Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, May 17, 2021

• Why Did Twitter Censor An Eminent Infectious Disease Expert For His Opinion On COVID Vaccines? by Arjun Walia from Collective Evolution.

• James Patrick with CJ Hopkins on the Covidian Cult featuring CJ Hopkins, who currently lives in Berlin, in interview (a little over an hour) from Ovalmedia's channel on YouTube. (Note: This starts at 1:06hr.) My reaction: I can't stand the smile on Patrick's face; but if you can get past this, I highly recommend listening to Hopkin's comments.
  

• Why is the FDA funded in part by the companies it regulates? by Beth Daley from The Conversation.
  

• Report Reveals Major Corporations Are Funding Lawmakers Behind Anti-Democracy Bills by Brett Wilkins from Common Dreams. (My reaction: Surprise, surprise!)

• MSM "Independently Confirms" Totally False Stories features Lee Camp from his YouTube channel, satirically commenting on this topic.
  

• U.S. And Its Allies Try to Split the World in Two by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Note: You may need to know what "BJP" means.) My commentary follows: 

I love this author because he documents, which I can learn from, so many of his historical arguments, and because his understanding of history is most similar to mine compared to others identified currently identified as "investigative historians" (I've yet to find his credentials, but he clearly knows history). But we part company as to whether the Democratic and Republican parties matter in the fake democracy such as ours. Furthermore, Zuesse is an unapologetic devotee of FDR which I am decidedly not.

 

Roosevelt was a strange capitalist in that he didn't make his millions (today that would be billions) during his lifetime, but lived off of investments that he inherited from his early ancestors from Holland. He himself was an avid follower of ancestry, and he described an ancestor whose wealth was obtained through the China trade, or in other words, he may have engaged in drug trafficking. 

 

His neighbors, the Astors, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts, were far richer. But he grew up with them and attended the same schools as them: Groton, a private prep school, and Harvard. However, possibly adding to his character was his coming down with polio just when started a career in politics. FDR later established the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation. Corporate media cooperated with him to ignore his affliction which confined him to a wheelchair.

 

Thus, when he was attacked by a political adversary because of his support for government programs to help the poor in the Great Depression, he once said that he was "saving capitalism". And, he did.

• Five Characteristics of Neoimperialism: Building on Lenin's Theory of Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century by Cheng Enfu and Lu Baolin from Monthly Review.
  

• Mounting Violence Casts Doubt Over the Project of Progressive "Reform" Prosecutors by Ralph Cipriano with an introduction by Glenn Greenwald from his weblog on Substack.

• United States withdraws from Afghanistan? Not really by Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad from Peoples Dispatch. 

• The mask of “liberal democracy” falls with a bang by Pepe Escobar from "The Saker" Blog.
  

• What is Left for Palestine? by Craig Murray, a Scotsman, from his weblog.
  

• The Hidden History of Zionism by Ralph Schoenman, a book by this author presented online from Middle East Archive. (Note: Or you can buy this book for $15 or $16.)
  

• Zero by 2050 or 2030? 1.5b°C or 2°C? Overshoot or not? Demystifying carbon budgets. By David Spratt, an Australian research coordinator, from his weblog Climate Code Red. 

• Sombre truths behind bright green lies by Paul Cudenec from Winter Oak (based in Britain).

• Extinction Monologues: A/C Busted! featuring Guy McPherson, an independent scientist who has focused on the climate crisis, from his YouTube channel.
  

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, May 13, 2021

• The Corona Crisis: Has “Depopulation” Already Begun? by Peter Koenig from Global Research. 
  

• Russia Is Seriously Concerned About US Biolabs In Former Soviet States by Andrew Korybko from OneWorld. 

• Who Dunnit Bill? Melinda Gates Sought Divorce After Epstein Reports by Finian Cunningham from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• A mainstream outlet accepted my pitch on what media refuses to say – then refused to let me say it by Matthew Alford from The Grayzone. He writes toward the end of the article:
  

... when it comes to Western power, I think something more fundamental is taking place than normal biases and differences of opinion. Indeed, it is standard – even when it comes to the most vicious applications of British and American foreign policy – that Western mainstream media simply ghosts pivotal critical content that is staring it right in the face.

 

(Note: You will need to know what "ghosts" (def. #3) mean as used as a transitive verb.) My reaction: Alford doesn't elaborate on his implication of "something more fundamental is taking place than normal biases and differences of opinion". Let me explain what the "something" is: it's blatant censorship.

• Was Folk Music a Commie Plot? by Mat Callahan from Monthly Review.

From the beginning of the twentieth century until 1929, purveyors of record players, radios, sheet music, and musical instruments had made large fortunes and proved useful in forging a culture with which people in the United States could identify. In many ways, the music industry was a nation-building force, which the country’s rulers needed to legitimize and propagate their claims. Now, after almost total collapse during the depression, the industry reestablished itself with new instruments, new sounds, and, above all, a new public attuned to bright lights and the big city.
 

In this context, the revival of folk music—that is, music derived from rural southern sources, unamplified, and, to a large extent, comprised of old songs of anonymous origin—was more than just another fad. Folk music encapsulated longings for an idyllic past, for a time before crass commercialism turned music into a commodity, and for relationships between musicians and audiences that were egalitarian and holistic. Folk music continues to have an appeal for these reasons today. 

 

My reaction: This post provides a real history of a cultural movement that was a threat to the ruling class which decided to launch an empire combining their military dominance with what was left of the British Empire. They smeared this folk music movement as Russian-Communist inspired. These folk musicians were hounded and persecuted by the FBI in an effort to destroy it. This cultural phenomenon flourished in the post-WWII years when the fascist coup began with the use of the atomic bomb in Japan and continued with the McCarthy attacks on anyone who dared to voice opinions different from what the ruling class coup-leaders allowed. But they could not destroy it until the conclusion of the Vietnam War when this folk music movement and their influence also ended. After that, youth devoted themselves to "turning-on and dropping-out" to the Beetles tunes and rock-and-roll music. Now we see the same ruling class, which owns nearly everything and able to censor at will, able to pull-off successfully 9/11, the Iraq invasion, and the current pandemic with its lockdowns, shutting small businesses, and vaccines which hugely profits the pharmaceutical corporations with the latter immune from prosecution when their vaccines harm people. (I added to this reaction at 8:38 PM CT.)

• On Nakba Day, Israelis Forced to Guiltily Confront a Secret by Jonathan Cook from Dissident Voice. My reaction: Please notice that Israel is very much a part of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.

• Poisoning the Planet’s Web of Life by Robert Hunziker from Dissident Voice.
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Saturday, January 9, 2021

• US Generations of Fake News w/ Nolan Higdon from Media Roots. This is a best post.

• How the left is being manipulated into colluding in its own character assassination by Jonathan Cook from Dissident Voice. 

• Report on ‘Havana Syndrome’ Prompts Call for More Research Into Health Impact of 5G by Pam Long from Children's Health Defense. 

• China’s Real Threat Is to America’s Ruling Ideology by Richard Hanania from Palladium. My commentary follows:

Hanania argues that the US is an imperialist nation that is bent on "global hegemony". After that he introduces several errors in his geopolitical analysis.

Ultimately, the danger for American elites is not that the U.S. may become less able to accomplish geopolitical objectives. Rather, it is that more Americans might begin to question the logic of U.S. global hegemony. Perhaps not every state is destined to become a liberal democracy, and nations with very different political systems can coexist peacefully, as many countries in East Asia do. Maybe the U.S. will not always be at the frontier of military and economic power, and the country that overtakes it may have completely different attitudes about the nature of the relationship between government and its citizens.

First of all, he refers to "American elites". This is a capitalist ideological term for ruling class. Next, in the third sentence, he writes "Perhaps not every state is destined to become a liberal democracy....". The term "liberal democracy" means bourgeois democracy, or the capitalist version of democracy which is a fake version of democracy. The author doesn't understand that nations ruled by capitalism inevitably become imperialist internationally and fascist internally down their acquisitive road to owning and dominating everyone or every nation on Earth. He is arguing for tolerance in a beast that is inherently intolerant.

• The Capitol Hill Fiasco 2021 by David W. Mathisen from his weblog Star Myths of the World. This was a psy-op performance? Mathisen thinks so and furnishes footage from the event to argue this. (Note: You may also be interested in the comments of "Syrian Girl", who I believe now lives in Australia; and Bernhard's article entitled "Democrats Use Capitol Incident To Suppress Political Dissent".

• Prepare for the new “Domestic Terrorism Bill” by Kit Knightly from Off-Guardian.
  

• While Railing Against Trump Coup, Biden Appoints Chief Ukraine Coup-Plotter Victoria Nuland by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News. (Note: You may also be interested in another report about a Biden appointment to be the Director of National Intelligence.) My reaction: Forget about what the "78-year-old Delawarean said".  Biden's administration takes order from the Deep State, whose orders he knows so well, as he continues their program of regime change with nations that demonstrate any independence from the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Most American workers don't follow foreign affairs, but they may start after witnessing attacks on their safety and welfare. The ever-shrinking capitalist ruling class regards workers as "deplorables" who increasingly do not share their interests of dominance over other nations, and certainly not over them.

• Sterilisation by Dave Cullen from his channel Computing Forever on Bitchute. (Note: I will be gradually converting from YouTube to Bitchute due to YouTube's practice of censorship.) My reaction: I don't agree with one of Cullen's opinion that there is no over-population on our planet and our masters are concerned with what he asserts as a fake "climate change" scenario. Capitalist ruling classes have always welcomed population increases and they were aided by collaborated religious authorities to promote families having children and restricted access to contraceptives. The Empire's ruling class is aware of, and concerned about, the overwhelming scientific evidence of the threat of dramatic climate destabilization, but their solutions to the crisis are totally self-serving as one would expect. Although vigorously denying it, they refuse to give up on their polluting industries, which directly or indirectly result in global warming, but also provide them with fabulous wealth and power.
  

• Climate Emergency Persists as 2020 Ties for Earth's Hottest Year on Record by Andrea Germanos from Common Dreams.

• ‘Massive-Scale Mobilization’ Necessary for Addressing Climate Change, Scientists Warn by Shani Cairns from Scientists Warning.
  

• Record number of billion-dollar disasters struck U.S. in 2020 from Climate & Capitalism. 

• “This Will Be Remembered as a Turning Point”: Snowden Warns Against Trump Social Media Ban by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News.

• Georgia Dems Relied Heavily on Massive Corporate War Chest to Cinch Historic Election by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News. My reaction: This is an illustration of how the Deep State "owns" and thereby controls Congress which I argued in a commentary in my last post on Thursday.
  

• ‘Progressive is a Farce’ — Ask the Squad. By Erica Gaines from Internationalist 360°. My reaction: 

This article illustrates the power of the family's interest in whatever social justice values these individuals held before their very comfortable careers in government. This piece of evidence supports the view of the general capitalist class that there is no such thing as society, only families (and possibly their neighbors) so well articulated by the former Prime Minister of Britain Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher was only recognizing the reality of the capitalist system and its promotion of the welfare of families. This ultimately leads, like the game of Monopoly, to a few "winners" and many "losers". Placing one's family's interests before society's is downgrading the importance of societies. 

What most people don't know is that societies are what has preserved the human species for several millions of years before humans resided in communities made possible by agricultural advances only in the last 10,000 years. Therefore, class structured societies with their emphasis on the welfare of the family are a dynamic that will ultimately lead to human extinction in which all humans and most other species lose. With the destabilization of the climate caused by human activities under capitalism, humans are threatening their extinction along with most other existing species on our unique planet Earth.

• The Boot Is Coming Down Hard And Fast by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• What Made January 6, 2021 a Historic Day by Ron Ridenour from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• We Cannot Let Yesterday’s Farce Become Tomorrow’s Tragedy from Spectre.

• Planet Lockdown Interview with Catherine Fitts from her website Solari Report via uncensored Bitchute. This is a "best post". (Note: Both 48:31m videos are from the same interview.)
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, January 1, 2021

• Pigs Catch COVID – UK Bans Free Range Chickens! – War on Meat / Animal Ag by Christian Westbrook of California from his weblog Ice Age Farmer. (Note: He addresses various signs of shortages of animal protein in this 16:21m video report that, in his opinion, suggests future shortages of our meat supply. He cites current articles which report coronavirus infections in animal stocks which supply our meat. At the end of this video he refers us to a website that promises so much as solutions to meet this protein crisis as well as many other societal problems. I will comment on this website in the next post.)
  

• The Greater Reset by followers of a relatively new philosophy of "agorism". (Note: "The Greater Reset" is a response to the Great Reset.) My commentary follows: 

This website espouses a new movement created by followers of "agorism" that offers solutions to many societal difficulties that we are now experiencing. Agorism is a philosophy that is gathering support from various critics of neoliberalism. Is this an effective answer to today's problematic capitalist nightmare? My tentative conclusion is negative. After perusing various websites that offer explanations about various aspects of agorism, I have found numerous disturbing elements.

Perusing the Wikipedia entry for agorism, I find that it was strongly influenced by the American version of libertarianism, the followers of Ludwig von Mises of the Austrian School, and such "notables" as Ayn Rand. They (seminal ancestors and current agorists) all want a return to earlier forms of pure capitalism which has inevitably spawned what we are currently experiencing as neoliberalism, a transnational capitalist philosophy that exclusively focuses on profit, and non-capitalists, that is, ordinary people be damned. 

This movement is no threat to the transnational capitalist class--in fact, they welcome these new antagonists--that is in control of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire that has a history of ignoring in practice the destabilization of our climate such that they are ensuring our extinction along with most other species. This is their cardinal sin, but it ignores their history of exploitation of workers, numerous and neverending wars, poverty, inequality in all aspects, etc. To return to some mythical golden age of capitalism is out of the question. Capitalism is the problem and the solution is revolution. 

I think that the leaders of the agorist movement have been influenced by ruling class's version of history, the indoctrination and 24/7 propaganda that they have been exposed to throughout their lives that they are so confused and inadequately prepared to solve anything. My tentative conclusion is that they (agorists) are excelling as critics but totally failing as revolutionaries. As a result, we will have to look to foreign activists to find revolutionary solutions (or at least outside of the core nations of the current Empire, that is, USA and what was formally known as the British Empire).

• Planet Lockdown featuring Catherine Austin Fitts in a 48:31m interview posted on Truth Matters channel of YouTube (with some unnamed person) expressing her views regarding the significance of the lockdown and related matters that our ruling class has in the form of governors' emergency powers to dictate activities on the general population. According to this post "The full film, when released, will be available at https://www.PlanetLockdownFilm.com".
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, December 21, 2020

• Important Announcement! Major Channel Update by Dave Cullen of Computing Forever channel of YouTube. (Note: He talks about his experience with censorship on YouTube, and he is going to Bitchute to avoid censorship. So, access his channel on Bitchute if you like his videos.)

• AOC Interview Signals She's Unwilling to Fight Pelosi For Medicare 4 All featuring Jimmy Dore from his YouTube channel. My reaction: Here is Dore trying his damnest to use the existing democratic machinery to pass legislation that has some semblance to univerisal health care. I wish him luck because his efforts are futile because the capitalist ruling class rules the USA behind their facade of "democracy", and they don't want Medicare for All. If AOC and the progressive members of Congress vote for universal Medicare, they will not return to Congress mainly because they depend on the rich ruling capitalist class for re-election campaign funds. That's the "beautful" secret of liberal democracy (also see "bourgeois democracy").

• Why It’s Good To Push Politicians To Do The Right Thing (Even When They Probably Won’t) by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

As we discussed yesterday, Americans will not be given Medicare for All despite overwhelming public support because an immense amount of power depends on keeping them in a state of financial struggle so they don’t interfere in the affairs of a nation which serves as the hub of a global empire. The US political system does not exist to serve the interests of Americans, it exists to serve the interests of the empire. No part of that system is there to protect the people from the powerful; it’s there to protect the powerful from the people.

• How dangerous is the Covid mutation? by Tom Chivers from Unherd (based in Britain). 

• Personal Liberty Sacrificed at the Altar of Covid Public Safety by Adam Creighton from American Institute for Economic Research. 

• Twelve Principles of Public Health by Dr. Martin Kulldorff from American Institute for Economic Research. 

• 2020: The Year We Let Ourselves Be Infantilised And Dehumanised by Rob Slane from The BlogMire.

• The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” by Prof Michel Chossudovsky from Global Research.

• Militarized Pandemic Science: Why is the Pentagon Funding the EcoHealth Alliance? by Sam Husseini from CounterPunch. 

• Medical Informed Consent, Nuremberg, and the Covid Vaccine by Dave Ratcliffe from Ratical Earth Journal.

• Research Arm of Congress Confirms that Mnuchin Never Released Bulk of CARES Act Money Earmarked for Fed’s Emergency Loans by Pam and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. 

• Utopia, Coming to a World Near You by Patrick Corbett from Off-Guardian (based in Britain and created by ex-Guardian journalists).

• Covid’s Logic by Kyrie Eleison from The St. Marcel Initiative. My reaction: Could this be what our capitalist masters have planned for us? And, to save themselves?
  

• The Hidden Truth About the NDAA 2021 by Derrick Broze from The Last American Vagabond.
  

• The Politics of Thinking and Cultural Warfare Explored (Darwin, Kepler, Shakespeare and More) by Matthew Ehret from FRN (based in Serbia). 

Some of the most pressing questions now being raised by thinking citizens watching the unravelling of their worlds include:

Why are so many highly educated people willing to give up their innate power to think in order to have shadowy experts tell them what is true and how to behave?

Why are so many of our fellow citizens so willing to give up their rights and freedoms to protect themselves from invisible threats like viruses with a 99.9% survival rate or changing climate which used to be called “the weather” having little to do with human activity?

Why are so many people incapable, and unwilling to accept the idea of conspiracy, or intention as an efficient, existent phenomenon in world affairs when such things as “Great Reset” are being spoken allowed by misanthropic billionaires on a daily basis?

• Ex-UK Ambassador: war on Syria continues with US occupation, sanctions, propaganda by Aaron Maté from The Grayzone.
  

• The Never-Ending Story by Andrew Joyce from The Unz Review.
  

• Imperial Intent: Destroying India’s Farm Sector by Colin Todhunter (a Brit who has lived many years in India) from CounterPunch.

The dominant narrative calls this ‘globalisation’, a euphemism for a predatory neoliberal capitalism based on endless profit growth, crises of overproduction, overaccumulation and market saturation and a need to constantly seek out and exploit new, untapped (foreign) markets to maintain profitability. 

In India, we can see the implications very clearly.

• The éminence grise of Third Positionism: the neofascist ideologue Gabriele Adinolfi from FOIA Research. (Note: This article is from authentic historians who are particularly interested in the historical development of the pro-capitalist right-wing. As Gabriel Rockhill argued recently in his article entitled "The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It", US right-wing capitalists merely took up the fascist mantel after WWII and combined with what was left of the British Empire to create a new US/Anglo/Zionist Empire (later Zionist Israel were admitted) that promotes the same old-fashioned elements of fascism, plus some new ones, to deceive workers wherever it serves the global capitalist interests of the new Empire. See my history of WWII.)
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, December 15, 2020

• Socialist Media - The New Rules featuring JP Sears, a comedian doing a parody of YouTube censorship rules. My reaction: I got a chuckle over this, but it is obvious that Sears has been thoroughly indoctrinated in US propaganda that has the socialist/communist countries as the source of all evil. He believes this despite the fact that they are the countries, according to this pervasive propaganda, that are the sworn enemies of US and all capitalist countries. This illustrates the power of propaganda to instill in subjects over all their lives the narratives of their propaganda. You can still be entertained by his satire here.
  

• Dismantling tyranny by Paul Cudenec from Winter Oak (based in Britain). 

• The Cyberpandemic Has Begun: SolarWinds + FireEye – Anything can happen now by Ice Age Farmer (Christian) from his weblog. (Note: I again don't want to spread panic, but this looks real based on articles reported in Newsweek, a major ruling class source.)
  

• How Gulf states became business partners in Israel's occupation by Jonathan Cook from Middle East Eye (based in London). 

• Will This Be the Radicalization of Black Lives Matter? by Ajamu Baraka from Internationalist 360°.
  

• Critical and Revolutionary Theory from Internationalist 360° featuring a 35:00m video appearance (after which is a Q&A to the full 1 hr and 31m--I'm still listening to it) of Gabriel Rockhill, who I consider the best Marxist intellectual in the USA, lecturing on this subject. A best post. (Note: This post is appropriate mostly for advanced students of the subject, and for those who are concerned about mostly post-war subversion of Marxist oriented intellectuals.) My reaction: I especially learned a lot about the history of the subversion of Marxist oriented intellectuals (beginning about 24 minutes into his lecture) or "the policing of the left border of acceptable [Marxist] critique" that especially occurred due to influence of CIA agents in the post-WWII period. I have personally noticed the corruption of "acceptable critique". 

• How NPR Divides and Conquers by David Rovics from CounterPunch.
  

• Brexit Bluster Exposes the Waning of English Power by Patrick Cockburn from CounterPunch. Call for your responses: I don't understand the Brexit issue, and especially it's influence the people of Northern Ireland. If anyone understands the issue in whole or in part, I invite emails responses to Ron, goatmeal36@yahoo.com. Is Cockburn right about his argument that Brexit represents a waning of British power?

• Menacing Methane – An Analysis by Robert Hunziker from CounterPunch. (Note: I listened to Dr. Peter Wadhams' hour and half lecture. However, Hunziker provides a good summary of his lecture in which he cited an immediate warning of a methane burst which will likely have catastrophic consequences for humans. If this article is of interest to you, you might also find this post interesting.) My commentary follows:

Wadhams has trained as a physical scientist who is rather pessimistic about humans solving this problem. However, where I, who has trained as a political sociologist through mostly independent study and experience, differ from him in that he blames the "ignorance" of humans in general for this lack of concern of the threats posed by the climate crisis, whereas I blame primarily the capitalist classes of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire which control all institutions of their societies. 

These capitalists are entirely addicted to their system of capitalism which has delivered to them so much profits and power that now they have created a powerful ruling class and an Empire. Therefore, it is no surprise that this Empire dominates the UN and its climate organization IPCC which he faults for having consistently underestimated the dangers of the climate crisis. It is obvious to me, and I'm joined by increasing others, that capitalism and the health of the planet are in direct opposition to each other.

During this current pandemic declared by the UN's World Health Organization, we see the obvious corruption of the UN agency through Bill Gates' top funding of the organization, but the majority of humans don't see his influence as corruption thanks to capitalist media coverage. Here in the USA the threats posed by the climate crisis is known by "climate change" which suggest a relatively benign threat thanks to the same capitalist media coverage. Wadhams, as a top climate scientist, claims that the threat is imminent.

Posts that I especially recommend today:Thursday, July 9, 2020

• As Long As Mass Media Propaganda Exists, Democracy Is A Sham by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (My reaction: Propaganda is an indispensable element added to fascism to create the neofascism of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. It is a crucial weapon along with the re-writing of history added to the traditional weapons of fascism (example: the militarization of police) in order to control their populations. "Democracy" has nothing to do with fascism of either type.)

• Lying, accusations major elements of US foreign policy: Iran from Press TV (Iran). (My reaction: This is precisely why Mike Pompeo is US Secretary of State. He is a consummate liar by his own admission. 

• Beware of Right Deviations That Have Emerged from the Three-Headed Crisis of US Imperialism by Danny Haiphong from Internationalist 360°. (Note: Haiphong is referring to right-libertarianism as found in the US, but not the European version which is quite different.)

• COVID-19 Exposes the Weakness of a Major Theory Used to Justify Capitalism by Richard D. Wolff from a German website Brave New Europe. My commentary follows:

Prof. Wolff is what we are left with to expose the weaknesses of capitalism after the great ideological purge of the late 1940s and '50s (see this and this). This period that saw the careers of Hollywood producers, directors, and actors destroyed along with true leftist intellectuals was very well described by Bruce Lerr. 

As a result, we now we see a very few tamed leftists who pose as true socialists like Wolff attacking the weaknesses of capitalism regarding the provision of health services of our country. (Or we see intellectuals like Wilkinson avoiding the topic of capitalism as a class-based system in preference to the highly abstract and meaningless "Business".) Wolff has been playing to the crowd, and "dissident" websites like CounterPunch, as a safe "Marxist" by promoting worker cooperatives within a capitalist system. He knows, or should know, that worker cooperatives cannot compete with private enterprises because the former serve the welfare of workers, whereas the private enterprises regard workers as expensive commondities that they must reduce in order to compete in the marketplace vis-a-vis other companies.

By attacking capitalist health services he stays on very safe ground because the capitalist system cannot serve the whole population with health services--it was never designed for this purpose. Capitalism is inherently a class based system. It was designed to serve a tiny class which has over the centuries accumulated capital in ever concentrated amounts and in ever smaller hands. Today major capitalists hold more money than entire countries along with their enormous power to subvert entire countries (and even the UN), including our own, and today's events reflect that fact. It is obvious that capitalists could never prepare for a pandemic. It's simply not "efficient" use of resources that were designed only to serve the needs of a tiny minority--capitalists.

• WATCH: Just a Little Prick – Part 1 by Dr. Vernon Coleman from Off-Guardian. (Note: I post this from the latter website because the article is better formatted compared to the author's website.) 

• The “Second Wave”: Politics Influences the “Science” of COVID-19. Flawed Data, Flawed Models by Josh Mitteldorf from Global Research. (Note: I recently sought a definition of "cases" as used by the CDC and gave up after 20 minutes. According to this article "cases" are merely those who test positive.)

• COVID-19: Confirmed Wuhan Man-Made Coronavirus Chimera Enters Vaccine Design by Dady Chery from News Junkie Post. 

• 80-85 Percent of Supposed US “COVID Hospitalizations” Actually Hospitalized for Something Else by Joseph Guzman from Anti-Empire.

• Coronavirus: Why everyone was wrong by Beda M Stadler from Medium.

• New Docs: NIH Owns Half of Moderna Vaccine by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. from Children's Health Defense.  

• Vaccine Bait & Switch: As Millions Pulled From WHO, Trump Gives Billions To Gates-Founded GAVI by Derrick Broze from The Last American Vagabond.

• From coincidences to coincidences, the Boston connexion serves Remdesivir? by Xavier Azalbert and Eric Gyssler from FranceSoir. 

• Why the Bill Gates global health empire promises more empire and less public health by Jeremy Loffredo and Michele Greenstein from The Grayzone. 

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

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

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

• Against Pacifism from The internationalists. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How the US Created the Cold War

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from Washington's Blog.

Unfortunately, the false history of WWII has been written by the ruling classes of the current US/Anglo/Zionist Empire through their well-paid propaganda agents throughout institutions of the Empire. In contrast, Zuesse offers a valuable source of the real truth, but his insights are limited by his social-democratic political orientation. 

This article (not the article posted in Strategic Culture Foundation--an edited version that left out his statement about "capitalism"--cleared up a number of questions I had about Eric Zuesse, the author. I have written several (at least) articles complaining about his use of the feudal term "aristocracy" instead of "ruling class" in his numerous articles. I saw this as reflecting his indoctrination in capitalist views mostly influenced by many years of education in US schools that he obviously had experienced. I was not wrong. In this article he clearly defines himself as a "progressive" by which he means his commitment to social democracy, a subset of capitalist ideologies, as illustrated by what has existed in the Scandinavian countries particularly after WWII when they had elaborate social welfare programs constructed on top of capitalist economies. Also, he is an admirer of FDR who saw the necessity of more elaborate welfare programs to preserve capitalism through the Great Depression. I gathered this from several paragraphs in the article such as:

Even other parts of that post-FDR system, such as the IMF, have served as siphons from publics around the world into the bank-accounts of the U.S. aristocracy and of its allied aristocracies. That’s not what capitalism was supposed to be. [Really?]

 And another quote:

Those weren’t “socialist” countries; they were dictatorial socialist (i.e., communist) countries, as opposed to democratic socialist (i.e., progressive) countries such as in Scandinavia — the proper term for what the Soviet alliance was is “communist,” not “socialist” — and there was a very big difference between the Scandinavian countries, versus the communist countries (though the U.S. regime wants to slur one by the other so as to sucker fools against democratic socialism — progressivism).

In other words, his "progressivism" is social democratic. He evidently believes that capitalism could be compatible with a sustainable Earth and that it could remain peaceful and just in spite of abundant contrary evidence throughout the relatively short history of capitalism.

Of further interest to me was a link in this article that brought me to an article in a publication that is followed by a section of the ruling class. This was published in Foreign Policy and entitled "The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan … Stalin Did" that added a great deal of clarity regarding the use of atomic bombs on Japan as well as the budding Empire's intentions toward the Soviet Union.

Zuesse's contributions to the geopolitical realities of our world are essential, but what isn't essential is his left-liberal views (capitalism can be reformed, his use of "aristocracy" instead of "ruling class", etc.) about these realities. 

Posts I especially recommend for today: Tuesday, November 19, 2019

• God Save the Queen. The US Destruction of the British Empire [and the rise of the US/British/Zionist Empire replacing the fascist empires of Germany and Japan] by Larry Romanoff from Global Research. (Thanks go to activist Caren administrator of Titanic Lifeboat Academy who posted this article.)

• French Yellow Vests Celebrate First Birthday, Converge With Planned Labor Strikes by a longtime activist Richard Greeman from CounterPunch.

• Capital Not Ideology by Michael Roberts from Socialist Economist.

• US National Debt Spiked by $1.3 Trillion in 12 Months, to $23 Tn. But Who Bought This Pile of Treasury Securities? by Wolf Richter from his weblog Wolfstreet.

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.

From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment: Romanticism as a Tool for Elite Agendas

Click here to access article by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin from Dissident Voice.

The author demonstrates how characterizations of major ideological trends of thought are largely influenced by ruling classes ("elites"). One such period called the Enlightenment, which emphasized the discoveries of the material nature of our Earth (and a little beyond), also was anathema to the rise of capitalist ruling classes. 

In addition, the Enlightenment examined the old ideas of feudalism and discovered that they were full of errors like the divine right of kings, feudalism's cosmology which placed the Earth at the center of the universe, and obedience to Roman Catholicism also gave rise to a whole new range of ideas that were first dramatically expressed during the French Revolution and soon led to socialist ideas, that is, to ideas of equality of rights and opportunities among inhabitants of regions. 

However, simultaneous to this, capitalist classes arose in various European countries which would soon formed ruling classes in those countries, and they saw such ideas as incompatible with their interests of private economic property and all the benefits derived from that ownership and control. They soon shaped what became known as a ideological period of Romanticism. This period was characterized not only by the mystification of nature but to differences such as language, race, and above all, nationalism that always favored the regions under the control of capitalist ruling classes.

The influence of Romanticism on politics shifted revolutionary thinking from burgeoning socialist movements to nationalism instead. Nationalism is the perfect class conciliatory ideology in that it retained the full social order/hierarchy (i.e. it includes the elites) and homogenised the people by excluding other national languages and foreign communities while putting the elites into positions of leadership and control.

Using divide and rule tactics and stirring up xenophobic attitudes and fears, the elites ran the new homogenised nations and used them for their old purposes: war. Modern global power struggles of the twentieth century started with nation set against nation in the First World War. 

Now we have entered a period identified as neoliberalism (the ideology of the new capitalism) as the capitalist ruling classes have outgrown their nation-states and formed transnational capitalist ruling classes such as we see in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire versus the rest of the world. Trump represents ideologically the earlier period of capitalism which glorified nationalism while the Deep State (see this, this, this, and this), which is in command of the Empire, pushes their neoliberal agendas under the Empire using deceptive psychological practices developed in propaganda against enemies in WWI and WWII, but this time aimed at their own populations. 

Articles recommended for Monday, June 17, 2019

• Marta Harnecker: Eternal Builder of Dreams and Hopes from Cuba-Network in Defense of Humanity (Cuba).

• Narrative Management = Reality Management by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• Media Black-Out on Arab Journalists and Civilians Beheaded in Syria by Western-Backed Mercenaries by Eva Bartlett from BSNews. 

• Fight for Hong Kong – why is the West so interested in China’s domestic protests? from United World International (Turkey).

A World Divided by Ideologies

Click here to access article by Graham Peebles from Dissident Voice.

Peebles uses some research to support a major insight: every ruling class has always used every institution to indoctrinate their subjects in their self-serving ideology.

We have all been the victims of such sociological/psychological conditioning, some more, some less. Conditioned images of oneself and of others are unconsciously built up, attachment to content made firm. Far from creating the security we yearn for, attachment to the construct ensures fear is maintained. .... The image of ‘me’ in contrast to the ‘you’ is formed, the ‘us’ against ‘them’ takes root; my country versus your country, my political party against yours, my God versus your God, my opinions versus yours and so on, and on, and on.

Attachment to the image is strong, defense of its beliefs and ideals fierce. From this narrow, conditioned center thoughts emerge and actions proceed, creating multiple divisions and disharmony, endless wars and violent conflict.

You can see how the present capitalist ruling classes, due to advances of technology and the increased concentration of power, have been enabled to vastly increase their ability to condition the majority of people to support their interests of profit and power. Wars have been the most profitable of all their activities, and have resulted in the concentration of power like never before. This self-serving concentration of power is now threatening human habitat resulting in severe doubt the very survival of humans and many other species.

The Surrealism of the Information War (Another commentary on this excellent article.)

Click here to access article by Gilbert Mercier from News Junkie Post. (Final paragraph revised somewhat for greater clarity on 4/1 at 11:52 AM CT.)

This article is very thought-provoking, and I would like to share some of my thoughts in my commentary.

Humans since the beginning of civilizations (about 2% of human existence) have been plagued with ruling classes who have tried to convince the rest that it is "their way or the highway", that is, their subjects must always accept their truths or they will be banished or punished in one way or another.

Truth has always been a slow awakening to insights about how our world functions and our place in it. Our creation of scientific methods has offered us a much more disciplined method of discovering truths. As the result of our efforts, we have learned much during recent centuries.

Basically we have learned that we are only a minuscule part of our planet's nature that has produced so many life forms, and we are rapidly destroying our own habitat. This insight is opposed by the current ruling class of capitalists because their very system has not only enabled them to dominate the rest of us to our detriment, but is the culprit responsible for the ongoing destruction of our habitat. We are also becoming aware that their system is responsible for creating extremes of living standards, wars, and many other hazardous conditions for the majority. Is it so surprising that our ruling capitalist class are energetically fighting such truths and proliferating fake news about what is happening in the world?

One of the effects I've been witnessing of this ongoing campaign of fake news is that many occupants in nations controlled by the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire exhibit behaviors that can be described as "deer caught in the headlights". This metaphor suggests that many occupants of the Empire have become mostly immobilized and unwilling to act for their own survival. I especially see indications of this among people in the USA where I live. This troubles me very much.

I think that the ongoing fake news and propaganda spread by our ruling class is largely responsible for this behavior. My fellow Americans are thoroughly confused, and in their confusion, they adopt a "don't rock the boat" kind of attitude. This attitude clashes with relatively few more independent thinkers who are terrified about the dangers posed by our rulers and their system, and who want to act.

When liberal democracy means plutocracy

Click here to access article by Canadian Stephen Gowans from his blog What's Left. 

This top geopolitical analyst exposes the deceptions of ruling capitalist classes, and their control of media to insure that Americans, Canadians, and citizens of all capitalist controlled countries have the "right views" of their government and economic system.

In the 1970s, the establishment’s Trilateral Commission defined the demand that government policy reflect the will of the majority as a “crisis of democracy”—a sickness originating in democratic “excess.” In the 1920s in Italy and in the 1930s in Germany, earlier crises of democracy were resolved by fascism, another instrument of the establishment.

Clearly, the New York Times, and the economic elite and organized business interests it represents, are not prepared to tolerate a democracy of the many, or simply, democracy as it has always been understood. A democracy of the few...namely, not a democracy at all but a tyranny of the economic elite, a plutocracy—is more in line with the newspaper’s, and the establishment’s,  predilections.

All the same, that won’t stop the New York Times, the US government, and the Western intelligentsia, from appropriating the good name of democracy to beautify and disguise their preferred system of anti-democratic rule, all the while defaming the people as democracy’s enemies.

Recommended posts that I read for Monday, January 28, 2019

• A liberal elite still luring us towards the abyss by Jonathan Cook from his blog. (Please note that "classical liberalism" is the original and still maintained ideology of capitalism.)

• A Progressive 'Artifice' of Democratic Impotence: The World Finally Gets It by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. (I couldn't open this on my second try.)

• How the West Weaponizes Refugees it Creates by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.

• These Media Claims About Venezuela Are Lies Or Misconceptions by Berhard from Moon of Alabama.

• Attempted Coup in Venezuela with Abby Martin, Greg Wilpert, Paul Jay from Real News Network. 

• Why are France's yellow vest protests so white? by Alice Kantor from Al Jazeera.

• Call of “Yellow Vests” from Paris east side from libcom.org. (This article offers some necessary revolutionary consciousness raising for the Yellow Vests.) 

Entering a Major Regional Re-set – The Syria Outcome Will Haunt Those Who Started This War

Click here to access article by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Commentary updated at 6:00 PM CT.)

This former MI6 (CIA is the American version) geopolitical analyst has a solid background in planning, organizing, and executing often illegal plans to serve the British ruling class. Thus, he knows much about what he writes in relation to ruling classes and the type of people they employ to serve their interests of power and profits. In other words, his career has well equipped him to understand the intricacies of power plays of those who enjoy overwhelming power--ruling classes in capitalist countries and heads of governments elsewhere. 

In this article he applies his knowledge to explain how the complex situation in the current Middle East, where the US-led Empire with their NATO army and their allies (Saudi Arabia and Israel) versus their enemies (Russia, Iran, and to a more limited extent China), is playing out. Turkey's pivotal actions are apparently swinging to the Empire's enemy camp.

I often find such geopolitical analyses rather mind-boggling. I challenge you to read another such analysis by an author who apparently knows about the history of the regions--Dr. Can Erimtan. More-so than Crooke's analysis, he cites distant histories of authorities using religion as a means to manipulate their people to fight to secure more power and wealth for themselves. You will notice that it is not much different today in that area of the world. 

Organized religion has its own hierarchy of officials who control their religious organization. Frequently the only "asset" that poor people have is religion, an ideology that tries to explain the fundamental questions about their lives: their extreme vulnerability which can be ameliorated by faith in this religion, and an unquestioning obedience to the authorities of this religion. Often such religions offer some sort of after-life as rewards for good behavior. Notice that secular authorities always collaborate with religious authorities to exploit, manipulate, and oppress ordinary people.
 
Throughout history we have seen secular and religious authorities motivating and manipulating people by appealing to their religion to serve hegemonic interests. They do this by justifying their aggressive policies because their gods (or god) and religion support these actions. Often these authorities advance their actions using such propaganda. For example, during the feudal era, the Christian religion was used by monarchs and their aristocracy (their princes) to justify their rule to their peasant subjects--they ruled by "divine right". Islam is still used to buttress the rule of the king of Saudi Arabia today. And Judaism claims that Jews are the "chosen people"--of course, chosen by their god. The advancement of science has weakened the use of organized religion to manipulate people in most of the world today, but it still plays a major role in the Middle East where many of these religions were born.

Today we also see the rather astonishing use of a sophisticated ideology among the Syrian Kurds: socialist Murray Bookchin’s "libertarian municipalism" (described in the article by Erimtan) that is used to advance the interests of the Syrian Kurdish rulers. And, Kurdish leaders seem to be cynically willing to ally themselves with anybody who they perceive has the power to advance their interests.

What all such wars and geopolitical contests have in common, other than the ultimate suffering of ordinary people, is that they are based on a hierarchical system of rule that serve a few versus the masses of ordinary people. What I have tried to argue over the past decade in my blog is hierarchical rule will inevitably lead to the disappearance of humans either through a nuclear war catastrophe or global warming and environmental devastation. 

Only the survival of our human species can be assured if we adopt a bottom-up authority  system (subarchy?), and this can only brought about if ordinary people become engaged in their own survival. Attempts must be made to construct such systems until a system is created that will erase class conflict and wars, and can adopt policies that can stop the degradation of our biosphere. Time is fast running out. If I were a hypothetical betting man, I would bet on the extinction of humans within 50 years.