeni's ambassador to Syria where she presently lives.
  

• The Anti-Semitic Birth of the Zionist State: A History of Israel’s Self-Hating Founders by Miko Peled from Mint Press News.
  

• Myanmar: Hidden Opposition Violence by Brian Berletic from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. My reaction: I have covered Berletic's reports, when he was known as "Tony Cartalucci", for many years, and I've always found them to be reliable. In this post he takes a report from a Western news agency and shows by reading line by line how it is scripting reports from other "color revolutions", whose activists are funded via Western NGOs, to hide what is really going on--starting a revolution in Myanmar.

• Overshoot or Omnicide? by Sam Carana from his weblog Arctic News. 

Posts that I especially recommend for Friday, March 5, 2021

• 💥GMO Soy, Popular Resistance, and Corporate Power, essentially a book review by Brian Tokar from Climate & Capitalism. This is a best post. (Note: It appears from reading this article that technically knowledgeable, ordinary people must learn about the genetic engineering methods to design seeds, foods, and even us humans in order to enhance corporate profits. Thus far, evidence suggests that corporations have obscured the introduction of these methods to hide their obsessive drive for ever greater profits despite their effects, potential and actual, on our health and well-being.)

• 💥Dr. Andrew Kaufman Interview – Virus Isolation, Terrain Theory & COVID-19 features Ryan Cristián conducting a 1:37:34 interview with Dr. Andrew Kaufman, a microbiologist, regarding the isolation of SARS-CoV-2 and other related subjects regard the Covid-19 pandemic. I have not the technical training to digest all of Kaufman's comments, but he sure seems credible to me. I was so impressed that I am giving it the highest rating--a best post.
  

• All Of Humanity’s Problems Are Caused By A Lack Of Awareness by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. 

• Full-Spectrum Extinction by Paul Atwood from CounterPunch. My commentary follows:

I wish he had provided links to supporting documents for the arguments he made. He acknowledges that "his undergrads" have been taught false history lessons regarding WWII. Why, after a lifetime of indoctrination in false history, should the American people and "his undergrads" believe his undocumented history of WWII? Or, his later argument that (unspecified) people who lead the USA want full spectrum dominance of the world much like Nazi Germany and Japan. He seems to grant legitimacy to dominance in the early paragraphs, but then in the last paragraphs he seems to imply that such policies and motives threaten the extinction of humans. Which is it? I think this is a lame essay because of these faults and weaknesses. For these reasons, I question the motives that led him to write the article and the motives for CounterPunch to publish it online.

 

The above criticisms apply to nearly all of the articles published by CounterPunch. Perhaps Jimmy Dore's satirical arguments about the evasiveness of Democratic Party members of Congress describe the writers that CounterPunch chooses to publish. I haven't seen them posting articles that challenge the policies of Dr. Fauci and the actions of Bill Gates.  Perhaps they, too, as well as CounterPunch, only pretend to care about the issues of inequality and imperialist US policies that the rest of their writers of CounterPunch so incessantly address. Perhaps they, too, are in on the game of promoting themselves while pretending to care about important issues.

• U.S., EU Sanctions on Russia a Reckless Triumph of Absurdity from Strategic Culture Foundation (based in Russia, but international in scope).
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, February 19, 2021

• March 1st Reopen America by Bold Business Owners For Liberty (3:43) featuring a small business owner in Florida calling for the complete opening of US businesses on March 1st free of any Covid-19 restrictions.

• Catastrophe Capitalism Has Gone Intergalactic featuring Lee Camp in discussion with Andrews Lee, a correspondent on a privately owned "lunar colony" in 2062! (Note: This is satire about our future.)
  

• Politico’s Defense News, Brought to You by Northrop Grumman by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News. My reaction: The point is obvious, but that applies for capitalist funding of media in general.
  

How can media be relied upon to report honestly on these industries or hold them to account if that media is being directly funded by them? Should we really expect journalists to be breaking stories about pharmaceutical price gouging, the enormous power of Silicon Valley, or the devastation caused by fossil-fuel company pollution if those companies are essentially paying their wages?

Advertising works, not only on consumers, but on outlets as well.

• Russia holds the key to German sovereignty by Pepe Escobar from "The Saker" weblog.
  

• Emails Reveal US Officials Joined With Agrochemical Giant Bayer to Stop Mexico's Glyphosate Ban by Kenny Stancil from Common Dreams.
  

• Global Ice Melt: Much Faster Than Predicted by Evan Lim from State of the Planet.

• Millions will die if world fails on climate promises by Tim Radford from Climate News Network. My reaction: As long the international class of capitalists drive policies, we will not see them keep climate promises. Furthermore, the nations (especially their governments) that they reside in will not suffer any significant consequences for their failures, but the people who reside in them definitely will.
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, December 8, 2020

• ‘Buy It or Else’: Inside Monsanto and BASF’s Strategy to Force Farmers to Buy GMO Seeds and Pesticides by Johnathan Hettinger from Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. 

• Palantir’s Tiberius, Race, and the Public Health Panopticon [part 2 of 3] by Jeremy Loffredo and Whitney Webb from Unlimited Hangout. This is a best post.

Part 1 of this series on Operation Warp Speed and Race, “The Johns Hopkins, CDC Plan to Mask Medical Experimentation on Minorities as ‘Racial Justice,’” explored Warp Speed’s vaccine allocation plan in depth. That plan utilizes a phased approach aimed at “populations of focus” that had been identified in advance by various government organizations, including the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

The main focus of this allocation strategy is to deliver vaccines first to racial minorities and in such a way as to make them feel “at ease” and not like “guinea pigs.” This is particularly glaring given that these minorities will be receiving an experimental vaccine that allocation-strategy documents admit is likely to cause “certain adverse effects . . . more frequently in certain population subgroups,” with research showing that those “subgroups” most at risk of experiencing adverse effects are these same racial minorities.

• Florida Department of Health Quietly Requires Labs to Report Cycle Threshold of Troubled PCR Test by Derrick Broze from The Last American Vagabond.

The fact that the Florida Department of Health is taking this step is a sign that an increasing number of health professionals and regulators are questioning the accuracy of the PCR test. The PCR is the most common lab test being used to detect COVID-19. This incredibly sensitive technique was developed by Berkeley scientist Kary Mullis, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993. The test is designed to detect the presence of a virus by amplifying the virus’ genetic material so it can be detected by scientists. The test is viewed as the gold standard, however, it is not without problems.

• US Media, Pols Rage After Venezuelans Defy US Empire to Re-elect Socialists by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News.   

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monnday, June 29, 2020

• The pandemic risk of an accidental lab leak of enhanced flu virus: unacceptably high by Lynn C. Klotz from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

• How a False Hydroxychloroquine Narrative Was Created. “Dangerous” When Used for Covid-19 by Dr. Meryl Nass from Global Research.

• The New (Pathologized) Totalitarianism by C. J. Hopkins from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc.

• Only Idiots Believe The CIA, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• Fed Launches Corporate Bond Buying Program, Gobbling Up Fossil Fuels and Tobacco Bonds by Pam and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade.

• While the World Burns, the Road Map to War with Iran Continues by Timothy Alexander Guzman from Global Research. 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, May 2, 2020

• May Day 2020 from SubMedia, a section of Vimeo, presents a 2:20m commemoration of this year's May Day. 

• May 1st, 2020 - 1.6 billion workers face potential unemployment globally from RT (via YouTube). 

Caleb Maupin is a widely acclaimed speaker, writer, journalist, and political analyst. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East and in Latin America. He was involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement from its early planning stages, and has been involved many struggles for social justice. He is an outspoken advocate of international friendship and cooperation, as well 21st Century Socialism.

• COVID-19: Questionable Coronavirus Evolution in Biosafety Level 4 Labs by Dady Chery from News Junkie Post.

• Nobel Prize-Winning Scientist Who Discovered HIV Says Coronavirus Was Created In Laboratory by Paul Anthony Taylor from Dr. Wrath Health Foundation.

• Gun-toting protesters in US occupy streets amid virus chaos from PressTV (Iran). (My reaction: I can sympathize with the protestors who oppose the elimination of their jobs. But they need to raise their political consciousness to see that the present stage of capitalism is responsible for this dilemma, and work for efforts to establish a real socialist economy, an economy under their control and serves their interests.)

• Funeral Directors in COVID-19 Epicenter Doubt Legitimacy of Deaths Attributed to Pandemic, Fear Numbers are 'Padded' by James O'Keefe from his website Project Veritas. 

• Edge of Extinction: The Trifecta of Overheating by Guy McPherson from his weblog Nature Bats Last (via YouTube). 

• Michael Moore's 'Planet of the Humans' documentary peddles dangerous climate denial by Dana Nuccitelli from Yale Climate Connections.

• Criminal Big-Pharma Put in Charge of Covid-19 "Vaccine" by Tony Cartalucci from his weblog Land Destroyer Report.

• Biden Is Everything The Democrats Are: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

My commentary: Johnstone argues that the ultimate use of capitalism, the generator of wealth for the "owners" of productive enterprises, is secondary to power that they wish to impose over the populations that capitalist ruling class control. This is in contrast to what I have argued many times in the past that profit and power are essentially two sides of the same coin. Reading her arguments, I am reconsidering my position. She offers examples where profit is trumped by power/control, which is the essence of fascism--the end stage of capitalism.

• The Truth Behind “Refrigerated Morgue Truck” Stories — Or How to Manufacture Mass Hysteria by Burying the Details by C. J. Hopkins from Anti-Empire.

• "Conclusion" from "The Breaking Of The Corporate Media Monopoly" by David Edwards, a co-editor, from Media Lens. (Note: Because this is from a British website and presents arguments from British media and society, I am reproducing below the last segment ("Conclusion") from this 2017 article which I think is most critically important for American workers to read. The full post is here.)

Conclusion – The Corporate Media Monopoly Is Broken

One week before the election, the Guardian reported that ‘a new force is shaping the general election debate’:

‘Alternative news sites are run from laptops and bedrooms miles from the much-derided “Westminster bubble” and have emerged as one of the most potent forces in election news sharing, according to research conducted for the Guardian by the web analytics company Kaleida.’

These alternative articles were ‘being shared more widely online than the views of mainstream newspaper commentators’. Remarkably, ‘Nothing from the BBC, the Guardian or the Daily Mail comes close’ to the most-shared alternative media pieces. The Canary reported that it had doubled the number of visitors to its site to six million in May. A story by Evolve Politics, run by just two people, was shared 55,000 times on Facebook and was read at least 200,000 times. These websites ‘explicitly offer a counter-narrative to what they deride as the “MSM” or mainstream media’.

Indeed, the evidence is now simply overwhelming – the 100-year big business monopoly of the mass media has been broken.

It is obvious that the right-wing press – the Daily Mail, the Sun, The Times and Telegraph – play a toxic role in manipulating the public to favour elite interests. But many people are now realising that the liberal press is actually the most potent opponent of progressive change. Journalist Matt Kennard commented:

‘The Guardian didn’t get it “wrong”. It is the mouthpiece of a liberal elite that is financially endangered by a socialist program.’

In truth, the Guardian sought to destroy Corbyn long before he became Labour leader (see here and here). This means that it did not target him because he was an ineffective leader imperilling Labour. And this hostility was no aberration, not a well-intentioned mistake that they got ‘wrong’. To this day, the Guardian remains Blair’s great cheerleader, despite his awesome crimes, just as it was Hillary Clinton and Obama’s cheerleader, and just as it was Bill Clinton’s before them.

While employing a handful of compromised fig leaves, the Guardian has ruthlessly smeared anyone who has sought to challenge the status quo: Julian Assange, Russell Brand, Hugo Chavez, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, John Pilger, George Galloway and many others. It has also been complicit in the great war crimes of Iraq, Libya and Syria – accepting fake government justifications for war at face value, ignoring expert sources who made a nonsense of the claims, and propagandising hard for the West’s supposed ‘responsibility to protect’ the nations it so obviously seeks to destabilise and exploit.

In our view, the corporate journalists who should be treated with most caution are precisely those celebrated as ‘dissidents’. Corporate media give Owen Jones, George Monbiot, Paul Mason and others immense outreach to draw 100,000s of progressives back to a filtered, corporate version of the world that favours established power and stifles progressive change. Above all, as Jonathan Cook says, the unwritten rule is that they will not speak out on the inherent structural corruption of a corporate media system reporting on a world dominated by corporations.

This is crucial, because, as last week confirms, and as we have been arguing for 16 years, if change begins anywhere, it begins with the public challenging, exposing and rejecting, not just the right-wing press, but the corporate media as a whole, the ‘liberal-left’ very much included.

In the last month, we witnessed astonishing numbers of people challenging all media, all the time on every bias – we have never seen anything like it. The young, in particular, are learning that they do not need highly-paid, privileged corporate employees to tell them what to think.

We don’t need to tolerate a corporate-filtered view of the world. We can inform ourselves and each other, and we can do so with very much more honesty, courage and compassion than any corporate journalist. If there is one message from last week, it’s a simple one – dump the corporate media; all of it.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, February 7, 2020

• The Psychology of Existential Risk: Moral Judgments about Human Extinction by Stefan Schubert from Practical Ethics (Oxford University). (Note: He addresses the subject of nuclear war, but, of course, much of this applies to the climate crisis.)

• Corporations as private sovereign powers: the case of Total by Alain Deneault from CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt). (Note: The author focuses on the "French" energy corporation as an example of a transnational corporation.) He concludes his essay with this statement about his examination of the example of a transnational corporation, Total:

We need to treat Total not just as a large energy corporation, but rather as a private, multi- and transnational, private, sovereign power that serves the interests [profits] of a highly diversified shareholder base and intervenes [power] in innumerable political, cultural, social, financial, industrial and academic issues. [my insertions]

• World Conquest: The United States’ Global Military Crusade (1945- ) by Eric Waddell from Global Research (based in Canada).

• Biological Weapons: A Useful and Timely Factual Overview (Part I) by Larry Romanoff from Global Research. 

• Bats, Gene Editing and Bioweapons: Recent DARPA Experiments Raise Concerns Amid Coronavirus Outbreak by Whitney Webb from The Last American Vagabond. 

• Election Politics: From Chaos to an Emerging Political Consciousness? by Renee Parsons from Global Research. 

• Liberté, égalité… créativité? RT looks at France’s most inventive forms of protest (videos) from RT. 

• German TV Exposes the Lies That Entrapped Julian Assange by Ray McGovern from Consortium News. 

• The Syrian Russian Turksih Idlib Stand-Of – Erdogan’s Last Stand? by Ghassan Kadi from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. 

Articles I especially recommend for today: Wednesday, September 25, 2019

• Just Three Of World's Top Ten Banks Signed UN Climate-Goals Commitment by Tyler Durden from ZeroHedge.

• Pesticides in the Dock: Ecological Apocalypse but Business as Usual by Colin Todhunter from CounterCurrents.

• Did CIA use LSD to create Charles Manson’s madness? from RT.

Articles recommended for Saturday, October 6, 2018

• Scientists Raise Alarm Over U.S. Bio-Weapon Programs by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

• Washington’s Quiet Proxy War Against Vietnam by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.

• New Silk Roads define brand China by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times.

• USMCA: New Economic Alliance Formed to Isolate China by Arkady Savitsky from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• Julian Assange in Crisis for Fifth Unity4J Online Vigil; Consortium News to Broadcast it Live on Saturday from Consortium News.

Is Gene Editing the New Name for Eugenics?

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook. 

Influential people such as Bill Gates and government departments such as the Pentagon are pushing gene editing as the new frontier of biotechnology. The fact that this poses profitable opportunities for biotech corporations is very likely the motivation behind these risky efforts.

With the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the USDA and the Pentagon DARPA all involved energetically advancing gene editing and especially the highly-risky Gene Drive applications in species such as mosquitoes, one has to ask is gene editing becoming the new name for eugenics in light of the fact that GMO technologies have been so vigorously opposed by citizen groups around the world. Honest scientific research is of course legitimate and necessary. But unregulated experimentation with technologies that could wipe out entire species is definitely not the same as planting a variety of hybrid corn.

Of a Type Developed by Liars

Click here to access article by Craig Murray from his blog. (Note: I added more content at 8:12 AM and 8:35 AM Seattle time.)

This former member of the British foreign service begins his article with this statement:

I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO  source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve gas as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. [my link]

And after supplying many facts and arguments, he ends with this statement:

Until this week, the near universal belief among chemical weapons experts, and the official position of the OPCW, was that “Novichoks” were at most a theoretical research programme which the Russians had never succeeded in actually synthesising and manufacturing. That is why they are not on the OPCW list of banned chemical weapons. [my link]

Porton Down is still not certain it is the Russians who have apparently synthesised a “Novichok”. Hence “Of a type developed by Russia”. Note developed, not made, produced or manufactured.

It is very carefully worded propaganda. Of a type developed by liars. [my emphasis]

(The propaganda directors of the Empire have become chronic liars and using others to issue lies to promote their self-serving anti-social agendas: wars, social injustice, inequality, etc. Another example of this allegation is furnished today by Caitlin Johnson in her article entitled "The “Alt-Right” Label: What’s Real, What’s Fake, And Why It Matters".

Read this piece by Edward Curtin who writes about the propaganda specialists who are currently engaging in a war on your mind. He sums up his views with this statement: 

... with a massive and unrelenting war on truth being waged by the Western corporate media, an arm of the CIA, capitalism’s invisible army. It is a twisted game show with deadly consequences. Its method is Janus-faced. From one face, repeat over and over again bold-faced lies always lacking in evidence – e.g. Russiagate, WMD in Iraq, the Syrian government used chemical weapons, Russia is an aggressor planning to invade Eastern Europe, three World Trade Center buildings fell into their own footprints in virtual free fall speed because of fires, etc.; from the other face, play the game of suggesting to the public that they know more than they do because they watch CIA-backed shows like “Homeland,” movies like “Zero Dark Thirty,” and are being informed by all the so-called ex-CIA and intelligence commentators that populate the corporate media and explain what’s really going on. The old adage that “you never leave the CIA” has somehow imperceptibly morphed into “Yes, we can; trust us.”

If you are still not convinced, read the article entitled "Lies Can Lead to War" by conservative Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.)

Russian Historiography of the Korean War

Click here to access article by George Burchett, son of renowned independent journalist Wilfred Burchett. (Much of what I learned about the true story of the Vietnam War during that war was furnished by his father, Wilfred Burchett, an Australian independent journalist.)

George, who is an artist living in Hanoi, Vietnam, writes of the massive efforts in the continuing campaign of denial of bacteriological warfare engaged in by the US forces in the Korean War by subsequent propaganda agents of the class that rules the US-led Empire, particularly evidence sourced from supposedly recovered documents from old Soviet files in the 1990s. 

I strongly urge those who are interested in the US use of bio-weapons in the Korean War read a recent book by Dave Chaddock entitled This Must Be the Place (2013) in which he extensively covers the subject from both sides of the controversy and comes to the definite conclusion that the US did indeed use bacteriological weapons in Korea and adjacent areas of China. Chaddock also confirms what George Burchett writes about Unit 731 of the Japanese army headed by General Shiro Ishii in WWII. 

These “former officers” belonged to Unit 731. While many of the worst Japanese war criminals were tried and sentenced to death by a U.S. Military Court in Tokyo, the leader of Unit 731, General Shiro Ishii, and his top aides, were granted immunity and asked to work on the U.S. BW research and development program.

The CIA, Wormwood, and Gall: The Facts, the Accusations & the Cover-up

Click here to access article by Peter Lee from Newsbud. 

This post provides an introduction to a full length that I watched several weeks ago, and immediately placed in on my Memorable Political Films list. It was a stunner because even corporations like Netflix usually don't go near such topics. But as I had a Netflix membership, I viewed it and was very impressed.

Frank Olson died after being thrown out of a 13th story window in New York City. The government, as usual, made up a series of stories over the years to explain this bizarre event. Frank Olson's son couldn't believe these stories, and started an investigation which led him to the conclusion that his father had been murdered because he opposed the bio-weapons the scientists were researching and developing at Fort Detrick (Maryland) under the control of the CIA. 

These bio-weapons were actually used in the Korean War. Many American soldiers captured by the North Koreans and Chinese armed forces, particularly airmen, knew from experience that this was happening and delayed their return to the US after the war. One, who I later encountered at a talk in Hawaii, actually remained in China. The series of six mini-films are a must-view.

America's Big Lie about Bioweapon Crimes in Korea--[interview with] Tom Powell

Click here to access the approximately one hour interview with Tom Powell by Jeff Brown. 

Tom Powell is the son of parents who lived in China during the Korean War and knows a lot about the controversies surrounding the subject. During the interview a lot of material was referenced to, and which I was familiar with from my readings. Much of this material was covered in a recent book by Dave Chaddock (2013) entitled This Must Be the Place in which he extensively covers the subject from both sides of the controversy and comes to the definite conclusion that the US did indeed use bacteriological weapons in Korea and adjacent areas of China. 

The Korean War  (1950-1953) has been actively and purposely censored and suppressed in American textbooks, classrooms and the media, for three reasons. First, the United States got its butt convincingly whipped by the communists – Korean, Chinese and Russian all. Second, America committed genocide, by bombing North Korea with ten times the firepower of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, as well as 33,000 tons of napalm, for evil measure. There was literally not a building left standing north of the 38th parallel, while America exterminated 3,000,000 North Koreans, about 15% of the entire population. This war plan became the blueprint for continuing genocide in Vietnam, a decade later. Third, America committed the most heinous of crimes against humanity: the use of bioweapons against the North Koreans and Chinese.

Sylvia and John Powell were at the center of a legal and media firestorm, which lasted nearly a decade, 1953-1962, for reporting the horrific truth about America’s Korean War atrocities.

Thus it is very understandable that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) are so motivated to defend themselves from the US Empire by developing long range missiles.

Tribunal finds Monsanto an abuser of human rights and environment

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from his blog Systemic Disorder.

Although there have been many discussions and proposals about an international court since WWI, it was only after WWII and the International Military Tribunal that tried Nazi war criminals that there was a strong push to set up similar international courts. Due to the Cold War and the lack of support by major countries, only tribunals have succeeded in being established. The only two I am familiar with are the International Court of Justice (ICJ) established in 1946 and a branch of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC) that was established by the Treaty of Rome in 1998 by many nations and became active in 2002. Both are located in The Hague, a city on the south coast of Holland. 

(Incidentally, Nicaragua in 1986 brought a case against USA in the ICJ for various war crimes, and the court essentially found the US guilty: "The very long judgment first listed 291 points, among them that the United States had been involved in the 'unlawful use of force'.") 

On April 18th the ICC found Monsanto guilty of violating internationally recognized human rights.

The tribunal, consisting of five international judges, has found Monsanto guilty. The tribunal is not a court of law and it has no power to enforce any judgment. The decision is a moral one, albeit grounded, the tribunal says, in international human rights and humanitarian law.

Dolack concludes correctly that capitalism is in contradiction to human rights because its priority is maximization of profit, and in order to survive corporations must continue to grow.

That concept of human rights, however, is in conflict with the mandates of capitalism — including the relentless competitive pressures that make “grow or die” an imperative. The domination of markets by a small number of behemoths is the inevitable product of that ceaseless competition, behemoths that by virtue of their immense size and command of capital can and do exert dominance over government and civil society.

D. Rockefeller’s Gruesome Legacy

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook. (Editing for clarity at 5 PM Seattle time.)

Engdahl unwraps one of the capitalism's most secretive and powerful actors and finds the stench of a self-seeking misanthrope who devoted his entire life to satisfying his own excessive needs for power and wealth at the expense of untold number of lives across the globe. Instead of eulogizing such infantile behavior as corporate media has done, Engdahl tells the real, gruesome story of his life. 

Capitalism is a kind of religion that extols the merits of self-seeking behavior. To practice self-seeking they see the necessity to dominate and control others. Its adherents claim that the practice of self-seeking is beneficial to all. Of course, this is only a ruse to hide their ambitions to control everything in the world for their sole benefit. A capitalist has the personality development of a two year old child who is devoted entirely to its own satisfaction. 

Although capitalism as a system benefits only a few, capitalist ideologues indoctrinate all citizens in the goodness of this lifestyle from birth; and this influence continues throughout their lives in schools, corporate media, and entertainment. The end result is a full-spectrum ideological dominance over citizens to such an extent that people can no long imagine any other social-economic system in spite of the fact of the system's many deleterious effects (wars, poverty, environmental destruction, etc) on people all over our planet.

As our Empire's transnational ruling class is becoming desperate to maintain their objective of securing the entire world as their oyster, they are increasingly resorting to desperate measures that include full-spectrum surveillance of citizens and systematic propaganda and psyop programs to manage their consent to continue with the capitalists' obsession to obtain for themselves every last thing of value on the planet.

Will Superweeds Choke GMO to a Timely Death in USA?

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook.

Engdahl cites recent studies, including this one and explained by this article, which report data that suggests that pesticide resistant "superweeds" are increasing on US farm lands. Engdahl writes:

When we human beings become too self-destructive for our own well-bring and that of our Earth, sometimes nature takes control and does what we in our greed and stupidity refuse to do. The refusal of Governments around the world–with notable exceptions such as the GMO-free Russian Federation–to order an immediate global ban on planting of Genetically Manipulated Organisms, GMO, including for corn, for soybeans, for cotton to name just a few, along with an immediate ban on paired weed-killers such as Monsanto’s Roundup, is stupidity pure. The response of nature, however, may sound the death knell for American farmers’ use of GMO seeds more effectively than any labelling or WHO carcinogen warning. Superweeds are literally choking GMO plants to death across the US Midwest farm belt and that should send a very real signal that nature abhors GMOs and their toxic weed-killing chemicals.

I must take issue with his first sentence. I think I can safely assume that people reading this article are human beings. So, are you responsible for developing and promoting Roundup? Of course not! People who developed, promoted, and sold this product were instructed and paid by capitalists to do it, and were likely fired if they refused.

Monsanto and Bayer: Why Food And Agriculture Just Took A Turn For The Worse

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from East by Northwest.

The deal marks a trend towards consolidation in the industry with Dow and DuPont having agreed to merge and Swiss seed/pesticide giant Syngenta merging with ChemChina, a Chinese government concern.

The mergers would mean that three companies would dominate the commercial agricultural seeds and chemicals sector, down from six - Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow, Monsanto and DuPont. Prior to the mergers, these six firms controlled 60 per cent of commercial seed and more than 75 per cent of agrochemical markets.

Corporate Power, The GMO Issue And The Debasement Of 'Sound Science'

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from his website East by Northwest.

Todhunter argues that the capitalist ruling class through their corporations, their engines of profit and ultimately power, are now putting considerable pressure on scientists to serve their interests.

Coming from the GMO biotech industry, or its political mouthpieces, the term "sound science" rings extremely hollow. The industry carries out inadequate, short-term studies and conceals the data produced by its research under the guise of commercial confidentiality while independent research highlights the dangers of its products ....

It has in the past also relied on fakery in India, bribery in Indonesia and smears and intimidation against those who challenge its interests, as well as the distortion and the censorship of science (see this and this about the "Seralini affair" as well).

The GMO agritech sector is only concerned with a certain type of science: that which supports its aims.

Life Itself Is Being Patented, Privatized and Re-engineered

Click here to access article by Mark Karlin from Truthout.

Karlin interviews Ashley Dawson, author of Extinction: A Radical History, about the ideas contained in his book. Dawson sees capitalism as the driving force behind the extinction of so many species.

Today’s mass extinction crisis is one of the clearest indications we have of the fundamental irrationality and destructiveness of the capitalist system.