Posts that I especially recommend for Sunday, April 18, 2021

• Open Letter to a Friend Who “Tested Positive”…and Should Have Known Better by Jerry Bernini from Off-Guardian. 

• Are Conversations About COVID Vaccines Fracturing Your Family? Here’s What You Need to Know. By Children's Health Defense Team from their website.   

• On Contact: Securing Democracy with Glenn Greenwald featuring Chris Hodges interviewing Greenwald on Hodges' YouTube channel (25:32m). 

• Uganda Dictatorship: Imperialism’s Pearl of Africa featuring Abbie Martin speaking in a 16 minute YouTube video from her weblog Media Roots about the history of Uganda that continues today under the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.

• A School for Spooks: The London University Department Churning Out NATO Spies by Alan Macleod from Mint Press News.
  

A prestigious university located in the heart of London, King’s College has, in its own words, “a number of contracts and agreements with various departments within government, including the Cabinet Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the Ministry of Defence.” Some of those contracts are up to 10 years long. The university has so far refused to elaborate on the agreements, telling investigative news outlet Declassified UK that doing so could undermine U.K. security services.

• Three China reads: 3, Global reach by Philip Roddis, an independent British blogger, from his personal weblog Steel City Scribblings. 
  

• So Who Wants a Hot War? by Pepe Escobar from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• US President Joe Biden’s Shameful Push for War with China and Russia by John Stanton from Dissident Voice.
  

• Ukraine Plays with Fire as NATO Moves Dangerously Close to Russia’s Border by Denis Lukyanov from Internationalist 360°.

• Why Xinjiang is Emerging as the Epicenter of the U.S. Cold War on China by Vijay Prashad and Jie Xiong from Internationalist 360°.

• How to Keep Poor Countries Poor — The Absurdity of Comparative Advantage by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room. My reaction: The article describes how the capitalist system works on an international scale.
  

• How the Rich Keep Workers Poor — Outsourcing and Sweatshops by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room. My reaction: Notice that he only makes unidentified references to "a system". He is another author who regards capitalism as another reality like the sun, moon, and stars instead of man-made. Therefore his recommended "solutions" are merely reforms and absolutely ineffective.

• Military Bases Housing Migrant Children Plagued by Serial Sexual Abuse Claims by Whitney Webb from her weblog Unlimited Hangout. 

• Six Months to Prevent a Hostile Takeover of Food Systems, and 25 Years to Transform Them by Nick Jacobs from Common Dreams.

... the keys of the food system are already being handed over to data platforms, e-commerce giants, and private equity firms. This could mean dismantling the diversified food webs that sustain 70% of the world's population and provide environmental resilience. It could mean putting the food security of billions of people at the mercy of high-risk AI-controlled farming systems and opaque supply corridors.

And yet, there is nothing inevitable about this dystopian future. 

 

I think that as long as we tolerate capitalism and its goal to maximize only profits, a dystopian future is guaranteed. I am not only referencing the ultimate extinction that we will inevitably experience, but I am arguing that in the time we have left if we do not reject capitalism and replace it with socialism (a system of governance that publicly owns and controls the economy for the benefit of all people) that a near-term dystopian future is guaranteed.

• Fukushima Daiichi Radioactive Dumping and the Summer Olympics in Japan In Question by Vladimir Odintsov from New Eastern Outlook.
  
   
  ... according to Kyodo, which recently conducted a social survey of residents about the holding of the Olympics in Tokyo, most Japanese residents oppose its holding in 2021. 39% of the Japanese surveyed were in favor of canceling the Games, and about 33% were in favor of postponing the Olympics. Only 24.5% of Japanese residents are positive about the fact that thousands of athletes from all over the world will come to the Japanese capital in the summer of 2021. [I supplied this link.]

  
  

  In these conditions, the new Japanese government, balancing on the mood of the population of its country, has been looking for an opportunity for several months to find an objective reason for canceling the Olympic Games and report it “without losing face.” Finally, as reported by the British The Times, citing responsible sources, the Japanese government is still tacitly inclined to the decision to cancel the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo “because of the Covid-19 pandemic”, intending, nevertheless, to claim the right to hosting the 2032 Games.

Exceptionally good posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, March 16, 2021

• 💥Canadian Doctors Speak Out from "Jacois" via his/her Bitchute channel because it was censored on YouTube.
  

• Halt All Covid-19 Mass Vaccination Immediately (Open Letter to the WHO) — Vaccine Research Expert from Dryburgh. (Note: I am posting this because of an activist who sent it to me.) My reaction: But Bossche doesn't mention any lack of concern regarding mRNA vaccines that all the other immunology specialists have expressed concern about. He seems to regard the current "vaccines" as traditional vaccines.)

• The Curious Case of Geert Vanden Bossche by Rosemary Frei from her weblog. (Note: This is a challenging critical review of Bosshe's recent letter.)

• Nazi Healthcare Revived Across the Five Eyes: Killing Useless Eaters and Biden’s COVID Relief Bill by Matthew Ehret from Off-Guardian. 

• When it comes to vaccines, suddenly “from vs with” matters again: The media’s attitude to possible vaccine-related injuries highlights how INSANE the “Covid deaths” count always was by Kit Knightly from Off-Guardian.
  

• Helping America Soar Again: Recommendations for Domestic Air Travel from America's Frontline Doctors.

• You Know “We’ll Never Know,” Don’t You?: Review of Adam Curtis’s six-part documentary ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ by Edward Curtin from Off-Guardian.

• The Impending Financial Collapse, Crypto and Anti-Lockdown Protests by Dave Cullen, an Irishman, from his Bitchute channel. (Note: I don't necessarily accept all of his opinions, but his comments should be thoughtfully considered.)
  

• 💥James Corbett Interview – COVID-19 Censorship, Technocracy & The Amazing Country Of Digital Gulag features Ryan Cristián in a discussion lasting nearly an hour and seven minutes with Corbett, a Canadian, regarding Patreon's letter that effectively tries to censor him, problems with Japan's postal system, and the coming digital gulag which will imprison all of us by restricting our communication of information. This is a best post. My reaction: Of course, the digital gulag is powered by the private ownership of communication-technology under the rules of capitalism in contrast to Corbett's arguments that focuses on government authorities. Of course, government authorities are controlled by billionaires in the capitalist ruling class.

• Sanitized Tyranny: The Weaponization of Truth by Michael K. Emerson from Dissident Voice. 
  

• Bill Gates Wants to Realize Global Vision in His Lifetime by Dr. Joseph Mercola from his weblog.

• Rachel Maddow's Jaw-Dropping Propaganda For Dems Stimulus Bill featuring Jimmy Dore (and Ron Placone) in this 32:29m YouTube video angrily exposing the function of Rachel Maddow, other celebrities, and TV corporations: the management of consent and dissent.

• How Democrats Abandoned You In Relief Bill featuring Jimmy Dore (and Ron Placone) exposing the Democratic Party for their hypocrisy in a 5:20m YouTube video. 

• Shifty Shifters: Movers and Shapers like a Trillion Locusts by Paul Haeder from Dissident Voice.

• On British colonialism, antisemitism, and Palestinian rights by Avi Shlaim from Middle East Eye (based in London).

• Ten Years Since Beginning of Failed Regime-Change Operation Against Syria by Paul Antonopoulos from AntiWar. (This post offers a general observation of the results of the 10-year war on Syria led by US forces.

• 5 former OPCW officials join prominent voices to call out Syria cover-up by Aaron Maté from The Grayzone. (This post offers a recent update regarding the UN investigation of the crimes committed in Syria involving the White Helmets. a propaganda organization used by US & British intelligence agencies to help enlist support for their war efforts in Syria from people who live in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.)
  

• Do we know what we’re doing? by Tone Lanzillo from Duluth Reader, an alternative website in Duluth, Minnesota. My reaction: I strongly suspect that this post applies to all US cities.
  

Posts I especially recommend for today: Saturday, November 16, 2019

Bolivia:

• Interview: President Evo Morales on the Real Situation in Bolivia from 21st Century Wire.

• Bolivian Army Massacres Peaceful Protesters in Cochabamba from Internationalist 360°.

• Top Bolivian coup plotters trained by US military’s School of the Americas, served as attachés in FBI police programs by Jeb Sprague from The Greyzone. 

• VIVA EVO! Morales Overthrown, But Bolivian Socialism Will Endure by Andre Vltchek from 21st Century Wire.

• The Removal of Morales is a Minor Victory in a Series of Losses for Washington by Paul Antonopoulos from Brics.

Other posts:

• Former US Secretary of State Kissinger points to danger of “catastrophic” conflict between US and China by Nick Beams (Australian) from World Socialist Web Site.

• Seeking to cultivate fascistic base, Trump pardons two war criminals and promotes a third by Evan Blake from World Socialist Web Site. 

• Epstein Is Alive (Part 2) -- No DNA Test! from Fort Russ News (FRN).

• Watch the Arctic’s sea ice slowly disappear by Sid Perkins from Science.

• 2020 El Nino could start 18 degree temperature rise by Sam Carana from Arctic News.

Short list of articles that I especially recommend today: Thursday, November 14, 2019

• Understanding the Deep State’s Propaganda by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

• ISIS Captives Offer a Convenient Pawn in Turkey’s Syria Chess Game by Vanessa Beeley from Mint Press News.

• “No No You Guys, THIS US-Backed Coup Is Perfectly Legitimate!” by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. 

• The Colonial Era Never Ended by Guy Crittenden from Solariun.

Nasrallah on the End of US Hegemony: Trump will Leave the Middle East, Region Already Reshaping

Click here to access this interview with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah Secretary General conducted by Ghassan Ben Jeddou, founder of the pan-Arab and anti-imperialist Al-Mayadeen TV channel in Lebanon originally posted on Resistance News, Unfilitered which is banned from YouTube by its owner, Google. The posts are picked up and apparently translated by The Unz Review for viewers in the USA. ("Sayed" is an honorary title.)

I listened to both parts of the interview that was held on January 26 on the Lebanese TV station which was very recently posted on this website. I was very impressed with Nasrallah's analysis because it brought together so much I have learned from my readings, research, and posts on this website/blog.

I would go further by arguing that the colonial powers (Britain, USA, and France) are primarily responsible for the turmoil and suffering that has occurred especially recently in the Middle East. This was implied by one of the statements that Nasrallah made (at about 14:24m in the second segment); to paraphrase: the governments would not exist in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Egypt (essentially the old Arab League) without the support of the US Empire. And, of course, Israel should be included. Thus, the conflicts that have divided this region would not exist, although Turkey might still be a problem.

The Zionist Project’s Duality: Escaping Racist Oppression and Reproducing It in Colonial Context

Click here to access article by Gilbert Achcar from Jadaliyya. 

This essay made perfect sense to me. It tied together so much knowledge that I've gained from other historical writings on this issue. By reading it, see how he weaves together many historical facts to arrive at this rather dramatic conclusion:

...Zionism is not a “normal” movement of national liberation that shares the dual character of many such movements struggling against colonial oppression while oppressing other communities, be they national or of another nature. This is the claim of those partisans of Israel who are not fanatical to the point of denying the oppression perpetrated by the Zionist state. The truth, however, is that the Zionist movement was built upon exploitation of the oppression suffered by the Jews and reliance on the help of anti-Semites in order to create a colonial state structurally integrated in the imperialist system—not a postcolonial state as it pretends. 

South China Sea: Failing to Find Asian Allies, US Invites UK to Meddle

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook. 

Client regimes the United States and its European allies have cultivated throughout the region have either turned on them or have been effectively removed from power, or even the prospect of ever holding power again.

Tough-talking Philippine President Duterte – fighting for his life & his country

Click here to access article by Andre Vltchek from RT. 

Although this site has been banned on lists published by the Washington Post, I think we should defy the thought police as much as we can by reading this article before our masters install overt fascism.

Vltchek has recently visited the Philippines and writes about his experiences especially among the many poor people of that country, and about President Duterte's support, or lack thereof, among various factions of the Philippine establishment. 

The Philippines has been a colony of the US since we took it from Spain in 1898, given formal independence in 1946, after which the US ruled over the country in a neocolonial fashion. Duterte's administration marks a radical departure from that rule, and we can expect at the very least some retaliatory and/or subversive measures against his administration, and even assassination attempts (like Fidel Castro) for his disobedience (see the latest here) to the diktats of the US Empire.

Duterte has acquired a reputation for lashing out at everything from Western imperialism to President Obama, to Pope Francis (in this staunchly Catholic country), the EU, and the UN. He has threatened to close down all US military bases and to move his country closer to China and Russia. To emphasize his seriousness, he has canceled all joint US–Philippine military exercises.

President Putin is his hero. He is clearly leaning toward the left, and he despises colonialism. He often speaks about the “genocide” committed by the US against his people during the ‘Philippine–American War.'

He refuses to provoke and antagonize China. He is with the poor, introducing and improving social programs. He is gradually releasing political prisoners and actively negotiating peace deals with the Marxist and Muslim guerrillas while seeking peace treaties and territorial compromises with China.

NATO Dominance and Italian submission

Click here to access article by Eliseo Bertolasi from Katehon.

I am convinced that the European Union is a prison. This is a consolidation of financial interests, but not the union of the people. This consolidation will not be long. Brexit – is a good example for us. Soon other countries will think of doing the same. Perhaps, this is the beginning of disintegration of the European Union.

Although I don't agree with several observations made by this author, I think this piece represents another indication that Europeans are waking up to the fact that they are a colony of the US-led Empire. The are ruled, like we ordinary Americans are, by a transnational class comprised of American, British empire, and European capitalists. We are all subjected colonial people.

Puerto Rico 'Rescue' Bill to Reinforce Colonial Relationship with US

Click here if you wish to access a 12:09m interview (and transcript) conducted by Gregory Wilpert with activist Julio Lopez directly from Real News Network.

If you haven't followed this issue very well, I recommend that you read this, this, and this for further background information which you should have to understand the present situation. For a history of Puerto Rico view this 28:43m video interview entitled "Puerto Rico: 500 Years of Colonial Bondage & Resistance" conducted by Abby Martin with two professors of Latin American studies, Luis Barrios and Danny Shaw.

Zionism, Genocide and the Colonial Tradition in Contemporary Syria [a must-read treatise]

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

I regard Gowans as having a first-rate mind; a mind which reflects clarity of thinking, mostly free of ideological mind-traps that most thinkers fall into, and well informed by having had access to the best intellectual sources. Nobody is infallible, but there are some people who have been blessed with abilities, time, and opportunities to offer the very best analyses to help us understand some of the urgent issues facing humans today. There are numerous articles available over the internet and most are read and quickly thrown away like most consumer products. This is not one of those products. This is a major treatise (of moderate length) that beams a powerful light through the fog of propaganda to help us understand what is going on in the strife-ridden Middle East.

By studying this treatise you will come to understand that what is going on in the Middle East is an updated version of old-fashioned colonialism known as neocolonialism:

Saudi Arabia, along with Israel, stands as one of the most important regional allies of the international dictatorship of the United States. And, as protégés of the dictatorship, the Saudi rulers long ago reconciled themselves to the existence of a Jewish state as an outpost of Western imperialism in the middle (literally) of the Arab nation.... As much as Israel, Saudi Arabia is a satrapy of the United States.

You will learn that in order to disguise their aggressions against other Arab states on behalf of the US Empire, Saudi Arabia and its satellites use anti-Islam sectarianism.

The dictatorship on the Arabian Peninsula leads from within the region a war against anti-neo-colonial forces which reject the hegemony of the United States and Israel and implacably insist on Palestinian self-determination. It seeks to weaken and undermine these progressive forces by using religion to achieve the profane end of diverting resistance to the Western imperialist project into wars on “apostates” and “infidels.”

Israel is the worst neocolonial crime committed by the Western capitalist nations against the nations of the Middle East. You will learn the real, thoroughly democratic position by those Middle Eastern countries and forces that are in opposition to Israel.

And finally, you will learn to put the European holocaust into a larger perspective: 

The greatest holocaust of all was not the one carried out against Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany, though that genocide, accompanied by the systematic extermination of others, including Roma, communists and Slavs, was as obscene as any other. If we have to attach priority to genocide, as is done in capitalizing the anti-Jewish holocaust as the Holocaust, then a much larger genocide, of which there is little discussion if even acknowledgement, has a more compelling claim to this grim mantle—the holocaust of the indigenous people of the Americas. In terms of the number of human beings exterminated, the American Holocaust is perhaps the greatest crime of the European colonial tradition. 

I find two interpretations of Gowans that I differ with in this essay. First, he fails to connect colonialism with capitalism. One would think that colonialism was only a racist disease that infected Europeans, instead of an inevitable desire by capitalists of any nation to expand their opportunities throughout the world in order to gain access to raw materials and cheap labor. The fact that capitalism first appeared in Europe is only an accident of historical forces.

Second, I totally disagree with his interpretation of the Western hostile attitudes toward Hitler and the Nazis. Although I don't have time to develop my argument here, my position is that Hitler and all fascists were created by Western capitalists both as a defense against socialist/communist forces within their own countries and to prepare particularly Germany to attack and destroy the Soviet Union, a nation that rejected capitalism and tried to establish the first workers state. The hostility often expressed by Western leaders is a psychological defense against this very embarrassing reality.

Heart of Darkness

Click here to access article by Jay Taber from The Wrong Kind of Green.

In terms of relevance to the indigenous nations often referred to as the Fourth World, the rollouts from the COP21 gathering of UN member states, Wall Street-funded NGOs, and the global financial elite resemble colonial initiatives undertaken as a result of similar 19^th Century gatherings to carve up the world for capitalism. Then, as now, indigenous territories and resources were targeted for expropriation through coercion, with Africa being a prime target.

Fall of the Arab Spring: From Revolution to Destruction

Click here to access article which consists of "Excerpts from the introduction of Christopher L. Brennan's recently released Book" posted on Global Research.

...the West’s ongoing involvement in the “Arab Spring” is part of a larger offensive to maintain the status quo of Western and Israeli hegemony. This was done—not through the crude and direct means of the Bush II regime—but more indirectly and via a sustained synergy of hard and soft power: so-called ‘smart power.’ This was supplemented and spearheaded through the techniques of the ‘color revolution.’ Thus, although a new cadre emerged with the onset of the Obama regime, the status quo imperative to secure Israel remained, and Obama administration introduced new techniques of projecting power. Whereas the second Bush administration was blunt and bellicose, the Obama regime acted more indirectly and surreptitiously, often relying on local proxies and ambitious regional powers such as Qatar and Turkey. This approach can be aptly labeled ‘imperialism on the cheap.’ It has been the defining foreign policy strategy of the Obama presidency.

Based on these excerpts, it appears that Brennan's analysis of Empire's policies, both hard and soft, corresponds well with a book I am now reading entitled Force Multipliers by M. Forte (see this post). The latter book also examines these imperial strategies, but Forte's focus is on the pseudo-scientific language that current imperial directors use to refer to them.

The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in the U.S.

Click here to access an introduction to this film produced by the Media Education Foundation posted on Transnational Institute.

So far as I know, the film's premiere was yesterday in Amsterdam. But you may be on the outlook for it at a nearby campus; or if you are connected to a university, you might be able to have it shown on campus. If you were unable to jet to Amsterdam yesterday, this 4:46m trailer might whet your appetite and motivate you to have it shown in your community.



Fortunately you can view other excellent films on this subject made by the author. I recommend this and this.

The New Colonialism: Greece and Ukraine

Click here to access article by Jack Rasmus from TeleSur. 

The new colonialism as financial asset transfer takes several practical forms: as wealth transfer in the form of interest payments on ever rising debt, in firesales of government assets sold directly to the colonizer’s investors and bankers, and in the de facto takeover the colony’s banking system and bank assets in order to transfer wealth to shareholders of the colonizing country’s private bankers and investors.

Ramos then goes on to explain to us how these weapons of the "new colonialism" inflict destruction on countries like Greece and Ukraine.

Europe in Free Fall

Click here to access article by "The Saker" from The Unz Review.

The author offers a view from a European perspective and the European failure to cope effectively with many of their problems.

The sad reality is simple: the EU is a US colony, run by US puppets who are simply unable to stand up for basic and obvious European interests.

Up until the late 1980s, there used to be some more or less “real” opposition “Left” parties in Europe. In fact, Italy and France the Communists almost came to power. But as soon as the Soviet system collapsed, all the European opposition parties either vanished or were rapidly co-opted by the system. And, just as in the US, former Trotskysts became Neocons almost overnight. As a result, Europe lost the little opposition it had to the Anglo-Zionist Empire and became a “politically pacified” land. What the French call “la pensée unique” or the “single thought” has now triumphed, at least if one judges by the corporate media.

Emigration and war: Capitalist media suppress the obvious

Click here to access article by Deirdre Griswold from Workers World. 

...the reports in the capitalist media about the tragic flood of emigrants from Africa and the Middle East avoid even mentioning the wars that laid the basis for it — even when on the same page or in the same television news program other reports tell of the drone strikes, the training and deployment of troops in the area under Western command and so on.

Can this be mere coincidence? That defies credibility. The reporters know the score. But the editors rule — and linking this unfolding tragedy of historic proportions to what their imperialist buddies have done to the region is verboten.

Speculators circling Puerto Rico latest mode of colonialism

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

Puerto Rico’s governor may have said the commonwealth’s debt is unpayable, but that doesn’t mean Puerto Ricans aren’t going to pay for it. Vulture capitalists are circling the island, ready to extract still more wealth from the impoverished island.

You already know the drill: Capital is sucked out by corporate interests that pay little in taxes, budget deficits grow and speculators swoop in to take advantage, leaving working people holding the bag. 

Eritrea, Human Rights, and Neocolonial Propaganda

Click here to access article by Eric Draitser from New Eastern Outlook.

Once again Draitser scores with this penetrating examination of a UN report which after his examination is revealed to be infected with a neocolonial virus. It appears that the Eritrean government is a bit too independent for the masters of the Empire.

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has issued an allegedly damning report detailing what it claims are “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” taking place in Eritrea. Media coverage has similarly echoed those claims, presenting Eritrea to a western audience as a backward and “brutal dictatorship,” playing on the traditional stereotypes of totalitarianism from East Germany to Stalin’s Soviet Union.

However, a closer and more critical analysis of both the report, and the true agendas of the western institutions promoting its narrative, reveals a vastly different motivation to this report and the continued anti-Eritrean narrative. It could be called politically motivated propaganda, and that would be correct. It could be called a distorted and biased perspective rooted in fundamental misunderstandings of both politics and history, and that would also be correct. It could, quite simply, be called abject neo-colonialism of the worst sort, and that too would also be correct.

Them a Murderer

Click here to access article by Don Quijones from Raging Bull-Shit.

For decades the suited and booted economic hitmen of organisations such as the IMF and World Bank have subjected some of the world’s poorest countries to a brutal process of neocolonial wealth extraction. Across vast swathes of Africa, Asia and Latin America they created an economic wasteland and called it progress.