Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, May 5, 2020

• For the Workers of the World the Pandemic is Based on Inequality by Pasqualina Curcio from Resumen. (Note: I thank an American activist for this post.)

• The Disconnect Between the Stock Market and the Real Economy Is Destroying Our Lives by Hamilton Nolan from In These Times.

• The Sleeping Giant by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (Note: This is a political allegory. See if you can identify the referents to the characters. Also notice that it is unfinished. What will the giant do the next time he wakes up? Only the future will tell. But you are a tiny cell of that giant, or should be, as an informed activist. What will you do?)

• Now more than ever, supporting abolition of the debt is a priority! by Brigitte Marti from Women in and Beyond the Global. 

• The scarring by Michael Roberts from his weblog. (Note: This is how a Marxist economist looks at recessions, and now we are in the "mother of all recessions".)

• COVID-19 “CARES Act” Bankrolls AlI Post-Human Education by John Klyczek from Dissident Voice. (Note: The author argues that the CARES Act promotes the future of education. Learn what this future is like.)

• Only the Poor Starve: Hunger in the Time of Covid by Graham Peebles from Dissident Voice. 

My reaction: I hope he is right about his optimistic future:

Consistent with the new time we are moving into, a shift in collective consciousness is taking place among large numbers of people all over the world. To accommodate this shift, this new awareness that is slowly emerging, new ways of thinking, new institutions and structures are badly needed, including crucially a radically overhauled socio-economic system. A flexible evolving model anchored in certain Principles of Goodness: Unity, sharing and justice.

This common-sense trinity is interdependent and encourages values of cooperation and understanding, responsibility and tolerance.

• Towards A New World Order? The Global Debt Crisis and the Privatization of the State by Prof Michel Chossudovsky from his weblog Global Research.

• LEAKED: Wall Street Told Investors Not To Invest In Cures! featuring Lee Camp (via YouTube) of the Redacted Tonight show. Camp illustrates the logic of capitalism regarding your health. 

• As Death Toll Increases Blame China Campaign Intensifies by Bernhard from his weblog Moon of Alabama (Germany). (Note: He provides much evidence that our ruling class are using this pandemic to prepare us for war with China.) 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Friday, April 17, 2020

• Engineered plandemic (sic) posted by "BoredButterfly" on The Duran. Spiro Skouras interviews Prof. Francis Boyle (also see this bio from Wikispooks). (Robert Kennedy, Jr vouches for one piece of Boyle's research.) (Edited commentary at 6:56 PM CT.)

I believe the evil Gates has funded this global disaster. Knowing his family eugenics background and after seeing this amazing video I’m convinced. The attached video reveals the Virus is a Bio-weapon developed with a plan in mind and its been purchased by China. Follow the thread to the countries involved, the Chinese scientists and locations of the P3 P4 labs. Now B. Gates wont shut up about his vaccine plan. It’s he who will benefit the most. JFK jr is on his case like NEVER BEFORE.

The dots are coming together on their own.

My commentary (edited @6:56PM CT): Boyle has been doing interviews (see this one) with Alex Jones on Infowars website, and I don't know why. Could it be that he has been banned from major media? In interviews done with Infowars, host Jones frequently interrupts Boyle with his reckless biased inferences and frequent breaks to peddle his vitamins. Although Boyle is clearly qualified and, as a humanitarian, has much knowedge to share with us, he too has biases against China which sometimes subtly informs his inferences (as demonstrated in the above link). I think Boyle does disservice to get his information out there by participating in interviews with Alex Jones on Infowars. 

This interview by Skouras lets Boyle present his evidence in a concise way. Although Boyle's evidence adds to our knowledge, I think it is clear that he provided a "smoking gun" for the origin of the virus in a US lab, but not its transmission in China. Additionally, what is clear is that he is being banned from major media by the Deep State (see this, this, and this) which operates behind the curtain of the grand deception that our government functions according to the rule of law.

• Corporations Are Not Letting This Crisis Go to Waste by Jeremy Mohler from In These Times.

• We Are Ruled By Wizards by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (Note: She dissects what it means to control the narrative or people's perception of reality.)

• Towards A New World Order? The Global Debt Crisis and the Privatization of the State by Prof Michel Chossudovsky from Global Research. 

• Epstein's 'co-conspirators' off the hook, says judge from the Rick Sanchez Show on RT.

• The Story of Cap and Trade by Annie Leonard from Though Maybe. 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, November 27, 2019

• Narrative Managers Faceplant In Hilarious OPCW Scandal Spin Job by Caitlin Johnstone (Australian) from her weblog.

• Google’s Quayside Project: Big Brother and the Privatization of Public Space by Guy Crittenden from Solarian.

• This Russian TV of Extreme Police Brutality Against Yellow Vests in Paris Will Shock You - Western Media Silent from Russia Insider. 

• Melting of Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets: Atmospheric CO2 and The Shift of Climate Zones by Dr. Andrew Glikson from Global Research.

• Accelerating greenhouse gas levels from Arctic News.

Charter School Promoters Terrified of Growing Opposition to Their Full-Frontal Assault on Public Education

Click here to access article by Shawgi Tell from Dissident Voice. 

Charter schools mainly enrich major owners of capital while masquerading as education arrangements that “empower parents,” “increase choice,” “serve the kids,” and “close the achievement gap.” The rich and those who wittingly and unwittingly agree with them believe that the chaos, anarchy, and violence of the so-called “free market” is a modern and socially responsible way to organize mass public education in a society based on mass industrial production.

Because the tide is slowly but surely turning against their wrecking activities, supporters and beneficiaries of charter schools are becoming even more arrogant and belligerent in their efforts to expand charter schools.

The Real Russian Interference in US Politics

Click here to access article by Diana Johnstone from ConsortiumNews.

Those of you who suspect corporate media of disseminating fake news, now is your chance to read an article about the real interference by the US ruling class in the Russian government and their promotion of private interests to takeover the Russian economy. 

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was ostensibly a conflict between two ideologies and two socio-economic systems.

All that seems to be over. The day of a new socialism may dawn unexpectedly, but today capitalism rules the world. At first glance, it may seem to be a classic clash between rival capitalists. And yet, once again an ideological conflict is emerging, one which divides capitalists themselves, even in Russia and in the United States itself. It is the conflict between American unipolar dominance and a multipolar world.

I differ with her implication that the Cold War was not about ideology, because it was about the USSR's half-baked version of socialism, and as such, an enemy to the agenda of the US Empire's intention to become the author of a New World Order or Pax Americana, or the latest capitalist version of the "Fourth Reich". The fact that the Empire is posing considerable opposition to the resistance led by Russia and China, who currently only want a multipolar world, attests to the fact that the Empire can accept no interference in their quest to dominate the world. The simple fact is that they have no alternative. The Empire's transnational capitalist class are committed to this objective out of necessity to pay off all the enormous debts (to themselves) that their governments have incurred. Their intention is that these debts will be paid at the expense of the rest of the world much as they have been in the past.

Brave New Money: PayPal, WeChat, Amazon Go - A Totalitarian World Currency in the Making

Click here to access article by Norbert Häring, a German economist, from his blog. 

This article illustrates how an old-fashioned conservative views the increasing digitization of money that is slowly creeping into our lives. Don't misunderstand me: I am also concerned about this, but I come from a different point of view. Häring, as a well-educated, well-paid upper-middle class German, has served capitalism well (which he still refers to as a "democracy"). He also has a fetish for gold which (not incidentally) started us on the path toward the promotion of privately owned banks (see video at 4:13m) together with private ownership and/or control of all of the economy, has led to widespread inequality, never-ending wars, widespread suffering, etc. 

Digitization of money, as a sub-system, can offer us a most convenient way to exchange our productivity for goods and services that we need. But when this sub-system and a general social-economic system permits not only money, but the entire economy to be owned and controlled by a tiny minority (today they are capitalists), we see the results in extreme inequality. 

On the other hand, what if we, the people, controlled the digitization of money through a general system that we created, a general system that promotes widespread participation in decision-making? We could have convenience without inequality along with many other benefits such as peace, economic security, real education (instead of indoctrination), an economy that wouldn't pose a threat to our ecosystem, leisure time to spend with others we love, boundless creativity, etc.

However, he is right when he warns us about the increasing control of money by our ruling capitalist class. This trend is another indication of their compulsive drive for total control over our lives. 

Private Prisons in US Turn a Profit, Ruin Black Lives

Click here to access article by Val Reynoso from TeleSur.

Private prisons are a billion-dollar industry which exploit prisoners who are predominately Black and non-white Latinx people for profit. These prisons are run by private companies and have been on the rise since the mid-1980s, especially following the crack epidemic during the Ronald Reagan administration. Over half of U.S. states today depend on for-profit prisons holding approximately 90,000 inmates each year.

Racial profiling perpetuates white supremacy and the subordination of non-white people. For instance, oppressed nationalities living in marginalized communities have been receptors of police misconduct and a heavy police presence in their neighborhoods.

Capitalist trends

by Brian McFadden from his website.

The looting of Brazil begins ... after Greece and Libya

Click here to access article and 0:59m video from the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens.

Brazil's coup govt has announced a huge privatization agenda with plans to auction off 32 major infrastructure projects.

Inside the stormy revelations concerning the coup against Brazil's suspended president Dilma Rousseff, the neoliberal "Taliban" rush to complete their mission, abolishing any pretexts. 

Hats Off To Mother Jones [and privatization of public services]

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his blog. 

The first part relates to the headline by applauding the Mother Jones' investigation of privatized prisons which, if you read the link to their report, you will find quite disturbing. But then he puts this in the context of a more general trend of privatization promoted by the compulsively wealth seeking ruling class. 

Being a retired person trying to live on Social Security benefits, I was especially drawn to his remarks about this subject. 

Republicans intend to privatize Medicare and Social Security. The road to Medicare privatization is the small percentage of medical billings that Medicare pays. Medical care providers are beginning to find that it is unprofitable to provide care to Medicare patients. When doctors cease to provide care under Medicare, the massive payroll tax revenues will be diverted into the hands of “more efficient” private providers.

The road to Social Security privatization is the “reform” of the consumer price index, which under-measures inflation in order to deny Social Security recipients cost-of-living-adjustments. The continuing decline in the real value of Social Security benefits will result in large-scale economic distress. This distress will be used to discredit the Social Security system and to privatize it.

I can personally attest to the validity of the above statement. My cost of just my living quarters in a one bedroom apartment has increased over the past 10 years by 75.2% while my Social Security benefits have only increased 18.2% for the same period. And I have been unable to find a private practice doctor who will take me on as a patient once they learn that I don't have additional private insurance.

9/11′s Conspiracy Trio Falling Apart

Click here to access article by Wayne Madsen from Global Research. (Madsen's article on his website is behind a paywall.)

There are times when my mind is completely boggled by the reports from credible sources that expose so many lies about what the US government and its private agents, both of which are sponsored by the One Percent, say or write about what they are doing, and the contrast between their fictional accounts and the evidence that is being accrued by independent investigators and leaked information is ever widening. This morning is one of those times. My brain's computer crash was first triggered by this article, then accelerated with another article entitled "US Government Intentionally Destroys 9/11 Evidence" from Washington's Blog, and finally crashed after reading many of the numerous and solid supporting links to other articles contained in the latter article. 

(I was forced to stop my work by this brain crash for about 20 minutes, and I hope now having recovered most of my faculties that I can intelligently continue.)

I think the main source of my "bogglement" was the realization that there has been so much information revealed about the many huge deceptions practiced by the official and shadow governments, their corporate sponsors and collaborators and yet they continue rather securely in existence! I really don't know how to make sense of this. How much longer can this sea of lies support the Empire's ship?

Policing and Profit

Click here to access article from the Harvard Law Review. (Note: I was alerted to this article by a reader of the Real-World Economics Review Blog and posted on the latter blog. I am posting the article from the original source as a matter of policy, because it is free of errors, and contains very valuable references which the secondary posting lacks. Because the article is unsigned, the "About" section of this leading scholarly law journal indicates that it was written by a member-student or students who consist of 2nd and 3rd year law students at Harvard.) 

I was rather shocked by the extent of privatization of the legal system and the gross injustice and exploitation that poor citizens experience who become entangled in it. My second reaction was my astonishment that no one in alternative media had alerted us (as far as I know) to this kind of material last year, and my third reaction was astonishment that the ruling class are fully aware of their system of injustice for poor and minority people: much more so by coverage like this that targets the elite than ordinary citizens who have not had such experience with the judicial system.

When residents of Ferguson, Missouri, took to the streets last August to protest the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager killed by a white police officer, the events dramatically exposed an image of modern policing that most Americans rarely see: columns of police pointing military weaponry at peaceful protesters. But the ongoing tension between residents and police in Ferguson was also indicative of another, less visual development in how the police are used to oppress impoverished communities: using law enforcement to extract revenue from the poor.

Also, on the same subject, view this chart and read the brief explanation in a posting entitled "Charged with Immigration Offense" that shows how many private companies profit from the detention of immigrants to the US.

Who Owns the Zika Virus?

Click here to access article by Guillaume Kress from Global Research. 

Kress has uncovered some startling information ignored by mainstream media in this excellent example of investigative reporting. The information illustrates how capitalists will go to extreme lengths to convert everything they can into a commodity. The ownership of this particular commodity begs the question: who knows how they are using their "ownership" of this particular commodity to accumulate more profits and power?

Aspiring to Rule the World: US Capital and the Battle for Syria

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

This article really consists of two essays: 1) an analysis and exposition of what people outside of the US refer to as "bourgeois democracy", and 2) how the latter influences our policies toward Syria. Essay #1 is Gowans' most important contribution. I regard it as a "must read".

Bourgeois democracy can also be described as "capitalist democracy" because the capitalist class created this fake form of democracy after they took control of the US and France during their revolutions and more gradually in Britain. It became the model that all capitalist countries at least aspire to. This form was a product of capitalist class rule disguised as democracy because of the early embryonic capitalist classes need for the support of the lower classes (peasants, laborers, skilled craftsman, etc) to overturn the rule of monarchs and aristocracy. Thus the lower classes were induced to support the capitalist revolutionaries with vague promises of "freedom" and the rule of law celebrated with such slogans as "liberté, égalité, fraternité". What they really seriously advocated was the sanctity of private property.

Gowans essay #1 provides a very concise understanding of how the capitalist class rules the US behind the facade of "democracy". 

Lebanese Rise Up Against The Capitalist Dream Of Privatization

Click here to access article by Catherine Shakdam from MintPress News. (Note: the article appears to end in several places--be sure to read the entire piece.)

I'm offering this piece as another effort to understand (see also this piece) what is happening in Lebanon, Syria's next-door neighbor.  

In stark contrast to the Arab Spring movement, the narrative of which was hijacked by the old political guard, even if in opposition to the actual regime, Lebanon has introduced a new revolutionary tone to the Levant, one which is defiantly non-partisan and proudly secular. Where Egypt, for example, fell prey to the old Islamist narrative under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, Lebanese protesters have risen beyond religious, ethnic and social divides to promote their shared values and expectations.

In the past I have expressed the view that US media coverage is almost entirely managed in support US Empire imperial policies. Thus when I apply this to the current protests over garbage collection in Lebanon, I must conclude that they are organic and not an application of a "color revolution" strategy that Empire agents have so often used to destabilize governments. From my observations, mainstream media coverage of this protest was strictly limited by presenting it as narrowly about garbage, and coverage only lasted about two days. This is in stark contrast to their coverage of the "Arab Spring" protests to which US media gave extensive and ongoing coverage.

This author sees the garbage protests as only a symptom of a much deeper opposition to the extreme capitalism that exists in Lebanon.

Where Egypt, Tunisia and Libya’s democratic aspirations were crushed before they could blossom, the Levant is not playing any faction’s game. Neither financed by any particular group nor sold out to any self-serving agenda, this budding revolution remains organic and popular — at least for the time being.

Going one step further than their Arab Spring revolutionary counterparts, Lebanese are calling for more than just reforms. Many want to wipe the slate clean to better redefine how their institutions should be organized and under what authority.

Turning national parks into corporate profit centers

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

Dolack provides disturbing evidence that this process is already underway. Under corporation control the public parks will be relaxing restrictions on mining, drilling, timber harvesting, and cattle grazing. As government, which is essentially owned and controlled by the capitalist class, imposes more austerity cuts on park services, this trend is likely to accelerate.

Given the corporatization of ever more commons, we may yet be visiting Golden Arches National Park or Disneyland Dinosaur National Monument. Even if the most extreme right-wing plans to auction off public lands don’t ever come to fruition, ongoing neglect can only promise creeping corporate colonization of the United States National Park system.

Commercialization is still relatively minimal in national parks, but worrying signs are there.

Added to this corporate threat, global warming is also damaging public parks.  

Book Review: The Modern Mercenary

Click here to access article by Catherine Austin Fitts from her website The Solari Report. 

In recent decades the capitalist dominated world has evolved from a nation-based phenomenon into a global phenomenon that has seen boundaries completely eliminated (for capitalists). This development has been accompanied by chaos as mini-wars and destabilized societies have appeared in many places. As a result millions of refugees are fleeing the chaos and violence to live in safer countries which, in turn, is  creating a backlash from citizens of those safer countries.

The capitalist propensity to "own" everything has also gone global in the form of private armies, spy services, security services, etc., all in support of the application of violence to promote their interests of power and profits. These new privatized agencies of violence have stealthily eroded what we were familiar with: state monopoly of violence and the embryonic development of international laws and norms governing the use of violence. As the state also morphs into an essentially privatized entity, governments often contract out their applications of violence to these agencies especially if they are illegal and secret such as false flag operations. Or if the operation is not secret, the government can directly hire and train combat units consisting of mostly foreign mercenaries as they have done, and will continue to do, under the Division 30 project for attacks against Syria. Fitts offers a brief review of a new book that deals with this new, mostly unrecognized phenomenon.

Who Owns Agricultural Land in Ukraine?

Click here to access article by Elizabeth Fraser from Oakland Institute.

Here you can see one of two major reasons that explain why the Empire's capitalist directors sponsored the overthrow of the elected government in Ukraine in early 2014: to plunder their rich farming lands by capitalist agricultural corporations. The other major reason was to set up more NATO bases on the edge of Russia as a way to intimidate the Russian government.

The fate of Ukraine’s agricultural sector is on shaky ground. Last year, the Oakland Institute reported that over 1.6 million hectares (ha) of land in Ukraine are now under the control of foreign-based corporations. Further research has allowed for the identification of additional foreign investments. Some estimates now bring the total of Ukrainian farmland controlled by foreign companies to over 2.2 million ha [hectares: one hectare equals 2.47 acres].

It appears that Western agents and their Ukrainian fascist collaborators are using the same method that they used in Russia and other satellite countries to convert and concentrate ownership of former collective and state owned properties into private hands--this time into the possession of Western corporations in addition to their Ukrainian collaborators.

Private Police: Mercenaries for the American Police State

Click here to access article by John W. Whitehead from Activist Post.

Whitehead alerts us to a growing ominous trend that suggests more police violence will be used against protestors and vulnerable people in America's future.

...what few realize is that these private police agencies are actually given their police powers by state courts and legislatures, which do not require them to act in accordance with the Constitution’s strictures or be accountable to “we the people.” As legal analyst Timothy Geigner observes, “They're hiding from public scrutiny behind the veil of incorporation, which may rank right up there among the most cynical things a government organization has ever done. It's a move one might find in the corporate republic of some dystopian novel.

Ownership & Business Models as Social & Ideological Battle Fields

Click here to access article by Roger Boyd from Humanity's Test.

This article is a highly academic treatment of the evolution of forms of ownership over the past 10,000 years to its highly concentrated form of capitalism that we see in existence today. Boyd only refers rather obliquely to the violence that has been used by various group down through this period to acquire ownership over land and resources. Such violence by warlords, colonialists, etc, served to provide the foundation of the accumulation of wealth that made possible the acceleration of capitalist concentration of ownership witnessed in the 20th century and continues today.

Still, he offers a critique of capitalism by showing how its resulting concentration of wealth and power is not legitimate according to any democratic standard. By presenting this broad historical perspective, he reminds people that the current reality, and those benefiting from it, strive to obscure alternative methods of organizing an economy.

The history of alternative ownership and business models and the power struggles that lead to the current reality have been mostly forgotten, as they do not fit the current ruling discourse. Instead, the current ahistorical ideology takes the status quo as a starting point. The modern vanguard of cultural and ideological imperialism is that of neoclassical economics, and its emissaries such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which treat private property with a near-religious reverence.